I guess Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is content to play Priscilla Barnes to Joe Lieberman’s Suzanne Somers. She is going to join Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham in every one of their press conferences calling for more belligerence and more violence on the global stage. I think it’s a bad career path. John McCain will never win another six-year term in office and Lindsey Graham will probably be primaried-out of the Republican Party next year. As for Joe Lieberman, his foreign policy views didn’t sit well in New England and he went from being the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate to being a man without a political home in six short years. Why does Kelly Ayotte want to join this losers’ club?
If I had to guess, I’d say that neo-conservatives are on their way out in the Republican Party. Rand Paul is ascendant.
Ayotte having been swept in with the 2010 Republican wave, one would think her fairly vulnerable in a purple state like New Hampshire. I agree with your assessment. She’s probably seeing an opportunity to gain stature by grandstanding but it’s a dumb move.
And she will have to stand for re-election in the open Presidential year of 2016. Not good for a Republican in the Northeast. But NH does have it’s fetish about taxes. She should stick to that.
She’s more like Jenilee Harrison.
I believe the Republican party as a whole is so fractured and damaged as a result of the election that they are seriously flailing now. Chris Christie is being fucking shunned by furious Republican leaders because he praised the President for his quick aid to Sandy victims. Imagine a party so bitter and hateful that someone acknowledging a good job by the opposing party, by the President of their country, gets the silent treatment.
Teapartiers and other ultra-nutty Conservatives may finally reach critical mass and implode. They are already teetering on the edge after losing this election, and the base is in tatters. Single players who continue to embrace the extremes may find themselves out in the cold as the party tries to shore up their base.
Til then, watch out. Those people are completely unhinged.
If the Tea Party falls, expect a rebranding by their backers. They’re too useful as a disinformation tool to distract from honest economic populism.
I suspect you are right, but at the same time there is going to be a battle to bring the “sensible” Republicans back into the party, at least up front. The tea party crazies will be treated like the evangelicals (a group the tea partiers include a lot of) and they will be used to get votes for Republican candidates. But the experience of losing possible control of the Senate – twice – already has a lot of Republican politicians trying to distance themselves from publicly catering to the crazies.
The party is going to clamp down on Republican criticism of Christi and at the same time FOX etc. will be attacking the media for reporting what the crazies say to attack him.
It’s going to be an effort to put a sane face back on the Republican Party but still include the election-power of the crazies in the background, just as they have the evangelicals and the out-and-out racists for years. With Rand Paul in the mix I don’t think they can sidetrack the libertarians as they have in the past, but I’ll bet they don’t include Rand Paul in Presidential debates in the future they way they have his father.
Rove’s great contribution to the Republican Party was to first gather the crazies in Texas and then offer Bush as a nice-guy sane-seeming figurehead who rode to office in their votes. That was 1994. He then did it again nationally in 2000.
Without a Rove-figure in the next four years the Republican Party will fracture, but the institutional structure of the party will not allow that to happen. There WILL be efforts to establish a new Rove-figure and feed money to him. (It will be a ‘him’, too.)
Successful? Depends on the level of general Republican panic and malaise.
Rand Paul will be “ascendant” only if he can manage to appear to reject almost everything in which his his father believed. The PermaGov will not allow those views to to become well understood. Bet on it. Rand Paul either will either cut the heart out of his father’s message and run as some sort of neo-libertarian…roughly equivalent to a neo-liberal but slightly on the other side of the real center…or suffer his father’s non-personed fate.
Bet on it.
You think the RatPubs will shun Christie?
Hell no!!! He’s the only candidate they have who could actually win a national election. The old-school people will try to get rid of him, but they are so far along on the way to the political cemetery that it won’t matter much what they say or do. It’s win or die in politics, and after 16 years of G.W. Butch, McCain/Palin and Romney/Ryan the RatPubs either have to move to the center and get some political sex appeal or accede to becoming a local party that only wins in all-white suburbs and rural areas. It doesn’t take any kind of political genius to see the changed demographics of the U.S. Christie sees it. Is there anybody else of national stature in the Rat Party that seems to have a clue about what’s going on? Rubio? Fuggedaboudit!!! Weak. Ryan? Lost in the past. Rand Paul? He’d have to be a political genius to get over after what his father said and did. It’s possible but I’d have to see it to believe it. He doesn’t have his father’s passion or zing. Who else?
Nobody else, that’s who.
Watch.
Christie in ’16 unless he crashes from some kind of scandal or explodes after “Just one more wafer-thin mint.”
Watch.
AG
LOL that photo! I think he is channeling Taft.
Rand Paul isn’t like Ron Paul at all, Booman. He might be personally, but in practice in politics he’s more of a cross with Jim DeMint/Mike Lee and your standard neocon.
It’s a damn shame Paul Hodes didn’t beat Ayotte. He was a heck of a congressman in NH and would’ve done them good in the Senate.
Depending on how the polling looks in a few years’ time, I could see either the outgoing governor (John Lynch) or the incoming governor (Maggie Hassan) making a run for it.
The main difference between Ron and Rand is that Rand is so stupid it leaks out of his brains into his mouth and then he says it. That interview with Maddow showed that he has no political sense whatsoever. Not even Jesse Helms would’ve been that blatant. I haven’t seen anything since then that changes my mind.
I’m expecting Christie to switch parties after the elections in 2014. He’ll do that because the crazies will be out for the blood of his allies in NJ. They won’t be able to get him, but they’ll get a large part of his people. I don’t like Christie, but I’ll bet he’s got a large portion of the Southwest’s Patriarch in him. You go after his, he’s going to take you down or die trying. Doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of give to him either.
On the rest of the mess the R’s are in, the meme is set in concrete: Obama bought the election. Not in the sense of $$ for votes but by giving the stupid brown and black people what they asked for. I expect this is the reason Ayotte thinks she can get away with this shit in NH … Not too many black, brown or asian people up there.
Like you, I don’t like Christie, but I’ve got top respect this:
I’m expecting Christie to switch parties after the elections in 2014.
Maybe he’ll lose his primary and then win as an independent.
Is there a sore loser law in NH, he may not be able to run after losing a primary. You can’t in IL and I know a lot of states have similar laws.
Switch parties to what end? He’s pro-life and that will doom him as a Democrat, either as Senator or President. Unless he switches that, if he wants to leave GOP, it’s go independent or third party. Either way, not a promising path to future office. I think he’s lost any hope in that regard; he’ll be re-elected Gov. and that will be it.
Christie is not always a calculating politician. If you make him mad enough, he move. If you box him in, he’ll move. If you push him too hard, he’ll move. All of which the ReichWing of NJ is eager and willing to do. Besides, where the hell is Christie going to get the primary votes to become the R Pres candidate? Kansas? Texas? Mississippi? Christie is toast as far as national office in the R’s are concerned.
As far as the Pro-Life thing, have you recently heard Obama on abortion? He presents as pro-life who realizes that the real world can intrude. That’s a position that resonates quite well with Democrats. It wouldn’t take much “evolving” for Christie to get there. A pledge to not put up Supremes who will automatically overturn Roe would probably suffice for many. Whether or not he’d be believed is another question.
I don’t like christie but I agree with Arthur Gilroy above that he is, thus far, the only prominent, intellectually proficient character who might be a credible GOPer candidate in 2016.
Huckabee and the various fringe nutballs who will seek to elevate Ryan Rubio or Rand Paul will chew each other up in their quest to be the most insane, Jeb won’t run, (and even if he did his family name and record as Florida governor will prevent him from winning. Barbour, Daniels, and any of the other recent GOP governors don’t stand a chance, (and the smart ones won’t run anyway). Christie is the only one left with a shot.
He’d have to go to finishing school to refine his manner, and he wouldneed to undergo some behavioral engineering therapy, (perhaps administered by his hero Bruce Springsteen if he’d be willing to take on such a task), but I can very easily see Christie as the main GOP contender in 2016.
Also, while I of course wouldn’t vote for a committed ‘conservative’, I do believe a strong GOP candidate is required in order to provide real incentive for the Democratic Party to become more effective, and to define themselves as more specifically different than whatever the current line of GOP dogma happens to be. Beating a pathetically creepy and clueless GOPer entity like the Romney/Ryan creature, welcome as such a defeat is, is really no great accomplishment. It’s like a middling sports team prevailing over a much weaker one. The Democratic leadership, and the Democratic electorate, need to contest with better opponents in order to improve and strengthen their own skills, and in order to stop capitulating further to the right with almost every election.