01 MARCH 2012
THE REPUBLICANS CAN’T FIND AN ACCEPTABLE—AND WINNING—PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:
Gov. Mitt Romney is thus far the closest thing that the Republican Party has to an electable candidate in relation to President Obama. But a presidential election isn’t a game of “horseshoes.”
Sen. Rick Santorum has more consistency to his conservative values, but the extreme nature of his social-policy views would make him an easy target for “mad dog” representation in Democratic ads during the upcoming campaign.
Rep. Ron Paul has many unique views that resonate greatly with people on both sides of the aisle, but his singular greatest limitation is that his direct style of advocating for his views does not work well with a form of government that requires compromise, not dictatorship or obstruction, to get anything done.
Speaker Newt Gingrich hardly merits mention. His wide variety of ideas contradicts his recent efforts to reestablish himself as an authentic Conservative.
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We Americans Always Vote for our presidents as if we are choosing a dictator. We care most about his views, which leads us to believe that he will steer our country in our preferred direction.
But this is not the case: no elected official can impose his will in this way. Either he must compromise, or he fails his constituents with a gridlock stalemate in which everybody avoids the tough choices of what they don’t want, but nobody gets what they need.
(The debt-ceiling debacle demonstrated this perfectly: the Tea Party Republicans held their ground against paying America’s bills without future reductions, the future reductions were arranged in what turns out to be an imminently surmountable fashion, and all we got for their trouble was a lowering of our credit rating—We didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt!)
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Even as We Have Watched President Barack Obama implement numerous mainstream, conservative, Republican ideas—
His liberal, progressive, Democratic base has detested his betrayal of their “Hope and Change” values—
While the loyal, Republican opposition garnered great success with their consistent, repetitive, Frank Luntz-crafted messages of “lower taxes” and “too much regulation” and “no more Keynesian/Kenyan socialism”—
Until the economy started turning around.
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But a steadily rising economy pretty much threatens to change everything....
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This Puts the Republicans in a challenging spot right now: in order to win the Presidency in November, either the economy must go back to Hell in a handbasket—
Or the Republicans must come up with a candidate who is:
(A) Conservative-enough to pass muster with the base, and
(B) Reasonable-enough to pass must with the majority of relatively moderate Americans actually willing to vote for him, and
(C) Leader-like and charismatic-enough to bring enough of the people out to vote.
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Now That it Seems to be “Halftime in America,” maybe the former mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California would be interested in taking on the job.
You read it first here.
Now announcing the soon-to-be, up-and-coming front-runner for the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination:
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
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