Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12:41:30 PM
The remarkable thing about the field of Republican Presidential candidates is how they don’t even seem to be trying to make themselves visible. In 2008, there were already a few in with both feet at this point, and speculation was rampant about some others entering.
Even more intriguing is how the ones that are active in Iowa and New Hampshire seem to be perfectly happy with Donald Trump taking up all the available light. It seems that none of them are worried about him in the long run, and are content to work their way around under the radar.
So, who will prevail next year? There is no way of telling at this point. Sarah Palin is convinced that the best thing for the Republicans is a drawn out and lively debate process, and I concur. She also says that she will only step in if nobody else looks like they are signing on to the Tea Party platform.
Which brings us back to ideas. As I’ve stated here on a few occasions, the party is not chasing after the man with the ideas. It is trying to find a candidate who promises to follow the ideas being handed up from the ground. This is why New Gingrich will not make it. The Tea Party is all about being tired of waiting for the person with the right ideas- it is about being so tired of not getting them, they are handing them a simple menu and asking if they are for or against.
Past that, there is always the reaction factor. Obama succeeded in part in 2008 because he was more articulate than George Bush and exuded an intelligence Bush’s detractors were convinced George didn’t possess. This year, it will be about having an aura of executive competence (can you say “Governor”?) and about being a relative milquetoast. Like the old saying goes, if you run one William Jennings Bryant against another, the one with squatters rights wins. Actually, I just made that up.
Obama is doing his level best to raise a ton of money, which at this stage is all about scaring off any primary challenges. Nobody will be able to run him ragged , if he has a $200 billion war chest by the end of the summer.
If he is running unopposed, he will then put his money to it’s most effective use- being a primary pest in all the states where crossover voting is allowed. He will do his level best to choose his ultimate opponent from the open menu. I don’t think he will be able to, but he can make some lives miserable.
When the general election campaign begins in earnest, Obama will find that, since so many swing voters are off his radar (like they were in 2010), he will be chasing after so much smaller a pool of undecided that nailing them down will be prohibitively more expensive than his last campaign.
I have two concerns. The minor one is that someone will obtain so much momentum after Iowa, NH and South Carolina that many swing states will get left out of the decision process. My major concern is that because the deficit proble will be front and center, somebody will be nominated who is short on foreign policy skills. There is a greater war coming still, and we need to face up to that.