Quote:
Originally Posted by dreadgeek
ALH:
I don't know if Romney can win the GOP primary. Think about the current GOP coalition:
1) Neo-conservatives
2) Right-Libertarians
3) Christian conservatives
4) The traditional, blue-blood Republicans
5) Tea Partiers
6) White Southerners
7) White blue-collar men
Groups 1, 2 and 4 would be just as happy to be done with groups 3, 5, 6 and 7. If it were up to 1, 2 and 4 Romney would be the nominee, Rubio would be the Veep nominee. But if 3, 5, 6 and 7 are going to turn out (and without them the GOP can't win national offices) Romney cannot be the nominee. Fundamentalist evangelicals still, to this day, consider the LDS a cult and not included in the circle of 'Christian' (they also consider Catholicism a cult). So Romney doesn't make it out of Super Tuesday. I think we're looking at Perry someone else which is probably Obama's *best* bet but even against Perry i wouldn't give Obama anything better than even odds. Hell, the only person I know he *could* beat is Palin and she's not getting the nomination.
The combination I would be concerned about, if I were a Democratic strategist, would be Huntsman-Rubio or even Huntsman-Romney. However, Huntsman has the same problem as Romney, he's a Mormon, plus an additional problem which is that Huntsman is kind of sane. Barring a dark horse, I see it as Perry-Rubio. Perry-Bachmann is too much of the crazy and she brings nothing to the ticket that Perry doesn't already bring. Rubio perhaps brings in the blue blood Republicans.
Both parties have a problem going in to 2012. The Democratic party has a demoralized base (whether that is justified or not, I won't bother with here), a weak President as standard bearer, and really horrifically bad economic numbers dragging them down. The GOP has the problem that anyone who can survive the primaries gets creamed in the general election OR loses the base because they have to pivot in order to grab independents. The farther right the Tea Party (which IS the GOP base, don't let the media fool you on this) drags the GOP, the more sharp the pivot and the greater the risk of alienating the base.
What the base *wants* to hear is that in the first year both Social Security and Medicare will be repealed, DOMA will be strengthened, DADT reinstated, the EPA and Education department disbanded and Sharia law will be made illegal. That's what they *want* to hear. But anyone running on that platform dooms themselves in the general election and cannot turn from ANY of those items lest the base bolt.
As far as how the GOP will handle things if/when they win the White House I dunno. In a different time and in a different place, I think the GOP would be forced to behave precisely how they would like to. I'm not sure that the GOP would have to do that these days. I think that, given the advantages that the government has vis a vis surveillance and given the latitude that any Republican President will be given by a Republican congress and the national media, I don't see that the GOP need do *anything* about jobs.
I say for the following reasons:
1) A GOP President (but never a Democratic one) could order anyone picked up, at any time, for any reason and held without charge for an indefinite period of time.
2) All manner of shady games can be played with voting machines and, more ominously, voting rights.
3) PROVIDED that any protests are on the West coast OR involves large numbers of non-white (read not traditionally Republican) peoples truly draconian measures to quell the protests (which will be called riots no matter how peaceful) will be approved of.
4) In the course of the first term, the newly minted POTUS will wax poetic about the churches providing relief. Anyone who does NOT want to accept the churches terms will be considered to have done that to themselves. (By terms, I mean 'convert or starve')
Cheers
Aj
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Oh, I so agree with so much of this- and it hurts. Where, oh, where, has
liberty gone? Your analysis reminds me of just what was really going on when LBJ took civil rights legislation to the land of
Dixiecrats and how that set so much of the stage we are now experiencing politically. We don't seem to remember our history well at all- when there was not a GOP in the South at all.
What you say about tyhe differences of what a Democratic president and a GOP president can do and not have it questioned is on so accurate. And we experienced so much of our civil liberties being shit on while Bush/Cheny were in office- and they were NOT questioned at all post 9/11. The very values that set the US apart from so many countries that oppress their people were just cast aside- and done so due to fear. We became so afraid, we lost all perspective. That, along with our allowing education to decline, has rendered us vulnerable to exactly the forces that you speak of. The GOP/TP
types has always had a grand plan since the Civil Rights Acts to promote an ill informed, ignorant society to flourish in order to reset the equation and re-build the strength of elites. This has worked throughout every civilization on earth.
Whoops- I went off on a tangent.... Romney may very well not be able to win in the GOP primary. Which really is scary given where Obama sits with re-election.