less than Rush got. ROTLOL
Posted on 02/26/2011 8:17:18 AM PST by Rufii
Mitch, Mitt, And The Race They Can Win
By John Taylor
Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana is, according to current criteria, a moderate Republican, which is to say an authentic Reaganite. His mentors include respected centrists such as William Ruckelshaus and Richard Lugar. Now David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan want him to run for president in 2012. I'm a little confused about why fans of a more pragmatic conservatism would feel that way. Assuming an incumbent's advantage in a recovering economy, President Obama will probably be reelected. Why waste a candidate who could win in an open year?Presidential elections aren't parlor games, I realize. Both parties should try as hard as they can to win in order to keep debates vigorous and urgent and give voters a real choice as well as be in the position to exploit the vagaries of circumstance. A young first-term senator from Illinois didn't start out expecting to beat Hillary Clinton. No one expected the September 2008 financial crisis to guarantee the election of whichever Democrat had been nominated.
No, you never know what will happen in politics. You also don't know what's going to happen when a .240 singles hitter steps to the plate, but you can make a pretty good guess. As political scientists have shown and common sense confirms, the smartest money and best candidates have a tendency to stay away from riskier races. The last year a Democratic incumbent was up was 1996, when Bill Clinton, thanks to his survivor's instinct and the ministrations of the great triangulator Dick Morris, seemed well positioned for reelection. So the GOP anointed Bob Dole, a respected warhorse about whom no one seemed especially enthusiastic.
But as the open election of 2000 approached, the drum beat for George W. Bush began two years or more before election day. In Republican circles you could feel the influence and moneymassing behind him. That's not happening now with any candidate because most of them (such as Daniels, I'd think) are wondering whether this is really the right time to run. All things being equal, the best nominee, whoever he or she is, will be naturally disinclined, since a better chance looms for a shift to the GOP four years later. It will be an especially tough call for Mitt Romney, who lost a strenuous bid for the nomination in 2008 and can't risk being a two-time loser.
Losing matters less to true believers such as those conservatives who, in Richard Nixon's deathless formulation, would rather be right than president. The likes of Daniels and Romney would be wise to leave 2012 to any one of the tea party's Quixotes. Assuming I've read the tea leaves correctly and Obama wins, we'd see if in 2016 the GOP wanted to try to get another pot out a used bag or come back toward the center where the voters are.
Well, it’s like this. PUBs shift leftward to the center; then the RATs shift further to the left, causing PUBs to again shift leftward. Repeat enough times and tou have the situation we have today. Most, if not all, RATs today would have been locked up by Wilson and FDR. The “eatablishment” today would have been RATs under the same Presidents.
We are two nations - sane and insane. We have two political parties - Communist and Liberal. We have two legl systems - Constitutional law and anarchy.
Heckuva endorsement right there. Makes me want to go right out and vote!
I read some favorable articles about Daniels in the conservative press and thought he might be a good candidate for the White House. But after reading in this article that Ruckelshaus and Lugar are advising him, I'm crossing him off.
Mitch daniels has an arrest record so this will disqualify him automatcally. Mitt romneys romneyCare will be a liability for running for president. now that ObamCare went into effect and Obama stated he took what Romney did for Mass. for all of the USA. Newt Gingrich had a problem with marital fidelity he had an affair while his first wife was suffering from Cancer. These three will drop out if that already have. republicans need someone whom has the scruples and no skeletons in the closet when going up aganst obama. whom in the republican establishment is an outsider and has no strikes against him.
There’s plenty of other negatives, as well. Mitch and Chris Christie have been getting a lot of press for controlling budgets, but neither of them is a real conservative.
Think a dumbell graph on the political spectrum—not the usual bell curve. We have a bulge on the Liberal left, and one on the Conservative right, with very little in the “middle” anymore.
On the Internet, sure. But that's not the real world. The people who go to protests one way or the other aren't a large percentage of the population.
"Polarization" means people get fed up with one extreme or the other and vote accordingly, not that they permanently enroll on one extreme against the other.
If the whole country really were divided into two equal and hostile blocs, we'd be in civil war by now. It's not and we aren't.
BTW, this guy has had an interesting career: "Priest and vicar; former Nixon aide and Nixon Foundation executive director." When he says "Nixon aide," though, he means he worked for Nixon after he left office, not that he was part of the Nixon administration. Apparently, Nixon maintained his own "shadow cabinet" after he left office.
Indeed, Taylor worked for Nixon during his post-presidential years.
ahhh...Diocletian is like Bawney Fwank eh?
...time to cross the Rubicon and fix America.
Really? I mention fruit growing in a garden and you think of homosexuality? I think you may have a problem.
I can’t take a hell of a lot more strain on mine either LOL.
Then we can really stick a fork in our country.
For starters, the Boy Scouts will be finished.
NO....I think of Bawney Fwank...
actually I do not care who sleeps with who(adults, that is)...as long as bone smugglers are not teaching kids....getting married....or doing dirty in public.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.