Peter Beinart : Petraeus is the only candidate who can unite the GOP

Hot Air ^ | October 13, 2009 | ALLAHPUNDIT

[RobinMasters]

I wish he was wrong.

As personalities, the syntax-mangling Ike and the self-consciously intellectual David Petraeus don’t have much in common. But politically, they’re in a parallel position. Today’s GOP has a right-wing base that can damage Obama, but none of its favorites have a prayer of winning the White House. The reason is that just like the Republican right of the early 1950s, which kept insisting that the New Deal constituted socialism (or fascism), today’s conservative activists have not accommodated themselves to some basic shifts in public mood. Over the past couple of decades, the American people have grown more pro-environment, more culturally tolerant, and more suspicious of the unregulated free market, and yet the Republican Party has responded with a series of litmus tests for its presidential candidates that represent the political equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “la la la, I can’t hear you.”…

Like McCain in 2008, Petraeus could largely skip the Iowa caucuses, which evangelicals dominate, and instead focus on New Hampshire, where independents can vote. In both 2000 and 2008, it was New Hampshire that boosted McCain, and New Hampshire, as it turns out, is the closest thing Petraeus has to a home state. From there it would be on to South Carolina, where military pedigrees go a long way.

All this is wildly speculative, of course. But there’s a political logic to it: Parties that have grown narrow and extreme tend to spiral downward until they nominate someone who is not beholden to their narrow, extreme base. That person has to be so popular that he or she can defy the normal rules about how candidates get nominated.

[Brugmansian]

I believe Bob Tyrrell coined the word. If not, he uses it a lot and has for years:

Clearing the Kultursmog

Doesn't really apply to Obama as he emits it. Allahpundit inhales and breathes it out to us because that is easier than clearing his head of it.

[lt.america]

I think you are being extremely short sighted when saying that a executive experience that you have as a governor trumps that of a General in charge of hundreds of thousands of troops. Especially in a COIN environment where it is not a matter of sitting in a bunker and moving pieces across a map with a long stick. Much more than most can even comprehend goes into what transformational leaders such as Petraeus can get done.

Additionally, I don't think voters look at Palin’s body of political experience in the terms of 17 years. Although you may be technically correct, most voters are going to remember her political run as a governor who stepped down mid term.

Lastly, what makes people think that Palin even wants to run in 2012 anyhow? That is a huge foregone conclusion which I think is extremely presumptuous. I felt when she stepped down that she may be back in 16 at the earliest.

[cookcounty]

Who’s Peter Beinhart?