Washington Post-ABC News presidential race poll

Here's your key takeaway from this:

Not Romney crushing Romney in GOP field; Romney only guy with shot against Obama.

But, as YF has pointed out, Romney is Not Conservative, so he can't win. They're gonna kill him on healthcare. And he needs a better answer than the one he has. Principled federalism just ain't gonna play to the 27 percenters -- anyone who thought Bush did a great job or who would consider voting for Palin. Incidentally, it's always folks who lose who are, after the fact, branded Not Conservative. Because Conservatism can never be failed. It can only be failed by imperfect vessels, and this mythos has been stoked since Goldwater. Oh, and anyone who thinks Obama was to the left of, say, Bernie Sanders or Russ Feingold, is a fool. Whoever is going to win the Democratic nomination gets labeled the Most Liberal Evah. That's just the way that shit works. Obama didn't run close to the most liberal campaign in the Dem primaries, where perhaps only Hillary was to his right -- and, arguably, Biden in regards to foreign policy, and look where that got him -- but not out of principle but necessity. The votes he couldn't get coalesced there, so she took the opening. No shame, but not representative, either. That campaign was almost entirely about who could win the general. The points of policy amounted to miscellany. When Obama passed a certain threshold where people were confident in him, it was all but over, in practicality, but marched on forever in reality.

And Starman's post was wrong, but not by much. There aren't many moderates left holding office for the GOP, because they can't win primaries. The problem is that the people who do win primaries are often dead meat in the generals, outside the south. Just take the Senate. Democrats run the ideological spectrum from Sanders to Bagman Ben Nelson -- with Joe Lieberman in there somwehere, too. The GOP goes from Susan Collins to Rand Paul. Sanders and Nelson's votes are wildly divergent. Collins and Paul, not so much. And once the New England Twins are gone one way or the other, who would the moderate members be?

The GOP has made the worst mistake a political party can make, in the wide scope sense: They started to believe their own bullshit.

 

You may have misunderstood me.

I don't think a moderate Republican can win a general election. It's gotten harder and harder for them to win the primary too, but McCain was generally a moderate. (Or at least a very inconsistent Conservative.)

Romney's an interesting case. He's trying to run as a Conservative. Conservatives just don't believe he's one of them.

He's very unpopular with the rest of the field.

Then there's the Mormon thing.

Finally, I heard Rush Limbaugh play a clip of him today. In it, he says that he believes the Earth is getting warmer -- based on "what he reads" -- and that humans "play some roll in it." Said we should try to "cut carbon emissions."

Now, regardless of what you think about it, Rush's take was that his chance at winning the nomination was over based on it.

And, while he never endorsed anyone in '08, Rush was very anti-McCain and was generally supportive of Romney.

 

Lieberman represents the Likud Party.

 

I don't think I did misunderstand, I think I just enjoy something that's a very real problem for you. You aren't not gonna vote for someone for saying something as obvious as what Romney said, but the fact is that it's poison in the GOP primary. Even if I grant your premise -- and I don't, but for the purposes of argument, let's say I do -- I would ask you, why can't a moderate Republican win the general? The answer is, of course, because a GOP candidate NEEDS all its hardcore voters -- the primary voters, who skew old, white and angry -- to show up, and they just won't do it for a moderate. The tail is wagging the dog. They've ceded the entire political middle to the Democrats (and I am not talking about the unicorn of "independent voters," but rather registered partisans who are open minded and can be persuaded. As I am sure you know, those folks skew younger, browner and more educated.) But you're right. Whatever Romney gets from them, he loses on his right flank with disaffected Baptists, say, who won't vote for a Mormon, or people in his corner ideologically who just stay home.

Here are just a few of the lies you're gonna have to tell to get through the GOP primary, at least this time out:

There's not enough evidence of global warming, further study is needed, etc.

I will never raise taxes. Tax cuts will fix the economy.

Evolution is a myth.

I am going to keep government out of your Medicare.

Etc, etc, ad infinitum. Ronald Reagan would have a damn hard time in a modern Republican primary.

Now Obama has his own problems. First is the economy. Second is a low ceiling. He'll never get the 27 percenters votes, without getting into why that is. He's campaining to 73 percent of America. But he is still campaigning to all 73 percent. I mean, they're just giving him the middle. Hell, I'd like him to left more on quite a few things, but I can't blame him, mostly, for driving right down the middle of the road. He's the only guy there.

Romney will have to go so hard right to convince the remaining 27 percent he should be the nominee, he's gonna have to be a helluva lot better politician than he's ever shown himself to be to this point to get anyone BUT the 27 percent in the general.

That's why GOP hopes and dreams are pinned on so many utter unknowns right now. Only someone with no record can pull this trick off -- unless the economy really heads south, in which case, they'd better hope they nominated Romney.

 

Barack Obama is in the middle?

If we were in Scandinavia, I'd say yes. Bill Clinton was in the middle, but Obama is really very left-of-center, and his idealism (much like Carter) has been his downfall. Obama campaigned as a moderate, then took a hard left turn once he got into office. Interestingly, it's the exact opposite tack Clinton took -- he pretty much ran as a liberal (promised national health care), then signed NAFTA and welfare reform.

Romney is a right-of-center moderate, but his health care plan and his beliefs on global warming (which I don't support) will kill him in the nomination process. However, he still could get the nomination, for a couple of reasons. First, since Daniels decided not to run, the rest of the GOP field right now is either a bunch of lightweights, unelectable ideologues (Paul, Palin, Bachman) or people who might be good candidates, but have no name recognition (Huntsman is probably the best example of these). However, he's a New Englander, a Mormon (two strikes against the Southern vote), doesn't have the Rush Limbaugh listeners in his corner (Rush has been really touting Herman Cain). A lot of times, the candidate with the best name recognition cancels out the ideologues, who all have hard-liners in their camp. The other thing that will help Romney is the states that have the biggest say in the nomination process on Super Tuesday (the states that pushed McCain over him in '08) are primarily blue or purple states -- California, New York, et al, states where the Republicans are generally more middle-of-the-road.

As a libertarian Republican, I usually have to balance my primary vote between the person I feel is most principled (the last couple of election cycles, it's been Ron Paul) and the person who is most electable. Right now, I'll probably vote for Paul.

 

Which is exactly why you think Obama is a hard-core lefty. If you're out there enough to vote for Ron Paul, Obama isn't even bothering with you. You're a lost cause.

 

Which policies or proposals of Obama's are very left of center?

And yeah, if you voted for Ron Paul twice, you probably don't have a great guage of the political spectrum.

 

Yeah, I know there are a lot of people who hate the Civil Rights Act.

 

Cool. Do it in the general, too.

Lots of simple things resonate with people. They just aren't often very good policy.

 

Barry Goldwater would look like a lefty to the Paul crowd. And yeah, Paul's consistent - consistently wacked-out. But he causes some awkward moments in GOP debates, so it's all good.

 

Fair enough. But like it or not, it's something Paul is going to have to deal with.

 

There are two easy answers to Ron Paul:

The Articles of Confederation.

Slavery/The Civil War.

Both of them national embarrassments. Both of them the logical conclusion of his "simple" philosophy that "resonates" with so many people.

You know that movie "Day Without a Mexican"? I wish they'd make, "A Day Without the Federal Government." People would be using motor oil to cure cancer by the end of a month if Paul got to impose his vision on us.