Posted on 07/03/2011 9:13:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In the past few weeks we’ve seen the media scrambling to promote a cat fight between Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.
As the UK’s Telegraph recently wrote:
The first shots have been fired in what could become an ugly battle between Sarah Palin and her potential rival Michele Bachmann for the Republican presidential nomination.
[...]
A Republican consultant who declined to be named because he is aligned with a rival camp, said: “The claws are out. It’s the cat fight everyone has been waiting for – Queen Sarah being taken on by the Palin mini-me.” This is all obviously designed to blunt Palin’s power and momentum. But could over-the-top tabloid coverage of two popular GOP women actually backfire and diminish establishment favorite Mitt Romney, instead of giving him the predicted edge?
Certainly a made-for-TV “girl brawl” between two outspoken Tea Party stars has at least the potential to overshadow Romney’s White House run, just as “Hillary vs. Barack” quickly eclipsed every other Democrat candidacy in 2008. In a cat fight scenario, Romney could suddenly become the mouse in the room — small, insignificant, and barely noticeable. It’s not like he can just suddenly grow ovaries (though we wouldn’t put it past him to try.)
If it plays out this way, Romney’s 2012 estrogen deficit would prove to be just the latest challenge for a man with well-documented “woman problems.”
As The Atlantic’s Nicole Allan put it last year, Mitt Romney “does not know how to look good while competing with a woman.”
How will he look competing against two women? Hmmm … I’m going to go out on a limb and predict it won’t be pretty if Romney’s past is any indicator.
Despite his high-profile endorsements of several women last year, let’s recall that Romney and the Massachussetts GOP establishment awkwardly forced out a popular female radio host who was running for Ted Kennedy’s seat in 1994, preventing her from even appearing on the Republican primary ballot so as to clear the way for Mitt. Next up was the first female Massachussets governor (Republican Jane Swift) in 2002, who once again, was driven off the primary ballot by Mitt and the state establishment GOP, as Mitt needed that office to pad his presidential resume. None of this went over particularly well with women, as you can imagine.
Romney again faced charges of chauvinism after participating in a male-candidate-only fundraiser in Arizona last fall, ditching the two female Congressional candidates, during a midterm election that was hailed as the “Year of the GOP Woman.”
Compounding the misogyny index, his aides continue to make anonymous sexist comments about Gov. Palin, instead of challenging her on her record.
But in what has to be considered the most bizarre outbreak of Romney’s Woman Derangement Syndrome yet, he pretended to get groped during a photo-op with New Hampshire waitresses last month. Apparently, it was some warped attempt to “connect” with women voters. Fake sexual harrassment? How weird is that?
Yes, Romney may have a grand money-raising operation, and the best GOP consultants money can buy. But will he be able to break through the potentially historic candidacies of Palin and Bachmann and their attending media frenzies — without looking completely boorish in the process?
It’s doubtful he will have the political muscle to force both Palin and Bachmann out, since so many of us are so fed up with the GOP machine: We’re not going let them pre-select our candidate.
And contrary to the conventional “wisdom” of the GOP machine, Palin and Bachmann are not interchangeable. As Michele herself strangely and proudly stated the other day … “I’m no Sarah Palin clone.” That’s right, Michele, you’re not. You have no executive experience, have never won a statewide office, have never run on a national ticket, nor balanced a $14 billion budget three times. Thanks for pointing it out. Oh, and you’ve never stared down Big Oil, signed the largest vetoes in your state’s history, nor had a conservative film maker ante up $1 million of his own money to document your political career.
While we’re at it, I’m pretty sure Governor Palin would never run for a seat in Congress, just to turn around and start campaigning for the presidency on the taxpayer dime six months later. She’s not wired that way. Moreover, unlike Bachmann who rejects the label, Governor Palin is a proud feminist, laying claim to the women’s movement begun by Republican stalwarts Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
The truth is though they’re both attractive conservative women, there are big distinctions between Palin and Bachmann. They appeal to overlapping but not identical constituencies.
Contrary to popular thinking, Palin’s support transcends the social conservative evangelical base: she does have a big evangelical following, but she has also attracted conservative gays, minorities, libertarians, veterans, business owners, Catholics, Mormons and independent Democrats. (Remember all those Democrats for McCain in ’08 who were really Democrats for Palin?) Recall that Palin had an 88% approval rating governing Alaska, the least religious state in America where nearly two-thirds of the voters are unaffiliated with either party. In contrast, Bachmann was elected in a predominantly Republican district, and because she hasn’t won a statewide office, she has never proven her ability to attract right-leaning independents.
For Romney fans or anyone to suggest that Palin and Bachmann completely cancel each other out is ludicrous, especially given the die-hard nature of Palin’s support. Let’s not forget Palin’s potential base is much bigger than Bachmann’s. Sixty million voters already cast ballots for Palin once. How hard would it be to get 15 million or so to do it again to win a primary? The bigger question is whether Romney will be able to convince more than four million GOP primary voters (his 2008 total) to suddenly support the man who couldn’t beat McCain and who ultimately inspired Obamacare.
Ideally, and forgive me for saying this, but two opportunists like Bachmann and Romney might cancel each other out, leaving the rest of the votes for the true reformer in the race, Governor Palin. Let’s recall that Mitt has been called the GOP’s version of John Kerry. And, Bachmann, with her legislative-only resume, and gift for self-promotion, has been compared to Barack Obama. Sounds like those two will be fighting over the same electoral pie, if you ask me!
What cracks me up is that Bachmann is being propped up as the Palin alternative. From Fox, to CNN to MSNBC, so many commentators are suggesting that Bachmann is the “better version” of Palin. It begs the question … Why is no one contrasting Bachmann to Romney, the guy who is actually in the race, you know, the guy at the top of the leader board? Could it be that Palin is seen as the de facto front runner, the pink elephant in the room? Will this race be all about who is the “real Palin”? I relish that thought … because, obviously, there is only one REAL PALIN.
Deliciously, Romney may find himself fighting a two-front war for relevancy with Bachmann on the far-right, and Palin in the center-right: Two confident Tea Partiers, with committed constituencies, eating his (and Obama’s) lunch, every day, for the next nine months. While Bachmann is swatting him gently over abortion flip flops, Palin will be ferociously assaulting his fiscal positions on cap and tax and healthcare mandates. After positioning himself as the Reagan Republican in the last cycle, will he now morph into Rockefeller Romney in a year when the party is primed to lurch rightward? Or will he just resort to outright sexist attacks on the “two crazy women.” That should go over really well with the electorate that sent a record 27 GOP women to Congress and governorships last year.
You may totally disagree with my gender-heavy assessment. That’s OK, I’m a former lefty and I don’t understand GOP politics all that well. In fact, I don’t really care to understand GOP politics all that well.
But from where I’m sitting … the faux frontrunner still has a woman problem.
And not even a fake pinch-in-the-butt can turn that around.
“I’m a former lefty and I don’t understand GOP politics all that well. In fact, I don’t really care to understand GOP politics all that well.” Statement by the author Nicole Coulter.
This is the stupidest article I have read in a long time. And I have read some pretty dumb ones lately.
The author starts with an idiotic quote from an unidentified (and probably nonexistent) source. She then goes off on a tangent inventing a cat fight and then she rattles off all kinds of silly gossip. Finally she states she really is a “former lefty” and doesn't understand what she is talking about.
Please spare us this inane gossip and stupid comments.
So far, I’m really enjoying this catfight between you and Eternal Vigilance.
As a skinny disabled vet, I’m damn glad you are here.
I can understand why they would be at odds, they essentially appeal to the same demographics for their core constituents.
Gays are 4% of the population.
Jews are 2% of the population.
Muslims are 1-2% of the population.
Catholics are around 25% of the population.
Based on these numbers, I would not try to appeal to gays at the risk of offending Catholics.
The problem with even pretending to be nice to gay Republicans is that they’re going to be constantly whining about gay stuff, constantly pushing for us to blend our position with the Democrats. It’s nice enough to say “oh, but they just happen to be gay, they support all of our agenda otherwise.” And we can’t appeal to lower middle class, blue collar Catholic Democrats because our strongest draw with them was our clear advantage on traditional moral issues.
Think of this. What would happen if we said “Homosex is a mental illness and science is unclear on what causes it, but evidence points to hormones. We need to study those homones
and work on a cure through medical means. As a matter of public policy, it is simply not a good idea to encourage extinctionary behaviors. It’s a mental illness, much like depression, which can be remedied with a simple pill which Merck (see Guardisil / Perry) Perry can say “I’m giving Merck $1 Billion dollars upfront for a medical cure to gay”.
Start with “stop drinking soy milk”. Ban anything that is thought to cause gay, like certain plastics or plastic components.
Marcus is going to prove a fatal problem, but he is opening up again the idea of curing gay. Prayer doesn’t seem to be working all that well with him. And truthfully, there are some people out there who think it’s a missed opportunity to start seriously talking about curing gay, when the guy talking about curing gay thinks that prayer works better than science when clearly it’s not working as well with him as one would think science might be able to do if we put forth a big War on Gay.
There’s always been a cure for “gay.”
It’s called “repent.”
Have you seen the video of Marcus Bachmann, the audio, any pictures? You know that story that’s coming sometime, certainly if Bachmann wins the nomination.
I’m talking about a full cure. There’s probably some biological component to it.
This is conduct, that if everyone did it, would cause the exinction of humanity in less than 120 years.
So, you know, it’s not just a moral problem, it’s a societal problem, that could be solved with science, because it’s not just another thing, like marijuana, that bothers some people, but it’s an extinctionary behavior, and that’s a serious serious problem.
Catholics already vote democrat.
Some Catholics vote Democrat, some vote Republican, and they’re a very very large group. With the proper moral values, we can move a significant number of them to vote for us. LePage did great with Catholics in Maine. He’s a tea party Conservative. He didn’t get country club republicans, he got catholic working class dems. And he won in a 3 way race with a liberal dem (who got 19%) and an establishment dem/indy (2 points less than LePage). We won that because they liked his ethnicity and his religion. I’d like more Catholics on board, and fewer mentally ill people who want to be celebrated for their sodomy. Blacks and hispanics will appreciate our stance as well. Gays are just not popular, and the people who like gays are almost all Democrats. Republicans typically are not as fond of the gays. If the Republican Party is trying to devise a systematic way to get Republican voters to hate Republican candidates, it’s to embrace gayness.
So, gays are 4% of the population.
Catholics are 24%. How do we get as many Catholic votes as gay votes we lose.
Let’s assume all the gays are voting for us. And we want to give all the gay votes, gay strategists, to the Democrats. We can just trade, maybe. We’ll keep paying their salaries,
put they work for Democrats, they call themselves Democrats, and we never talk to them again. We can take Chris Matthews. He at least understands white working class Catholics. Here’s a list of conservatives Chris, pick one out that the white working class Catholics will like. We won’t have to worry about offending gays with our message.
Ok, so we have an 8 point swing.
Let’s say the Catholics currently get 75% and we get 25%
That’s 18% of Catholics to Dems, and 6% to Reps. How can we make up for the loss of 8 points of gay votes.
Well, if we go from 75/25 to 50/50 with Catholics we make up
12 points. Dems would lose 6 points and we’d make up 6 points 12/12.
There are just many many more Catholic votes than gay votes, and that’s the vote you want. Skip the gays entirely.
Mr. Romney "Disses" Amateur Radio In Televised Town Meeting
Obama is pRes_ _ent ONLY because sore loser Team Romney
savaged Gov. Palin and her children.
Romney OWES America, and not even eligible anyway.
:’) We tend to be smug about that. ;’)
Note: this topic is from July 3, 2011. A re-ping from July, due to the current Cain smear.
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