The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

U r not an American. U don 't count.

You're not Chinese, you won't count for much longer.

@JPB,

So many anti-'s.

That was a big part of the premise of my original post in the Obama '08 thread, that Obama was the first person in a long time that I could see myself voting FOR, instead of just voting to keep the other guy(s) out. (I liked Kerry, for example, but in a very Finn&Mitt way. My motivation was much more to get Bush out of the White House than to get Kerry in.)

And that really affects voter engagement, which really affects things like the ground game.

Of course Obama will probably have less engagement this time around, too. Still, I think it makes a difference.

Meanwhile, the problem with Huntsman is that he's always going to be not anti-Obama enough. He's too closely tied in terms of experience obviously (ambassador to China), but also policies and especially temperament.

Moderates will have a harder time deciding between Huntsman and Obama, but chunks of the base will just throw up their hands or write in Gingrich.

So the "electable" thing won't last long, I don't think. Huntsman looks more or less electable depending on who you contrast him with. (Contrasted with juvenile, facile, pandery Republican candidates he looks good. Contrasted with Obama in a general election, not so much.)

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@izzythepush,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

U r not an American. U don 't count.

izzythepush wrote:

You're not Chinese, you won't count for much longer.

Thay have been around for a while now.
Thay don 't amount to much.

David

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

So the "electable" thing won't last long, I don't think. Huntsman looks more or less electable depending on who you contrast him with.

Agreed; we can compare him to Clinton,
the relatively unknown governor of a very small State.
Whether he is electable or not will be determined during the plenary campaign.

David

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OmSigDAVID wrote:
U r not an American. U don 't count

izzythepush wrote:
You're not Chinese, you won't count for much longer.

David responded:
Thay have been around for a while now.
Thay don 't amount to much.

You haven't been paying much attention to the world lately, have you, David?

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

U r not an American. U don 't count.

izzythepush wrote:

You're not Chinese, you won't count for much longer.

Izzy, I wrote in a fit of pique (with depleted personal energy for typing).
I was irritated by his foolishness about:

spendius wrote:

. . . the speech is anachronistic rubbish
designed to play for a soft-headed audience.
The right to bear arms is now a business proposition. . . .

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land,
outranking any statute (e.g., gun control).
He pushes the proposition that self defense
is "anachronistic rubbish" and that we shoud
accept that; maybe he implies that we shoud change it,
abandoning our rights to self defense, as the English have.
FREEDOM is more important than life; dignity is worth defending.

Americanism is Individualism, not collectivism.
WE r sovereign, not government, which is our low-life servant.

The notion that we shoud trade places with out servant is annoying.

David

1 Reply

O4FS! We just got this thread back on topic. Can you guys take the China owns America discussion elsewhere?

Soz, I don't think moderates will have a hard time choosing between Huntsman and Obama. One has demonstrable experience in budgeting and leadership whereas the other knows how to give a great speech. Conservatives are going to have to choke down his Morman-lite-ism and the fact that he was willing to be an ambassador under Obama, but even Eric Erikson is now pointing to him as the anti-Romney/anti-Newt great white hope.

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I like Newt and Huntsman; Newt better.
Either is good, as long as we keep out the RINO.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

Newt doesn't understand or appreciate the separation of church and state. That alone disqualifies him for me. Huntsman I like.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Whats more important to you Dave, winning the election or retaining your political- genetic purity

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@OmSigDAVID,

Well, you know me Dave, never one to back away from a fight. Our notions of freedom are quite different, I feel freer living in Southampton than I ever did in Texas. I had to hide a bottle of tequila in a bag, and wasn't allowed to take a can of beer offsite for fear of being arrested (honest).

I can empathise with Spendi getting narked about Gingrich going on about how we would have enslaved you all, just like we enslaved the Canadians and the Australians. The biggest empire at the time was the French Empire not the British, and we were more concerned with being invaded by Napoleon to worry too much about you.

1 Reply

@JPB,

JPB wrote:

Soz, I don't think moderates will have a hard time choosing between Huntsman and Obama.

I understand you feel that way, but that doesn't seem to apply generally.

I couldn't find a poll that isolated how moderates feel about Huntsman vs. Obama. However this, from Nate Silver, indicates that Huntsman isn't doing particularly well amongst moderates:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/12/02/us/politics/fivethirtyeight-1202-moderateproblem_moderate/fivethirtyeight-1202-moderateproblem_moderate-blog480.png

Meanwhile, in head-to-head matchups, Obama is beating Huntsman by an average of 8.6 points:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_huntsman_vs_obama-2005.html

1 Reply

Huntsman may suffer from the same problems Romney does, regarding his religion:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/the-christianist-standard.html

Quote:

The Christianist Standard

Serial adultery? Fine. Mormonism? Er ...:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57337973-503544/newt-gingrich-strong-with-iowa-evangelicals-tea-partiers/

Quote:
Gingrich's favorable rating among white evangelical likely caucus-goers is 60 percent - compared to just 31 percent for Romney. Only 18 percent hold an unfavorable view of Gingrich, compared to 43 percent for Romney.... More than half of likely Republican caucus-goers (55 percent) say it is at least somewhat important a candidate share their religious beliefs, a figure that rises to 80 percent among white evangelicals. Eighty-five percent overall (including 77 percent of white evangelicals) say they would vote for a Mormon candidate, though just 67 percent say most people they know would vote for a Mormon.

Another way to put this is that 23 percent of white evangelicals will not vote for a Mormon, period. They even ranked Gingrich's personal life higher than Romney's.

If that holds up in the general - even at half the 23 percent rate - it will be difficult for either Romney or Huntsman to win. I suspect that most of these people polled, however, would hold their noses and vote for Romney anyway. Dunno about Huntsman though.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

What is interesting about the report you posted is the simple fact that conservatives are supposed to be the "moral majority," but they seem to overlook that in their own candidates. How immoral can their candidate be before they are laughed out of contention, or out of simple anger?

How does one determine how conservatives will vote if they vote for the very reverse of what they want - or claim they want?

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Re: Huntsman, one thing I find interesting about him is that he seems to vacillate between two modes. One is Serious Candidate (SC) who is careful and calibrated and does stuff that I think is stupid. (Like refusing to raise his hand indicating that he'd accept $1 in new taxes for $10 in spending during one of the early debates.)

The other is What The Hell, It's Not Like I'm Going to Win, (WTH), who is more interesting.

I thought of this because now that he's getting interest again, he's walking back one of his most famous WTH moments, re: climate change. Now back in SC mode, he's not so sure about climate change after all:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/jon-huntsman-flip-flops-on-climate-change.php

1 Reply

@sozobe,

That IS a point of controversy.
I have an open mind in regard to that.

David

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@Cycloptichorn,

Every time I vote, I care about 1 thing, which is determinative:
I choose the fellow that I believe will come the closest
to doing the job as I woud do it, if I had that job.

That 's all I care about.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

None even comes close to what I would do, but that's besides the point that congress is also broken. They all need to be replaced, and if that doesn't work, replace them again until it does.

They forgot how to negotiate and compromise; that has to change 100%.

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@OmSigDAVID,

The chap who would do the job as I would do it is the very last person I would ever vote for. I'm not entirely convinced that my idea of what should be done would not end up in a complete fiasco. And I wouldn't risk having that on my conscience.

A better definition than the dictionaries give for the word "bigot" might be someone who cannot contemplate the idea that his or her ideas might end in a fiasco if put into operation. I mean he or she cannot contemplate such a thing because it doesn't exist for them.

When someone points out that such a thing does exist, that their ideas in action might produce wheels coming off and burning, bigots get indignant and shouting insults with the vein in their temples throbbing sixty-to-the-dozen.

Try putting actually teaching evolution theory to schoolkids into action. And I don't mean pretending to just because the syllabus has it in.

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@sozobe,

There's definitely a difference in who we're describing as a moderate. Moderates who tend to vote in a Republican primary and moderates voting in the general election are two separate groups. I agree with cyclo that Huntsman's Mormanism (even though it's been described by some as progressive Mormanism or Morman-lite) will be a hurdle for him to overcome. I've liked him from the beginning but there's something about his presentation that bothers me. I've called it smarmy, Finn called it something else. Maybe it's the bi-polar flipping between SC and WTH.

1 Reply

The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

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