Piell posted:

Yeah Palin is 100% not running, she might have to do actual work then and she's done with doing that, she just wants to get on TV saying dumb poo poo.

Unzip and Attack posted:

Watching Romney flail to stay relevant has been even more rewarding than his actual loss. Is there any precedent for a losing politician to hang around and snipe rather than actually do anything other than Palin? Did she create a new political cliche?

evilweasel posted:

I think that he'll have a vague cloud of incompetence that will follow him as the result of 2012 no matter what he does. I have a lot of sympathy for the argument it may be entirely undeserved - I still maintain Kerry was a decent candidate and did well in a hard situation to no avail - but it's there. The last memory most of America has of him is post-2012 when everyone (friend and foe) tripped over themselves to discuss how incompetent his campaign was. Right or wrong, that's the image and I don't see how you make a serious run when that's everyone's gut feel about you.

Alter Ego posted:

pulled up stakes and went to New Hampshire--only to eat poo poo once again in another Senate election.

Mooseontheloose posted:

I mean isn't the whole Texas Miracle basically based off the fact that oil was so expensive?

Nessus posted:

Speaking of which, what do you guys think about this campaign I've heard rumors of to have blue states with Republican legislatures go to an EV-split situation? This seems like it could upend the map significantly, although if it just COINCIDENTALLY happens to be in three large Democratic-leaning swing states, at some point I think they're going to have a hard time explaining that in a way other than "gently caress you, we rule now, the First Tea Party Division occupies Washington."

Hodgepodge posted:

I suppose it could actually be good for the economy if billionaires stop trying to play the startup lottery and actually invest money into the real economy.

Joementum posted:

There's some evidence that Palin actually helped McCain's final vote tally by turning out more of the base in 2008, but I did leave off a couple of qualifiers from that statement. The Vice Presidential pick doesn't matter if the pick is someone generally perceived as qualified for the office. Palin fails that test, obviously, and Eagleton might be another example, though McGovern was doomed anyway. The other qualifier that I left out is that the VP pick doesn't matter in the post-McGovern primary reform era. Prior to that, the pick was used to bargain at the convention for delegate support. Nixon allowed Thurmond to hand him a list of acceptable names, which is how we got Agnew.

radical meme posted:

This is what amazes me also. Plus, many of those imagined potential voters from eight years ago will be dead by 2016. Everything about Cruz indicates a commitment to doubling down on the conservative.

HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:

Please tell me how this guy is going to get the nomination because Unless it will be because it's the best the GOP can do.

FMguru posted:

I've always loved Charles Pierce's observation about the utility of the Iowa straw poll - that the ability to convince old people to board buses to take them to somewhere in rural Iowa qualifies you to be the marketing director for an Indian casino, not the leader of the free world.

Charles Pierce posted:

That doesn't mean that everybody won't show up for the corn dogs and the concerts and the spectacle of deciding which campaign is best at putting old white people on buses and moving them from one place to another. (Which, to me, is a qualification for managing an Indian casino, not for being handed the nuclear codes.)

ufarn posted:

Uhm, so does all this mean the SOTU responses will be more or less absolutely batshit insane?

baw posted:

I really doubt they'll go through with this, but...


...I imagine it would backfire horribly if they did.

Joementum posted:

Jackson Taus posted:

That's gonna be like an all-time list, right?

Sir Tonk posted:

Goddammit I really hope Fiorina doesn't run. She's completely insufferable and would be even worse with Clinton running as well.

quote:

His time as governor was quite a while ago.

quote:

A substantial number of Republicans have never heard him deliver a speech. Mitt is a proven commodity

quote:

Gosh, my friends, it sure seems like only yesterday when we were on our way to a crushing victory over the, ah, dark forces of Barack Obama, under whose leadership America’s once-bright future has, um, dimmed, leaving us staring into a bla–

Uh, well, you understand where I’m coming from. “Ann” and I to this day often sit down with our five boys — Tagg, Fritz, Spork, Clog, and (annoyed grunt) — and ask ourselves what happened. They’re growing boys, as you know, and they’ll often scarf down one of “Ann’s” special treats, like unflavored pudding or mayonnaise on white bread. Clog likes his bread toasted, but “Ann” says the shards of toast “feel like machetes” when she tries to swallow it, so it’s plain white bread for us.

I can assure you that our internal campaign figures and computer numbers and whatnot guaranteed a “Mitt” Romney victory — my top advisers assured me of such every time their direct deposit payments hit their checking accounts, and I’m sure they were right on the money. But I suppose some things will have to remain a mystery, like, for example, the exact percentage of our income that “Ann” and I have paid in taxes over the past several years. Only God and Saul, our Israelite accountant, will ever know for sure.

At any rate, while “Ann” and I have made no final decisions about what would be my first real attempt at winning election to the presidency (my first race was merely dabbling, and you’ll recall that my last attempt at the office was undertaken largely against my will, so these should not be counted), I can assure you that we will not be swayed by the opinions of Jennifer Robins at the Washington Post. I plan spend the next few months asking ordinary Americans what I can do to help make their lives better. I’ll go from corporate boardroom to corporate boardroom, from country club to $50,000 a plate gala dinner, to hear from regular folks.

“Regular folks.” Ha! They’re adorable! Many of them, I would imagine, don’t even have elevators for their cars! I guess you’re taking the stairs, Mr. Aston Martin! Oh, gosh, I’m almost giddy today!

These are people who realize that, under a “Mitt” Romney presidency, there would be no ISIS, and Vladimir Putin would know his place. People would be more physically appealing, cancer would surrender to our doctors, and everyone would win the Powerball. That’s the kind of leadership you’ll see from President “Mitt” Romney, and it would be unfair to the American people to deprive them of my own gifts simply because Robert Jefferson at the Washington Post has some problem with me attempting what, again, would really be my first run for the presidency, or political office of any kind, really.

Rest assured that once I have interacted with other human beings in regards to my future plans, I will inform you of same in a timely fashion. Thank you my friends, and God Bless the United States of America!

Mitt “Mitt” Romney

evilweasel posted:

He may disagree about how bad the skeletons are or not realize they're there, or just figure that anything that damaging would have leaked already.

Concerned Citizen posted:

Yeah. Edwards campaign was already over, but supposedly (according to Game Change and probably bullshit) his top staff knew about the affair and promised to sabotage the campaign if he actually came close to winning the nomination. I highly doubt that, though.

Necc0 posted:

I'm not giving him a pass but this always came across as a general cultural tone-deafness to anything outside of his own bubble, not just on race issues. He was just as aggressively awkward around farmers or dock workers or anyone that wasn't massively wealthy.

BiggerBoat posted:

I agree with all that but what would you say about the net effect of Lieberman on Gore's ticket or Cheney on Bush's? The former turned a lot of people off to Gore and I think, conversely, Cheney arguably added some right wing credibility to GWB.

Duckbag posted:

The thing is, announcing a VP --any VP -- almost always entails a significant boost in media coverage and a corresponding bump in poll numbers. What's more, Lieberman was announced in August to coincide with the Democratic Convention. Conventions inspire a lot of positive media coverage and are known for giving huge (but generally temporary) boosts to their nominee's poll numbers. Unless you have a way of factoring out these major confounding variables, there's really no way to know how much the Lieberman pick affected things. You could probably use a rough aggregate analysis of presidential campaigns to find a "generic" VP bump and a "generic" convention bump and compare those numbers with what we saw in 2000, but so many other factors change between election years that I'm not sure even those results would be meaningful. Someone get Nate Silver on this.

shadow puppet of a posted:

That raises the question, what did Biden do with Cheney's direct-report kill teams he had scattered around the globe?

joeburz posted:

Is that pic taken on an airplane banking hard left?

Bizarro Watt posted:

Also guns. To many conservatives, California's gun laws (silly as some of them are, admittedly) are evidence that it is a state completely adverse to individual freedoms. Because to middle class white conservatives, that's the only freedom that matters.

quote:

They just bring up the pension stuff in that case.

Pegged Lamb posted:

I think he meant Canon in D

Rygar201 posted:

I'm always surprised by how spry W was there

Jazerus posted:

He never actually bounced back, he is just campaigning as though he did and he is facing ever-spiraling federal investigations.

GalacticAcid posted:

Besides the big names (Bill, Barack) I'd anticipate a Warren speech, probably a smiling Southerner like Mark Warner, possibly Cory Booker, and someone like Ann Kirkpatrick who won a Red State election without running away from Obama.

Nessus posted:

I remember that MTV personality whose whole thing was "I have a Republican elephant tattoo and find Dan Quayle hot." What happened to her?