Redstate

are the only ones I find acceptable candidates, but none of them push my buttons or get me excited, mostly they all leave me wishing there was some other choice.

Rudy, Newt, and Mitt are the "men" seperated from the boys?

Yikes!

I think this is a particularly strong field. Except all the big candidates have both glaring strengths AND glaring weaknesses.

It's as if a national hero like Ike/Reagan (Rudy) were running against a great communicator like Bill Clinton (Romney) against the guy "whose turn it is" Bob Dole (McCain) with George Allen as a lesser W. with Newt in his own category.

I for one can't wait.

is interesting. Occurred to me as well, reading some of the posts on the other thread describing Romney as bright, great CV (Harvard!), problem solver, good speaker, family man (oops,fortunately for Romney, the analogy fails here). And Romneycare sounds like one of those wonky ideas the Clintons would have brought back from their annual policy retreats at Hilton Head.

Anyway, I believe the GOP has a pretty good group to pick from.

What do you think about Jeb? Will they try to pull him in if they can disassociate him with his brother's low numbers? Last thing I heard was that he is absolutely not running. Coming from a Bush, not so sure I believe that. Hou could George W. do that though? I can't see Americans putting another Bush in office, at least right now.

What are your thoughts?

pbgv

What are your thoughts?

I think you are a waste of bandwidth.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.

Remember that this is bloggers, not voters. There is no name ID difference. If this was a national poll, you would be rightfully excited.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

Didn't Huckabee raise the sales tax? Why do we want a tax hiker?
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Have already taken a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th look at him: http://www.clubforgrowth.com/huckabee/ and it is pretty ugly.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

I say he is more anathema to the conservative blogosphere and "in the know" Republicans than he is in the general public. Those Republicans that aren't particularly interested and remember him as the "principled maverick" or however the media last portrayed him form his base. And to be quite honest, I think the same situation applies to Guiliani, in the sense of "image-over-positions"--though tuned-in neocons everywhere love Rudy too.

I truly believe McCain could have had this in the bag without Guiliani. Now, it looks like "leaning Rudy".

Disclaimer: Works for Alan Schlesinger (R-CT). Volunteer, no pay.

McCain suffers from a lack of trust from activists, which is most of the blogosphere. On the other hand, he benefits from a great deal of trust with independents and non-activists. That shows up on national polls but not blog straw polls.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

What's interesting is that Rudy is trusted by 65 percent and distrusted by 25 percent both in the blogosphere and the offline world. He's not polarizing on activist/non-activist lines, or on moderate/conservative lines. Look at the ideological breakdown of this poll, and you'll see that Rudy maintains very high scores across the spectrum and only starts dipping with those at 9 and 10 on the conservatism meter (where he still maintains a net favorable). And these activists already probably know the worst about Rudy's social views -- as a candidate, he'll probably be smart enough not to exacerbate these negatives, at least through his own doing.

McCain on the other hand starts seeing consistent declines in favorabilty after you get past 4 or 5 on the conservatism scale, all the way down to 13/78 acceptable among 10's. The only people really comfortable with him are people very much to the left of the party, and who may not normally vote in primaries. McCain is 28/60 acceptable in the blogosphere and 55/41 acceptable in the real world (and even then over 50% unacceptable among conservatives) meaning that he is very ideologically polarizing, unlike Rudy.

We're seeing our own version of "What's the matter with Kansas?" The Left can't fathom why red staters don't vote their economic interests, preferring instead to vote on cultural issues. Are we seeing a similar dynamic develop with respect to national security/partisan trustworthiness trumping the raw social issue calculus? Like Thomas Frank, the media and even some of the traditional party power brokers on our side simply can't fathom why the old formulas might not work.

if it happened, that could turn out to be the most uninspiring match-up since ford v carter in 76.

You obviously haven't seen Condi in a pair of black leather boots... =)

good one

I personally like Romney / Rice with Condi as the VP. I think it would be a huge success especially against Hillary.

Hillary would bring out the conservatives who might distrust Rice or Romney for whatever reason and Rice might split off a large chunk of the minority vote as well as have the Foreign Policy credentials to offset Romney's domestic agenda.

The downside for Condi is Iraq. If Iraq hasn't gotten better by then, she won't be asked to run for anything.

Not exactly the message Republicans want to send to women voters. However, either Rice/Romney or Rice/Gingrich would be a dynamite combination.

The downside for every Republican is Iraq. The media will make sure of that. But it isn't as big a downside as the media and the Democrats make it out to be, and if that is the sole issue that they attack on, they're toast.

Republicans can't stand Hillary. Independents are about evenly split on her. Even many of us Democrats (I would guess at least a third) aren't crazy about her. She has money, she has stature, and she has name recognition but she still may not get the nomination. If Gore entered the race, he would run away with the nomination. Then, the GOP voters would have to be very astute in picking the right candidate.

The moment that Gore embraced the radical environmentalists, he threw any chance of becoming President. The independents simply won't have him. He's the Democrats darling, even more so than Hillary, and he'll probably play a significant role in the party for years to come, but not as a candidate. And, if by some dark manipulation of the Force by Darth Rove, the Democrats do nominate Gore, he won't capture more than 46% of the popular vote, or come within 20 electoral votes.

And Hillary is not our darling. I liken Gore to Nixon in 66.

The gist of his environmental message resonates and his breather from politics helped his public demeanor.

You liken Gore to Nixon in 1966. I would liken him more to Nixon in 1976!

By then he was disgraced...his political fortunes in ruin. The only candidate more likely to go down to defeat than Gore would be McGovern...if we could convince him to run again!

See The World In HinzSight!

For the Dem nomination. Hillary has burned a lot of bridges with her base... many on the left do not like her, at all. OTOH, they like Gore plenty. They think dumping the Howard Dean they wanted for the "electable" Kerry was a mistake and they don't want to make the same "mistake" next time around. It is entirely possible we could see a Gore in 2008.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Just to give one example: Rudy leads Hillary in New York.

I'd really like for you to come up with a plausible scenario where Democrats win the Electoral College without New York. I don't think they can do it.

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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Democrats: the party of Woody Allen family values

That blanket charge is guaranteed to get you some really bad feelings.

Now, I liked him when he settled down and I would much rather have him as speaker than Hastert.

lombard,

I don't remember that from 1992, but I was still mostly Democrat in 1992 and a (post-primary) Clinton supporter at the time, before I saw the light and became Republican, so I probably didn't like it much either.

But,

From:
Democrats' Woody Allen Family Values: If Clinton's Party Approves of Affairs with 21-Year-Old Interns, Will the Media Apologize to Gingrich?
by Tim Graham
Thursday, March 12, 1998
http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/1998/fax19980312.asp

excerpt:

As former "right-wing hit man" David Brock pens an abject apology to President Clinton, perhaps the media need to send an open letter of apology to Newt Gingrich. For years now, they've recalled the stump speech from 1992 when Gingrich compared the Democrats' stands on families to Woody Allen, then infamous for carrying on a romance with 21-year-old Soon-Yi Previn, an adopted daughter of his companion, actress Mia Farrow. But was it a gaffe -- or an eerie vision of the Democratic Party to come? Now, as Clinton refuses to respond to public inquiries about an alleged sexual relationship with a 21-year-old intern, DNC Chairman Steve Grossman boasted Tuesday that "This is the most unified Democratic Party in years" and that donors "are not only renewing, they are increasing their contributions. Far from having a depressing effect, it has had a galvanizing, energizing effect on us." If being charged with having sex with 21-year-old interns causes your donations to go up, what kind of family values do the Democrats embrace? In 1992, Gingrich took exception to the Democratic platform claiming "governments don't raise children, people do." He claimed "If they had tried to use the words 'families raise children' in Madison Square Garden [site of the 1992 Democratic Convention,] half their party would have rebelled and they would have had a bloody fight. So they tried to finesse it, to sound conservative without being conservative." Later, Gingrich added: "Woody Allen having non-incest with a non-daughter to whom he was a non-father because they were a non-family fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

Cross-tabbing by the self-ratings of how conservative the poll-taker was shows us that Giuliani is the only one in the entire poll that garners a net favorable rating through all 10 levels of conservativism.

Romney also excels with favorables across 9 of the 10 levels (2 through 10), and Gingrich comes close with 6/10 (levels 5 through 10). Of course, Romney and Gingrich have much higher net acceptability ratings than Giuliani the higher up the scale you go.

Allen has net acceptability in 5/10 (6 through 10), and McCain in 4/10 (1 through 4!).

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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

A nerd and a visual learner, which leads to a lot of those kinds of things in my spare time. :)

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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

analysis and graph.

One thing it also tells me is the fact that Guiliani has strong positives among the more centrist conservatives means he would have a wider appeal to the moderate voter.

MCain's numbers indicate that while he has wide centrist appeal, he tanks with the conservative base, and isn't going to survive a primary period.

I also think Romney's numbers at the more centrist end of the scale are a positive, but Gingrich looks like he may have to fight harder for these folks-and these are the ones he will have to convince in a general, since the base tends to be more towards the extreme in both parties.

I still can't say I am overly excited about any of them, and I am not sure how Giuliani or Romeny will fare once the real primary season starts, but they both seem to have some appeal to the more centrist end of the spectrum that the other candidates don't currently have, although Gingriche's numbers are close, and he has the ability to articulate persuasive arguments, he may end up doing quite well overall.

What that tells me is that the national politicians (McCain, Allen, Gingrich) have to take positions that dissatisfy some people. The local politicians (Romney and Giuliani) can be to a degree all things to all people.

It should be fun to watch these numbers change when the campaigns really start.

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

what they will be in 6 months, or a year.

It would also be interesting to compare internet straw polls, where the majority of those voting are politically aware, to some of the scientific polls-granted the straw poll isn't scientific, but I suspect there is a difference between who bloggers find acceptable and like and who more non politically aware folks like.

I also would like to see the conservative rating on the straw poll divided into a social conservative rating and a fiscal conservative rating.

That last idea of yours would be interesting, but I'm skeptical of that whole fiscal/social split as really existing.

I'd make up a whole list of party factions, though, and let people check which group or groups they're in.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.