George Will actually made sense today as he ripped Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee for trying to Mau Mau the president. His conclusion is also accurate:
Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon – Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.
So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.
What’s probably worrying Will is not just that a “plausible” candidate will get “diminished” by standing on the same stage with Gingrich or Huckabee or Palin. He’s got to be worried as hell that the Republican electorate will not nominate a “plausible” candidate at all. Despite running as hard as he can away from RomneyCare and calling for the repeal of ObamaCare, it’s very hard to see how Mitt Romney can win primaries and caucuses when the number one issue is the tyranny of health care plans like the one he created in Massachusetts. Jon Huntsman didn’t create the template for federal health care reform, but he did something almost as bad. He accepted a job as Ambassador to China in the Obama administration. He’s known as a moderate, which is not a good thing to be when running for the GOP’s top ticket line. Plus, can two nearly identical Mormons avoid splitting the vote and handing some more conservative candidate the ring?
As for Tim Pawlenty, you might as well tell me that Cris Collingsworth is going to be president. Check that. At least Collingsworth was a pretty good football player. T-Paw is as tough as cookie dough. No one is going to hand him the nuclear suitcase. They just aren’t. Every inch of him screams “man who wouldn’t stick up for his wife.”
That leaves Govs. Mitch Daniels and Haley Barbour. I haven’t seen any real indication that Daniels is going to run. But he decided it would be a good idea to call for a truce on social issues (meaning God and gays and abortion, mainly) to focus on economic issues. How’s that gonna work in Steve King’s Iowa? Daniels might be able to overcome that faux pas, but I don’t see how.
As for Haley Barbour, if you think America is going to throw out Barack Obama for a guy who didn’t think Jim Crow was that bad in his home state of Mississippi, then you basically think we’re headed for the worst disaster this country has faced since the Civil War broke out. I’m concerned about the direction of our country, but I don’t see that happening in 2012. Haley Barbour only seems plausible inside the Beltway where he is well known as a back-slapping high-paid lobbyist for unpopular causes.
Someone has to win though, right? Yeah. But not the presidency, just the nomination. If things get as weird as I think they’re going to get, we might even see someone that no one is thinking about come out of the blue to win the race. Not The Donald, of course. It would have to be someone “plausible.”
The only plausible candidate the GOP had was John Thune.
As a SD resident, I resemble that.
The funniest thing about this, in a macabre sort of way, is that Will has been enabling the know-nothings all along. And now he wants to rip the know-nothings he has been cheering on?
Poor George is heartbroken that his party of Grifters On Parade suffers from such a dearth of integrity that it is looking to Newt for leadership. This is quite an embarrassing spectacle.
I could see The Michael Bloomberg throwing his Fedora in the ring. Does he wear one?
Mark my words: The nomination is Sarah Palin’s is she wants it.
I believe that, in many ways, the conservative movement in 2011 is in a very similar condition as liberalism in 1971 — still the default ideology of the beltway establishment, but splintering and overreaching as the ground beneath it shifts to their disadvantage. Pretty soon, the majority of the electorate won’t remember the 1960s. All they’ll remember is conservative rule interrupted by brief respites of Democratic centrism. Blaming liberals and liberal ideas doesn’t get any traction with this generation.
Palin:2012::McGovern:1972
Mark it.
Are you saying that Katharine Graham’s hiring of George Will to spar in the back pages of Newsweek with Meg Greenfield is like MSNBC hiring Rachel Maddow? I’m talking about the situation of the Village media here, not necessarily ideology.
The plain fact is the McGovern lost because state and local Democratic parties in the South and in working-class and ethnic neighborhoods did not seriously try to get out the vote. Because their base was against McGovern’s stance on the Vietnam War. Liberalism as an ideology had very little to do with it. Most of the folks that became Nixon Democrats would say that they were FDR Democrats and that the Democratic Party left them. On Vietnam, on equal housing opportunity, on judicially ordered school desegregation outside the South, on equal employment opportunity, and on the push to desegregate union membership. And their local and state leadership supported their defection to “teach the kids a lesson”.
As for Haley Barbour, if you think America is going to throw out Barack Obama for a guy who didn’t think Jim Crow was that bad in his home state of Mississippi, then you basically think we’re headed for the worst disaster this country has faced since the Civil War broke out. I’m concerned about the direction of our country, but I don’t see that happening in 2012. Haley Barbour only seems plausible inside the Beltway where he is well known as a back-slapping high-paid lobbyist for unpopular causes.
Barbour is nothing but a CAC in a suit. And while that is fine for the state of Mississippi, it won’t play north of the Mason/Dixon.
His repeated attempts at revisionist history are not going well, because way to many people are alive that experienced the POLICE STATE that was JIM CROW MISSISSIPPI, and have absolutely NO intentions with going along with his attempts at WHITEWASHING the horror that was JIM CROW MISSISSIPPI.
A fat racist white guy who looks like Boss Hogg running against Barack. Now there’s a good idea, eh?
about wisdom involving knowing what’s worth worrying about and what isn’t. You’re too smart to keep worrying about the reelection of Barack Obama. He will undoubtedly win in 2012. The thing to worry about is that the nation could go down the toilet anyway. Between the moronic freshman class in Congress and forces in the middle east beyond our control which could have a catastrophic effect on the price of oil, we could easily slide into a depression despite the president’s best efforts.
I didn’t know that Huntsman was a Mormon, that makes his chances less likely in my opinion. I don’t know, can a Mormon get the nomination in the Rep party? Romney shure seems like the likely candidate but his religion seems to be the one possible obstacle. Maybe the GOP is beyond that now?
Republicans don’t seem concerned about hypocrisy, so Romney can just change his mind on Romneycare, say he learned his lesson or something.
Mitch Daniels has the whole Bush budget director thing around his neck, and he’s too moderate from the right of the party…he actually considers raising taxes, you know.
Haley Barbour is a joke and Huckabee isn’t going to run, he’s enjoying making money and being a Fox News celebrity.
Trump would never have a chance, he has too much history. But it will be fun to see him run, it will certainly add spectacle to the race.
Palin isn’t running either, too much work and she’s enjoying making money instead of having to spend it on a campaign and work to raise money. She’s intellectually and physically lazy.
I don’t see Tim Pawlenty getting very much excitement either, but he’s been playing his cards right and he’s in the pack.
Michael Bloomberg, if he were to run would have a good chance I bet. I’m not sure how the teabaggers feel about him.
Talking of teabaggers, Michelle Bachman should add a lot of absolute stupidity to the race…distracting people from real issues. Of course there is no way she lasts very long, but you never know, she might break away and run independent. That would be fun.
Bloomberg seemed to be positioning himself for a run until the blizzard of Dec 28 dealt a blow to his political future. Aside from the fact that ppl died b/c there was no plowing, it turns out Bloomberg thinks it’s ok to go out of town and not tell anyone when and where he’s going. The fact that he was out of town on vacation somewhere, perhaps at one of his luxury homes abroad, while ppl at home died from his neglect, is probably the end of any candidacy. Teahadists won’t like him anyway. Maybe he was going to run as an independent.
The TParty reached its zenith with the elections and now that the reality of their governing drumbeat of cut spending at the cost of America is hitting the streets it is a dying force.
The radar screens of America’s conscience now have the Koch brothers front and center. If the HealthCare goes to the Supremes, the first battle will be over Ginny Thomas and that will be very public and very nasty, another moment where Will may wince.
He has nothing and no one left to believe in. And thanks to his many editorials and their part in forgiving the TParty for standing up he now has a party that is near useless in every way shape and form.
The Left needs to add a nail to his collective coffin and stop letting the mantra of “He’s talking to his base” become a label that cloaks the conversation as somehow acceptable. Everytime someone walks on by because a remark has been labelled, ‘he’s just talking to his base’ we allow that remark to win credibility.
The one person out there that I think has the capacity to bring together the Tea Party and establishment factions is Jeb Bush.
That’s why I get a few grins from the fact that showing up with Obama in Florida yesterday probably put the nail in the coffin of the Tea Party buying into the possibility.
Obama has certainly put the hug of death on any potentially serious GOP challengers. Got Christ’s support, appointed Huntsman to China, made Petraeus put up or shut up in Afghanistan, and not fondly embraces the public service of the Bush family.
He should invite John Thune over for a beer.
Got Christ’s support …
This typo made me laugh on a day when I needed it. Thanks!
do I dare mention 11 dimensional chess?
You could, but you’d be a complete idiot to do so.
This is why Obamaphiles get made fun of so much over trivial things. You assign messianic powers to the guy over routine political maneuvering.
Politicians employ people whose job is to do nothing but think of ways the candidate/officeholder is vulnerable or beatable and then come up with new messaging and tactics to avoid such a fate.
There are no “eleven dimensions.” There’s barely two.
Seems pretty one-dimensional to me. Look like ideological soulmates with the guys who could occupy the center of the political spectrum and pull independents away from you. Play especially on the ideological purists on the other side and stiff the ones on your side. That doesn’t seem 11-dimensional at all. It’s pretty straight-forward politics.
On the contrary, Obama gave Jeb status as an equal.
Its clear you don’t have the ability to think like a Tea Partier.
Perhaps not a bad thing. LOL
Considering that every gop governor will be toxic either because of what he did – so he can’t win election – or what he didn’t do – because the tp won’t nominate him – that leaves Jeb.