Saturday Off-the-Wall Street Journal piece:
Wide-Open GOP Presidential Field Spurs Dark Horses
The lack of a clear 2012 Republican presidential front-runner is prompting lesser-known figures to consider joining the race.
Instead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, some conservative groups are looking for fresh faces and asking: Why not Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan or former Godfather’s Pizza Chief Executive Herman Cain?
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who is President Barack Obama’s ambassador to China, has hinted he might join the GOP contest. Onetime United Nations ambassador John Bolton is talking up a possible bid, and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, an early supporter of the tea-party movement, is making her own high-profile jaunt to Iowa.
Seriously?
Michele Bachmann? Herman Cain? John (Just for Men) Bolton?
Campaign Outsider Mortal Lock (pat. pending):
The hardworking staff will be president before John Bolton is.
Campaign Outsider 
Michelle Bachmann is the thinking-person’s Sarah Palin. Every bit as crazy, not as flashy, more serious, and able to speak in complete sentences in big-time interviews. After her bizarre reaction to the Arizona massacre, Palin has blown her chances at elected office (if indeed she was seriously interested). But Palin’s crazies will stick with her, and if she endorses Bachmann, Bachmann may pick up serious momentum. Don’t discount her.
A thinking-person’s Sarah Palin??
I’m having a hard time getting my head around that one… are we in Bizzaro World?
I doubt Palin or Bachman have ever had a chance of being selected as a presidential candidate on the national ballot. Palin got on the 2008 ballot only because the vetting was done by the top of the ticket.
The more people talk of the credibility of people like Palin of Bachman, the more credibility they are afforded. Were they not be given or allowed to take the spotlight, their influence and credibility may not get enhanced. Think of spotlighting as enabling.
Never happen, they say? Take a look at how the influence of Rush Limbaugh has waned since those rabidly afraid of his views have realized that he’s not much more than useless hot air. Palin and Brachman –Beck, Maddow, Olbermann, et al, too–are useless hot air. (We certainly can make a list of Congressmen and Senators that fit into the hot-air category to round out a cast of scoundrels.)
But then from a political standpoint, having a Palin or Bachman around to swing at moves a political spotlight. In the swinging of the spotlight, however, attention is drawn away form the real threat to the liberal agenda, the solid, slightly right of middle that works to accomplish as opposed to selling ideology.
The majority of the American voter are there and likely to remain there for quite some time. (See Nov. 2010 congressional and state elections.)
The question is not where the majority of Americans are, but rather where the majority of Republicans are.
Ask the liberals who lost their seats about that.
Your comment is too inscrutable for me, Curmudgeon. I thought it was Republicans who chose their nominee. Republicans in 2010 were pretty willing to toss out moderates (see Castle, Mike, et. al.) in favor of Teh Crazy. Where will they be in 2012?
Republicans chose McCain, McCain chose Palin with a convention rubber stamp.
Democrats chose Obama, Obama chose Biden with a convention rubber stamp.
That’s been the pattern since the 1950’s. Party chooses candidate, candidate chooses VP, party rubber stamps as only sheep-like parties can.
Also, the loonies of the right are subject to electoral scrutiny similar to the loonies on the left. Remember the Presidential candidacies of Barry Goldwater and John McGovern?
I won’t mention the candidacy of Michael Dukakis as being exactly parallel, but it certainly had some similarities when it came to the advice he was given.
Carter was just clueless, sincere, but still clueless.
Where will the Republicans be in 2012? Good question. Where will the Democrats be? As Carville says, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
I recall in 2008, the Republican party was dead and ready to be buried. I seem to recall that you leaned toward such a view.
I will not predict the death of either.
Now, remind me, how many seats did the Democrats lose in the November 2010 elections? House? Senate? Governors? State Houses? Weren’t those as dramatic a shift as the results of the 2008 version?
I’ve answered your questions, how about answering these?
As the excesses of the European social democracies continue to flush through the world’s economic and political scene — Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, France — the slide to the right may just accelerate. The deficit and the debt of this nation are not redounding to the benefit of the social democrat, or, in our lexicon, the liberal. The changes may be painful.
The Dems lost lots in ’10. Almost as much as Republicans in ’06 and ’08 (combined). Incumbents get thrown out when the economy is bad, but approval ratings for Congress are in the toilet for both parties. The comparison you’re looking for is ’94, I think – *that* was a palpable shift in the attitudes of voters, ideologically and not economically driven.
Your recollection of my view of the ’08 results (“Republicans dead”) is totally made up, BTW. I say silly things sometimes, but I’ve been around far too long to have said or even thought such a thing. What comments are you referring to?
Impressions drawn from the positions you were taking on or about the days after the November 2008 election in other blogs. Note that “leaned” does not say “held”
Did I mistake them for complaints about Obama and the Democrats winning? If so, I sincerely regret the error of painting you as firmly on the left.
I agree with you that Congress has been in the toilet, and would note that it has been in the toilet from most of my voting life. Everyone thinks his toilet denizen is just peachy, and all of the others of the problem, so the toilet denizens get to take up life-time residence there. It takes political cataclysms to induce change, and both 2008 and 2010 qualify in this sense.
I do not, however, subscribe to the theory that the 2010 shift was solely the poor economy at its root. I believe that it was alsothe over-promise, over-reach and under-performance of the Democrats as leaders, especially given absolute control that made the fault lines shift.
You will see the results in terms of left and right as President Obama dives for the middle. It isn’t where the liberal wants it to be.
To return to the topic, I see it impossible for a Palin or Bachman to get elected just as McGovern and Goldwater had little prospects. A Republican Party that nominates them deserves to lose.
Obama is going to be the Democrats choices in 2012; I don’t think we even have a viable horse race going for the Republicans at this time. For the sake of the sanity and comity of the people, I would hope that a horse race does not develop until this fall at the earliest.
Once again, I ask for specifics about the views you claim I held – they should be easy to find, given the time frame you cite, so give me one or two examples of what you’re talking about.
And, back to the topic, you say “I see it impossible for a Palin or Bachman to get elected just as McGovern and Goldwater had little prospects.”
I agree wholeheartedly. That was part of my original point. I was talking about them getting the nomination.
“A Republican Party that nominates them deserves to lose.”
Once again, we agree. It remains to be seen how far towards the crazies the center of the Republican party has swung. McGovern is a very apt comparison. I might even extend it by saying that Gene McCarthy was the darling of the anti-war left in ’68, and McGovern’s ’72 candidacy was made possible by that movement. It pains me intellectually to make the McCarthy/Palin comparison, but it may be politically apt.
Palin is damaged goods at the moment, but the movement is real. I think Bachmann can ride that movement and be VP on the 2012 ticket (as a sop to the Tea Party). But unlike Palin, Bachmann will not shrink from “uncontrolled” major media exposure. She’ll go toe-to-toe with interviewers and debate opponents. So even though she’s completely loony, her schtick will draw some constituency.
You are, missing the point, Steve.
It’s the crazy ones in the middle that count, and that middle has the tendency to swing both right and left. It’s now in the going to the right mode, or if you want to look from behind the pendulum, to the left. But that is just a matter of perspective, it is moving.
John “Just for Men” Bolton.
That’s a good one, John.