I understand that Governor Romney is driving a pick-up truck these days.
Posted on 08/08/2010 4:57:28 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For the men (and one rather polarizing woman) who might run for president as Republicans in 2012, now is the wilderness campaign. After the midterms, the struggle for the nomination will move out into open country. But for the moment, it's all guerrilla warfare and tactical maneuvering - in the form of Web videos and op-eds, speeches and endorsements, and the occasional public dig at a potential rival.
By definition, in a wilderness campaign it's hard to tell who's winning. Are all of the endorsements Sarah Palin has made building an army of "Mama Grizzly" Republicans who will rise up for her in 2012? Did Mitch Daniels' June trip to Washington, during which he managed to irritate both neoconservatives (with talk of defense cuts) and social conservatives (by floating the idea of a social issues "truce"), quiet some of the buzz around the Indiana governor's candidacy? Was Mitt Romney's recent op-ed article attacking the New Start treaty a savvy move that burnished his credentials as a critic of the Obama administration's foreign policy? Or was it an unforced error, because it annoyed pro-Start foreign policy hands in the Republican establishment?
Matters will become clearer once the midterms pass and campaign season officially begins - but maybe not that much clearer. The Republican Party is famous for always nominating the politician whose "turn" it seems to be, and for choking off insurgent candidacies early on. In 2008, though, there was a wild and un-Republican scramble for the nomination, and the original front-runner, John McCain, only emerged as the winner through a series of fortuitous coincidences.
Right now, 2012 looks as if it could be another free-for-fall. In part, that's because the populist temper is stronger among Republicans than it's been since the days of Barry Goldwater. But it's also because the most likely leaders for a populist uprising, Palin and Mike Huckabee, have a more devoted following than most earlier insurgents - and the current "it's his turn" candidate, Romney, inspires little in the way of actual excitement.
Palin is Palin: If she runs, there's going to be a constituency that would crawl on broken glass to vote for her, no matter how many soap operas cling to her. Huckabee, meanwhile, is a chronically underestimated figure who straddles two anti-establishment demographics (the Tea Parties and the Christian Right), and whose political savvy rivals that of his fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton.
Neither is exactly brimming over with gravitas. But either one might be able to beat the unloved Romney, his money and organizational muscle notwithstanding.
This prospect gives Republican insiders heartburn. In the salons and bars of conservative Washington, there's an obvious appetite for a kind of intra-establishment coup, in which Romney is knocked from his perch as the safe and sober choice, and a fresher figure takes his place.
One candidate for this role is Daniels: He's too wonky for some tastes, but he's a well-connected wonk, with access to the web of power brokers who helped elect George W. Bush. Another is Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who's beloved of party bigwigs despite seeming like a liberal's caricature of a Republican - floridly Southern, heavyset and an ex-tobacco lobbyist. There's also Sen. Jon Thune of South Dakota and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, both safe-seeming choices - though Thune doesn't have much of a record to run on, and lately Pawlenty seems more interested in playing the populist card than in wooing the establishment.
Then, of course, there's the ultimate insider, Jeb Bush. Last week, and not for the first time, he publicly denied having any interest in following his brother to the Oval Office. But he denied it the day after appearing at a fundraiser for Rand Paul, a figure who would normally be anathema to the Bush family - which suggests a man with a strong interest in keeping his political options open.
All of this leaves Romney in a perilous position. If he's going to win the nomination, he needs to co-opt some of the populist zeal that a Palin or a Huckabee - or even a Newt Gingrich, who's busy railing against the American elite from his perch inside the Beltway - will seek to use against him. But if he goes too cynically populist, he risks alienating the establishment, and seeing a Daniels or a Barbour (or a Bush) move in and take his place.
In a sense, the stronger President Barack Obama looks next year, the better Romney's chances of being nominated. He needs the prospect of an uphill general-election battle to keep his potential rivals for establishment support safely on the sidelines. And then he needs that same establishment to rally around him once the primary voting starts - not out of love or admiration, but out of fear of the populist alternative.
I understand that Governor Romney is driving a pick-up truck these days.
Does his chauffeur drive while Mitt rides in back?
Maybe he has an old Louis XIV chair back there, ala Granny Clampett.
Romney is the front runner, perhaps the only runner, among the Big bloc of Democrats who will be voting in Republican primaries if the Kenyan does not have a major challenger from other Social Democrats- the Clintons, say. That would be a huge and possibly unbeatable bloc. I do believe that Romney will be the “Republican” candidate and will lose to the Kenyan.
Democrats probably selected the last Republican candidate and will probably select this one future ones because the Republicans will NOT reform the primaries to exclude even some of the temporary Republicans. They think they are being “inclusive” and “tolerant.”
I smell a 'polarizingly' biased statement.
My prediction is that as long as Sarah Palin is in, the only way Romney will win is if he and Huckabee team up to solidify the RINO vote and crossover Democrats. I’m not saying that won’t happen but I think it unlikely at this point.
That sounds like a plan to me. If you can think it, so can Romney and Huckabee's handlers. Romney, at least, will be calculating the crossovers. Hell, he IS a crossover.
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