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

serious question here:
is the outcome of the republican primaries essentially moot? does it matter who wins?
this is the party that got George W Bush elected. twice. couldn't they just nominate, say, a block of wood and proceed to do that thing they do - where they just attack attack attack and say whatever they want about their block of wood regardless of how laughably false it may be?

i guess, it seems to me like what decides U.S. elections is essentially the democratic candidate's ability to deflect the mud being hurled at him throughout the campaign. the republican candidate can be Bush, Romney or a block of wood for all it matters.

how off base am i here?

this is not the party that got george w bush elected, this is the party that exists after george w bush got elected. it actually matters a lot who serves as the face of the gop righ now.

where they just attack attack attack and say whatever they want about their block of wood regardless of how laughably false it may be?

I think they'll continue this m.o., but the difference this year is that the cracks in the party facade are really starting to show. In previous elections, they could attack-attack-attack and pretend that it was a position of strength; now it's more revealed as a position of batshit insanity and desperation. (c.f. Taibbi from last week)

shit. the link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/arizona-debate-conservative-chickens-come-home-to-roost-20120223

Tabibi not particularly perceptive but generally OTM

Also the party that exists after George W Bush became a massive negative that everyone tried to distance themselves from.

It obviously matters who becomes president, but I guess that's not what you mean. For all that Romney seems to be dissolving into a series of gaffes, Obama will have to run much more seriously against him than against Santorum - I don't remember whether it as this thread or the sandbox one that someone pointed it out, but Obama can basically shut that one down with "Some of you don't like me, some of you for reasons that aren't racist, but I am not going to make contraception illegal", and that's the election.

I think they'll continue this m.o., but the difference this year is that the cracks in the party facade are really starting to show. In previous elections, they could attack-attack-attack and pretend that it was a position of strength; now it's more revealed as a position of batshit insanity and desperation.

It always feels like this in the depth of the primaries but Republicans fall into line very quickly and if enough antipathy for Obama can be whipped up everyone will have forgotten about this whole phase

'republicans fall into line very quickly' doesn't square w/ this primary

that's not going to happen. primary is draining the GOP of money and morale.

xp

not yet - but after....

xp

Also the party that exists after George W Bush became a massive negative that everyone tried to distance themselves from.

it's worth noting that liberals/most people and conservatives now say "i hate bush" but for totally opposed reasons.

If Willard Romney is the nominee, there will be a hard core of bitter losers on the Republican right who will not fall into line this year. It may not be huge in terms of numbers, but the republican coalition isn't big enough to elect a president without them. However, I expect the anti-Obama rhetoric to glow red hot at the convention.

Wicked clown, wicked clown. Wicked clown, wicked clown. Don't fuck with me."
--Rick Santorum, speech to the Detroit Economic Club, 2/18/12

aero I <3 you

In other words this will be like every GOP convention in my lifetime.

who will be this year's Zell Miller I wonder

I have to strain to think of any GOP convention in my lifetime in which the rhetoric didn't glow red-hot. 1976?

Remember when the GOP was supposed to shatter into a hundred pieces after November 2008?

that's what they said about the democrats after 2004

well i'd argue it did happen to the republicans but they still won in 2010. the country only changes so much.

that's what they said about the democrats after 2004

But you can't shatter what broke decades ago.

goole OTM

the GOP was supposed to shatter into a hundred pieces

At the level of single Congressional districts, this hasn't happened, obv. But the big coalition looks damn shakey at the national level, whether you're talking about presidential politics or just the grit in the gears among the republicans in congress. So, to some extent that mirrors a party that is cracked and fragmented, but still has the power to obstruct and frustrate democratic initiatives.

post-2010 was disastrous for the GOP, Boehner couldn't keep his caucus together, threatened government shutdowns over basically nothing etc

like, they one, but they were definitely broken as a party

one WON argh

If anything, being cracked and fragmented makes it even easier to obstruct, since even if they wanted consensus they'd never get it.

Gore Vidal in 1892: "The Republicans aren't a party, they're a mindset, a pathology."

Had no idea Vidal was that old.

It's quite likely that Vidal doesn't know either.

"I especially love Joe C--he's just the right height.

Between this and aero's santorum speech, I'm still laughing.

early voted for Santorum today in my state's open primary. it felt... right.

wish it coulda been you, Newt ;_;

lol that's great

pulling the lever for Santorum always feels good

make sure to wash your hands afterward

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_un4SKl1mygU/TFS67nJ64JI/AAAAAAAACm4/39syZhK0KRc/s1600/soda_fountain.xlarger.jpg

I really wish I could vote for santorum

early voted for Santorum today in my state's open primary. it felt... right.

I appreciate the shenanigans behind this, but I would still feel a little skeeved.

I'd be skeeved too, but what I do I know. My votes have gone to tickets including Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in the past.

doing one's civic duty has become a very degraded idea

i'm all for celebrating the clusterfuck, but I could never go into a voting box and say I prefer Santorum to Romney.

well you do, within the context of a certain contest

i prefer that the GOP nominee be santorum over romney, what's wrong with that?

It is actually amazing to me that the idea of a vote representing and signaling your real, true beliefs has remained so durable. Like it's a window into your soul or something.

you know the GOP nominee has an actual chance of being president, right?

for me it wasn't just a strategic 'operation chaos' vote; in a way i felt a civic duty to "support" the guy who most emblematic of the modern GOP.

It is actually amazing to me that the idea of a vote representing and signaling your real, true beliefs has remained so durable. Like it's a window into your soul or something.

haha yeah it's kinda adorable

David Atkins at digby's blog posted this rather long thing about what terrifies conservatives. I'm not sure I agree with his conclusions.

But that would be a mistake that overlooks one pivotal fact: devastating realignments don't usually happen overnight, but rather slowly. FDR's presidency was more the exception than the rule. True, progressives had many reasons to hope that Obama's election would mean an FDR-style reversal, coming as it did on the heels of a major economic downturn clearly caused by conservative economic policies. The President's own tendency toward an obsession with grand political compromises certainly hasn't helped. On the other hand, President Obama has a far more conservative legislature with a much more sluggishly corrupt system to deal with than did FDR.

In terms of electoral realignments, the election of Barack Obama may rather most closely resemble the election of Richard Nixon. That's not a bad thing, either.

Richard Nixon was the beginning of the conservative realignment. Barry Goldwater lost, and lost badly. But he ignited the movement conservative coalition. The Goldwater conservatives upended the establishment and elected Richard Nixon. The parallels between Goldwater and Howard Dean, and Nixon and Obama are striking in this regard.

But as with Obama and the left, Nixon disappointed his movement conservatives. He wasn't the man they had hoped he would be. He founded the EPA, opened trade relations with China, almost passed a more progressive health law than the ACA, and much more besides. He was a total paranoid crook tactically and personally speaking, but from a public policy standpoint he was actually fairly liberal even for his time (to say nothing of today.) But that doesn't mean that he and his Southern Strategy weren't the harbinger of an enduring, half-century long coalition that remains politically vibrant, even dominant, to this day.

The same can be said for Barack Obama. No, he hasn't been as progressive as many liberals of the Howard Dean persuasion, myself included, would have liked. But his very existence--and more importantly, of the electoral coalition that sent him to the Oval Office as well as the younger, hipper, more urban, more multiracial, more cosmopolitan political ethic he represents--are here to stay. And not just to stay, but to be the prophet of the dominant political era to come.

Perhaps Barack Obama will not realize the desires and natural policy outcomes that derive from such a coalition. Indeed, he almost certainly will not and can not, any more than Nixon could have implemented the fully formed Reagan agenda back in 1971. But he has done much. And the next president elected by this coalition will do more, and the next one after that will do even more than the one that came before, until in 25 years, even a Republican president will be significantly more liberal than any Democrat in 2008. Conservatives understand this, even if only at a deep-seated level in the darkest fathoms of their collective angst.

This election, then, is about much more than Barack Obama. For conservatives, It's about putting back in the genie's bottle the coalition that the election of 2008 began to unleash. It's about reverting America back to a time when the Nixon coalition was still comfortably in charge--whether it elected Republicans like Reagan or Democrats like Clinton.

lol j/k fuck those guys i hope the end of the world starts in Tampa

xxpost