Posted on 07/03/2010 10:22:47 AM PDT by yongin
Since we began ranking the 10 most influential Republican leaders early last year, we've made sure to note that this Line is not to be taken as an early ranking of the 2012 field.
More and more, however, it is. As the 2010 election now stands less than four months away, the 2012 jockeying has begun in earnest with potential presidential candidates seeking to out-endorse and out-stump one another.
The current leaders in that game are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who are both doling out cash by the bucketful through their respective PACs.
Increasingly there is chatter that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is a likely 2012 candidate, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threw himself back into the mix with an interview last weekend on Fox News Channel.
And then there is Sarah Palin, who will mark one year since her surprise resignation from the Alaska governorship this weekend. Palin's political future is fundamentally unknowable; While she has endorsed a series of candidates and used her following on Facebook to counter the Obama administration, it's not clear whether she is willing to give up the financial benefits she has reaped out of office for what would be one of the most highly scrutinized candidacies in modern history.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com ...
Michelle Bachmann - Haley Barbour ticket, that’s a winner.
I can’t figure out why they keep shoving Romney in our faces after his health insurance debacle in Mass.
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He was the machine and administration choice last time.
He will be again most likely.
Well, the machine’s choice, anyway.
I like Newt, I now place my head down with hands over head and await the slings and arrows. Seriously, I do like him and I think he has many terrific ideas for a new admininstration. He is not perfect but he knows what the problems are and has answers that make sense.
I wouldn’t want to see Haley on the ticket, but do I wish he were still the RNC chairman. Steele must go. We’ve only a few months until the mid-term elections. I hope the outcry against Steele continues to grow. I’m rooting for Ken Blackwell to replace Steele.
Sarah Palin is basically pushed aside and while I like Haley Barbour, he looks and sounds like the old pol he is, which is going to be anathema to the majority of voters looking for real change and not a re-arranging of the deck chairs on the good ship Titanic. I see Barbour as a VP, especially if Palin runs. Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty and Gingrich are off my list for a variety of reasons and although I like Bobby Jindal, he tends to be boring in his public appearances and would do better in a Republican president's cabinet than as the front-runner against Obama. Scott Brown is another RINO, Nikki Haley is relatively unknown and inexperienced and Chris Christie has indicated that he isn't really interested, although, again, Christie could be a good VP or cabinet member in a Republican administration. I agree that Governor Jan Brewer should have been included in the list, especially when they added Nikki Haley, who is far less known or experienced.
What this list shows, besides it's inherent bias, is that we have a very small GOP bench for the 2012 presidential election and I don't see that drastically changing, although the emergence of Arizona Governor Brewer as a force to be reckoned with during the immigration battle proves that things can change quickly in politics.
I still prefer Sarah Palin as the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, for a variety of reasons, including her record of achievement in office and the fact that she has already been attacked, investigated and reviled by the Democrats and the media for the last two years without seriously affecting her solid conservative positions or her popularity. I do not believe Palin would pass up the opportunity to serve her embattled nation to make more money as a commentator/writer. She's already made millions from her autobiography and I suspect that Fox News had to give her a seven figure deal to sign her up as a commentator.
Unlike Romney, Brown, et al. Palin is a true conservative and despite non-stop media sniping, manages to convey her conservationism with a pleasant smile and a sincerity that most politicians lack. Obama's pitiful resume and failed presidency will put to rest the 'no foreign policy experience' complaint often lodged against Palin, even by some Republicans. Because foreign policy was, well, foreign to Obama, the fact that Palin was never in some senate meeting discussing aid to Turkestan or some such hardly disqualifies her to run for president, just as it didn't disqualify Ronald Reagan in 1980. No, Sarah Palin is not the incarnation of Ronald Reagan but there are a few similarities, including the left's hatred for Palin which is easily equal to their hatred for Reagan in his time.
Did I mention that I think the list is bogus?
My dream picks for 2012 primary slate: Bachman, Bolton, Brewer, Liz Cheney, Coburn, DeMint, Inhofe, Jindal, Palin and Pence.
My nightmare picks for the 2012 primary are: Giuliani, Hucklbee, McCain, Ron Paul, Perry, Romney, any Bush.
I like Barbour and I believe he would make the best president.
That said, now that Huckabee is coming up lame, this is nothing more that the WaPo pushing it's new regional candidate, to split the vote, to hand the nomination to Mitt.
The money men of K Street agree with you.
Haley Barbour's fundraising takes off
The fundraiser, set for adjoining hot spots in Washington’s trendy Glover Park neighborhood, has been the talk of Washington GOP circles, boasting a host committee that reads like a next-generation GOP bundling and campaign dream team.
Ascendant lobbyists for the health insurance, tobacco, liquor, defense and pharmaceutical industries are jockeying for space on the host committee with hotshot, young finance professionals and accomplished political operatives such as media strategist Phil Musser and election lawyer Michael Toner....
I like Newt, too, he’s just a mess.
He’s an ideas man. That is his strength.
He is not a leader. He has character flaws that keep him out of REPUBLICAN leadership. He’s stellar compared to the Dems.
National Review wants Palin to be RNC Chair
Re: Steele and the RNC: Allow me to chime in with my usual observation on this subject: This is a job for Sarah Palin. Palin would be a much better RNC chairman than presidential candidate or freelance kingmaker. She’d raise tons of money and help recruit good candidates, i.e., she’d excel at doing the things Steele should have been doing instead of appointing himself Republican pundit-at-large.
A Chairman Palin would help set the right tone for the Republican party without having to get herself entangled in the minutiae of policy-development, which has not been her forte. Sure, she’d be polarizing, but so is Barack Obama, and these are polarized times. And it’s one thing to have a polarizing party chairman, another to have a polarizing candidate.
Anybody disagree?
You mean Mr. “Obama is doing a great job with the gulf crisis” Barbour? You were being sarcastic, right?
LOL...thanks for weighing in, Mitt.
The money may pour in from the lobbyists for Barbour, but I bet it will mostly be from the ones who want to see a regional conservative candidate split the vote, and hand the nomination to Stink Mitt.
My dream picks for 2012 primary slate: Bachman, Bolton, Brewer, Liz Cheney, Coburn, DeMint, Inhofe, Jindal, Palin and Pence.Michelle Bachmann - Haley Barbour ticket, that’s a winner.21 posted on July 3, 2010 1:54:22 PM EDT by FlyingEagle
Warren G. Harding is the only senator ever to defeat a governor in a presidential election;
no senator has ever defeated a sitting president's bid for reelection.IOW, senators only beat other senators - and therefore senators should not be considered for the nomination in the first place. And Abraham Lincoln was the only congressman to be elected president - and he won only a plurality in a three-man race.
Only governors should be considered presidential timber.
Well, JFK did beat a term limited VP/ex-Senator (Nixon), otherwise those odds do indeed look very formidable. However, I think most history is somewhat irrelevant in 2012. We've never had a Kenyan anti-American President before, and the Tea Party just might have a large influence this time.
Not even a mention of Giuliani? Thank goodness republican infatuation with that unreliable, liberal toad has finally subsided.
Still, some disturbing news here. Last election cycle I was pretty much a Tancredo fan in the beginning (one of the few politicians out there, at the time, who’d taken a really firm stance on illegal immigration and what needed to be done about it) but Romney charmed me in the early debates. However, It didn’t take much investigating at all to reveal him as a charlatan.
So I’m not understanding how he’s still at the top of the polls. The only donations he even got last time came from himself; how much debt did he end the cycle with?
He is NOT a strong candidate. However, perhaps he is just liberal enough to strip independents and moderate democrats away from Obama? And is that possibility in itself enough for conservatives to justify selling out their principles - AGAIN - supporting a RINO just to keep a lib out of office?
I still consider supporting Sarah, but I’m going to admit I’m worried she might be a little thin-skinned for the job. We have a president right now who throws a fit every time someone criticizes him (all his critics are racists, dontcha know - something even a lot of Freepers pushed during the primaries to make the Clintons look bad, without thinking of unintended consequences). But Sarah can’t afford to let late night comedians get to her - and to go after Letterman personally, over a really stupid joke, really did take away some of that presidential stature. And I’m not sure she can recover from the whole governor issue, either. We know why she stepped down, but I think we also know most people out there don’t pay as much attention as we do.
And, of course, there’s that special branch of conservative that bashes Palin no matter what she does... For example, did you know that Sarah is a sell-out for saying McCain deserves to be in the senate, even though she was considered a hero just two years ago when she was saying he deserved to be president? When you’re able to figure out any sort of logic in that thinking, I’d like to know how it works! I understand most of us only supported McCain because of Palin, but the idea that she herself felt that way, or should, is a bit bizarre.
Jindal does not impress me, with his current “the government does too much”/”the government doesn’t do enough” multiple personality syndrome. Christie and Pawlenty I don’t know well enough - I’m looking forward to finding out more about them.
How does Nikki Haley make the list while Jim Demint doesn’t?
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