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Pete, I would so love to see Gov. Romney use that as justification. "But, we need all those cars because we have all those houses. Hee!
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posted
With all those trips through the woods to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood should have some fairly impressive arboreal observations.
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: What does it mean for the trees to be the right height, anyway?
It was a way of saying that the place just looked like home to him.
When I moved from Kansas to Ohio, one of the things that struck me as different about the was the trees. They're huge here, both in girth thw up with. I find the trees here beautiful, and actually prefer them to the ones I grew up seeing, but I could understand it if a fellow Kansan, when going home, felt on some level that there was a rightness to the trees there that didn't exist elsewhere.
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Or, you know, he didn't have anything else pre-prepared to say about trees but felt that some sort of tree-associated comment was called for.
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: What does it mean for the trees to be the right height, anyway?
It was a way of saying that the place just looked like home to him.
When I moved from Kansas to Ohio, one of the things that struck me as different about the was the trees. They're huge here, both in girth thw up with. I find the trees here beautiful, and actually prefer them to the ones I grew up seeing, but I could understand it if a fellow Kansan, when going home, felt on some level that there was a rightness to the trees there that didn't exist elsewhere.
This I can relate to. The trees in Nebraska are nothing like back home in Michigan, both in composition and the sheer lack of trees. Where are all the forests out here?
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quote:Originally posted by Bella Bee: Or, you know, he didn't have anything else pre-prepared to say about trees but felt that some sort of tree-associated comment was called for.
Nah. I listened to it back when he first said it, and it seemed pretty clear that it was what he was going for. He stumbled all over it, but you know.
Lyrhawn, I know; it's all scrub wood, or at least most of it is.
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quote:That Mitt Romney finds himself so imperiled by Rick Santorum—Rick Santorum!—is just the latest in a series of jaw-dropping developments in what has been the most volatile, unpredictable, and just plain wackadoodle Republican-nomination contest ever. Part of the explanation lies in Romney’s lameness as a candidate, in Santorum’s strength, and in the sudden efflorescence of social issues in what was supposed to be an all-economy-all-the-time affair. But even more important have been the seismic changes within the Republican Party. “Compared to 2008, all the candidates are way to the right of John McCain,” says longtime conservative activist Jeff Bell. “The fact that Romney is running with basically the same views as then but is seen as too moderate tells you that the base has moved rightward and doesn’t simply want a conservative candidate—it wants a very conservative one.”
quote:To a large extent, Romney’s concurrent problems with conservatives and independents are of his own making. His campaign’s incineration of Gingrich in Florida, though perhaps necessary and certainly skillful, also contributed mightily to alienating the center while doing nothing to remedy his main malady in the eyes of conservatives: the absence of a positive message that resonates with them, coupled with a tic-like tendency to commit unforced errors that exacerbate their doubts that he is one of their own. Crystallizing this phenomenon was an episode that took place the morning after Florida, when, on CNN, Romney disgorged another gem: “I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”
With these few short sentences in what should have been a moment of triumph for him, Romney managed to send the wrong message to an array of factions. To independent voters, “I’m not concerned about the very poor” sounds callous. To conservative intellectuals and activists, talk about fixing the safety net—as opposed to pursuing policies that enable the poor to free themselves from government dependency—is rank apostasy. And to congressional Republicans, the comment reflected a glaring lack of familiarity with the party’s anti-poverty positions. “Electeds were flabbergasted,” says a veteran K Street player. “Even moderate Republican members, if they’ve been here for more than four months, get dipped in the empowerment agenda.”
A week later, Romney attempted to repair part of the damage with his speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference—and promptly put his foot in it again. In an address in which he employed the word conservative or some variation of it 24 times, as if trying to prove he is a member of the tribe through sheer incantation, his use of the adverb severely to express the depth of his conviction raised eyebrows inside and outside the hall. “The most retarded thing I have ever heard a Republican candidate say” was the verdict of one strategist with ample experience in GOP presidential campaigns.
posted
If he gets the nomination though, as soon as the primaries are over, he'll undergo a Jekyll and Hyde like transformation into a moderate titan. I think it'll be more problematic than in past years, because GOP candidates have rarely been forced to spout the extreme right dogma he's had to say. Retreating from those positions will be impossible, and Obama will carpet bomb swing states with large populations of independents with ads that just show Romney talking. That's all it will take. Winning the GOP nomination this time around will severely weaken any of them.
What remains is what happens in 2016. A lot of people suspect that if Romney wins the nom and loses the general, the GOP will figure it's because they didn't nominate a TRUE conservative, so they'll dig even deeper into the well four years from now and they'll lose even worse. If they hitch their cart to someone like Santorum and lose, then they'll actually have to reevaluate their principles and ask themselves why they lost being so true to their convictions. Hard to say what will happen from there.
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posted
Kind of a funny story, Rick Santorum has been running robo-calls in Michigan encouraging Democrats to go out and vote for him. You can apparently switch parties very temporarily there so that you can be a Republican for just long enough to vote in the primary.
So the pitch is "Vote for me, I have a much worse chance of winning the general than Mitt does."
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posted
You don't have to switch parties. In Michigan, you never register under a party to begin with.
And judging from the posts I've seen from friends on Facebook, they were all planning an anti-Mitt Santorum vote well before robocalls started going out.
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posted
Ah, open primaries. Accurately representing the interests of the people since... uh... well...
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quote: Ah, open primaries. Accurately representing the interests of the people since... uh... well...
While it's true that some people game the system in some open primaries, I think open primaries are more likely to produce candidates that Americans are comfortable with than closed ones do. If all the primaries were open, we could still end up with "Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich", but I think it's slightly less likely.
Closed primaries allow the nutjobs at both ends of the political spectrum inordinate control over the eventual candidates.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Ah, open primaries. Accurately representing the interests of the people since... uh... well...
I think you'll find the actual number of people on the opposite side who sabotage vote is fairly small. Consider that turnout in general for primaries is usually very, very small, and even less so for some people when you have a sitting president running for reelection. The number of people who make a special trip out to register a protest vote that matters even less than a ideologically pure vote is small. They only affect the outcome when the results are incredibly close.
On the other hand, I abhor the idea of having to register with a party. I like open primaries, I like the flexibility it brings, and I think the idea of having to so officially choose sides is wrong.
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quote: Ah, open primaries. Accurately representing the interests of the people since... uh... well...
While it's true that some people game the system in some open primaries, I think open primaries are more likely to produce candidates that Americans are comfortable with than closed ones do. If all the primaries were open, we could still end up with "Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich", but I think it's slightly less likely.
Closed primaries allow the nutjobs at both ends of the political spectrum inordinate control over the eventual candidates.
I think your last sentence is correct, and to me it seems like that reduces the first point you make.
Or maybe I'm misinterpreting. I read the giant douche/turd sandwich thing the same way I read the old Simpsons Kang/Kodos thing, which is that the candidates are too similar.
Closed primaries seem more likely to field the idealogues in each party, which means the choice at election day would be between a stark contrast of viewpoints. No Kang/Kodos problem there!
That being said, I can also see that fielding moderates from both parties is preferable to relatively moderate-minded folk like Lyrhawn. But the possibility of abusive fraud (like you admitted your friends plan on committing, Lyr, before you wrote it off as inconsequential) is a huge turnoff for me.
Edit: I think I see the idea of open primaries sort of the way I see people arguing against the 2-party system. It sounds sort of nice and free and open, but I'm not convinced the reality necessarily reflects the dream.
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Olympia Snowe is retiring. That's the end of an era. She's one of the last moderate Republicans left in government at all, let alone the Senate, and she was often a swing vote voice of moderation. Her and Susan Collins made a great team.
But with her retiring, what does that mean for the senate, especially the GOP's chances for retaking it? Is there another "Maine" Republican waiting in the wings? Or does her retirement hand the seat off to a moderate Democrat?
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Or maybe I'm misinterpreting. I read the giant douche/turd sandwich thing the same way I read the old Simpsons Kang/Kodos thing, which is that the candidates are too similar.
He said "...we could still end up with "G... vs. T...", but I think it's slightly less likely...", meaning that's what we have under the status quo, with primarily closed primaries.
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quote:That being said, I can also see that fielding moderates from both parties is preferable to relatively moderate-minded folk like Lyrhawn. But the possibility of abusive fraud (like you admitted your friends plan on committing, Lyr, before you wrote it off as inconsequential) is a huge turnoff for me.
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment.
Let's say there are two kinds of votes: a positive vote and a negative vote. A positive vote is when you vote for someone you support. A negative vote is a vote cast in order to stop someone you abhor.
Why is one better than the other? You have a vote which you are allowed to use as you see fit.
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quote: Rick Santorum’s campaign is locked in a tight battle with Mitt Romney ahead of Tuesday’s Michigan primary. On Monday his camp started openly courting a demographic that’s not often reached out to in GOP primaries: Democrats.
Michigan’s primary rules allow Dems to vote in the state’s GOP primaries. The liberal site DailyKos and other progressive partners have been trying to drum up enthusiasm for “Operation Hilarity” - an effort to get Democrats to vote in the GOP primary and tilt the vote against Mitt Romney. The Santorum campaign evidently decided they’d take votes from any legitimate source.
Following some speculation that the robocall may have been a “false flag” effort designed to harm Santorum, a spokesman Hogan Gidley confirmed to TPM that they were indeed footing the bill, and reaching beyond party lines. “If we can get the Reagan Democrats in the primary, we can get them in the general,” he told TPM.
It’s a controversial tactic. Bill Ballenger, a longtime Michigan politico and the editor of Inside Michigan Politics, spoke with TPM about the call earlier in the day. He said the call piqued his interest because it sounded like it could have come from a union targeting Romney ahead of the Feb. 28 primary. The call focuses on Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout and calls on Democrats to vote for Santorum Tuesday because of it.
“It went on and on like this and I kept listening because I kind of smelled a rat,” Ballenger said. “And finally at the very end, in a tagline it says, ‘this call was paid for by the Santorum for president committee.’” TPM readers in Michigan reported Monday receiving the same robocall as Ballenger. TPM Reader BG emailed in to say he’d received a robocall where the “voice sounded Union-ish” and “said the word ‘Democrats’ repeatedly, though not as a derogatory label.” He stayed on to hear who claimed the call in the tagline at the end and “yup, it was from the official Santorum campaign.”
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: In other Republican news...
Olympia Snowe is retiring. That's the end of an era. She's one of the last moderate Republicans left in government at all, let alone the Senate, and she was often a swing vote voice of moderation. Her and Susan Collins made a great team.
But with her retiring, what does that mean for the senate, especially the GOP's chances for retaking it? Is there another "Maine" Republican waiting in the wings? Or does her retirement hand the seat off to a moderate Democrat?
This is oft repeated, but no truer for the frequent repititions thereof. Several of the Freshman GOP class are significantly moderate, like Scott Brown, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats and Kelly Ayotte in the Senate, and numerous members of the House. The truth is that the 2010 wave, as is true with most national waves (such as 2006 and 2008), washed out many of the moderates from the losing party (bye-bye Blanche Lincoln, Arlen Specter, Byron Dorgan and Evan Bayh) and washed in many from the other.
As to the electoral prospects for the GOP or Dems in Maine, I'd think Dems have the early edge just because both US Reps are Democrats. I imagine the best bet for a competitive race will be if one of the runners-up to Paul LePage in the 2010 gubernatorial primary is the GOP nominee; maybe Peter Mills or Steve Abbott.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
From an outside perspective your moderate republicans never seemed to ever been willing to break with republicans to support a moderate cause.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: In other Republican news...
Olympia Snowe is retiring. That's the end of an era. She's one of the last moderate Republicans left in government at all, let alone the Senate, and she was often a swing vote voice of moderation. Her and Susan Collins made a great team.
But with her retiring, what does that mean for the senate, especially the GOP's chances for retaking it? Is there another "Maine" Republican waiting in the wings? Or does her retirement hand the seat off to a moderate Democrat?
This is oft repeated, but no truer for the frequent repititions thereof. Several of the Freshman GOP class are significantly moderate, like Scott Brown, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats and Kelly Ayotte in the Senate, and numerous members of the House. The truth is that the 2010 wave, as is true with most national waves (such as 2006 and 2008), washed out many of the moderates from the losing party (bye-bye Blanche Lincoln, Arlen Specter, Byron Dorgan and Evan Bayh) and washed in many from the other.
As to the electoral prospects for the GOP or Dems in Maine, I'd think Dems have the early edge just because both US Reps are Democrats. I imagine the best bet for a competitive race will be if one of the runners-up to Paul LePage in the 2010 gubernatorial primary is the GOP nominee; maybe Peter Mills or Steve Abbott.
We'll see. Moderate means something different now than it used to.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: From an outside perspective your moderate republicans never seemed to ever been willing to break with republicans to support a moderate cause.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Moderate means something different now than it used to.
What do you think it used to mean? For example, I doubt there was an elected Republican in the nation 20 years ago that would support the current median Republican position on gay marriage. I don't think there's some Platonic ideal of moderation; it changes as the issues change.
That said, on a quantitative level, I think the DW-NOMINATE system is pretty good at giving a rough estimate of this issue. And, to be fair, it does show a Republican party moving strongly to the right. So I think there's a good case that the average Republican is more conservative than he once was, but that's a somewhat different statement.
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posted
BB: That's hilarious, although it's a little scary sharing a provincial/state border with the place.
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I'm wondering: how soon do y'all think (if anyone thinks this, that is) that the GOP side of this election will morph into 'setup for 2016'? I believe I first heard that kind of talk on either Talk of the Nation or It's All Politics, as well as in this thread. I simply don't buy into the notion that a lengthy, bitterly contested primary serves the eventual Republican nominee if that primary sees all candidates drive to the right. If it were driving to the center, I could see there being a strong case for this being good for Republicans.
What do Hatrack's various political nerds and watchers think?
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posted
Conventional wisdom states that a hotly contested primary can give a candidate energy and momentum going into the general election...but this primary has been incredibly damaging for everyone in the party. It's driven candidates so far to the right that when they eventually have to tack back to the center, as they always do, it'll be nearly impossible to walk back from some of those statements. Also, many have noted that Primary enthusiasm is down almost across the board for the GOP, as opposed to 2010 numbers. They're not going to have the turnout advantage they had two years ago. There's also money to consider. Obama is banking while big money candidates like Romney burn cash in states they never planned to contest at all, like Michigan.
I think the 2012 crop is dominated by those who aren't running. All the people that have been talked about for months, like Jindal, Daniels, Bush, and Christie all stayed out of what would have probably been an easy win for most of them, probably because they felt it was Mitt's turn. Or, because they didn't think Obama was going to be easy enough to beat and wanted to wait for clearer skies.
So is this a setup for 2012? In what sense? I don't think we'll see any of the current crop of candidates again in 2016 (well, except Ron Paul maybe), unless the party goes through a major identity crisis. In 2016, one of those who stayed on the sidelines this year will step up, and all these also-rans will be crushed.
Besides, no one in the party leadership likes the idea of "setting up" a further election by throwing the current one. Too much long term damage can be done waiting another four years.
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posted
I think a couple of candidates have potentially set themselves up for a stronger 2016 run than they otherwise would have had, particularly Jon Huntsman. I also think that whomever gets the VP slot could have a strong claim to being "set up" for 2016 if Mitt's run isn't successful (or 2020 if it is).
My early prognostication for the 2016 Democratic ticket is Cuomo-Villaraigosa.
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posted
What do you all think of the rumblings that the convention is going be changed to a delegated one, with an emphasis on finding a candidate who isn't one of the current four?
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quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: I think a couple of candidates have potentially set themselves up for a stronger 2016 run than they otherwise would have had, particularly Jon Huntsman. I also think that whomever gets the VP slot could have a strong claim to being "set up" for 2016 if Mitt's run isn't successful (or 2020 if it is).
My early prognostication for the 2016 Democratic ticket is Cuomo-Villaraigosa.
That depends on a few people turning it down. Both parties are about to turn things over to the next generation of politicians. The Democrats have already sort of done it with Obama, but if Biden or Clinton want it, it's theirs. Clinton has downplayed the chances, but she's incredibly popular, and her and Bill would be an incredible force on the campaign trail. Plus no one can say she doesn't have experience after 4 years as SecState and a few as a senator. She can run on the things from Obama she likes and jettison the ones she doesn't. There's also the whole "first woman president" thing. Then I think she picks a young white guy as her VP.
But she still might say no. I guess she'll be 8 years older than when she tried last time, but she just seems to be one of those people that can't put it down, and never got her turn.
I'm crossing my fingers for Russ Feingold. He was ousted in 2010, but he's the real thing.
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Feingold would be incredible. However, he's flatly stated in two recent interviews that he has no interest in being president or doing what it takes to become president. I also don't think he could truly survive a strong GOP push.
In essence, the very qualities that make him the "real thing" make him unelectable these days.
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posted
Nope. Huntsman wants to be on the GOP ticket in 2016, and he can't do that having been Obama's SecState. Huntsman was already hammered for being the Ambassador to China. It's a shame too, because I think he'd be great for the post.
Don't forget the magic scenario a lot of people still hope for, where Clinton and Biden do the swappitydo.
Human -
I suppose I agree. If Feingold stuck to his principles on campaign finance, he'd be crushed in funding alone...but maybe he'd go down as a powerful message to the nation on his singular issue.
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