Here’s your chance. We can check back later to see how you did. Who do you think will win the Republican nomination and why? For bonus points, predict the Republican ticket and explain the rationale. Anyone who gets both predictions right will get to be King of Booman Tribune for a day.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Romney/Huckabee
Mitt Romney, because he is “next in line” for the GOP nomination AND the Republican Leaders won’t mind another four years of an Obama Presidency; for the Republicans “Gridlock is Good”.
In a secretive and ‘suprise’ move, Mitt Romney will pick Sarah Palin for his running mate, because, well, Mitt Romney hasn’t had an original thought, ever.
Romney/McDonnell.
I misunderstood the proportional voting thing…thought it was like the Democratic election one. I think Romney can secure a majority now.
McDonnell because Virginia is Obama’s most vulnerable state that he won in 2008, and if he wins it there’s no way he loses the election. Plus, the Senate seat is a must-win for Republicans.
I really didn’t think the base would swallow it, and part of me still doesn’t. Anyway, if I were betting, that would be the ticket I’d bet on. I can still see Romney losing, though.
This is pretty much my thinking as well. Although seabe, I thought you were sure the VP pick would be Rubio. Who is now damaged goods IMO because of his Medicare/SS comments earlier this year.
No, he’s damaged goods because he’s not white.
Everybody who foresaw potentially big things from him were deeply underestimating Republican bigotry. Any topic with a Hispanic tint is poison with “the base.”
Rubio is damaged goods because he was found to be a FRAUD.
he isn’t the child of EXILES..
he’s the child of IMMIGRANTS
now, there’s nothing wrong with being the child of IMMIGRANTS..
UNLESS….
you used the EXILE status as the reason why you’ve decided you can’t help other children of immigrants, and have dismissed the issue of immigration, not opening your mouth about the WHAT ABOUT IF YOU AIN’T WHITE DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND laws that the GOP has passed around the country.
Maybe Latinos are more forgiving than Black folks….
No, I thought he would be VP if Perry was the nominee. I still think Rubio will be a threat in the future. Joe below apparently doesn’t think so because he’s Latino, and Booman doesn’t think so because he’s a criminal.
choice of McDonnell – who makes a great deal of sence.
Gingrich is going to win the nomination, and my guess is he will choose either a woman of a governor from a battleground state. Obama’s Florida numbers aren’t very good, which means if the GOP holds Virgnia they probably win.
Off the top of my head his best two female choices are Kay Baily Hutchinson and Condoleezza Rice.
If I had to guess the ticket will be Gingrich/Rice.
None of the above would be my choice.
The boring and predictable Willard (aka Rat) Romney will slowly and achingly eke it out – and then to try to be a little less boring will choose Herman Cain as his running mate.
Romney, because he’s won the money race.
Romney because no one else is even close to electable or has the money.
I think he’ll pick Haley Barbour to try and shore up his creds with the evangelical right. An alternative could be Thune, also very socially conservative, with more Washington experience, ie. foreign policy creds.
But you know who would be a gas: Condi Rice as VP.
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On the other side of the race, I still think it’s possible that Biden will bow out (perhaps for Sec’t of State, sorry John Kerry) … and Hillary could be VP candidate. That would be one tough ticket to beat.
I need for you to go over to barackobama.com and check out the items in the web store. Do you see the merchandise with Joe Biden’s face and name on it? Its not from 2008, its for 2012. Biden is staying as VP so knock it off.
Indeed they’ve been sending out material for months now with Biden’s picture on it.
i quite like Joe Biden. He connects very well with ordinary people, he’s always good for a zinger or a gaffe (and the gaffes, fwiw, are usually very funny too), and as a long-time senator he knows where the bodies are buried (figuratively, that is).
I like him too and he and Obama work so well together. Besides, his “big f-ing deal” comment goes into the annals of history
speaking of Biden, I observed in his debate with Sarah Palin a calamitous (for the republicans) error in judgment when she “accidentally” mentioned his first wife who was killed in a car accident. Of course the mention brought up his emotions, which was what they obviously intended but instead of throwing him off, (in my reading of how the debate played out) it motivated his impassioned response, a bit later, about being a single parent. Hence Palin and the republicans, to their detriment, revealed the passionate, caring Dad that most voters did not know.
Romney will be the nominee because he’s next in line. All the other candidates are treating him with kid gloves and deliberately sabotaging their own campaigns so as not to take the nomination from him.
I don’t think the VP will be any of the other candidates. I can tell that they don’t like him personally and Romney doesn’t like them. None of the other candidates will add value even though they are more far right.
I say Romney/Thune – a boring VP candidate for a boring Presidential candidate.
And by the way, Its King OR QUEEN of Booman Tribune for a day.
I was going to go with Empress.
Well that’s good too 🙂
Romney will inevitable his way to the nom despite the lack of enthusiasm and will lock it up well short of convention time.
He will play it safe for VP and go for someone reasonably smart and experienced not prone to daily gaffes or needing special handling (the Palin lesson). Thune fits that profile, seconding poster meh. No need to go southern — that will still be an easy lock for the GOP except for FL.
This one is going to be about the economy and, in Romney’s favor, the sense among indies and mod Ds that he’s no radical Tea Partier. I now expect the GOP ticket to win, unless unemployment gets down close to 8%, very unlikely.
The economy may not be in Obama’s favor but it sure as heck won’t be in Romney’s. His work at Bain, his calls to let Detroit go bankrupt, let foreclosures bottom out, “I don’t want to put money in people’s pockets”, “corporations are people”, – basically Romney’s economic policies will destroy the economy and erase whatever good Obama has done. Polls also show that voters prefer Dem and Obama’s policies even if they disapprove of his performance on the economy.
Good or bad economy, Romney is not going to have an easy time.
To be clear my prediction about a Romney win doesn’t mean I prefer that outcome. And definitely he has some major weaknesses — but how often does the Dem in the general run an effective , aggressive negative campaign? Bill Clinton the last to do so and before him Johnson in 1964. Not very often. And Obama doesn’t strike me as the type who would want or be able to pull it off, and he will be hampered in part by his own previous high minded rhetoric decrying such “politics of division.”
Hope I’m wrong though.
You are wrong. Plouffe and Axelrod are as tough and, when necessary, ruthless as they come. They’ll be able to pull it off just fine.
I think Nixon/Agnew will win their nomination for the 12th consecutive cycle. They keep changing names and faces, but the candidates are the same.
Romney, for all the reasons above. For VP, he’ll want to avoid a Palin disaster, so he’ll go for someone experienced and who won’t upstage his campaign by being, you know, interesting. And as one commenter noted he doesn’t need the South but he does need the evangelical base. I’m gonna go with Mitch Daniels.
Romney/Huntsman as the GOP phones in POTUS 2012 to set up 2016, putting Huntsman next in line. GOP will go all in on the Senate to maintain gridlock and lay the blame for a lack of progress on “an ineffectual Obama”
Side prediction: Obama wins and no conservative SCOTUS justice retires until 2017, but there will be chatter about impeaching Thomas.
That is, if the Dems hold the Senate and Obama wins then there will be no retirements until 2017.
Huntsman can’t be Romney’s VP. Huntsman’s own attacks on Romney tells me that Huntsman wants nothing to do with Romney. Plus two Mormons on a ticket? On a Republican ticket? HA!
Romney, for all the reasons listed above. Republican voters do not have the same priorities as Republican kingmakers in the media.
So who does he pick as VP. He needs to balance off the fact that he is a Mormon from Michigan, has support in Utah, was governor of Massachusetts, represents Wall Street big time, and was a moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts who pushed through an individual mandate healthcare bill. Those are likely points he can’t fuzz with flip-flops. So he needs an evangelical from the South, Southwest, or Pacific Coast who is associated with “Main Street”, is a flaming movement conservative, a member of Congress, and a privatizer. And can deliver Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee, or Indiana (and strangely, maybe Michigan).
Senate:
Tom Coburn (OK)
Jim DeMint (SC)
Thad Cochran (MS)
Roy Blunt (MO)
Richard Burr (NC)
House:
Mike Pence (IN)
Fred Upton (MI)
Sue Myrick (NC)
Patrick McHenry (NC)
Jeb Hensaerling (TX)
Ron Paul (TX)
My SWAG:
Romney/Pence
Pence is running for the governorship of IN in 2012. That will give him the admin experience to run for President in 2016 or later.
I’d much prefer he run as the GOP candidate for VP. I can’t imagine living here with him as guv. Hope Gregg can beat him.
Mitt will get the nomination but the VP….don’t have an idea. It has got to be someone who can debate Biden with more than wingnut talking points.
Romney for all the reasons mentioned above, / Hensaerling for right wing cred
Hensarling is an interesting choice, but when was the last time a member of the House made it onto a Presidential ticket? Ferraro is the only one I can think of her, and she wasn’t even really qualified for the position IMO.
true, yes, but they have few (no?) viable candidates. He has visibility but is unknown. they’d probably like to run Ryan, it sounded for a while like he was an option, but he couldn’t carry his own state.
Just like a defeated army, defeated parties are always fighting the last battle instead of the current one.
For this reason, Romney will be primarily concerned with not picking a running mate who hasn’t been properly vetted, who has a unmarried pregnant teenage daughter, who doesn’t know anything, and whose rationale is limited to their appeal to the far-right.
Romney will seek to do what Clinton did in selecting Gore. He will reinforce his strengths by picking a moderate technocratic governor who has even less charisma than he does.
Meet Mitch Daniels.
In that case seems to me they’ll have a GOTV problem, have to work even harder at disenfranchising democrats. depressing all around
That’s one of the problems with putting Daniels on the ticket with Willard: he doubles down on Not Really A True Conservative what with his tax hike proposal on incomes above $100k and his call to end the wars over social issues.
That said Daniels does check a lot of other boxes for Romney and so would be a top contender for veep in a campaign where — if Mitt does play it safe as i predict — both VP contenders will probably matter even less in the final outcome than they do historically.
Does anyone think Romney will not be the nominee? I mean, a lot can still happen. Not a single vote has been cast. This time four years ago the “leaders” were Giuliani and Clinton.
It’s kind of like if you lined up a squirrel, a skunk, a badger, a hyena, a mule, a zebra, a bear, and an elephant and you asked me which of them was going to fit through the eye of a needle. I’d tell you that none of them could do that.
But then you’d point out that someone is going to wind up on the other side of the needle.
Romney is the squirrel.
I think Romney’s odds are less than 25%.
Here is why:
Gingrich’s odds at the nomination are well over 50% at this stage.
Links to past work?
Nate Silver published under poblano at Dkos.
One article is here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/06/418493/-National-Polls-Dont-Matter:-Heres-the-Proof
My article on New Hampshire and National Polling is here:
http://openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=71469B284396C413CF758E4355730656?diaryId=893
I’m still gonna go with Romney/Bachmann. No reason and no logic to it–which is why it’s almost a safe bet.
Reason and logic are anathemas in today’s Republican Party. Wasn’t always that way.
Romney plus a hard core teabegger is my guess. Bachmann might be the red meat vp he’s looking for.
I’d like to see the crown for the winner.
Come on guys, everyone picks Romney? Lets get away from the CW for a bit.
I’ll go for the Gingrich/Cain ticket, just for laughs. The combination of arrogance, and self-righteousness would be unbeatable. How could Obama possibly compete against that level of crazy?
I didn’t go with Romney from the get-go; I had Bachmann winning it over a year ago (last November). I thought she’d be able to fundraise just as much as Romney because her House numbers were incredible, and have deep reaches into the stupid and the crazy. She knows what the base wants, and I thought she’d be able to hint at it in a way that Gingrich fails (remember when he said Socialist/Marxist/Atheist/Muslim in the same sentence?)
But when Perry jumped in, I figured it was over for her. He took away any momentum she once had, and then I think she started scrambling and dialed up the crazy to get it back…but it never came back, she started sounding as crazy as she always has, and I don’t see it coming back.
I also thought Cain might be able to do the same as her, and would have chosen him over her around May, but I didn’t think he’d be able to fund raise. Well it looks like neither of them can fund raise, and he has problems I wasn’t aware of.
Ticket will be Asshole1 and Asshole2.
Take that to the bank.
I’m surprised nobody has predicted a Romney/Gingrich ticket as near as I can tell. Romney basically because he seems to be the only one running an actual campaign and because everyone else that has a shot is pretty much a joke. The VP nominee is typically placed in the role of attack dog so the guy on the top of the ticket can “stay above the fray” and look “Presidential.” Gingrich is a perfect fit and he seems to take himself seriously enough to not come off as a complete moron. I don’t think the fundie wingnuts really care about the moral baggage as long as he whistles the right tune. Then again, if I were worth a shit as pundit I probably wouldn’t be posting this…
Gingrich, Santorum. The base has made clear they don’t want Romney and had a lot of success defying the moderates (tea party), while sticking the electable guy brought them defeat (McCain). Gingrich isn’t ideal for them, but he loves to bash hippies and that matters. Gingrich won’t upset the Republican establishment. As far as the party itself goes, he is more of them than Romney is. He could self-destruct from over-confidence, but he won’t say idiotic things like the other anti-Romney’s. The business class and military will be happy with him. He just needs to shore up evangelical support, as he is obviously not of them. For that: Huckabee or Santorum. I say Santorum because Huckabee might have a few of his own ideas, and Gingrich won’t like that. Plus Huckabee is probably having too much fun as a TV personality like Palin, and he doesn’t even have to pretend he might run for President. Santorum is a mediocrity designed to deliver a constituency, just as many Veeps have been.
PS. If Santorum can deliver his home state, Obama will have a very hard map to draw.