FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

All this talk about Hillary being the presumptive nominee in 2016 reminds me that Obama wasn't on any pundit's radar in 2005.

 

And Bill Clinton wasn't on the radar in 1989.

I think the democrats may look at the 2016 election this way, "If Hillary wins, great, but we're not putting one of our bright stars out there to lose, which is what usually happens after one party has the White House for two consecutive terms.

One could argue that the republicans did that for the 1996, 2008 and 2012 elections. I remember one of the books I read on Clinton implied that Bush I was unbeatable in 1992 and that was why certain people were staying out of the election (Cuomo, I don't remember who the other was...) and then Clinton went in and won.

 

I see I need to compose my posts in paint-by-numbers style ...

Regardless of a GOP candidate's background -- whether or not he/she becomes the nominee -- he/she will tend to be viewed by the general electorate, particular that portion referred to as salt-of-the-earth Democrats, as an entitled silver-spooner. When one has an ingrained tendency to view GOP-ers as such, then I can see how one would view the GOP's difficulties this way. But this has less to do with the GOP's actual difficulties than it does with the lenses through which these difficulties are viewed.

Let's go back in time and assume that John Edwards hasn't stepped on his dick yet. Let's further assume that he and Lindsey Graham are being discussed in some sort of left-right, either-or thing. Both of those guys have similar backgrounds, coming up from nothing to be elected Senator from their respective states. By the time Edwards entered public service, he was already a multi-millionaire, but Graham was just a small-time pol and Air Force (reserve) JAG lawyer. Yet many Democrats/lefties would see Graham as the entitled silver-spooner and Edwards as the heroic bootstraps type by default.

To summarize: The GOP-can't-find-anything-but-entitled-silver-spooners meme is nothing but a tautology.

 

And 2016-20 will be spent undoing most of the damage from 2008-15.
That should make the libs wonder what they even accomplished.
Either way, you can't really claim progress when both sides are either pissing on each other or cleaning up the floor.
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Which leads me to good ol' Mike Huckabee's morning facebook update and this quandary for both the GOP as a whole and the Democrats' most prized possession, at least until it dumps it and replaces it with the one...

"Is the GOP doomed if the immigration bill doesn’t pass, or if it does pass?...Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans block immigration reform, the party is doomed. But wait: other pundits say that if it passes, a flood of newly-legalized immigrants will vote Democrat, and the GOP will be doomed. But you might be surprised to learn who else is worried about being doomed. In an op-ed for the Charleston Gazette, Peter Kirsanow warns that the bill will be a disaster for low skilled American workers, especially black males. He warns that the combination of newly legalized immigrants, and all the new illegal immigrants likely to follow, will flood the market for low skilled workers, reducing job opportunities and depressing wages even more. And who, exactly, is Peter Kirsanow? He’s a labor attorney…a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights…and the former chairman of the Center for New Black Leadership. It seems that when it comes to the immigration reform bill, every side is afraid they’ll be doomed if they do, and doomed if they don’t."

 

The notion that a Republican's would think his or her initial responsibility in a primary is to imagine what a Democrat would think of said candidate is grossly counter-intuitive and not something you've proven. Do you think Republicans thought to themselves "Bob Dole is our best chance to beat Bill Clinton" in 1996? No. Most of them only had Dole to choose by the time primaries rolled in.

That's, in part, because the GOP is smart enough to know most of the GOP candidates are so off-putting before they turn 60 that there's just no use having them run for President. And the one time they found one, W, he only narrowly beat a man universally regarded as an obnoxious snob.

The GOP cannot excite its salt-of-the-earth, Southern base with Rubio, Jindal, Bachmann, Ryan, any of them.

 

Even worse, they'll obnoxiously defend their tautology because ... well, you know ... they think they can get away with the lie that "REPUBLICANS HATE THE POOR!!!"

 

The GOP put out its "bright stars" as the VP noms, Mizzou. Palin turned out to be nothing more than reality TV star (the 2008 campaign is the most incompetent POS-run thing I've seen this side of Dukakis in a tank) while Paul Ryan has a lot of substance but cannot refrain from chronically, hysterically lying to win some minor point of debate. If Ryan ever runs for President, he will be eaten alive for doing this and he knows it.

I don't agree with everything Ryan proposes, but I would consider a vote for him. But he has to stop lying.

 

I will be giddy if Hillary is the democratic nominee, because, as a republican, if the worst case scenario is Hillary, that's a pretty good thing, especially compared to what we have now...

I think a lot of democrats feel the same way about Christie and it seems like there are more and more democrats who seem to like what (or at least some) of Rand Paul has had to say.

I thought Paul was batshit crazy when he ran for the senate in 2010. I don't feel that way at all now... I read an article in the Washington Post yesterday that made it sound like he has really connected with people in both parties.

I like Ryan, but I don't think he can connect with voters. I love Scott Walker, and I think he's just what this country needs, but I don't think he's electable.

The more I hear from Rubio, the less I like him.

That said, I like all of the aforementioned republicans better than anyone who was running last year.

 

If Hillary is ever president I would imagine it would be hard to fill ambassadorships, seeing as Hillary has turned them into death sentences.

 

I liked Christie until he admitted he was a Dallas Cowboys fan. Now he can GTFO.

 

Around here, we leave the lying to you, DEDW and fart boy. Nobody can come close to you three in terms of partisan-driven lying.

 

Don't forget Poquette.
He's more of a dimwit, though.

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