Ideas don’t run for president; people do. That’s as true today as it was four years ago. So, it is understandable that much of the press and blog coverage of the 2012 GOP primary race has focused on the personalities, experience and record of the candidates rather than their ideas. In fact, until you know the candidates by their actions, you cannot meaningfully judge what | Read More »
If there is one thing we should have learned from the 2008 primary and general elections, to say nothing of 1996, it’s that being a good presidential candidate on paper is useless; you have to want it – want it badly enough to hire a serious staff, badly enough to trim a few positions and hard edges to fit the various demands of the primary | Read More »
As many of you may recall, I am not the biggest fan of Mitt Romney. Contra streiff, I don’t really expect Romney to be the last man standing in the 2012 primaries, even if they go relatively badly in terms of who gets in and who gets their act together once in. Romneycare, atop his many other defects, is too big a problem for too | Read More »
A little history can be a dangerous thing, and in advance of Tuesday’s State of the Union Address by President Obama, political commentary will be focusing on Obama’s ability to replay 1995-96, when President Clinton rebounded from a similar rout in the midterm elections to more or less coast to re-election (while Clinton finished below 50% of the popular vote, it was only a “coming | Read More »
The Census Bureau today released the official reapportionment figures from the 2010 Census, which will determine (1) what states gain and lose House seats and thus will be prime targets for redistricting and (2) what states correspondingly gain and lose votes in the Electoral College for 2012. By and large, the news was good for the GOP. For the immediate impact, I’ll focus on the | Read More »
Bush pollster Matthew Dowd looks at why he thinks it’s possible – not likely, mind you, but possible – for Sarah Palin to win the White House in 2012. (H/T) Along the way he reminds us that John Kerry was one of the few challengers in memory to lose a race against an incumbent that may actually have been winnable: Gallup polls over the past | Read More »
If the GOP is going to renew itself, Republican governors will need to play a major role. Fortunately, we have some good ones. Several of us from RedState participated in a blogger call with one of the best, South Carolina’s Mark Sanford. Gov. Sanford, best known as a critic of excessive government spending, is leaving office in 2010 due to term limits, and there is | Read More »
As promised, here’s my initial thoughts on what the Republican field will look like in four years. Obviously, there are many variables along the way, ranging from how beatable Obama looks to the 2010 midterms; I’m just forecasting with the known knowns we have today. As usual there will probably be 10 or so candidates, but from where we sit today there look to be | Read More »
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