Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal has tasted what the GOP presidential candidates are offering and has decided to spit it right back out. Perry’s sounds too Texan and his “muscular religiosity” won’t play in the suburbs. Bachmann is too inexperienced, gaffe-prone, and anti-Establishment. Romney provides “little evidence that he has convictions beyond faith in his own technocratic expertise.” Huntsman has no governing philosophy. Ron Paul “has no chance to win the nomination.” The rest of the field (including the undeclared Palin) doesn’t even merit a mention. It’s a frank and brutal assessment of the field, and it concludes with this:
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.
Translation: the Republican Establishment hates Rick Perry and they aren’t going to line up behind him as many people suspected they would. As for Romney, they don’t like him either, and don’t think he can beat Obama. I don’t know who the Journal thinks they’re talking to. Jeb Bush? Mitch Daniels? Chris Christie? We’ve been down those roads over and over again.
I think the Journal should worry less about personalities and more about the fact that the Republican Party is now so unhinged that it’s literally applauding a downgrade of our country’s credit rating that it wantonly and recklessly caused. Maybe the financial elites should work on fixing that problem instead of exacerbating it.
The establishments of both parties didn’t exactly line up behind Obama or McCain in 08, but they certainly got in line when they had to. ‘Perry for President’ is a ridiculous and nauseating concept, but my fear is that he’ll be the nominee, and assuming we still have a stalled economy, an actual threat in the general.
And if that happens, we may all be forced to eat that GOP dog food. Perry will be spectacularly good at playing the insecure white guy card. He will be motivational to that crowd and they will show up for him.
That may well be the nauseating truth.
Yeah, they’ll side with whomever wins. But right now they’re sitting it out. And that bodes well for Obama retaining the support of the Gates/Powell/Rockefeller/Ford/Eisenhower wing of the GOP.
So Republicans were expecting better. Perhaps they have a new definition of insanity.
Perry’s job plan is to lower everyone’s pay and benefits so we can compete with china. His campaign slogan should be “WE’RE ALL CHINA NOW”.
There’s a problem with that strategy. China is now outsourcing to even cheaper labor countries.
In my opinion that WSJ article had two prongs.
One?
Ron Paul “has no chance to win the nomination.”
He scares the living shit out of the corporate controllers and moneymen.
“Anyone but Paul” is what they are saying.
Two?
” I don’t know who the Journal thinks they’re talking to. Jeb Bush? Mitch Daniels? Chris Christie?”
I don’t think that the stench of the Bush administration has yet been Febrezed sufficiently out of the political atmosphere for Jeb Bush to be a credible candidate. Mitch Daniels? Maybe, but it’s a little late for him to get started. Chris Christie? He could win the Neanderthal vote and perhaps carry the mainstream RatPub vote as well, but do they really want a nasty-spirited fat guy with his finger on all of the buttons? On their buttons? I don’t think so. My take on Christie is that he doesn’t take orders very well. Betcha it’s Wall Street’s take as well.
That leaves…Tah-Dah!!!…their boy Mayor Mike. Michael Bloomberg. It’s not too late for him to raise money because he could easily finance his own campaign. He has a squeaky clean image; his record as Mayor of NYC is impeccable if you don’t consider the massive human damage that his gentrification policies have caused, and he has definitely, beyond any possible doubt proven his fealty to big business. Hell, he is big business. If only he was a WASP he’d be running already. And winning. But…any port in a storm, old chap, any port in a storm.
Watch.
AG
I thought this sounded a little familiar.
I thought Mayor Mike was going to transcend party and bring us together. Isn’t he who the Third Way really wants?
The far Right Wingnuts don’t like Perry either for advocating a Gardasil vaccine and because he’s “for amnesty.”
I see a Perry nomination as the one way to get all sides of the “liberal blogospheres” on one page regarding working towards Obama’s election.
With Romeny, I can actually see a scenario where some “soft supporters” of Obama while not wanting a GOP in the WH see Mittens as someone who while pandering to the right at this moment, if he makes it to the office they figured that Mitts will govern the way he governed Mass as “moderately” as he possibly can. So I can see a scenario where people who worked for and supported Obama last time would in the back of their minds think well at least Romney isn’t that bad.
With Bachmann, I think we see her as so certifiably crazy, that there is no way she’ll even make it to the nomination. I kinda see the scenario that Bachmann makes it to the nomination, but crashes an burns in the general.
With Perry, I think he will reminds them of the days of Bush, and if he makes it to the nomination, he will be able to unify liberal, progressives, whoever else who loyally vote Democrats to actual work for, campaign for and donate even more to Obama in ’12.
I guess what I’m saying is I do see Romney has a bigger threat against Obama than Perry in a general.
Either way though, I think Perry can win the nomination, but I can’t wait to see if Romney has that “eye of the Tiger” to put it to Perry before Perry totally buries Romney. If people think Obama doesn’t punch back enough, I certainly don’t see “Who let the dogs out” Mitt Romney punching back against Perry. He’d looked even phonier than he usually does.
The Wall Street Journal and every other Murdoch entity will be chowing down on their dog food when the time comes.