I’m not one to read much into primaries, but it’s interesting to note that the only incumbent Republican who lost last night, Bob Inglis of South Carolina, made the politically fatal mistake of mocking Glenn Beck last August:
I still think that the 2012 Republican will be an affable himbo like Mitt Romney or John Thune, but stuff like this makes me think Nate Silver might not be so crazy to think Palin has a shot. South Carolina is an important early primary.
MikeJ
I was joking when I said DougJ was going to be on a canal boat tour of wineries to select the best vintage for his private label Dijon, but here he is posting from a yurpian time zone.
Or he’s up all night in deep hack mode like other unlucky people.
DougJ
@MikeJ:
You’re not far off.
Tank Hueco
I know it’s fun to bash Sully for being ‘excitable,’ and that he’s taken heat for his dread that Palin will win the nomination. But (I hope I’m wrong) I’ve always agreed with him. Sarah’s a rapture-ready true believer, full-throttle Zionist, gleefully ignorant, and possesses a ripely fertile female form. That should be enough to capture the lizard-brained base and the nomination. I thought for some time that Huckabee might be the GOP’s ideal candidate; belligerently pious enough for the base, but his economic populism won’t fly with the supply-side sociopaths who run the party. Furthermore, Romney’s a mormon, Pawlenty’s a joke, and I don’t see Thun-mentum sweeping the country.
M. Bouffant
The Goofy Old Party has a choice: Go w/ the himbo, though there’ll at least be a veneer/narrative of “competence,” &, if the economy hasn’t improved much, “Romney = Businessman” or go for broke w/ Palin.
It probably comes down to how many Rs are currently suffering buyer’s remorse & wishing they’d nominated Romney. Or whoever they now wish had been nominated. That may even explain their tendency to nominate the “next weasel in line” so often.
And the Sen. & Gov. races in California may tell us something about Palin’s chances.
M. Bouffant
I keep forgetting Mittens’ biggest drawback.
However, “A Mormon’s Still Better Than A Muslim!” does have a certain ring to it.
Napoleon
The Republicans have a winner take all system. All Palin has to do is get lucky with 2 non-crazies hanging on for most of the primary season and splitting the vote so she can win.
wrb
Jindahl may gain enough from the spill to take her
David
The Republican primaries are going to be a repulsive freak show.
Palin’s Campaign Strategy:
1. Release a pre-primary book about how mean the media will be to her.
2. $tring along her followers on Facebook and Twitter (If you love ‘murca, donate, donate, donate) until the last minute and then blame her decision to not seek office on the mean media.
3. A post primary book will be about how mean the media was to her during the primary.
Palin does what is be$t for Palin.
wrb
@M. Bouffant:
Hard to win when the opposition can always use the magic underpants.
Mike Kay
I just had kinky victory sex with Nikki Haley! Lemme tell ya, she’s one Tamal Tigers in bed. And I love her all but she has this fetish for bloggers. She told me, being with some strange is so good cuz it’s so wrong.
Mike Kay
General Rancor:
My prediticions for today’s main even:
1. If Obama doesn’t fire him, he’s weak.
2. If Obama fires him, he’s weak..
Olberman is already saying the latter, imploring the president to show strength by retaining General Putz. Rachel almost stroked out when she heard him.
Jon Stewart had a novel view: they were meaningless words, so ignore them. I guess he falls into category 2, ie firing someone over meaningless words would be weak.
Never a dull moment in the circus.
Mike Kay
ya know if these high school scribs want the class president to show strength, maybe Barack should start lifting weights and using steroids.
MattF
Palin certainly has a chance, but I’d bet on Huckabee. My advice to other Repug candidates would be “watch your back”– Huckabee’s got the winning combination of a folksy exterior and a not-at-all-nice interior.
kay
Mitch Daniels. Governor of Indiana.
Mike Kay
@MattF: huckabee can’t raise money because wall street hates him and he gets some bad press because the neo-cons hate, but most importantly, he’s got his own willie horton incident which will drag him down.
Mike Kay
@kay: he has hair plugs, he gives speeches bashing the excess of the 60s, he was bush’s first OMB director and right now bush is box offic poison, he was to cut social security and medicare, and if all of this was bad enough, he’s a bore. In comparaison, Daniels so so bad, he makes Boenher look like Jimmy Hendricks.
cleek
@Tank Hueco:
this.
Palin’s got it if she wants it.
Southern Beale
Oh please pretty please DRIVE OFF THAT CLIFF, REPUBLICANS! Nominate Sarah Palin and give Obama another 4 years in the White House!
kay
@Mike Kay:
He wants to call a truce on the culture wars, he privatizes everything, and gives huge tax breaks to any comer.
He’ll get all the business backing, vowing to funnel all of that federal cash to private companies, and no one who’s really powerful in the GOP ever gave a rat’s ass about the culture wars.
He’s the perfect candidate. All he needs to do is make some belligerent and reckless statements on national security and he’s the whole package. I’ll let you know when he writes his foreign policy op ed :)
I would love to have Palin, or Huckabee. I just don’t think Obama will get that lucky. They’re going to want to win. They’ll all back the nominee.
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
You really should read the epic fisking over at Bats Left/Throws Right about Daniels.
ETA: “He wants to call a truce on the culture wars” – unfortunately, the GOP base has no such intention.
kay
@Mike Kay:
Imagine how much money flows to Wall Street if they privatize Social Security? Imagine how much money flows to private hands if they privatize most or all of the federal government? Directly from taxpayers to private hands, and it’s guaranteed!
It’s the last big pool of untapped cash out there, public funds. Daniels will unlock billions, and direct it accordingly. Business interests be lining up to donate to him. What’s Social Security privatization worth to Wall Street?
Sly
Silver made some good points. But I still remain unconvinced that Palin would even run, let alone win, and its a bit of a stretch to assume that many of the 2008 candidates would run again. If more than one or two (credible) candidates from 2008 ran again that would, historically speaking, be an anomaly. Most candidates only run once and, if they run again, wait a cycle or two.
It’s also worth noting that there have only been four candidates in the past century who have won a major party nomination while not holding office at the time (Mondale in 84, Reagan in 80, Nixon in 68, and Eisenhower in 52), only two of them faced incumbent Presidents, and only one of them actually beat the incumbent.
I think the 2012 will include the names Daniels, Barbour, Jindal, Perry (if he wins a third term), and perhaps Thune (I don’t think we’ll see a lot of credible candidates from the Senate). Maybe two or three candidates from 2008, two of which will be Ron Paul and Alan Keyes. Of that list, I’d personally put Perry at the top. He’s George Bush in almost every way without actually being George Bush, which is what the Republican base wants.
As for Palin, I don’t think she’d run for the simple reason that campaigning for a nomination requires spending other people’s money, when what she really wants is to keep other people’s money.
BR
Here’s the problem with Palin being the GOP nominee. I know in a fair fight she wouldn’t stand a chance against Obama. But suppose the GOPers in the RNC that know how to play dirty plan a major October surprise that catches Obama off guard? Anything can happen. Palin is too dangerous to be one well-planned dirty October surprise away from the presidency.
Linda Featheringill
South Carolina: The winner is the lady who was being ridiculed because of her religion and ethnic heritage, right?
I don’t know if she got votes in SC because of the over-the-top taunts but at least it seems that a lot of people didn’t care that much about her ethnicity. Good for them!
SC, sometimes you are good people. :-)
El Cid
It was good to hear Michael Hastings, author of the Rolling Stone McChrystal profile, calling out as the absolutely ludicrous warmed-over ‘best & brightest’ Vietnam and other colonialist nonsense this weirdo bullshit “counter-insurgency” fetishism which has been used as the justification for how we would soon be getting on the right track in Afghanistan.
The fact that this ‘counter-insurgency’ nonsense could not only be taken seriously for several seconds before being laughed out of the room, but was treated seriously as some truly new innovation in warfare, is one of the most serious critiques of the utterly demented and debauched nature of political discussion in this nation that I’ve ever seen.
I give George H. W. Bush credit though — one of his most proud moments was when he declared that our massive bombing of Iraq and surrendering Iraqi troops in the first Gulf War had whipped the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ — that awful thing which had made so many Americans conclude that foreign wars were a horrible thing for the U.S. to get involved with — he was entirely right.
Jim C
That’s a whale of a supposition.
Lee Atwater is dead, you know.
Cat Lady
Palin would have to campaign. I refuse to believe that she can win anything by just tweeting and posting on Facebook, if other candidates are out speechifying, granting interviews and pressing the flesh. Palin’s so undisciplined and lazy that even if by some miracle she made it through the first primary, she’ll implode. She’s burned every bridge she’s ever crossed, McCain’s campaign team have the goods on her, and they hate her. She’s a natural as a grifter, and she’d have to give up the Fox gig, which I doubt she’d do.
All that said, I hope to FSM she runs, or pretends to, cuz she’s the seed crystal for Peak Wingnut.
schrodinger's cat
No room for the sane in the party of the insane
SiubhanDuinne
@Linda Featheringill: I have to keep reminding myself that just because Nikki Haley prevailed over horrible vulgar racist sexist slime, does NOT mean she is actually someone I would support politically. The Palin endorsement alone is enough to make me think twice. But I know where you’re coming from, I think, and to thhat extent I agree that SC voters did a good thing in ignoring the slime. But ONLY in that respect!
Seanly
Another example of the odd conservative infactuation with the new kids: some folks are talking about Halley as vice presidential material after winning the conservative SC crazy GOP primary. I’m sure she’s a shitheel like all of the other Republican politicians here in SC. And I wonder how many of the SC GOP in the general election will vote for the white guy over her out of their general racism.
Chris G.
@David: That strategy would also let her string out the question of who/whether she’ll endorse throughout the primary, getting her lots of attention without having to do all that boring campaigning.
wrb
@Cat Lady:
Why?
Haven’t we reached the point where that “news” network could have their very own candidate and no one would blink?
She’d probably keep her gig when president and just tape her show from the White House.
Hell, Fox would probably tape all their shows from their White House.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
I read it. I’m not impressed. It’s funny, but it pretends he’s a clown, and he’s not. I think the writer is too complacent. Conservatives aren’t going to throw their hands up and surrender.
Indiana under Daniels is fascinating, in a horrible, frightening way. I go there all the time. It’s like a case study in how to privatize. It’s going to be wholly corporate-owned, and soon.
Daniels privatized child support. He outsourced the contract, and the private actor tried to administer payments with a call center. It was an absolute disaster, but he left those people hanging for two years before he would admit the mistake and cancel the contract.
I think it’s a template for conservative governance. They privatize the services where vulnerable people don’t have any choice: child support, social services. Those people don’t vote either.
McCain is short. It was never mentioned, but McCain is a little guy. Daniels being 5′ 7″ won’t hurt him.
Jose Padilla
Palin could go head up aganst a “moderate” Republican and win. She gets 60% approval ratings from Republicans and her supporters are die-hards. She’d wipe the floor with Romney.
Toni
Palin’s tweets and facebook messages make it into reporter’s questions and form the basis for many discussion segments on cable tv. If she doesn’t run she will dominate the media because other candidates will be asked whether they agree with her continuously and she will be free to throw her barbs directly at Obama and ignore the candidates. If she does run she also will dominate because of her catchy one-liners and made-up phrases, which the media will fixate on.
More substantively, Palin already has a base to build on and in winner-take-all primaries with several candidates, she only needs 30% or so to win. In terms of willingness to campaign, I agree that is her weak spot though but with her name recognition she could still work less than people like Pawlenty and win the nomination.
I do think that Mitch Daniels could be a formidable threat vs. Obama for the independent voter particularly if the economy is still somewhat weak. Daniels problem is getting out of the republican primary.
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
i should have mentioned that that is only the first part of at least four other posts about Daniels.
I don’t know the guy, don’t have a clue about what he’s done to Indiana (There’s enough screwball politics in Illinois at any point in time to keep up with).
That said, if he’s as wooden and dull as the author makes him out to be, I don’t see him standing a chance in a debate situation.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
Indiana is actually growing, because Daniels is giving away the store to attract jobs.
He raised objections to the Great Lakes Water Compact (an agreement between Great Lakes states and Canada on water use and conservation) that were ostensibly based on local water use and state’s rights issues, but were ideological. The compact describes water as a publicly-owned”commons” entity, and not a commodity. That was the real objection.
He’s a smiling, competent hard Right economic ideologue, and I just think he’s tailor made for Club For Growth and corporate backing. With Citizens, that backing is going to be a real threat.
Conservatives need a midwestern state. They need Ohio, or Indiana, or Wisconsin or Michigan, and no one gives a shit about social issues when the economy is bad. If they don’t win one of those, they have to do better in the West, and I think they might have trouble there with all the Hispanic bashing.
Hunter Gathers
@kay:
So he was right about the Iraq invasion costing 95 cents?
Damed librul media been lyin’ to me about the cost.
Mitch the Bitch Forever!
Glen Tomkins
That SC primary
Sure, the SC Republican electorate can definitely bring the crazy, so a win for a Palin/Beck ticket in their primary is far from ruled out.
But that electorate also tends to reflect, in similarly exaggerated form, another R tendency besides crazy. The SC Rs also tend to line up behind the party leadership, and back the consensus leadership choice. The Rs in general, led by SC, are both crazy and authoritarian, not just crazy.
Because of this dual nature of the R electorate, and SC’s hyper version of same, I don’t think you can say whether they are more or less likely to go for a candidate that outsiders such as ourselves might perceive as the more crazy. Romney has already had, in the 2008 campaign, to at least act crazy to stand a chance at winning. He’ll doubtless do it again, diving more deeply into crazy as needed, and will doubtless be followed or surpassed in crazy by Thune, should he get into the race. Palin, in turn, has used her time since leaving elected office to become a full-time self-appointed party consensus shaper, endorsing in primaries all over the country. They all want to look like both the natural leadership of the party, plus bomb-throwers, all at the same time.
The Rs lucked into a natural combination of these antithetical characteristics once, with Reagan. But in that case they had both his career as an actor and his Alzheimer’s helping with the smooth and seamless blending of the two irreconcilable characteristics.
What happens if you don’t luck into such a combination, if that combination is the aim of every hack drawn to power, is that the combination becomes a fairly transparent, insincere ploy, and thus doesn’t work too well, either to get the nomination or in the general election. There’s less likely to be an establishment favorite going into the SC primary precisely because all of the candidates will probably be working the same grift, that they, and only they, are the one true genial bomb-thrower Reagan reincarnation. You betcha.
A whole state full of crazy authoritarians without one clear leader, is a recipe for an unpredictable result.
kay
@Hunter Gathers:
Well, no, but that figure was for an Iraq invasion that lasted six months. He was relying on Rumsfeld.
I didn’t say I was a supporter, or that I agreed with his positions, or that I think he’s competent.
I just think it’s delusional to portray these people as circus clowns. They’re dead serious. There’s a lot of money at stake. Business interests are going to be allied lock-step against Obama, because despite the theme that he’s corporate owned, it could get much, much better for big business/privatization with a Club For Growth conservative at the helm. They’re not giving up. They want Social Security. They want a zero tax rate. They want no public sector union presence. They want zero regulation, and zero worker protections. They’ve been making progress towards those goals for 30 years. Obama is just a brief detour on the path.
There are a lot worse things out there than a Sarah Palin nomination. She’s the best possible outcome.
Michael57
Palin would get clobbered by any moderate Republican in New Hampshire. Huckabee has already proven that he can’t win in New Hampshire. So what happens to the primary narrative? … The problem the Repubs have is that all their superstars are batshit crazy. Romney is toast because of health care. So who do they run? Kenneth the Page? I don’t think so.
For all the problems we have, the other team has worse, I think.
Hunter Gathers
@kay:
I know, I was just having a bit o’ fun,reliving my old Morning Zoo days from when I had a lot less grey hair. It’s going to be Palin. The GOP base is way too rabid at the moment (and for the next 10 + years) to let someone so utterly boring as Daniels to slip through. I used to live in Indiana (America’s Armpit), and remember when Daniels ran in 2004. Indiana Nice won’t work in a national GOPer primary.
I wouldn’t worry about the GOPer scheme to privatize SS and Medicare. When Dubya tried to privatize SS many moons ago, it fell flat on it’s face, and that was at the high water mark of GOPer rule. I don’t worry about SS and Medicare being abolished. I worry about these crazy fucks starting a 3rd or 4th war in the Middle East should they return to power under their current coalition.
The one race to watch in November is the Gov’s race in Texas. If Perry looses, Obama has a decent shot at winning Texas in 2012. I get the feeling that the GOP will have to spend cash and candidate time in Texas in 2012 no matter who the nominee is. If Texas turns blue, the GOP is dead.
Bob L
“Don’t buck the Beck” should be the new GOP motto for 2012.
Amazing some stoner like Beck is the leader of the conversations. One of the bigger jokes in American history.