2012 republican presidential nominee III: can romney get santorum out of his hair?

Okay--this is huge:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/fred-thompson-endorses-newt-gingrich.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

Reader comment: "Next he'll get the much coveted Wilfred Brimley endorsement."

amazing

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/2012/01/23/liveblogging-absurdity-5/

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intel/2012/01/23/24-tampa%20debate.o.jpg/a_560x375.jpg

I would guess Brimley is a Paul guy.

hey folks reassure me that there is NO chance of a gingrich presidency.

b/c i dunno i might prefer a military coup to that.

Remember the margin by which Clinton creamed Dole or Reagan creamed Mondale? Uh yeah, it will be tighter than that, even with Gingrich's billions of foibles, but Obama should take it in a walk.

i mean the thing is that gingrich won't even have the support of half of his party. it'd be like humphrey or something.

Can I just....?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/ElectoralCollege1984.svg/800px-ElectoralCollege1984.svg.png

I was only ten when this happened and I don't remember what kind of candidate Mondale was. All I remember is that Ferraro was his veep-hopeful and that Reagan was on tv every day and night. I can't imagine how gutted Democrats must have been that night. Any reported suicides?

i remember watching those results with my dad at his office - his office threw a late-night election party, they were all big lefties - and even at my very young age i remember knowing something had gone very wrong, wrong beyond banter, beyond jokes

mondale was game but everybody knew reagan would win in 1984; four years before was the shocker. the one surprising thing in 1984 was when reagan spaced out & started babbling at debate's end. intimations

i still think (hope?) that 2012 will resemble 1972, when mcgovern/dems tilted way left to appease the hippies and wound up badly miscalculating how liberal the country actually was. same thing now w/republicans and the far right. look i know how conservative america is at heart - i'm from cincinnati. but not THIS "conservative."

Mondale was the only candidate I've ever seen who actually PROMISED to raise taxes.

"By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

I think a lot of lessons were probably learned from that :)

So who ran the third-most disastrous campaign for the Republican nomination in the past quarter-century? Now that Gingrich has secured endorsements from Rick Perry and Fred Thompson, Phil Gramm's must be imminent.

Best moment by far last night: Gingrich's long silence at 30:38.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5WnwsBwsI

"Let me be very clear"--shades of the master.

"By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

I think a lot of lessons were probably learned from that :)

Yes: let's all be Republicans and cut taxes.

The Wall Street Journal gets tetchy:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577178594236642420.html?mod=wsj_s

The problem is that voters also know that Gaius Gingrich is liable to deliver his prime-time speeches in purple toga while holding tight to darling Messalina's—sorry, Callista's—bejeweled fingers. A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.

Thanks WSJ. I like this part better than the economic analysis in that piece Ned linked to.

Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant.

Bitches be crazy, amirite?

Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it.

I think there's something commendable about putting your family's welfare above your political ambitions but I guess that's why I'm not a WSJ writer.

Also, this is classic grass-is-greener stuff. There's no reason to think any of these five have the chops to run a national campaign; Christie maybe the only one, and it's pretty hard to see the hard-core conservatives flocking to him any more than they do to Romney.

my god this little fucker is blaming the wives

this is like listening to someone wonder aloud for weeks why that one person they went on a date with hasn't called. maybe they got stuck in a well! no, dummy...

the "better men" of the GOP decided to sit this one out because obama's position isn't nearly as weak as conservatives believe and they didn't want to waste time losing

besides, daniels and barbour (and maybe a couple of the others on that list) were "running" as of a year ago, but saw the vast oceans of money mitt romney was swimming in and figured out the primary was hopeless too

I would be v. surprised if Jeb ever runs -- there's a lot of skeletons in his closet.

13.9%

Having seen a little more of Christie the past couple of months, I think there would have been a 10-20% chance of him being a give-'em-hell type voters took to, and an 80-90% chance he would have been a very iffy loose cannon.

He also probably lost a core of folks when he appointed a Muslim to the state Supreme Court or something similar and essentially told the anti-sharia nuts to die in a fire. And then yesterday he nominated a jurist who is both black and gay, which probably pissed off everyone left in the base.

the "better men" of the GOP decided to sit this one out because obama's position isn't nearly as weak as conservatives believe and they didn't want to waste time losing

I've said this before...I think in response to you? but there are no 'better men' of the GOP. nobody can currently play all the roles that the right demands from a candidate today - you're either too crazy or not crazy enough.

I also find it roffly that Christie was on TV going "Attention base voters: you are dumbasses if you want Newt in the general" and Palin proceeded to go on Fox and say "Well that's a rookie's mistake on his part." Extrapolate as you please.

well as little as i think of them, the people on that list are of a slightly higher quality than bachmann, santorum, etc.

xp

that might be true, but I think they'd just have had a pawlenty experience

!

Would I be able to get random shit played on The Current if I recorded under the name The Pawlenty Experience?

also unless the gop wins and already has a candidate in place, I expect the primaries 4 years from now to look a lot like this year's

I also find it roffly that Christie was on TV going "Attention base voters: you are dumbasses if you want Newt in the general" and Palin proceeded to go on Fox and say "Well that's a rookie's mistake on his part." Extrapolate as you please.

I am in no way a fan of Christie, but at least he looks on track to finish out a term as governor before quitting to pimp reality shows?

president scott brown though
xp

President Scott Brown has another 10 years before he runs for President

long may he reign

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bUPnRwe8UGU/S2YDHh8VBrI/AAAAAAAABA8/Z4__g4-Y0GI/s320/snl+scott+brown.bmp

I would vote for this Scott Brown.

(to clarify, I do not mean 10 more years as a MA Senator; I mean 10 years working his way through the political system. I am team Warren 1 bazillion percent)

I would love to see Warren annihilate him.

was romney's decision to release his tax returns really a good idea?

13.9% is gonna get a lot more press than 'romney still hasn't released taxes'

Romney has a $100 million trust set up for his five sons. The campaign said the Romneys paid no gift taxes on the trust because they were able to use credits related to estate tax.

OFFSHORE INCOME

Romney's investment funds run through Bain are in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, a practice the campaign insists is legal and common but that has come under some criticism during the campaign.

So this is the kind of stuff he did not want to release, earlier.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/24/us-usa-taxes-romney-idUSTRE80N07320120124

13% (well, 15%) was already out there, wasn't it?

xp - yeah, that's the stuff.

hahaha oh Mittens

well it was the logical assumption but now it's 'out there'

No I mean it was out there - he was saying 'I pay about 15% tax' last week.

"Well that's a rookie's mistake on his part."

Says the rookie who lost.

http://thepage.time.com/2012/01/23/palin-christie-made-rookie-mistake/

remember four years ago when every politics head was parsing statements like these every day

sarah palin might not have much political capital today but I think her throught-process on screen there is probably fairly close to yr average 2012 gingrich supporter

gingrich's scandals are essentially a selling point cause they just prove that 'everyone is against him'