In a move that is a surprise to almost no one, Texas governor Rick Perry has officially announced his candidacy for president. The race really heats up now. Mitt Romney is the GOP establishment guy to a certain degree. Romney will hope Bachmann and Paul siphon votes away from Perry. Many liberals seem to be in denial about the rise of Perry. Just check out this Guardian piece:
Can he win? He is probably too conservative, even for American tastes, but he’s popular in Texas, having won re-election in 2002, 2006 and 2010. He also has an impressive record in job creation, and Texas is bucking the national trend of economic gloom.
Will Obama be worried? Not really. But several other radical rightwing Christian Republican hopefuls – Michele Bachmann included – will be.
Do say: “Let us all kneel and pray that Rick Perry never becomes president.”
Simply confessing Christian values makes one a “radical rightwing Christian Republican.” I know it’s abhorrent to many liberals, but most Americans don’t believe in global warming. Perry is actually in the American mainstream on that position.
What will happen? I’m not sure. Romney is a formidable opponent and the GOP always seems to nominate the guy who has paid his dues. But maybe this isn’t a ordinary election. Rick Perry’s biggest obstacle to being the next president is Romney. The air is going out of the President Obama experiment. Obama wasn’t qualified for the office. Worse, he’s too liberal to govern a center-right nation. The bigger questions is this… who would want to be president right now?
Representative Michele Bachmann is officially in the race. Republicans are a lot more excited about Bachmann than the odd Jon Huntsman campaign. However, I’m not sold on her experience. Politically speaking she has a lot to offer, but Bachmann suffers from the same problem as Obama. Lack of executive experience (or really any real world experience whatsoever) didn’t harm Obama, but I’m not sure the country is willing to elect another unproven leader.
The press and the left is all over Bachmann. FOX News’ Chris Wallace asked Bachmann in an interview over the weekend if she was a “flake.” What kind of question is that? FOX is supposedly the “right leaning” news network. Just imagine what liberals think of Bachman. Oh, wait…
Wow, don’t you just love the tolerant left? The amount of over-the-top vitriol toward Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann is insane and the press is feeding it. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Hillary Clinton had problems with the press during the 2008 primary. The misogynists on the left were guarded during that campaign but they have officially become unhinged.
We’re all about equal time here at The Daily Plunge, but even I can hardly motivate myself to write about former Utah governor and ambassador to China Jon Huntsman. Any time I read “Democrats fear” a candidate you can rest assured they want to run against said candidate. Even Harry Reid likes the guy.
Huntsman should challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination if they like him so much. Can anyone give a reason why he’s in the race?
Huntsman Who? Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard wonders “[if] there [has] ever been a candidate more hyped by the mainstream media and unknown to the GOP base than Jim Huntsman?” I can’t think of one. Usually when the media jumps on the bandwagon of a GOP candidate no good can come of it. There is literally no one excited about his candidacy.
Bashing Rick Perry: One canidate getting people excited is Governor Rick Perry, who appears to be getting closer to running. Conservatives aren’t the only ones who are excited about the Texas governor. The deranged left is in a tizzy about Rick Perry. Over the past week Twitter is alive with Perry bashers. Here are a couple of my favorites from today…
If the Bush years were a mess what do we have now? By almost any conceivable measure the average American’s life is worse today than it was four years ago. Obama has no plan to make things better and if his polices aren’t reversed things are going to get worse.
What goes through a person’s mind to write something like that? What has Rick Perry done that’s so evil? It seems that many on the deranged left live in some kind of parallel universe. I don’t think they realize they’re on the political fringe. I think I blame Jon Stewart, but Bill Maher is a more likely candidate. Here’s the thing, and while I understand this is a blanket statement, it’s generally true… Liberals who rant via Twitter and the blogs tend to go a bit overboard in their rhetoric. Not only is Palin’s approach to public policy wrong, but she’s a bitch, or worse. Rick Perry has a different ideology so he’s evil. What if we here at The Daily Plunge wrote about Obama like the deranged left does about Palin, Perry, et al? Hmmmm… Maybe Club Soda will take a deranged left post and substitute “Obama” for “Palin”. This should be interesting.
Fake Moderate: Jon Stewart is a brilliant comedian, but he’s liberal. He’s very liberal and The Daily Show went from being a pop culture show and turned into a liberal mouthpiece under his stewardship. There’s nothing wrong with that and there’s an audience for it. I don’t have a problem with the market at work; however, Jon Stewart likes to pretend he’s a moderate.
It’s obvious that Stewart isn’t a moderate, but I’m not sure that liberals who watch the show realize they’re outside the political mainstream. They want to believe it’s true so it is. If you disagree with their point of view you’re either a racist, misogynist, or a homophobe. Or if you title your blog “Plunging Towards Gomorrah” you’re a homophobe. I guess it all makes sense if you’re crazy.
Will he or won't he?
If you want to seriously run for President, time is running out. Last night CNN held a presidential debate in New Hampshire. There are about a million things more entertaining than watching a faux debate 17 months before election day. Read Club Soda’s post and check out Hot Air’s winners and losers for a recap.
I won’t go into a candidate analysis until the field is set. However, things are getting closer to having a complete field. It’s possible that someone could jump in late, but it’s not likely to change the race. The campaign infrastructure is being built right now. Plus, the Romney, Pawlenty and Bachmann campaigns will be raising money over the next six months to gear up for Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s a difficult head start to overcome.
There are four top tier candidates who could declare right now: Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Paul Ryan. I don’t think Palin will run this time around; however, she might have a tremendous influence on who gets the nomination if she chooses to endorse a candidate. Paul Ryan and Chris Christie are adamant that they’re not running and it doesn’t appear that they will change their minds. Ryan could still potentially be a great running mate for the eventually nominee. That leaves Texas governor Rick Perry.
Supposedly Rick Perry is “thinking” about running for president. Great, so am I. So is Donald Trump. If Perry is serious he’ll have to make a decision soon for all the reasons I listed above. Perry isn’t a friend of the GOP establishment. Normally that would be a huge problem, but this would likely a huge plus for his potential candidacy. People don’t want Bush 3.0. The fact that Karl Rove and George Bush aren’t on board the Perry Train is a plus. However, Perry can’t wait three months to get in the race.
The country is need of real leadership. A half-hearted attempt at running for president isn’t going to cut it.
Here are a few deranged tweets about Rick Perry. Enjoy!
There you have it. Rick Perry is “pure evil.” Is it really surprising that the Associated Press is still floating this picture around? Kathryn Scags’ Twitter profile says that she’s an Atheist, and a recovering Catholic. Apparently Atheists are experts on what is evil. Who knew?
I haven’t been kind to Governor Tim Pawlenty. I even went as far to say that he’s the Republican version of John Kerry and that his presidential candidacy is dead on arrival. I stand by these statements if Pawlenty runs a typical campaign. Pawlenty doesn’t have the charisma to run the prototypical American campaign. However, the time for prototypical campaigns is over. If we’ve learned anything from the Obama debacle is that it’s time for real honest leadership. Here’s Pawlenty’s new video announcing his campaign:
I’m not convinced because, frankly, this video is a speech. They’re just pretty, empty words at this stage. Let’s see what Pawlenty says in Iowa. Is he going to tell them that we can’t afford farm subsidies? Is he going to tell the elderly in Florida that Medicare and Social Security have to be reformed? If he does that then I might change my mind.
This really isn’t a shock, but Newt Gingrich is running for president. There are a lot of things that I think are great about Gingrich. He has an excellent understanding of history and he has a lot of great ideas. He’s always been a big idea, think outside of the box type of guy; however, he’s also been thin skinned in the past.
Ultimately Gingrich’s biggest weakness is the fact he doesn’t have executive experience. This wasn’t a barrier to entry for President Obama, but it should have been. Almost everything the President has done has be an unorganized mess. If the country decided to elect another president in 2012 I expect someone with more executive experience will win.
I haven’t analyzed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s political positions enough to formulate an opinion. However, the GOP field for 2012 is weak on enthusiasm and there’s a huge buzz about Christie right now. The biggest part of the appeal is that Christie is speaking frankly about the problems the nation is facing. What sets Christie apart is that he is not tiptoeing around our problems.
If Christie decided to run it will likely take a groundswell of support. He’s been adamant that he is not going to run. I admire the fact that he wants to finish the job, but the call of the White House may end up being too much.
Bill Palatucci, often described as Christie’s “political godfather,” said that not forming such a fundraising committee would be “leaving money on the table.”
The comments came in an interview with the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, N.J., published Sunday. Palatucci, Christie’s former law partner, made the remarks even as he tried throwing cold water on the notion that the governor — who’s gotten acclaim from national Republicans — is taking steps designed toward a presidential run.
“If reporters would look for a second below the surface, they’d see I’ve never been to Iowa,” Palatucci said, adding that another adviser, Mike DuHaime, “has not been to New Hampshire. There have been no lawyers hired to advise or investigate a presidential run.”
This will be a bigger story as we approach the end of the year. Christie will ultimately have to make a decision by October/November if he wants to make a serious run. Typically that would be too late, but there’s no consensus favorite going into the nomination process. This race is wide open.
Tim Pawlenty has a YouTube video out for his new book, Courage to Stand. I would have called it Courage to Read because who is going to waste their time to read a book by Tim Pawlenty? The video is beyond parody.
I’m sorry Pawlenty, just give it up. You don’t have what it takes to be President. Hot Air calls the video “the motion picture event of a lifetime.” America is great, we get it. What makes Pawlenty great? Now, that’s a better question. I don’t want to read a book to find out.
Many of the players in 2012 are already household names. Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are embedded in the American consciousness (or is it consciousless?); however, Americans might be longing for an outsider, a fresh face or both of the above. One such person is Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. There have been a few whispers of a 2012 run for Daniels, but outside the beltway most Americans have no idea who he is.
Daniels fits the presidential mold. He went to school at Princeton and got a law degree from Georgetown. During the Bush administration Daniels served at the Office of Management and Budget and was a member of the Homeland Security Council and National Security Council. He might run as an outsider, but it’s not like he hasn’t had experience in Washington.
As Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels has shined. In 2008, he was named one of the top eight best public servants. To get an idea of how popular Daniels is in Indiana he won his bid for reelection in 2008 by 18 points. That’s an impressive margin of victory in a Democratic year.
As we all know, a major part of the presidency is communication. Here’s an impromptu speech by Daniels on ObamaCare from last year.
Awesome sweater. Sounds like he fits the part to me. He communicates much better than Tim Pawlenty. Daniels has all the tools to be a successful chief executive, but Republican Party politics are tricky to maneuver. However, there’s really no clear consensus on who the front-runner is for the 2012 nomination. Romney would be a shoe-in but his biggest achievement as governor of Massachusetts is an ObamaCare like bill that he passed. Sarah Palin just doesn’t have enough experience to be president. There is an opening there if someone wants to take it. How seriously does Daniels want the job? We’ll find out in 12 months.
I don’t really know enough about Daniels at this point to get excited. On the other hand, there’s nothing about the current crop of hopefuls that’s very exciting either. After the mid-terms, expect the presidential speculation to start heating up.
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