As the economy continues to improve (DOW closed above 13,000 for the first time since May 2008), Republicans are discovering that they’re losing the only ticket they had to a November victory, a faltering economy. And with that discovery comes the further realization that they are going to be stuck with a lame presidential candidate. Mitt Romney.

Redstate’s the Son of Erick expresses his anguish.

Seriously, putting it bluntly, conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don’t like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you’re going to go with the guy you like.

If Republicans in Washington are not panicked and trying desperately to pull Bobby Jindal in the race tomorrow, or someone like him, the party leaders must have a death wish. Mitt Romney continues to run an uninspiring campaign only able to win by massively outspending his opponents to tell voters how much worse the other guys are. That may work in the primary, but it will not work in a general election where the President of the United States won’t be outspent 5 to 1.

[...]

But I suspect he [Romney] will be the nominee. At least we can be rid of him and, hopefully, his most ardent cheerleaders on November 7th when what the rest of us know will happen unless an economic catastrophe happens.

We feel your pain, Eric…but Bobby Jindal? That’s your great savior? You’re joking, right?

If Jindal were to enter the race tomorrow, how far could he possibly get with no campaign structure in place and no money to fund that campaign? Jindal would be unable to get his name on the ballot in most of the remaining primary states. And even if none of those matters were vital to waging a successful campaign, Jindal lacks the dynamic personality required to compete against a Barack Obama…to say nothing of what Jindal’s image would look like after a zillion dollars worth of attack ads from the Romney camp did their dirty work.

It must suck to be a Republican these days.

But don’t be fooled by any of this. When Republicans have their nominee in place, Erickson and Limbaugh and Fox and the Christian right and every other conservative who despise the current President, will rally behind their man and proclaim him to be the greatest conservative since Jesus Christ.

And that applies even if their nominee is an out of touch rich guy whom no one likes.

Musical interlude. Sorry, Smokey…but I like this Adam Lambert rendition.

(The source photograph for this illustration is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.)

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

Former Reagan strategist Ed Rollins made this observation (as quoted by John Heilemann in New York Magazine) regarding the 2012 Republican primary:

Six months before this thing got going, every Republican I know was saying, “We’re gonna win, we’re gonna beat Obama.” Now even those who’ve endorsed Romney say, “My God, what a fucking mess.”

Given Rick Santorum’s quest for an American theocracy, Mitt Romney’s insistence throughout the campaign on portraying himself as a somewhat less compassionate version of Gordon Gekko, Newt Gingrich’s moon colonies and hope of eradicating from the judiciary every judge who does not follow the Gingrich Doctrine and Ron Paul…well, Ron Paul’s refusal to be anyone else but Ron Paul…one can only think, a fucking mess, indeed. Which begs the question, why so, why now?

Because any party which is composed in large part (in Robert Reich’s words) of “birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers” cannot possibly be appeased by a single candidate and when the attempt is made, the result is the three (four?) ring circus Republicans now have before them.

In this Republican age of insanity, finding credible, rational conservatives willing to risk their political careers to take on an incumbent president while courting the vote of teabaggers, bigots and religious fundamentalists (not all mutually exclusive) is no easy task. Just ask Jon Huntsman. Intelligence and a record of staunch conservatism is simply not enough to satisfy the GOP’s current base – a base which insists that their candidate be every bit as irrational and loopy as them. It is a request which the four remaining candidates vying to become the Republican nominee are desperately attempting to fulfill.

Given the current state of the Republican party, John Heilmann theorizes on the consequences of an Obama win or loss in November.

…it’s still perfectly conceivable that Obama might lose this thing.

If that happens, the implications for the Republican Party will be straight­forward: It will be reshaped in the image of whichever of the candidates becomes president-elect. A Romney victory would signal the resurgence of the regulars, while one by Santorum would usher in an era of red-hot regnancy.

But if Obama prevails, precisely the opposite dynamic is likely to kick in: a period of bitter recriminations followed by a reformation (or counterreformation) of the GOP. This, please recall, was what many Republicans were counting on to happen in the wake of their party’s loss of the White House and seats in the House and Senate in 2008. Instead, Republicans seized on a strategy of relentless opposition to Obama, which proved politically effective in 2010 but left the party as bereft of new ideas, a constructive agenda, or a coherent governing philosophy as before.

And this bit of reasoning for hoping that Rick Santorum prevails against Romney but loses to Obama.

Only the most mindless of ideologues reject the truism that America would be best served by the presence of two credible governing parties instead of the situation that currently obtains. A Santorum nomination would be seen by many liberals as a scary and retrograde proposition. And no doubt it would make for a wild ride, with enough talk of Satan, abortifacients, and sweater vests to drive any sane man bonkers. But in the long run, it might do a world of good, compelling Republicans to return to their senses—and forge ahead into the 21st century. Which is why all people of common sense and goodwill might consider, in the days ahead, adopting a slogan that may strike them as odd, perverse, or even demented: Go, Rick, go.

You might want to start making your ‘Sick Rick for President‘ posters.

__

(The Rick Santorum source photograph for this illustration is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.)

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

Grover Norquist, in his CPAC speech, revealed exactly why the GOP establishment favors a Romney win.

All we have to do is replace Obama. …  We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

[...]

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.

How’s that for in-your-face honesty?

Choose Rick Santorum and Republicans are stuck with a Christian Taliban leader whose top priority will be to enact a ‘Sex For Procreation Only‘ law.

Go with Newt Gingrich and and they’re facing an ego of untold proportion who takes orders from a single god. Clue: initials are N.G.

Ron Paul and they have a man who has no intention of listening to anyone or anything except the intergalactic voices in his head – the very same voices that have commanded his every move of the last four decades.

And then, of course, there’s Mitt Romney – the man who will in all likelihood become the Republican nominee in the general election. If ever there existed a politician lacking any trace of core convictions, a man more than willing to say whatever it took to be accepted by those from whom he craves recognition, a man who would strap the family dog to the hood of his car if it helped him get to where he so desperately wanted to go…if that’s what Republicans want or need, then Mitt Romney is their man.

If I was running the DNC ad campaign to reelect Barack Obama, I would have that Norquist quote playing every day between now and November.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Here are three reasons you can count on tonight’s Republican debate being a lively one.

a) The latest poll shows Romney retaking the lead over Gingrich. Newt is always more feisty in the underdog role.

b) Gingrich has the entire Republican establishment battling him. They understand that a Gingrich win in the primary, not only guarantees an Obama victory in November but just about rips open the Republican party. Gingrich needs to win Florida to keep the momentum going…and the cash flowing in.

c) They’re allowing the crazies in the audience to applaud and boo at tonight’s show and no one plays an audience better than Gingrich.

In the preshow war of words Romney got things rolling by questioning Newt’s mental state.

He’s gone from pillar to post almost like a pinball machine, from item to item in a way which is highly erratic…It does not suggest a stable, thoughtful course, which is normally associated with leadership.”

Moon-man Gingrich fired back.

“We are not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs who have foreclosed on Florida and is himself a stock holder in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together and understand what this is all about,” Gingrich declared in a preamble to a decidedly angry stump speech.

“In 1992, he gave money to Democrats for Congress,” he added at another point. “He voted in the Democratic primary for Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate. This is the man who stood up the other night and questioned my credentials as a Reaganite? This is the kind of gall they have, to think we are so stupid and we are so timid that we will let someone who voted for Paul Tsongas -– in 1994 he is running for the U.S. Senate to the left of Teddy Kennedy. Do you know how hard it is to run to the left of Teddy Kennedy? And he says, ‘You know, I don’t want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years, I was an independent then.’”

“He won’t tell you that now, because he is counting on us not having YouTube,” Gingrich said. “That’s how much he thinks we are stupid. And we are not stupid. The message we should give Mitt Romney is: we aren’t that stupid and you aren’t that clever.”

All of which has hardcore conservatives saying stuff like this:

I am a firm believer that primaries make stronger candidates. But at some point you just have to stand back, take a sip of bourbon, and sigh “Damn” under your breath as you behold the carnage being wrought within the Republican Party.

How pretty is that?

Very.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

It appears that the South Carolina verdict is forcing Romney to start taking Gingrich seriously.

“We’re not choosing a talk show host, we’re choosing a leader,” Romney said, saying that their nominee should exhibit “integrity,” “sobriety,” and “ethics.”

He called Gingrich a “failed leader” as Speaker who “had to resign in disgrace” and criticized his work as a highly paid consultant for Freddie Mac in his years out of office. “He said he was just a historian there,” Romney said. “I’d like him to release his records there.”

Gingrich was able to take South Carolina by expertly flipping any criticism about his character and past into an attack on the media and the left. In a game where perception is everything and integrity takes a back seat to hubris, it’s not what one has actually done that counts but rather the manner in which one denies having done any wrong. Romney’s poor performance in that regard was his downfall in South Carolina. He came off as weak and defensive in defending his role at Bain Capital and was unable to articulate in a convincing manner his reluctance to release his tax records.  As for Gingrich, he was able to deflect the issue of his gross hypocrisy and infidelities by deftly going on the offensive with blows to CNN’s John King and the mainstream media. After that, it was game over.

And so, the call for Romney to remove the mittens has begun.

Another reason why Gingrich won is that Romney has been playing it safe, believing that the nomination will be his, and that he can train his fire on President Obama. That thought should be banished from Romney’s head; he has to use the upcoming contests to decisively put away his competition. He can do so by going on the offensive against Gingrich, who actually represents a target-rich environment for Romney. Romney has to campaign as though he is a million votes behind, so that commentators will stop talking about how Romney might feel that he is entitled to the nomination, and so that they will start talking instead about the grit and fire which Romney needs to display from here on out.

Romney has the backing of the Republican establishment to take out Gingrich as quickly as he can. The thought of Newt possibly winning the nomination is creating serious headaches for every thinking conservative who hopes to defeat Barack Obama in November.

If Gingrich wins Florida, the Republican Establishment is going to have a meltdown that makes Three Mile Island look like a marshmallow roast. Why? Because the Establishment will be staring down the barrel of two utterly unpalatable choices. On the one hand, Gingrich’s national favorable-unfavorable ratings of 26.5 and 58.6 percent, respectively make him not just unelectable against Obama but also mean that he would likely be a ten-ton millstone around the necks of down-ballot Republican candidates across the country. And on the other, Romney will have shown in two successive contests—one in a bellwether Republican state, the other in a key swing state—an inability to beat his deeply unpopular rival. If this scenario unfolds, the sound of GOP grandees whispering calls for a white knight, be it Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (who, conveniently, is delivering the Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night) or Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan or even Jeb Bush, will be deafening.

Tonight’s debate will indicate whether Mitt Romney is willing to take the fight to Gingrich face to face. Tune in, it should be interesting.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Here’s what you missed:

Santorum, Paul and Perry – more of the same.

Gingrich was in fine form giving the raucous conservative crowd exactly what they wanted – red meat. Tainted and slimy? Of course. Is there any other kind offered at a Republican debate? Oh, and in case you were not aware, Gingrich Perry  informed the world that, “South Carolina is at war with this federal government.”  SC Gov. Nikki Haley nodded in agreement. To the barricades!

As for Romney, the following observation by a conservative blogger pretty much sums up not only Romney’s performance in the debate but it also gives an apt description of the essence of the man.

So far I’m pretty horrified.  The low point was when Santorum asked Romney if Romney believed that felons who had completed their sentence should be allowed to vote.  Romney froze and tried to change the subject since apparently Romney didn’t know what he was supposed to pretend to believe.

Nice.

As for the audience in attendance last night, they booed when it was mentioned that Romney’s father was born in Mexico. Some people just can’t hate enough.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

The ABC Republican debate last night was a bust as no one was willing to go after Romney with any degree of conviction.  This morning’s NBC debate was a different affair.  Great television as Huntsman, Gingrich and Santorum walked in with a rumble in mind and faced Mitt Romney head on. It brought about some of the better lines heard at any of the debates.

Santorum vs. Romney

This skirmish dealt with Romney’s repeated claim that he’s not a career politician.  Note Romney’s straight-faced, ludicrous claim that he had no desire to serve a second term as Massachusetts’ governor. And listen for the “Run again? That would be about me?” assertion from Romney which should win the Chutzpah Award, if one existed, for brazen bullshit.

Gingrich vs. Romney

Romney’s “politics for me is not a career” was too much for Gingrich to let pass.  Here was his honest and brutal appraisal of Romney, the ‘non-politician’.

I find Gingrich to be one notch below disgusting but you had to love his honesty on this one.  And what was Romney thinking when he shot off this line about his father’s advice to him on entering politics?

“Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage.”

Really?  The implication here was that anyone from the middle class wishing to enter politics might want to reconsider.  In the Romney household, politics is a career reserved for the well-to-do.

Another Romney $10,000 bet moment from the Richie Rich of Republican politics.

Huntsman vs. Romney

This next confrontation produced the best line of the debate…perhaps the best line of all the debates.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

The boxing gloves are on and the fun level has just gone up a notch.

“This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC – it’s baloney. He’s not telling the American people the truth.

“It’s just like this pretense that he’s a conservative. Here’s a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in ‘Romneycare,’ puts Planned Parenthood in ‘Romneycare,’ raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he’s magically a conservative.

“I just think he ought to be honest with the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points, and I think he ought to be candid. I don’t think he’s being candid and that will be a major issue. From here on out from the rest of this campaign, the country has to decide: Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won’t level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine.”

Gingrich has taken a beating at the expense of Romney’s PAC attack ads and it’s showing.  If the polls are right and Romney wins Iowa with Gingrich taking 4th position, the next couple of debates should be interesting.  Expect Gingrich to go full throttle against Romney, who is every bit the lying, duplicitous, poll-driven politician Gingrich says he is.

Yes, I know…pot, kettle, etc., but Gingrich’s words are true nonetheless.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Whatever happens in Iowa come January 3, the next Republican debate should be a doozy. Here’s Newt Gingrich unloading on Ron Paul.

“I think Barack Obama is very destructive to the future of the United States. I think Ron Paul’s views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American,” Gingrich said Tuesday in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.

Could he vote for Paul? “No.” If it came down to Paul vs. Obama? “You’d have a very hard choice at that point.”

“As people get to know more about Ron Paul, who disowns 10 years of his own newsletter, says he didn’t really realize what was in it, had no idea what he was making money off of, had no idea that it was racist, anti-Semitic, called for the destruction of Israel, talked about a race war – all of this is a sudden shock to Ron Paul?” he asked. “There will come a morning people won’t take him as a serious person.”

With Paul now leading in Iowa (Romney’s in second with everyone else but Huntsman tied in third position), the spotlight is now on the cranky old man with the radical positions and the bigoted past.  To hear Paul disavow any knowledge of the content of newsletters which earned him a little fortune ($1 million or more), does serious damage to his credibility.  It’s a point which Gingrich, Bachmann and Perry will hammer away at over the next while.

Interestingly, a poll released this week shows that only 51 percent of Paul’s supporters come from the Republican side of the ledger.  That compares with Romney’s 87 percent and Gingrich’s 85 percent Republican support.  The breakdown for Paul supporters in New Hampshire is as follows: 13% Republican, 36 % independents and 26% Democrats.  No other candidate attracts non-Republicans like Paul does.

Is Ron Paul going to win this thing?  Not likely…but here’s an interesting thought to ponder:

[A] semi-successful Paul 2012 run means that there is now a whole network of party activists who love the Paul brand and know the ropes. They’re ready to go if Kentucky Senator Rand Paul – Ron’s son – wants to run. He’s also a fairly pure libertarian in many ways and could easily pick up that wing of the party. If the social conservatives burn out in 2012 and 2016, by running against Democrats during the peak of the business cycle, then the GOP may be ready to let Rand Paul run in 2020 and he might win. The real legacy of Paul’s 2012 primary run may be laying the groundwork for Rand Paul presidency.

Chew on that.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Andrew Sullivan over at The Dish made the decision last week to endorse Ron Paul over Jon Huntsman (although, smart conservative that he is, he’s still voting Obama in November).  You can read the reasons behind his Paul endorsement here, but it all comes down to Ron Paul being the least crazy of the crazies as well as the belief that Huntsman has zero chance of becoming the nominee.

Well, many Dish readers took exception to Sullivan’s endorsement believing that he erred in choosing the more popular Paul over the pragmatic and more electable Huntsman.  The following letter makes a compelling argument…and it also made me laugh.

While I agree that Paul is far more attractive than the rest of the field, that is damning with the faintest of praise. His problem is still the same – he clings to ideology divorced from reality. If he were to become president and actually governed according to his beliefs, it would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. He would eviscerate the economy and cripple government. At least Romney is just faking his radical beliefs, but Paul, Gingrich, Bachmann, Cain and Perry actually believe that what they advocate for the country makes sense.

True, true and true.  But here’s the part I really love.

At first glance, it may seem that Paul is the only person riding in the clown car who is a real human being – a civilized, dress-suited adult, out of place in a tiny car full of face painted fools with curly wigs. But no. Look down at Paul’s shoes: they are red and about 5 sizes too big.

Beautiful and perfectly stated.

I’ve written a number of times that there is much about Paul for one to admire – not the least being one’s sense that the man is in it for his beliefs, so very unlike most politicians who come off as self-serving grifters willing to sell their souls for a pocketful of votes.  Not so, Ron Paul.  To hear him speak is to understand that his beliefs, all of them, are not for sale at any price.

But it is many of those same beliefs which make Paul unsuitable for the presidency. His apparent unwillingness to moderate some of his more radical policy proposals (e.g. eliminate Dept. of Education/Energy/Health and Human Services, the Federal Aviation Administration, IRS, massive $1 trillion budget cut in the first year, etc.) make Paul a dangerous man.

As that same Dish reader wrote:

I would love to sit down over beers with Paul and talk politics. It would be fun. I’d learn a lot. I’d laugh, I’d cry, I’d be deeply moved. But I don’t what him anywhere near the federal budget. The person I want making tough decisions about what to cut is the only guy in the race with experience doing it: Huntsman. The only person I want navigating the dangerous and murky waters of our relationship with China is the one person with experience doing it: Huntsman.

Yes, do look down at Ron Paul’s shoes.  They are red and five sizes too big.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.