Pawlenty drops out of race

I agree with this statement. Seems like warmed over GW to me.

 

Compare his roll out to Huntsman's.

In a day and a half, he's already had more good days on the campaign trail than Huntsman.

Politico is fawning over his appearance in Waterloo last night -- especially in comparison to Bachmann.

The guy might not be a great Governor. He might not make a great President.

But, he's a very good politician and a very good campaigner.

He'll be able to raise money, and he'll probably pick up some of Pawlenty's staff.

He's the real deal as far as being a contender goes.

 

I think Huntsman blew his chance Thursday night to differentiate himself from the rest of the field. He raised his hand with the rest of sheep on the spending increase question, and wasn't aggressive enough on his support of civil unions.
Given that Romney has veered right like a bad slice off the tee and abandoned any pretense of being a moderate in response to Perry's entry into the race, there's plenty of room for a moderate while every is trying to scramble farther right than the next candidate. If Guiliani did it right this time (unlike '08), he could still be a factor. And his moderate social positions would probably not scare Republicans in most other states the way they do in Iowa.
Stake out a moderate position while the cons are fighting amongst themselves, and you've got an excellent shot at the nomination (and an excellent shot against Obama).

 

Rudy's ace in the hole went away went Seal Team Six did their job.

Rightly or wrongly, you are not going to beat Obama on national security, which was the biggest plus for Rudy.

Plus, I think that he is perfectly happy making his millions, sitting in his first row Yankee seat and lobbing periodic bombs at Obama on TV.

 

Rudy's problem remains as it was in 2008. On the campaign trail, outside of his friendly confines, he's just too damned unlikeable to people.

Complete non-starter.

 

I'll still support Perry, but the dirty secret some people don't know is (like Reagan) he used to be a Democrat. That's enough to cause some to keel over in the Republican ranks.

 

Eh, not buying it. Former-Democratic Republicans aren't uncommon in the South.

 

Bachmann campaigned for Carter. Though I think that was more because Carter was an evangelical.

 

Perry also has the advantage, for now, of nobody knowing who the fuck he is. At this point, the Republican party is looking for a miracle, and hoping it doesn't turn out like Perry's prayers to end the drought in Texas. Perry appears to combine the (male) gravitas of Romney with the religious bent of a Bachmann, without a maybe-gay spouse.

However, Perry will get picked apart like any other candidate, especially if he proves to be popular. And, as of yet, while there's a bit of enthusiasm, there is no indication yet he's The Guy.

Nobody know who the fuck you are at the outset can be a good thing, if people seem to like you the more they get to know you. (Heck, it worked for our current president.) I'm not convinced that people will like Perry the more they get to know him.

 

True. And they tend to have one thing in common, or at least the older generation did.

 

Interesting: the Murdoch Street Journal, tepid on Perry and downright bashing Bachmann in an editorial today:

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576507933332443602.html?mod=ITP_opinion_2

On Bachmann:

Mrs. Bachmann has a record of errant statements (see Battle of Lexington and Concord, history of) that are forgiven by Fox Nation but won't be if she makes them as a GOP standard-bearer.

More substantively, her attempt to position herself at all times as the anti-establishment outsider has made her seem on occasion less principled than opportunistic. She quickly distanced herself from Paul Ryan's Medicare reform when it came under liberal fire, even as she purports to be the scourge of uncontrolled spending. Her recent opposition to the debt-ceiling deal on grounds that GOP leaders should have insisted on first passing a balanced budget amendment, while holding only the House, was a political fantasy.

Americans are already living with the consequences of electing a President who sounded good but had achieved little as a legislator and had no executive experience. Mrs. Bachmann will have to persuade voters she isn't the conservative version of Mr. Obama.

On Perry:

As a conservative Governor, he is bidding to fill the vacuum in the race left when Indiana's Mitch Daniels and Mississippi's Haley Barbour declined to run, and by the failure of Mr. Pawlenty to gain traction.

That's not a good start. Filling the vacuum? Perry's not a candidate -- he's a prototype.

More:

The Dallas Federal Reserve recently found that 37% of all new net U.S. jobs since the recession ended were created in Texas. This is no small selling point on what is likely to be the dominant issue of 2012, and Mr. Perry knows how to link job growth to Texas's policies of low taxes, spending control and tort reform.

The questions about Mr. Perry concern how well his Lone Star swagger will sell in the suburbs of Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the election is likely to be decided. He can sound more Texas than Jerry Jones, George W. Bush and Sam Houston combined, and his muscular religiosity also may not play well at a time when the economy has eclipsed culture as the main voter concern.

The kicker:

The emergence of Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann is nonetheless more evidence that GOP voters continue to have doubts about their candidates. Mitt Romney is a weak front-runner who has money and campaign experience and looks Presidential. But he gives little evidence that he has convictions beyond faith in his own technocratic expertise. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is likewise running on his resume more than a philosophy of government. We would have thought that John McCain proved you can't beat Mr. Obama on biography.

Republicans and independents are desperate to find a candidate who can appeal across the party's disparate factions and offer a vision of how to constrain a runaway government and revive America's once-great private economy. If the current field isn't up to that, perhaps someone still off the field will step in and run. Now would be the time.

If the Fox Street Journal is still praying for a miracle at this point, that's not a good sign. Of course, the candidates that Fox groomed by having them appear as paid staff pundits are all crashing and burning outside the Murdoch hothouse, and Palin, assuming she runs, isn't going to win in large part because she can't be trusted to make up her damn mind.

The bottom line is, Obama seems ready to be picked off, yet the Republicans, so far, appear not be able to find anyone up to the job of doing it. It's damn hard to beat an incumbent president. Perhaps the Republicans would be better served by, rather than waiting on a miracle, actually vetting its candidates and letting the primary process play out. You'd think they might have learned from 2008 that a long, drawn-out primary process is not an all bad thing. A big reason Obama won, and won some of the states he did (i.e., Indiana), I think, is because he had to campaign in all of them while McCain twiddled his thumbs to wait for his race to start.