With Michigan and Ohio governors Rick Snyder and John Kasich thinking seriously about throwing their hats in a ring that already includes Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, I am beginning to feel a little left out. Why can’t Tom Corbett run, too?
Then there are Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. I wonder what’s wrong with Govs. Paul LePage of Maine and Rick Scott of Florida.
I mean, this is a lot of governors. And until three minutes ago it looked like Indiana governor Mike Pence might join the fun. Instead, he’s just hiring a Koch Brothers spokesman to be his Deputy Chief of Staff.
Then there is Rep. Peter King from the Irish Republican Army and half the Senate thinking about running, plus washed up pols and charlatans like Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson. A debate stage would have to be half the length of a football field and each candidate would only have time to give opening and closing statements.
You’d almost think that the Republicans had solved the Electoral College conundrum, but they haven’t.
The Republican National Committee has already sanctioned nine debates and may add three more. I’m not sure this will be sufficient.
A committee within the RNC and top staffers have been working for nearly a year on an effort to cut the number of debates roughly in half from the 20 held during the 2012 cycle. There have been high-level conversations between party leaders and executives at the nation’s broadcast and cable channels.
To give their push to control the debate process teeth, the party announced Friday that any candidate who participates in a debate that isn’t sanctioned by the RNC will not be allowed to participate in any more sanctioned debates. A question clouding the effort has been whether media organizations and cash-strapped candidates desperate for free airtime would go forward with unofficial debates, undercutting the whole process. But the stiffness of the penalty will probably deter such behavior.
Maybe they’ll have the regular sanctioned debates on the major networks and then a kind of kiddie’s table set of debates on the internet or something like that.
Whatever happens, they’ll expect us to pay attention to them and take them seriously. But no one can take this many candidates seriously.
Did I forget anyone?
Adelson and Kochs are still buying instead of running, right?
Carly and Lindsay. And Rick the colossal dick.
And Jeb.
Perry?
Rahm could change parties.
Not if the public demands to see/hear every candidate’s “bucket list.”
Limited to ten items. Submitted to the “debate” moderators in advance who will then abstract the items that appear on all the lists and present that list as “Party X’s “bucket list.” Voters that like/agree with those items can choose among eeny, meany, mighty, and mo; they’re all the same. The “debate” would then be limited to whatever personalized items remain on each candidate’s list. That could easily be covered in two minute “opening statements,” each followed by up to one minute for the moderator to list the candidate’s falsehoods, and if time permits, a one minute follow-up statement from each candidate.
That cuts out the MSM middle-men/women that always focus on the candidate they and/or their bosses think is just swell and exciting. Tsongas, really? Over the experienced, competent, and decent Tom Harkin that voters never had a chance to consider.
Same format for the general election. Just for fun, imagine the 1992 “debate” limited to GH Bush and Clinton. Both: NAFTA, capital gains tax cut. Clinton something about health care and an income tax increase. Bush, flag burning amendment. The 1996 “debate” would have been shorter. Both: deregulate communication, banks, and commodity industries.
1968 general election debate with only Humphrey and Nixon – peace with honor; no Southern strategy
The Southern Strategy was going to happen even if Nixon and Wallace had convenient heart attacks in 1962 and some other Republican took Nixon’s place.
The Southern Strategy was not some masterstroke of evil genius from a wicked man. It was an obvious extrapolation from the results of the 1964 election matched with a demographic analysis of the composition of the New Deal Coalition. See: The Emerging Republican Majority.
Re-imagining the general election debates, and assuming that changing the primary debate rules wouldn’t have changed the actual nominations. (Anyone polling over 5% gets in.) Game show type podiums with script lights on front of each podium.
So, 1992 would have been what it was: Bush, Clinton, and Perot. Each of the podiums would light up with “NAFTA” and under that for Bush and Clinton, there would have been a big check mark and Perot’s would have had a big X. One minute for Perot and 30 seconds each for Bush and Clinton on that issue. Capital gains tax cut, a check mark for each; no further comments necessary. “Healthcare” a ? for Bush and Perot and a check mark and ? for Clinton who would then get one minute to explain that it would be whatever Hillary and the team would assemble recommend in a couple of years. Bush and Perot would then have 30 seconds to rebut.
1968 would have been Nixon, HHH, and Wallace. “Vietnam War” — a check mark for Wallace iirc, Xs for Nixon and HHH. Nixon 30 seconds: “I have a secret plan.” HHH: “The Paris Peace talks will work.” Wallace would have gotten one minute (and I have no idea what he would have said). “War on Poverty:” … “School Desegregation:” … etc. The format could have increased Wallace’s support, but undefined as to who would have lost the most voters to Wallace
George Pataki Says Bet on Him to Run For President.
Fiorina — because what would a GOP presidential primary be without a crazy token woman to stand near the crazy token African-American man?
Governor Brownback seems awfully quiet these days about his presidential aspirations.
Pataki for president.
Just because.
Um.
Bet on it.
Hasn’t Lindsay Graham already appropriated that slogan?
How about “President Pataki because it sounds right?”
While this craziness is going on, the establishment pols in South Carolina are beginning to coalesce around Scott Walker and under a religious freedom platform.
Watch this space.
And watch the Democrats be blindsided again.
So many gov’s whose favorability and record in their own states. Ya think maybe they’ve already figured out that there’ll be no re election for them so might as well cash in on the Pres race to fill their own unemployment coffers?
Reminds me of the old Home Depot motto, ‘stack ’em high, sell ’em low’.
After Citizens United, candidates do have a new independent source of income. Exploratory committees become an analysis of how much grift is available.
You’d also almost think the party hadn’t made it clear, via rule changes and Reince Priebus’ pronouncements, that they’re not going to allow a repeat of 2012, where the base delays the coronation of the establishment-anointed candidate.
I expect the party to pre-empt any serious debate, and to rush one of the “acceptable” candidates to the finish. I also expect the base to comply with only perfunctory grousing, as they did in 2012.
But I’d love to be wrong about that. It could be so much fun!
They’d do a damsite better to have fewer, not more, “debates”. Debates just gives the crazies more chance to crazify the atmosphere.
They’d also do better to put in a few rules about WHO can BE in the debate: If you can’t get 50%+1vote of your home states Likely Republican voters to back you … you really shouldn’t be running and you certainly don’t want to actually be seen SPEAKING.
Unless, of course, you are Newt Gingrich wanting to sell a few more terrible, knockoff history books.
It’s gonna take a lot more clowns than that to make Jeb look good.
When we get to that many clowns we may not even be able to find Jeb. He’ll be like Waldo.
great .. ok
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All Republicans love to run for President. The problem is they just do not understand what they need to do to win an honest election with All American voters allowed to vote and they never will.
There would be two more if the Bush machine hadn’t already squashed Romney and Christie like bugs. So far I count one serious establishment candidate and a gaggle of nincompoops.
Romney’s not squashed, at least not in his delusional mind. This is perfect: the clown car gets way too full, everyone looks terrible, including Jeb, there’s no clear strong candidate in the primaries, and Republicans beg him to ride in on his white horse and be the consensus candidate.
I absolutely believe that this is the fantasy in Romney-land.
Is there anyone left in ‘Romney-land’ besides Ann and the kids and those few poor souls who still owe Mitt their livelihoods?
What makes you think the kids really want Romney as President?
To keep him busy, out of their hair, loosen his iron grip on their lives?
To keep from holding up the family chow line?
So let’s just take Ohio as one example. I could riff on John Kasich until the Internet ran out of pixels, but that’s not my point. My point is that Ohio is essentially opaque to the national media.
I’ve lived in Ohio for 31 years. I know Ohio politics. More to the point, I know Columbus politics and Franklin County politics. See what I did there? When I read about Kasich in the national media, I do not recognize the person they describe. It is not that they are more or less flattering; it is just their perfect, comprehensive, from-the-ground-all-the-way-up ignorance of what is actually going on in Ohio.
I cannot speak firsthand for Michigan, or Wisconsin, or Indiana, etc. etc. but it is difficult to imagine that the situation is much different.
The real point is that the national media’s ignorance of where these governors are coming from leaves them (the media) no alternative to presenting the governors as though they were [already] politicians of national stature, which most of them are not.
So it is structurally much more difficult for a national electorate to assess these men than it would be for them to assess a Senator — any Senator, even a very junior one. The national media audience knows a lot more today about (say) Ted Cruz than about John Kasich and that is not going to change by next November, even if Kasich somehow gets the Republican nomination simply by being the last man standing, rather like Harding in 1920. (The Harding/Kasich parallels go further, although in the direction of cronyism, not of nookie closets.)
From the Party standpoint, it may very well be that the better their eventual nominee is known, the less he will be liked. The comparative blankness of a governor, compared with a Senator, may be a tactical advantage.
Nice ..
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