A Second Hand Conjecture

Rasmussen reports today that Sarah Palin is the choice of 64% of Republicans for the 2012 Republican nomination, and that a staggering 91% of Republicans have a favorable impression of her (equally remarkable, 65% rate their view as ‘highly favorable’).

It’s perhaps unnecessary to mention that there is no figure of comparable popular prestige left standing in the Republican party. Assuming she puts to rest lingering concerns among the Republican commentariat about her knowledge of foreign affairs, she’s in a remarkably similar political position to Ronald Reagan in 1976…standing as she is, alone among the wreckage of the GOP. And in 2012, the conservative grassroots sentiment will likely be quite similar to 1980, when no one in the GOP was eager to give the establishment favored candidates of George H.W. Bush or Howard Baker another chance, after the painful defeat of their previous hero, Gerald Ford.

6 Comments »

After speculating upon Hillary Clinton’s strategic thinking with respect to the Democratic nomination, James Taranto concludes (emphasis added):

To summarize, Mrs. Clinton maximizes her chances of becoming president if she (1) does enough damage to Obama to snatch the nomination away from him, (2) failing that, does enough damage to him to bring about his defeat in November, and (3) gets herself on the ticket, whether he wins in November or not.

Some will say Mrs. Clinton is being disloyal to her party if she undermines Obama’s chances of winning in November. But maybe she just practices a different kind of party loyalty. After all, if you can be a patriot while hoping your country loses a war, why can’t you be a loyal Democrat while hoping your party loses an election?

It is an interesting question.

1 Comment »

Meet Shirley Golub, a feisty San Franciscan who is challenging Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic nomination in the 8th Congressional District of California, on the grounds that she’s just not anti-Bush enough. Shirley fears above all that if Bush isn’t impeached, he’ll invade Iran. Yes, you might say that Bush will not even be in office if Shirley were to be elected in place of Nancy. But Shirl says it’s just a symptom of “corporate brainwashing” to suggest it’s too late to impeach. You must understand Shirley is very anti-Bush. It wouldn’t be the first time that obsessive and excessive animosity toward this president bent reality a little bit, and sent people spinning off into pointless efforts.

3 Comments »

(photo: Serguei Kovalev)

Christopher Hitchens once said that the trouble with biographers of Thomas Jefferson, is that there appears to be the collective assumption on their part that the great man was without a penis. I’m reminded of this truth in reading about the very hot water Mr. Al Franken –the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for US Senate in Minnesota– has gotten himself into, over a satirical and sexually explicit essay he wrote for Playboy magazine in 2000. Hot water originating not only from GOP women, but also from within the Democratic Party.

The piece is without doubt salacious, even enormously kinky (naughty NSFW excerpts available here). But one could be forgiven the crime of commonsense in expecting that a writer tasked with composing anything for such a magazine on contract, would tend to produce something somewhat sexually suggestive if he wished to be paid. One might even go so far as to posit that writing something entitled “Porn-o-Rama,” for an unabashedly pornographic publication, isn’t all that shocking. I mention the title because in defiance of reason we are told by Liza Porteus Viana that the title itself (and neither the publisher nor the substance of the essay), is what is most politically objectionable here.

(more…)

No Comments »

Obama the Confident:

Barack Obama’s campaign, riding a wave of 10 straight victories in the contest for the Democratic nomination after wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii, today urged Hillary Clinton to bow to the inevitable and accept defeat.

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, dismissed her camp’s hopes of making a comeback when the power states of Texas and Ohio hold their primaries on March 4, and said Clinton would be unable to bridge a widening gap in delegates.

“This is a wide, wide lead right now,” Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters. “The Clinton campaign keeps saying the race is essentially tied. That’s just lunacy.”

The argument from the Obama camp appears designed to paint Clinton as a nuisance candidate — much like Mike Huckabee who has continued to fight for the Republican nomination even though it is mathematically impossible for him to catch up to John McCain’s lead in delegates.

Shaun Mullen writing at The Moderate Voice takes a look at the delegate race and agrees that Clinton is unlikely to prevail as eventual candidate, but finds Plouffe’s comments to be mere … Plouffery:

I’ve been killing a goodly number of brain cells lately trying to figure out how Hillary Clinton can keep from driving off the electoral cliff, but I keep shooting blanks.

For one thing, the mathematical deck is now stacked against her. She needs to win the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4 by huge margins, but that looks increasingly unlikely, while a big win in Pennsylvania on April 22, where she doesn’t even have a full delegate slate, would be too little too late.

With voting over in all but 14 states, Barack Obama leads Clinton 1,336-1,251 in delegates, according to The Associated Press’s count, with 2,025 needed to secure the nomination.

[...]

So what’s a cooked goose to do?

Certainly not concede, as Obama’s campaign manager suggested in an atypically silly remark. What Clinton is left with is stealing and attacking.

Stealing as in trying to manipulate the superdelegate count and get delegates seated who are pledged to her from Florida and Michigan. Because of the longtime connections that she and Bill Clinton have to the party establishment, she would seem to have the inside track on this.

Atypically silly or not, I think it’s indicative of how much Obamamentum the campaign has right now. I think Mullen’s right as rain about Hillary needing the superdelegates to pull this thing out, as well as at least some of Obama’s pledged delegates and/or getting the Michigan and Florida contingent seated. While the race isn’t anywhere near final, I do believe it’s Obama’s to lose.

Even so, advising your opponent to just quit at this stage is a bit much.

No Comments »

photo: Chris Dunn

The Moderate Voice takes a good and short look at McCain’s politics and notices a compelling absence of social conservative moral lectures, as well as a preference for stressing the characteristics of conservatism that Americans find most appealing: limited government and national security. Jennifer Rubin might add that McCain’s emphasis on pragmatic realism in international affairs, is also the only acceptable antidote to a politics of ambiguous hope from Obama. McCain’s secular politics and taste for moderate political compromise represented vulnerabilities in the nomination fight, but they can become powerful electoral assets in the general election, if he can use them.

(HT: Donklephant)

No Comments »

Obama in Chicago: “If this contest comes down to superdelegates, we are going to be able to say we have more pledged delegates, which means the Democratic voters have spoken. Those superdelegates, those party insiders would have to think long and hard how they would approach the nomination,” he said.

No Comments »

Some people are very happy about the Michigan results: media firms. As Ken Wheaton  points out in Advertising Age, with there still being no clear frontrunner for the GOP nom, spending on advertising is about to go through the roof.

No Comments »