GOP Pres Candidates Breaking Bad

Pols for GOP nomination are lame, or not sufficiently crazy

Update: See also Sarah Posner's Christian Zionists, Bibi, Obama, and Armageddon at Religious Dispatches.

The weakness of the field at this point is comparable to December 2007 when many on the right were trashing Mike Huckabee in the twisted objections then twirling in leading Republican minds.

Sarah Palin is the recipient of similar derision today, though from different players.

As Chris Cillizza wrote then of the GOP field: "Someone Has to Win the GOP Nomination."

McCain won and lost, the target of McCaincon—a plot by authortarian (ostensibly religious) Movement officers to sabotage the GOP nominee for not being sufficientally crazy, though McCain tried mightily and got a bum rap by the right in this respect.

The parallels between the '08 and '12 nomination race are striking.

The most striking analogue is Mitt Romney.

The Ken Silverstein cover story of the November 2007 issue of Harper's seems like it could be rerun today without anyone noticing.

November 2007

Writes Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina.

Add to this lack of conviction a dose of Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political Loser, now leading the current pack of crazies. [Palin, Paul, Gingrich, Cain, Pawlenty, and Bachmann]

Let's say Romney wins the nomination. Will he then pull a McCain and court the endorsement of John Hagee, another whack who says the Holocaust was part of God's plan, among other charming nonsense?

ADL in 1994 Hits Crazies

Being Christain Zionist and anti-Tolerance, anti-Pluralistic and just plain nuts, as Hagee is, sits fine with elements of the Lobby now-a-days—now making noise to align with the GOP nominee [certain to be anti-pluralistic] as long as the Christian right-endorsed candidate advocates war against Islam or at least employs the term "Islamofascism" with some frequency.

The ideologues—who may fall together into a motley coalition looking for an endless war against terror, Satan, Muslims, [maybe even South America]—look to conjure some GOP chimera.

But they may find that the vast majority of Americans are not apocalyptic, war-mongering nuts who, as Noam Chomsky wrote in 2002, do not accept the "increasingly desperate claim that everyone is following them in their depraved subordination to power" and more war.

One aspect of the American political culture persisting is the hope that people can compete with power; that the remnants of our democracy are sufficient to knock down a religious zealot like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Medicare-destroying ideologue like Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), rightwing billionares like the Koch brothers, and the eventual Republican nominee for president.

Rightwing Activists: Filibuster Sotomayor

Bring it on.

The White Party says filibuster the first Hispanic Supreme Court nominee. [In Wisconsin, the White Party says: Do not gather racial profiling data.]

The GOP did well in the deep south and Appalachia in the last election. But I think even the religious right might be getting tired of these guys.

From the Politico, Manu Raju reports:

Conservatives are demanding that Senate Republicans take a harder line on Sonia Sotomayor, with new signs of tension between the Hill GOP and elements of the Republican base over the direction the opposition should move in the Supreme Court fight.

In a letter to be delivered to Senate Republicans Tuesday, more than 145 conservatives – including Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie and Gary Bauer — call for a filibuster of Sotomayor’s nomination if that’s what it takes to force a 'great debate' over judicial philosophy.

But as is clear, the the White Party hates a debate.

Nearly nine in ten (89 percent) Republicans are white with the vast majority of those people describing themselves as 'conservative' (63 percent). Just seven percent of Republicans are either Hispanic (five percent) or black (two percent).

The more the GOP listens to its base, the more it isolates itself.

GOP Pres Candidates Looking Bad

Update II: The GOP is not so hot on the Huckster:

- Rush at War with the Huckster.

- Condi Rice: Huckster 'simply ludicrous'.

- National Review's Rich Lowry: "Huckacide"

- Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer: "overdose of public piety," "scriptural literalism,"

- Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes: Huckster "seems to believe the best foreign policy is one guided by the Golden Rule;" [maybe the Huckster is dangerous; if the guy starts campaigning on human rights and compassion, look out, though I doubt that will happen].

Update: Arianna Huffington has a piece comparing the Huckster to Frankenstein running amok and leading the pack in the GOP primary. Writes Huffington:

With Mike Huckabee's continuing surge, the Republican Party now has an Iowa front-runner whose religious beliefs are virtually identical to those of George Bush. He's anti-choice, born-again, against gay-marriage, and gets political advice directly from God.

So why is the Republican establishment suddenly in a state of near-apoplexy about Mike Huckabee? Shouldn't they be happy? They've been cultivating evangelicals and fundamentalists for 30 years. Now they finally have a candidate who's truly part of the movement. So what's the problem?

Actually, that is the problem. The evangelical crowd was fine when it was just a resource to be cynically exploited every few years in demagogic anti-gay get-out-the-vote campaigns. But now the holy-rolling monster the GOP's Dr. Frankensteins have created has thrown off the shackles, fled the lab, and is currently leading in Iowa. And the party doesn't know what to do.

In the 2008 election that is indisputably a challenging historical period for the GOP to begin with, the top five candidates for the GOP presidential nomination all present major problems in assembling a winning GOP coalition in the general election, and even two weeks away from the Iowa caucuses no candidate looks like a winner.

But as Chris Cillizza says: Someone Has to Win the GOP Nomination.

Below is Cillizza's take on the top five GOP presidential candidates with additional weaknesses (most previously published) added in brackets.

Rudy Giuliani isn't positioned to win a single state before Florida's Jan. 29 primary. [James Dobson, the leading religious right leader of the Focus on the Family group that self-consciously rallies religious right voters has made clear that Rudy is political anathema; hence Rudy will perform badly with the religious right; and Rudy’s past positions on affirmative action, abortion, civil right for gays, and immigration will kill his candidacy, no matter how often he portrays his inner-jerk persona in an attempt to appear tough.]

Mitt Romney has fallen behind in Iowa and his flip flops on issues like abortion and gay rights make him unacceptable to the Republican base. [As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney was even more pro-choice and pro-civil rights for gays than Rudy. The massive effort underway to convert him into a rightwinger won’t fly (detailed in a Harper’s (November) piece by Ken Silverstein). As quoted by Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina. Add to that Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political loser.] Update: Romney drawing heat for falsely claiming he and his father marched with Martin Luther King, adding to the growing perception that Romney will do and say much anything to further his political ambitions. See also NYT's Romney Learns That ‘Facts Are Stubborn Things’.

Mike Huckabee is surging in Iowa but doesn't have the money or organization to take advantage of a win in the Hawkeye State.
[The rapist-pardoning Huckster is a divisive fake just dying to be found out. Even the Republican establishment has blasted the guy. Provincial, ignorant of foreign affairs, his success in the GOP race thus far has depended directly upon his below-the-radar-and-ascending appeals to the religious right, and his ability to mount a positive, above-the-fray campaign as the other Republicans competed for who is the most mean-spirited in advocating for draconian measures such as more torture, more Gitmo prisons, more war, more fences, and more trashing of Mexicans as Karl Rove's dream of a GOP appeal to Hispanics evaporates. Add to this that he would be deficient in traditional GOP political strengths in foreign affairs and tough-on-crime appeals, and the Huckster would be a goner in the general election.]

John McCain is running a single-state strategy in New Hampshire, but in that state he trails Romney by double digits. ["Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson. Few religious right leaders have forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular (in Republican circles) McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech). McCain would perform worse than Rudy; let's hope for Joe-mentum for McCain.]

Fred Thompson doesn't seem to care much whether he wins or loses. [As a late September piece in The Politico notes, quoting Dobson: "Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson asked in the message, obtained by The Associated Press. "He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!" Grandpa Fred is dead, and he comes across as tired and wooden: An older version of an unenergetic John Kerry.] And as Cillizza notes: Apathetic.

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