The first thing to look at, before getting down to the strengths and weaknesses of any specific candidates, is just how terrible the 2012 field is for the Republicans overall. When it comes to the Presidency, successful candidates generally come out of sitting government officials (current governors, senators (but only first-term; the longer you spend in the Senate, the more your voting record gets diluted with compromises until your opponents can always find something to attack you with) vice-presidents, or military officials)…since McKinley, only two Presidents have gotten elected without being current office-holders when they started campaigning.
All the sitting Republican governors? They’re staying out of this. (Or at least, they are for now. There is quite a while between now and the election.) My strong suspicion is that they’re not particularly eager to tackle Obama; despite Republican claims that he’s a demonic entity from beyond our universe here to put our grandmothers to death and dragoon our children to study in madrassas, they’re actually lucid enough to realize he’s a popular, savvy campaigner with a good ground game and strong fundraising skills. So the Republican establishment, while they’d take a win if they got it, is not going to put up someone like Chris Christie up against Obama and wind up getting him tarred with the “loser” brush. They’ll save their big guns for 2016, and put a sacrificial candidate up in 2012.
Which means that there are exactly two kinds of people running; people who are too dumb to realize/don’t care that they are a sacrificial candidate, or people whose only chance at any kind of relevance is to run now. I don’t see any of them as having much luck against Obama (although again, there is a while between now and the elections.) But who will take the nomination? Well, let’s look at them one by one!
Mike Huckabee
Strengths: Background as an ordained minister puts him as the front-runner among the religious right; Deputy Dawg-esque appearance and folksy, homespun demeanor lulls people into not noticing what an asshole he is
Weaknesses: Gave clemency to a man who went on to kill four cops, which is a little bit out of step with the “Law and Order” party; looks like he’s about one pair of bib overalls away from a recurring role on “Hee-Haw”; nobody named “Huckabee” ever has a chance of being President ever
Chances: From the sound of things, Huckabee’s smart enough to realize he’s better off sitting this one out; he’s not making much of a move towards campaigning, and he certainly doesn’t need to run to stay in the public spotlight. But he might make a run at it, just to see if he can pick up momentum in Iowa, a state that likes him, and translate it into a strong showing elsewhere.
Mitt Romney
Strengths: Strong fundraising skills; desperately wants to be President; good hair
Weaknesses: Has to explain how his RomneyCare is completely and totally different from ObamaCare while explaining how Obama stole all his ideas; desperately wants to be President; religious affiliation with a group that has, on occasion, talked about how they will “dance on the ashes of our enemies” when they get a Mormon to the Presidency has made some people slightly leery; has difficulty door-knocking due to people pretending not to be home when he shows up, forcing him to just leave his literature for them to read later
Chances: Very good, actually. He’s not particularly well-liked by the Republican establishment, but he’s also not particularly disliked, and he has an aura of respectability to him that a lot of strategic-thinking primary voters will mistake for electability. He won’t win against Obama because he’s got the same problem Hilary Clinton had–his naked hunger for the office turns off voters, who at least like their potential President to pretend like they don’t ache for it.
Sarah Palin
Strengths: There are still a few Republicans dumb/sexist enough to believe that if they vote for her, there’s a chance she might sleep with them
Weaknesses: Most people are beginning to catch on to what a vapid, corrupt, petty, spiteful, intellectually incurious, vindictive, greedy, dimwitted, dishonest, crazy asshole she actually is
Chances: Zero. She’s going to make a token run, because she’s an utter fame-whore and she only has two ways to get on the media’s radar now that she’s no longer an actual politician, and criticizing Obama for everything he says or does is starting to get stale. Running for President extends the timer on her fifteen minutes of fame, but she doesn’t have the organizational skills, establishment connections, or real desire for a sustained run. Expect her to drop out the first time she loses a primary, citing negative remarks about her and a need to protect her children from the harshness of a political campaign.
Newt Gingrich
Strengths: Is as close to an intellectual as a Republican gets; has a Nixonian ability to go for the jugular; believes that like Nixon, he’s been out of politics long enough that people have forgotten why he wound up out of politics
Weaknesses: Has never stood for national office before; has spent so long exclusively in the company of people who agree with him that he doesn’t actually realize that most Americans wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire; is named “Newt” (see “Huckabee”, above)
Chances: Not great. He is popular among Republicans, and he does have a lot of favors he can cash in from the Republican establishment, but his habit of impulsive speech will get him into trouble at least once and remind primary voters of his downsides. Expect him to hang around for a while if he does go for it, though; Newt isn’t one to admit defeat easily.
Ron Paul
Strengths: Actually has strong convictions and an intellectually-coherent position, albeit one that supports child labor, the return of the gold standard and the right of Texas to secede from the United States
Weaknesses: Anti-war candidate in a party that might well beat him to death with a blunt instrument for it before realizing he’s on their side; among people that think of Rush Limbaugh as the Voice of Mainstream America, is kind of viewed as “a little bit out there”
Chances: None and then some. Among the people who love him, he’s very well loved; unfortunately, that’s a very vocal five percent of the Republican party. He tanked in 2008, and I really can’t see him doing better with four more years under his belt. It might not stop him, though; he’s the perfect definition of a sacrificial candidate, someone who runs just for the bigger soapbox and nothing more.
Tim Pawlenty
Strengths: Lack of charisma makes him seem deceptively reasonable; can claim he balanced the budget in Minnesota for eight years without raising taxes, knowing nobody cares enough about Minnesota to find out how he did it
Weaknesses: Couldn’t deliver Minnesota to McCain…in the Republican primary; best known to most Americans as “that guy who let the bridge collapse, right?”
Chances: Low, but not impossible. His habit of tacking hard-right to show his Tea Party credentials makes him seem more “craven and desperate” than “strongly conservative”, but he’s got enough legitimate conservative street cred to avoid seeming like an opportunist like Romney. Which, in a tie between the two “staid white guys with no charisma”, might be enough to pull him ahead.
Donald Trump
Strengths: …hahahahahahahahaha! Oh, you’re serious? Um, he’s rich enough to pay for his own attack ads instead of having to ask big corporations to do it
Weaknesses: The hair; the personality; has no political experience; has no campaigning experience; the hair; has donated as much money to Democrats as to Republicans; like most self-funded candidates, has a platform primarily geared towards restructuring the tax laws in a way that benefits him personally; Americans can’t shake the lingering suspicion that he’s only running so that he can rename the White House “The Trump House”; the hair
Chances: Less than none. I don’t actually expect him to run, to be honest; this is another publicity stunt, like “The Apprentice” or his appearance on WWF Raw or his naming everything after himself. Expect him to drop it after about six weeks.
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I’m going to rank Romney a little higher- the danger is if he manages to make it out of the Republican primaries.
Of this whole lot he’s the only oen who doesn’t engage my ‘IGNORE! IGNORE!’ button on site- he’s got to start talking for that to happen.
Personally, I think an Iowa primary debate between Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Donald Trump is exactly what the Republican party deserves.
I am a touch surprised you didn’t mention Jon Huntsman Jr. He did resign as Ambassador of China to (probably) prepare a run at the Presidency. He probably has a better chance than most of the people you’ve listed here.
Is there anyone else from a state with many electoral votes that’s a legit candidate?
(Doubts a Paul/Trump ticket would fly.)
I assume Rand Paul is in a similar boat to Ron?
Rand, to the best of my knowledge, has not talked about running. Actually, he’s in a pretty good position to run, relatively speaking; he’s a first-term Senator, so he doesn’t have to worry about compromises weighing down his voting record, and he’s 1/3 of the way through a term in a safe seat, so it won’t cost him anything, opportunity-wise, to run. And Obama couldn’t even use his lack of experience against him, since he was in pretty much the same position when he ran.
His only problem is that he’s an incoherent idiot who alienates people every time he opens his mouth. (Oh, wait. And all the skeletons in his closet. Two problems.)
And I’m vaguely aware of Huntsman, malakim2099, but that actually puts me ahead of most Republicans, which is why he’s not on the list. 🙂 Huntsman has a huge name-recognition gap to overcome, and not much of a war chest or fundraising capability to do it with.
I don’t think Romney’s ever going to be able to get past the fact that he’s a Mormon…among Republicans. The same crowd that thinks Obama is a Muslim communist tends to look askance at Mormons, and even mainstream Christians don’t usually consider them to be Christians.
Rand Paul’s very first act in the Senate was to completely reverse positions from what he’d been specifically promising his teabagger supporters, though.
This is American Conservativism. You don’t need to be a long-time Senator to be a two-faced whore.
You’re not serious about the name thing are you? Cause:
a) Is “Mitt” any better than “Newt” or “Huckabee”
b) Our current president is named Barack Obama
c) We once had a dude in the Oval Office named Millard. [i]Millard![/i]
1. Mitt recalls mittens-soft and fuzzy. Much better than “slimy lizard” or “hayseed stereotype.”
2. Barack Obama may be unusual, but it is free of any negative connotations by sound alone.
3. The 1800s, like the 1700s before it, involved drinking heavily morning, noon and night, every single day.
Where’s Gary Johnson? He’s been showing every sign of running for at least a year now.
I guess his big strength is that he appeals to all the Ron Paul fans, but isn’t quite so nutty, so he’s less likely to scare away the mainstream voters.
I suppose the big weaknesses are that he’s still not that well-known, and he freely admits to having smoked pot recently, rather than in the distant past.
“Barack Hussein Obama” is a name free of negative connotations? *blink* Did you miss all of the howling over that? Not that I agree with them, but his name was a major stumbling block.
At the time Pawlenty (or T-paw as we derisively call him) the state deficit was something like 6.2 billion. It’s come down in the last couple of months because of better economic forecasts, but he did neither jack nor shit to balance the budget during his time in office, instead choosing to buff up his republican cred by refusing to work with the democrats in office, refusing to even discuss taxes except to talk about cuts, and generally dicking around outside the state hobnobbing with the people he thinks will support his run for president.
The economic situation here is kind of complex, basically the state reserves the right to enact sales taxes and income taxes for itself, while promising to assist cities with their finances though Local Government Aid. (LGA) T-Paw has been doing the old “Strangle government in the crib” thing by slashing LGA to cities while still denying them the ability to enact sales taxes locally.
While it can be argued that there is government bloat to be cut in a lot of places, what is particularly notable about MN is the way that T-Paw forced cities and counties to slash their budgets and reduce services while the state government he oversaw remained basically untouched by cuts.
As a very minor but telling example I recall one article in particular taking the state to task for still providing refreshments at meetings, when most cities and counties had cut coffee, water and donuts out of their budgets several years previously. Pretty typical republican tactics, “pain for thee, but not for me.”
TL;DR. I’m from Minnesota and Tim Pawlenty sucks goat balls.
In 2007 I don’t know that Barack Obama was that well known or taken extremely seriously as a future president, most people assumed Hilary would get in.
Regarding the names, yeah, some people made hay over Obama’s name, but that’s the sort of problem that can be confronted head-on as a question of racism, etc. Conversely, having a silly-sounding name is not going to inspire strong defense.
Far from an insurmountable obstacle, of course.
Also missing here would be Haley Barbour (though the former has even more stereotype-related problems than any other candidate; he’s pretty much a collection of stereotypical Southern Republican traits; it’d be like the Democrats nominating Barney Frank) and Mitch Daniels.
@Sofa King,
That’s why I both said “by sound alone” and omitted the “Hussein” mddlename.
Despite his saying he won’t run, there’s the chance of John Thune making a go at it–though, as you said, he would do better to wait it out.
That said, a John Thune/Nikki Haley ticket would scare me; Thune has enough on both sides of the equation that he would appeal to independents and moderates, while Haley (having quashed the sex scandal) is everything Sarah Palin should have been. Plus, you can never discount the effect that having a pretty, pretty ticket can have.
There are others who WILL run: Rick Santorum, for one, whose campaign I welcome almost as much as Palin’s, Haley Barbour (he’s Boss Hogg, and therefore will die on the vine right after Iowa); Mike Pence, whose uberconservative views doom him in a general election.
There are some very real VP possibilities who scare me, as well: Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Bob McDonnell.
Also, Mitch Daniels’ naked desire for higher office is palpable.
My biggest worry? That having people like Pence, Santorum, Palin, and barbour will make the eventual winner of the Republican primary look sane, intelligent, and moderate by comparison, and therefore better positioned to wool-pull in the general election.
@Josh R: I’m from MN, too. That gag was by way of being a little self-deprecating Minnesotan humor. 🙂 And yes, the impressive thing about Pawlenty was the way that he kept insisting, “Well, I balanced the budget without raising taxes…” all without mentioning the fact that property taxes (the only way municipalities could raise income in the absence of LGA) skyrocketed during his eight years as governor. Because, you know, he didn’t raise them. He just created conditions in which they absolutely positively had to be raised in order to maintain essential services.
Not hearing Thune mentioned much (the occasional Barbour mention, but I don’t think he’ll go through with it, not with his habit of spontaneously telling people how segregation wasn’t really all that bad for black people)…but man, I wish I’d remembered Santorum. How can you not wish you’d remembered a man whose main weakness is that his name is almost literally synonymous with “oily sack of shit”?
In 2007 I don’t know that Barack Obama was that well known or taken extremely seriously as a future president, most people assumed Hilary would get in
Barack got a ton of name recognition from giving the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. After that speech, there were many people who thought it was a matter of when Obama would run for President, not if.
Good point on the idea of a Palin vanity run. I’ve spent the last year convinced she wouldn’t run because a) she’d hate being president and b) FOX keeps her attention habit supplied. I should have realised that one doesn’t need to have any hope of becoming president in order to run, even when we except sacrificial candidates.
Having said that, of course, if there was one person in the world I would think couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that they couldn’t choose to run for president without running the risk of actually getting the job, it would be Sarah Palin. Or possibly Bill Kristol.
Sigh. So we have to talk about 2012 now?!
The biggest knock against Romney? He couldn’t even win the 2008 GOP primaries with the backing of the major Far Right media whores like Limbaugh. In the Deep South and social conservative states, Romney rarely placed second behind either McCain or Huck. And McCain, remember, still wasn’t much loved by the Far Right going in. For McCain to be more trusted than Romney should tell you something… and yes Mormonism plays a part in that. The Baptist/Evangelical bunch in charge of the GOP may want conservative Mormon votes but they sure as hell don’t want a Mormon in charge…
@Alex Jay Berman
I don’t see Haley having that kind of pull; she hasn’t actually DONE anything yet besides ‘get elected’.
And that was (a) as a Republican in South Carolina, which isn’t exactly a stretch, and (b) that in a state climate where she was following Mark Sanford, over whom a ham sandwich had a higher approval rating. She barely took the election (52% vs. 47%), did virtually nothing in the SC Congress before she pinged that radar, and even with the positional advantage of ‘Republican governor with Republican legislature in SC’, she hasn’t actually started to get anything done.
Mostly I think people on both sides will look at her and see Palin2.0, especially on the tail of Palin’s endorsement of her in the governor’s race (which, again, she was the darling of the TParT and Palin and only pulled out an election in SC with 52%?).
Huntsman’s also a Mormon, although his biggest hurdle is actually choosing to be a part of the Obama Administration.
I think the GOP dark horse is Marco Rubio, the newly-elected Florida senator. He would definitely peel off Hispanic votes from Obama, either as a VP candidate or in a last-minute presidential run. Also, he’s being groomed by Jeb Bush to be the de facto heir to the Bush Dynasty. If it’s true that the 2012 GOP candidate would be a sacrifical lamb, Rubio in the VP ticket would place him perfectly for a 2016 run.
This post is lame, because there are a lot of other wacky candidates who could be considered. Herman Cain, former founder of a pizza chain, just announced he’s considering running.
Every night I pray for some variation of a Palin/Guiliani/Trump/Ron or Rand Paul primary.
Just 2 of the 4 would keep me entertained for the next year or so.
DON’T CAOUHNT ME AAOUHHT YET! SUUAAH, MAEIIBEE I WAHSN’T BOAAAHN HEAHH BUT NEEETHAAH WAAHS OBAAHMAAA! WHY DON’T YOU CHILL OUAAHT AND CATCH COLD AND GIVE ME THAH COHAALD SHOUAAHLDAAH AND HAVE AN ICE DAYEE AND AGHGHAAGH IT’S IN MY NOSE AAGHGHAGAGAHGAHGAGHGHGHGAAAGHGH!!!!!!!!
As an austrian who once declared that he felt that hitler was one of his heroes, Arnold is far too left wing to be taken seriously as a republican candidate.
>>I don’t think Romney’s ever going to be able to get past the fact that he’s a Mormon…among Republicans. The same crowd that thinks Obama is a Muslim communist tends to look askance at Mormons, and even mainstream Christians don’t usually consider them to be Christians.
And yet Glenn Beck is doing okay in that crowd, and he’s a Mormon too.
BlackBloc: Actually, Beck’s losing audience at an advanced rate, to where rumors or swirling that his numbers are no longer making up for the headaches he causes.
on Palin: I generaly agree with what John said, except I think he misreads the “why” she’ll quit….or the extra spin. She’ll be “forced out by the entrenched powers who are afraid of her.” Time has shown that nothing pumps up Palin’s q-rating with her followers than her casting herself as the victim
Of the ones you list, it’ll be Huckabee to get the nod. As sacrificial lambs go, he’s a decent choice. Strong enough he -might- be able to beat Obama, weak/stable enough to toe the party line if he does.
Romney would’ve been a good choice, if he didn’t “have the stench of loser” about him.
Palin won’t get the nod simply because she’s too certain to lose, and she’s too unreliable on the off chance she wins.
Newt might make for a decent VP choice, but I think even he knows he can’t win the main prize. But he might see himself as Cheney to Huckabee’s Bush.
Seriously though, if the Republicans choose smartly (and the economy continues to worsen) they could actually give Obama a serious run in 2012. A moderate choice on the GOP’s part, and they -could- swing enough undecided voters to win.
Needs an alignment chart.
Well, far too slowly, but the current trajectory of the economy is (generally) improving – actual jobs and people’s attitudes will lag, of course.
And other shit may happen, too.
From what little I know, Huntsman is perhaps the sanest option out of them, has a record of building compromises.