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

fundamentally Gingrichian

I really liked Bob Dole as a candidate. I thought he was funny as hell. He would show up on a show like Conan and just kill it. Too bad his politics are horrible.

cutting waste + bureaucracy is a religion for all politicians, but gingrich is especially obsessed with stuff like efficiency. i assume everyone on this thread has read about his relationship to Lean Six Sigma? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/08/jack_donaghy_for_president.html

Bob Dole was quite funny during that campaign but, yeah, he was in the same party as Newt.

yeah Newty loves management strategies/gurus

I've mentioned before how that book was pretty funny. Lines like "The meeting ended with Dole yelling 'Aaaarrrggghhh' at his staff before calling CNN back…"

that's newt has all this 'supported policy now considered left-wing' in his past

romneycare, carbon pricing, etc. = all market based / 'efficient' / etc. ways to solve big problems.

dole is so awesome as a character:

and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it.

the "did" ^^ in this sentence just KILLS it

way behind here i know but I feel like I should address the morbs storm I unleashed, firstly I like morbsy and regret snapping at him quite as intesly as I did, the reason he was pissing me off is his pov on what we were talking abt and on the gov in general is m/l what I consider a primary defilement as far as how citizens relate to their government, it's the tendency to make the whole thing an undifferentiated morality play where every politician is as bad as the next and this knowledge excuses not actually knowing anything abt how the government works, like the filibuster is an actual problem that has huge distorting effects on our electoral system, its one of the things that allows poloticians to behave so poorly, if you really believe everyone in government to be so horrible shouldnt you have at least some interest in the mechanism that allows that to happen

which is not even mentioning how ignorant the the bums are all the same platform is, its not just the parties thatre different, each polotician is themself a snowflake, for instance gwb is the only guy out of all the pres candidates of any party in that cycle who wouldve started the Iraq war, it was just a weirdo quirk of his psychology and neocon retinue, ralph nader was majorly tragically wrong on that one

overall: long on moralizing short on precision, nagl

Dole is second only to Dukakis as the most wretched candidate of my lifetime. The Dole humor only emerged after the campaign; his handlers purposely told him to can it.

idk it was p funny when he fell of that stage

what about literally?

Oddly enough, I had enough of a soft spot for Dole that I felt bad for him after the stage fall.

As Republicans go, I honestly thought Dole would have been an okay president; I think he paid lip service to certain things to secure the nomination, but I think he would have spent a fair amount of time pushing back against his party. I admire that he voted for civil rights legislation in '64 and '65. (Amazed that this is still online.)

http://www.dolekemp96.org/agenda/issues/civil.htm

He probably wouldn't have been more conservative than Bubba himself. I don't think I was clear that I was referring to his campaign – an enervating thing.

Y'all make Dole sound like Romney.

After his 1972 divorce, the senator from Kansas moved into an apartment in Washington's new Watergate complex -- also home to offices of the Democratic National Committee. But the future Senate majority leader was in Chicago on the night of the break-in.

Then the Republican Party's national chairman, Dole was a vocal defender of the Nixon White House during the early stages of the Watergate investigation. U.N. Representative George Bush took over Dole's party post after the 1972 elections, but the senator remained a Nixon loyalist. In September 1973, he introduced an unsuccessful Senate resolution to stop live TV coverage of the congressional Watergate hearings. "It is time to turn off the TV lights," Dole said. "It is time to move the Watergate investigation from the living rooms of America and put it where it belongs -- behind the closed doors of the committee room and before the judge and jury in the courtroom."

Later, Dole was one of the most prominent GOP lawmakers to urge Nixon to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking the president's secret Oval Office recordings.

Dole cried at Nixon's funeral.

I think Dole had a hatchet-man reputation in the early-'70s, the main reason Ford recruited him for '76; I think he toned it down later and became more of a moderate Eisenhower type. I know no one will agree, but I found his crying at Nixon's funeral completely genuine and quite moving (and, as a nice Nixonian touch, colored by self-pity).

"When Jaws die, nobody cry, but when Nixon die, everyone gonna cry."

This could leave a mark, from the Washigton Examiner: News Gingrich is a Saul Alinsky Republican

lol News Gingrich

Then you've got:

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=AC7D3B54-3A1A-4401-9CBA-87DAB16C3C15

Another Romney adviser was more derisive of the Anybody But Mitt Republicans.

“They like preachers,” the adviser said of the tea party demographic. “If you take them to a tent meeting they’ll get whipped into a frenzy. That’s how people like Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich get women to fall into bed with them.”

Reporters love these binaries.

The comments to that piece on HotAir are good fun.

I’m an educated elitist …”

I’d like to see your ass in the mountains of Afghanistan with a platoon of RECON Marines.

How long do you think you’d last?

Elitist? Nah – you’re a PU$$Y that’s all.

HondaV65 on January 26, 2012 at 1:57 PM

the name at the end of this one is a real punchline:

Wow. Politico — typically referred to here as “left-wing” and “in the tank for Obama” — really wants a Newt candidacy. They found some snotty guy at an event – probably a democrat plant; hell, probably a Politico staffer – and they quote him and suggest that he is part of Romney’s campaign, even though he’s not. Politico wants Newt. Politico wants Newt baaad. Why would that be? Hmmmmmmm. Let’s put our heads together and see if we can figure out why the media that is in the tank for Obama wants Newt to be the candidate. Anyone have any ideas? Some speculation? Anything?

Rational Thought on January 26, 2012 at 1:59 PM

I get the feeling I’m going to spend Prom night alone again…

Kraken on January 26, 2012 at 1:57 PM

lol

maybe the screenname is self-descriptive...

lonely kraken is lonely

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmnup4YmFw1qa0kkuo1_500.jpg

a defense of the ice bucket

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/289385/empty-bucket-his-hand-yuval-levin

makes you think

It's still a stupid look-at-me thing. It's like if he had abolished a position for a stapler-operator and made congressmen staple their own documents... great, but then don't hang a stapler from a chain around your neck.

Yuval-Levin: empty bucket

Someone a few days ago. cited Didion's masterful Gingrich essay. Here's an excerpt from her review of Woodward's The Agenda. Most of it is behind the NYROB firewall but if you can get it the depiction of the Dole-Clinton relationship is hilarious.

(yet another encouragement, by the way, to buy Didion's Political Fictions)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/sep/19/the-deferential-spirit/?pagination=false

I disagree w Didion about a number of things but it's hard not to love her writing

is The Agenda worth checking out? i'm suspicious of woodward, though Wired is an entertaining read, if clearly mostly bunkum

I've read two of his books, most recently the one about the Supreme Court, in which he makes quite clear which sources he spoke to for dirt and that he knows jackshit about constitutional law.

e.g. Thurgood Marshall wheezing and smoking his remaining years away while his law clerks do all the work; William Rehnquist (a proto-Scalia in terms of wit and scabrous opinions, according to Woodward) plays basketball, laughs a lot, and hangs out with his clerks.

It had to be done:

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/funny-pictures-lolrus.jpg

Probably nothing, but I like the way these words go together: "Romney," "Swiss bank account," and "discrepancies."

I just want to reiterate:

Mad Mitt Beyond Blunderdome

Given the speculation earlier this week about a brokered Republican convention, with Indian Gov. Mitch Daniels being nominated, does anyone know how that would be possible with state filing deadlines?

haha waht where was this speculation

through what mechanism would Daniels get enough delegates to claim the nomination?

I already posted this but: http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/01/deadlocked-not-brokered-is-kind-of.html

mitch daniels will not be the nominee

yeah I saw that, but in that post dude correctly points out that there are no brokers

Daniels would have to a) get on the ballot in as many states as possible, immediately, b) win the majority of the delegates in those states, and c) get one of the other candidates (Gingrich, Santorum, Romney, Paul) to try and convince their delegates to switch their votes to him and d) pray that all of that amounts to a >50% total of the delegation. All four of those things are wildly improbably at this point.