Bachmann: A Very Serious Contender
Like Paul, I think Bachmann is not being taken seriously enough, and I particularly reject this kind of analysis, which you’ll presumably hear a lot if you listen to Sunday talk shows:
The Republican nominee is somebody who did ok in the primaries last time, and/or a former VP candidate. You can only beat this system if your dad was president. The Republicans don’t nominate insurgents. They didn’t nominate Ron Paul last time, they nominated the boring guy who came in second in the previous election cycle. They aren’t going to nominate the crazy firebrand this time, either. They’ll nominate the boring guy who came in second last time.
This style of argument sounds good but pretty clearly doesn’t hold up:
- The “Republican Party” isn’t a static entity, which makes what it did in 1980 and 1996 of very little relevance. Something like the O’Donnell primary win, in which the GOP base in a deep-blue state decided to throw away a sure Senate seat to punish some very mild heterodoxies on the part of the frontrunner, would be unimaginable 20 years ago too. So what? If you applied this kind of analysis to college football you’d have Notre Dame and Michigan as the co-favorites heading into the 2011 season.
- The sample sizes are too small, and even so the “second place finisher” expectation has a rather important recent exception (and, of course, the second-place finisher in the 2008 primary won’t win this time.) Also, many of the “elite” choices were also acceptable to the party base, making the comparison with Romney meaningless.
- Comparing Bachmann to Ron Paul is the most telling error. Isolationist libertarianism is a tiny constituency. By contrast, Bachmann is a mainstream Republican circa 2011. You may not want to hear that, but it’s true.
- Bachmann may not be the first choice of many party elites, but it’s not clear that they will be steadfastly opposed, either. Huckabee couldn’t do anything with an Iowa win because the business wing of the party was strongly opposed to him, leaving him unable to raise enough funds. It’s far from obvious to me that this will happen to Bachmann, who also has to be considered an overwhelming favorite in Iowa right now.
- If you can site another frontrunner whose most famous policy accomplishment involves legislation that most of the party now considers a fundamental threat to the country, I’d love to hear it. The problem with these generalizations is that every race is in fact different. It’s true that McCain was the runner-up in 2000 and won in 2008. It’s also true that McCain lost to the more orthodox conservative, while Romney finished third in a race that didn’t even have a serious orthodox conservative. It’s still not clear how Romney has become more appealing to the Republican base after intervening events have turned his central policy achievement politically toxic within his party. He could still win by default, but Romney is obviously an incredibly vulnerable frontrunner, not remotely comparable to Reagan or either Bush.
Another way of looking at it is Chait’s — Bachmann is probably in a stronger position than Obama was at a similar point in the cycle, and Clinton was in a far stronger position than Romney (even granting that the latter won’t hire Mark Penn.) Lots of things could happen to stop Bachmann — most obviously, as Chait says, a Perry entry — but she’s a very, very serious candidate. At this point, I would bet on her to win a heads-up competition with Romney, and as of now that’s the most likely scenario.
Extreme candidates always look more plausible from a distance than closer up, and as Bachmann becomes more central to the campaign narrative, her nutty positions will become better known, and she’ll be much more likely to trip up over innocuous things. We’ve already seen her take the position that slavery wasn’t all bad, and her “pray-the-gay-away” husband is getting a lot of attention.
What’s it going to be like when her political rivals take her seriously enough to directly attack her, which hasn’t happened yet? I doubt she is going to stand up to that.
Here’s my key disagreement: in the context of the 2012 Republican primary, Bachmann’s positions aren’t extreme. They’re mainstream. Everyone assumes that Rick Perry is a serious candidate, and he’s no less radical than Bachmann.
Yes.
Two things have happened since the last Republican primary that need to be taken into account when considering this context:
1) the Tea Party
2) Several states that used to have open Republican primaries have switched to closed primaries or caucuses. (Apparently, the thinking here is that Barack Obama would have totally lost to a “real conservative.”)
This 100%. Perry is only less radical in the sense that he lacks ladyparts, and therefore is serious.
in the context of the 2012 Republican primary, Bachmann’s positions aren’t extreme
Exactly. People are missing the forest for the trees.
I think a better objection to Bachmann’s inevitable victory is that the extremely conservative religious wing of the party is going to have a problem voting for her, what with all the “women must be subordinate to a man” bit and her own professed biographical details of how she entered politics because her husband told her to. They may not be ready to support a woman for president – which is why Perry (who is the same as Bachmann on every angle) gets the “win” nod from punditry if he decides to enter the race. (Unless the rumors of his sexual orientation turn out to be true and “provable”, then it goes back to a toss-up between the two of them for the religious right elements with maybe a squeaker of a victory for Bachmann).
But if it’s truly between Bachmann and Romney and the choice is an conservative evangelical Christian woman “being led” by her conservative evangelical Christian husband and a Mormon who pushed for Obamacare before anyone called it Obamacare, I think I gotta give it to the evangelical Christian woman and her husband.
But has this ever really stopped the religious right, gender traditionalists from rallying behind female political leaders who tell them what they want to hear?
These seems to be one of those rules that they apply to the little people. I’m thinking of Phyllis Schlafley.
I think at this point it’s more like a tie-breaker than a prerequisite. So it would only apply in a Perry v. Bachmann scenario.
Exactly.
It’s certainly not a problem in a Mittens-v-Bachmann scenario where Bachmann is clearly the winner with that demographic.
As someone who remains unwillingly tapped into said extremely conservative religious wing, I assure you that it’s already pre-finessed. Plenty of the same people in 2008 were able to convince themselves that Todd Palin wears the pants. Hell, Franklin Graham hasn’t paused for a moment in flagrantly abusing his non-profit status on the Palins’ behalf, and that’s the spin he puts on it. Why the men in question don’t simply run themselves instead of hiding behind their wives remains unaddressed. Perhaps they still believe that a woman on the ticket will trick non-Talibornagain voters into thinking all is well. As usual, see the relevant passage from the Book of Jobob: “Bearing false witness is A-OK if you’re using it to gain political power.”
Of course the home is a woman’s proper sphere. It’s just a sign of how far this country has fallen from Godliness that we need women who will set aside their true natures, hit the rubber chicken circuit, raise metric assloads of money and
behead Holofernes in his tentdefeat Obama so that the rest of can return to our divinely ordained roles. God bless Sister Sarah and Sister Michelle for making such a sacrifice to redeem our sins.Can I get an amen?
Great. Wonderful. Original? May I borrow it?
I think I gotta give it to the evangelical Christian woman and her husband.
If the economy is not doing much MUCH better, it really won’t matter who you put up against the Democrats. They’ll win.
I don’t think it’s really Bachmann’s positions on issues that are going to break her. It’s that she seems crazy, temperamentally, and that Republican elites think she is crazy.
Bachmann is going to have trouble attracting any high level endorsements, she’s going to be creamed in New Hampshire, and, probably above all, she’s going to have trouble raising money.
Obama didn’t get as many endorsements as Clinton, but he had way more than Bachmann is going to have, and he also raised a ton of money.
Basically, I think Scott is right that the “mainstream” Republican Party is totally insane and ridiculously right wing on policy. At the same time, Michele Bachmann is considered crazy and extreme even by that insane right wing “mainstream Republican” contingent.
And I genuinely fail to see what advantages she has that Huckabee didn’t.
I would want evidence of this. Bachmann’s favorability ratings among Republicans are excellent, with no hint of “crazy lady” negatives you suggest.
There’s also the possibility that while rank and file Republicans like her just fine, the elites don’t. With Palin, for instance, there was an extended whispering campaign about her craziness and incompetence, clearly engineered by party elites, which destroyed her candidacy before it started. I have seen nothing of the sort deployed against Bachmann. The evidence that either rank and file Republicans or the party elite find Bachmann too crazy to support is not borne out in the evidence I see.
It’s possible that either prolonged exposure to Bachmann will drive up her unfavorables, or that the elite will deploy their Anti-Bachmann Device some time between now and January. But as of now, I don’t see why I should necessarily believe those things will happen.
Huckabee made some very tame remarks about economic justice. The rich should pay their fair share, we should do right by the least fortunate among us, that kind of stuff. While he never backed it up with any policy content, that tiny amount of rhetorical impurity destroyed his candidacy with business elites.
Huckabee’s fundraising numbers were astoundingly poor, and for this reason he made no inroads in states where he didn’t already have allies.
Bachmann is a perfectly orthodox rightist on economic issues, and is a wonderful fundraiser. Those are her two major advantages over Huckabee.
Hmm…trying to get a sense of elite Republican opinion on Bachmann. Here’s George Will:
Beyond that, looking at Republican discussion of her it seems to me that elites haven’t engaged deeply with the merits of the idea of her as nominee because none of them actually think she’ll be the nominee. Here’s Krauthammer, for instance, talking to Real Clear Politics:
If she does well, says Krauthammer, she has a good shot at the bottom of the ticket. It’s early yet. We’ll see what happens if she gets any real momentum.
If she does well, says Krauthammer, [a man whose prognostication skills are rivaled only by Bill Kristol], she has a good shot at the bottom of the ticket
Added some context.
Yeah, I’ll bet George F. Will wants to vitiate her assets…
I agree with this. The problem for Republicans today is that their basic party platform is totally insane. A good national Republican candidate would defend those positions without sounding insane. Bachmann does not.
I’m not sure how this will play out, but I think Bachmann has problems as a candidate and politician that will make it very difficult for her to win the nomination. Her policy positions are not really the problem, though.
I think Bachmann’s problem is, as it has been in the past, that she doesn’t dog whistle well and she doesn’t cover up the platform’s crazy well. It’s not that she’s crazy (though she is). Lots of crazy Republicans run without letting the crazy out in public. Bachmann doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that you’re not supposed to talk about straightforwardly about either the economic or religious elements of the Republican platform. So the party is constantly in danger of having to answer questions about their platform that they would really prefer remain obfuscated.
As things stand, the media regards the craziness of the Republican platform as ‘old news’ and ‘not a story’. The risk of Bachmann is that suddenly she’ll made it a story. To an extent, it’s the same problem that Paul Ryan’s budget had; everybody knows that Republicans want to kill Medicare, that’s old news. But an actual budget vote to kill it? That brings the entire issue back to media prominence. The Republican party’s policy positions are public opinion toxic waste, thus their constant effort to make national politics about something other than policy.
And I genuinely fail to see what advantages she has that Huckabee didn’t.
Well, unlike Huck, she doesn’t even pretend to give a shit about the poor, those lucky duckies. My recollection is that Huckabee strayed a bit from the “sucks to be you” Republican orthodoxy, at least rhetorically, and that scared a lot of Republican money away.
Huckabee actively worked to try to get a tax increase passed in Arkansas when he was governor. It’s more than just making a speech – he actually pushed to raise revenue to close a budget shortfall. Which is, of course, a responsible approach to take but one that is counter to the current GOP mantra of always finding spending to cut and never trying to raise revenue. Because of that he became a target of Grover Norquist and the Chamber and Norquist in particular spent a lot of effort to make sure that he never got near the Oval Office.
Bachmann has no such record of heterodoxy. She has a few of the die hards complaining about her record voting for Bush-backed spending proposals, but so far no one has seriously expended effort to try to bludgeon her with it. And if she prostrates before the right altars and recites the proper prayers towards tax cuts and spending cuts she’ll probably avoid their slings and arrows (especially if she starts to look like a good “compromise candidate” because their chosen boy Romney doesn’t have a shot in hell.)
She has a few of the die hards complaining about her record voting for Bush-backed spending proposals, but so far no one has seriously expended effort to try to bludgeon her with it.
Hell yeah. If Republicans start pulling on that thread, their whole world will come unraveled.
Why? They all know that Bush was a big-government Democrat. When they acknowledge that there actually WAS a president between Clinton and Obama.
Seriously though – if hypocrisy were any kind of barrier, none of the current candidates would be in the running. I suspect that Huckabee was more a victim of Norquist’s desire to prove that he was more important than the religious right – and thus more important to placate – than it was anything about Huckabee himself (though I could be wrong).
The Republican anti-tax position is a “seamless garment.”
An admission that there could be any circumstance that would justify any tax increase would put a hole in it.
Is there a high profile Republican besides Ted Nugent who doesn’t hate Mike Huckabee? If Gov. Huckabee (that is, before he ran for president or had a tv show) gave an alternate response to a State of the Union speech, would anyone notice?
Yes, this is what I was trying to get at in my first post. I recognize that Bachmann’s basic policy positions are well within mainstream Republican thought. It’s her general pattern of behavior that’s going to make her have a hard time not looking ridiculous. I can’t imagine that Mitt Romney is going to claim that lesbians tried to assault and/or abduct him from a ladies’ restroom.
I can’t imagine that Mitt Romney is going to claim that lesbians tried to assault and/or abduct him from a ladies’ restroom.
Mitt Romney Haunted By Past Of Trying To Help Uninsured Sick People
Even beyond the fact that he prays to the wrong Jesus, he’ll never survive writing the first version of Obamacare. Either of those is worse for the primary than a lesbian abduction story.
Perhaps. I’d still rather put money on Romney at 34 on Intrade than on Bachmann at 16.
why do you hate women?
My position is that the Republican Party elites always choose the nominee. I don’t think that we can extrapolate from one Senate race in a region that is only by dint of historical contingency a “state” to a national primary and suggest that the game has irrevocably changed. The elites may be terribly powerful and terribly evil, but they can’t exert too much control on a race that has very little media coverage and requires only a tiny amount of fundraising. In the national, though, you need tons of both, and they’ll get their man.
As Scott points out, though, there isn’t a clear candidate of the Republican elites in the field. Pawlenty’s continued stagnation and weak fundraising suggest he has not won over the party. Romney’s got health care. And Michele Bachmann has been fundraising well, campaigning effectively, and has no ideological red marks against her. We don’t have much evidence of party elites embracing Bachmann, but we don’t have much evidence of them rejecting her either.
My guess is that the next three months or so are critical for Bachmann. If she can run a competent national campaign, fundraise effectively, shmooze the necessary local and national power-brokers, and avoid making an ass of herself, Bachmann should start picking up elite support. She also needs Perry to stay out of the race (or crash and burn once in the race), and Pawlenty to keep flailing. I think that basically makes her a serious competitor, though she could fall apart in any number of ways between today and the first primaries.
Given the support Romney had from the GOP money and media I think he would’ve beaten McCain easily if it wasn’t for two factors.
(a) He decied to base his political career in Massachusetts. If he’d run in Michigan (or certainly Utah) he wouldn’t have had to give as much voice to liberal positions in his state campaigns. Massachusetts voting is dominated by a single metropolitan area in ways that most other states aren’t, even a state like Michigan with one large city.
(b) His personality disorder that prevents him from putting a decent gloss of bullshit over his record and from convincingly defending it on the substance, so he just comes across as an insincere pandering tool.
It’s a real stretch to think of John McCain’s nomination being the product of a predictable system. McCain and Romney slugged it out for weeks while Huckabee carried most of the South without being able to afford a plane ticket, ferchrissakes. That the eventual nominee ended up as “the guy who came in second last time” was almost coincidence. Does anyone really think the 2012 nominee will emerge from a similar situation?
Michelle Bachman isn’t an insurgent candidate. She’s absolutely no threat to the Republican elites, and has taken no positions that are at odds with their wishes and ideology.
Pat Buchanan opposed free trade deals. Mike Huckabee wanted to raise taxes. John McCain (2000 version) supported campaign finance reform and wandered off the reservation on other issues occasionally.
What has Michelle Bachman ever done to show the slightest disloyalty towards the movement conservative agenda?
The elites can reject someone for non-ideological reasons. too.
See Sarah Palin, destruction of, 2010-2011
I’m not saying Bachmann is Palin – on the key issue of whether she wants to do the work that is required of a presidential nominee it is very clear that she isn’t Palin – but the case generally seen against Bachmann’s prospects as a candidate is that she’s not electable enough, that she seems crazy, stuff like that. If Bachmann is to be rejected by the party elites, it will be for non-ideological reasons.
Also, did Huckabee ever actually support higher taxes nationally? He raised taxes in his state, but I thought he campaigned on the ludicrously regressive “Fair Tax”.
Sarah Palin became governor by defeating a corrupt Republican governor who was very close to the state’s business community in the primary, and took some very real steps to rein the oil industry’s free ride.
There actually was something to that “team of mavericks” line she used to use, you betcha. That, not looking crazy, is why the Republican establishment stuck a shiv in her.
I have to say, I’m just not buying it. Palin from her VP run on was a perfectly normal rightist Republican ideologically.
At the same time, Palin was running the most embarrassingly amateur political shop the world has ever seen, and she was destroying her favorability with moderates. She would have been an astoundingly bad candidate, she could have lost a very winnable election.
I think it’s much more likely that the knives came out for Palin because she was legitimately “un-electable” – that is, she could lose a winnable election – and not because of Alaskan heterodoxies.
Yeah, this. While Palin is obviously supremely talented at some things — I’d love to have people paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars to schlepp my family around the U.S. in an RV — she’s never even shown particular interest in running a focused, professional campaign outside the unique environment of Alaska. Bachmann is vastly, vastly more disciplined and polished a campaigner.
I think there’s a larger issue there–Palin has serious loyalty issues. She’ll turn on her allies (the Alaska GOP, McCain and his campaign) at the least provocation if it looks like it will be even slightly to her advantage, and maybe even if it doesn’t. That’s not a quality that builds elite confidence in her willingness to carry out their program.
Yes, excellent point. This too – Palin just wasn’t trustworthy.
OK, how is this different from the point I just made that you “Just didn’t buy,” about her history of unseating an incumbent Republican and turning against Republican aligned business interests?
Well, insofar as you were talking about her trustworthiness, then I misread you, I buy the point, and we agree.
I thought you were arguing that Palin was ideologically unacceptable to the elites, as shown in her turning against business interests in Alaska.
My argument, such as it is, has been that ideological concerns have not been the driving force behind the Destruction of Sarah Palin that party elites have engineered. I think it’s much more because of non-ideological issues – they think she’s a historically bad general election candidate, a barely competent politician, a terrible campaign leader, and she’s wildly untrustworthy to boot.
No, not ideology, teamwork.
She’s out for #1, and will shiv other Republicans and their buddies if it’s in her interest.
I doubt she ran against Murkowski and wrung some more money out of the oil companies because she’s an actual goo-goo.
Gotcha.
Then I misread you originally, and we generally agree.
Ding! I think this, combined with her inability to NOT LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT ON CAMERA and her inability to be born to a proper rich family, tanked Palin.
If she was a good team player, the other two “deficiencies” might have been overcome. After all, GWB always looked/sounded like a complete doofus on camera and had anger management issues to boot, but he came from the “right” family and always – always – showed himself to be looking out for the “right” people. And John McCain’s biggest problems came from him trying to position himself AGAINST Republican elites. It took him 8 years of groveling and bootlicking (and a field of unelectable candidates) to recover from that. Palin has shown that she’ll stab anyone in the back to make things better for herself, and elites don’t like it when their tools bite them.
Bachmann doesn’t look like she has that problem – yet. If it starts to look like she isn’t sufficiently loyal they’ll cut her off at the knees too. I have no doubt about that.
Cut Jonah Goldberg in half.
Sarah Palin is the half that watches made-for-Syfy movies and YouTube videos of little kids in Darth Vader costumes all day, then shows up at the office thinking it’ll impress everyone anyway by being so naturally brilliant and charistmatic.
Michele Bachmann is the half that realizes it’s kind of a dumbass and it had better ask Richard Brookhiser and Michael Ledeen which writers’ Wikipedia pages it should read and which it can merely name drop.
What has Michelle Bachman ever done to show the slightest disloyalty towards the movement conservative agenda?
Yeah, I’m wondering about this too…and frankly I wondered the same thing about Palin. Sure, the powers that be may not like their style, may not accept them as “one of us,” but in what way would either of them challenge the dogma in terms of actual policy?
The 2006 Alaska Republican gubernatorial primary.
She’s out for herself, not the party, and will mess with its leaders and funders if she decides it’s in here interest to do so.
Palin’s record and some of her positions were originally not that dogmatically conservative and her more fervent supporters didn’t seem to mind. Nor did she look like an idiot on camera at the national convention, where she was generally conceded to have knocked her speech out of the park, not an easy thing to do on that stage. She even survived the VP debate decently. Her interviews did her in.
Bachmann beat the low expectations game at the Republican debate, but it remains to be seen how she’ll stand up to closer inspection and sustained attacks. You just never know when she’ll come out with something goofy.
Who’s going to siphon support away from Bachmann? Seems to me that the more people in the race the more support Mittens stands to lose. Could he win head to head against her anywhere? Well, he didn’t set New Hampshire on fire last time, so that’s not the lock he’s counting on. Michigan? I’m not so sure. Utah, probably. He’s in trouble, and Bachmann is the most likely beneficiary right now.
No, the more people in the race, the more it favors Romney. White southern evangelicals won’t vote for a Mormon, but they’ll vote for an insane candidate. The more crazy candidates, the better things look for Willard.
Okay, sure, but who are the other crazy ones? What we’ve seen so far has looked like a variety of different anti-Romneys. I’d put Newt in the anti-Romney category for example. By my lights he’s as crazy as a bedbug, but Republicans seem to think he is a Serious Intellectual and he was Speaker of the House. I think Newt draws support away from Romney, just as T-Paw does. Cain probably hurts Bachmann, but it is hard for me to believe that he is likely to do much damage. Perry might yet jump in, and that would damage Bachmann, but it hasn’t happened, and the time for it to happen is drawing to a close.
If the flow of the big boy money is any indication, it doesn’t look as if Ms B is in the running this year so far. She needs to make some backroom deals before that would happen, so stay tuned. She can do a little side step with the best of them.
I have been working is Minnesota for more than 10 years and I can’t stress enough that no one should underestimate Bachmann. She is a consistent electoral winner. In 2000 she defeated a long time GOP State Senator in a primary. Dems said hurray and ran the COS of a sitting Congressman in a competitive seat. She won. In 2002, she was re-districted with an strong Dem incumbent State Senator. Dems said hurray, we can beat her. She won. In 2006, she creamed two strong GOP legislators for the Congressional endorsement. Dems said hurray and ran Patty Wetterling who was practically a MN saint. Bachmann won. In 2008, progressive donors flooded Bachmann’s opponent (a former Commissioner with Gov. Ventura) with cash. She won. In 2010, her opponent was s great moderate former State Senate Assistent Majority Leader. Bachmann won.
Anyone notice a theme?
Yes, she won a bunch of local races. If she even one a statewide race in MN, I would be more impressed. Palin won such a race. So, I’m not seeing it yet.
Her winning would be a major upset, even if she didn’t come off as a bit crazy (which again, is fine up to a point, but then it gets you in trouble). Past candidates won state office, were long-term Republican officials, ran for President before and so forth.
Too much shit is going on that is actually happening for this to be what I’m worrying about yet. And, you know what? If her not being taken seriously makes her the nominee, I really don’t see her beating Obama. Can’t see that happening. Less so than I see someone else doing it. Don’t care if she won a bunch of local races.
Bachmann’s races were local, but they were competitive races. Palin won a three-way race in a GOP state. Obamam beat Alan Keyes.
Palin and Obama getting breaks, as many do, doesn’t change the fact that she only won local races.
As a fellow Minnesotan, I have to politely disagree with you. I think you’re underestimating the massive national spending that has (I believe) salvaged three mediocre-to-bad campaigns. In 2006, the national GOP spent $3,000,000 on top of Bachmann’s own campaign spending to keep what should have been the safest Republican district in the state. In 2008, progressives nationwide may have adopted Elwyn Tinklenburg, but she still outspent him 3:2. In 2010, Bachmann spent $8 million in a house race just to outperform CPVI by 3 or 4 points, during a very Republican election cycle.
I would also suggest that Bachmann has been somewhat shielded from local media scrutiny by the nature of the Twin Cities media market. The Twin Cities tv market covers 1/2 the state, and includes parts of all 8 congressional districts. Bachmann has never run the most important or most watched race in her own local media market, much less statewide. She can come across as sane as long as a media outlet only has 30 seconds on Tuesdays between sports and weather to devote to her campaign appearances. When you get into longer-form coverage, she comes across poorly.
Obama’s 2004 race is really not the right comparison, as Obama won 70% of the vote in a statewide election. It may have been against a completely unelectable candidate, but he still managed to convince most Illinois moderates and a significant portion of Illinois Republicans to vote for him. To put it another way, could you see Bachmann winning a gubernatorial or senatorial race against Dean Zimmerman by a similar margin? Are you even sure Bachmann would win that race?
When she runs outside the hothouse environment of the northern suburbs, without a big spending advantage, stands up to serious media scrutiny, and manages to convince some moderates to vote for her, I’ll start seeing her as a viable presidential candidate.
I really don’t see her beating Obama. Can’t see that happening
When I look at statements like this, I remember thinking in 2008 that whoever won the Democratic nomination was going to be President. The fact the Obama was a great candidate that got him the nomination. Not being in the same party as George W. Bush (and then avoiding a spectacular flame-out/acutal skeleton in his closet) won him the general election. If Hilary Clinton had gotten the nomination, she’d have won.
The point of the above ramble, is that if the economy sucks in 2012, whoever gets the Republican nomination will have a major advantage. Bachmann looks crazy to us, but she’s a mainstream Conservative and that’s not going to keep right-leaning voters away from the polls. The economy being bad won’t make left-leaning voters vote for crazy-lady, but a bunch of them would probably “vote with their feet” and simply sit out the election.
If Bachmann can get the nomination, there’s a frighteningly high chance she could be President. All that has to happen is a major economic downturn. I’m certain the Republican know this. I look at the debt-ceiling negotiations and wonder just how much damage the GOP is actally willing to do get back in Whitehouse.
She doesn’t only look off to “us” as if only “left leaning” types have a problem with her.
Obama had a great shot in ’08 because his opponent was tired and made a desperation move.
When change was wanted in ’92 and the competition wasn’t just a tired old man with a nutty running mate (as compared to a safe nobody partially because Bush didn’t seem to be likely to die any time soon) but Bush, Clinton won a narrow plurality, helped by Perot splitting the vote.
Obama was a safe choice as was Clinton. Clinton was a Blue Dog. Obama a centrist with an added historic moment quality that helped some to vote for him. Bachman is very conservative. She is not someone so “safe” to middle of the road voters. Heck, even FDR was bland enough and the “right sort” so not to scare people.
So, it isn’t really the same. The RIGHT candidate can be dangerous. If things get so bad that Obama has a decent chance of losing, I’d want Bachman there since she is simply not a safe choice. More are likely to hold their noses. I can’t see her winning enough swing states.
But, we shall see in a bit over a year.
Clinton won a narrow plurality, helped by Perot splitting the vote.
Not to split hairs on a tangential point, but every serious piece of research I’ve seen suggests pretty strongly that Perot drew from both candidates about equally.
Not that this has any impact on your point at all, but it is a meme that I would just as soon see drowned in a bathtub.
Palin won a statewide race in a state with maybe 450,000 voters in it. There are plenty of counties in this country that are bigger than that: Alaska is a goddamn bumper-car. Just because Palin drove it around for half a term doesn’t make her a pro.
So how did she do it? She’s not exactly Barack Obama in her speeches.
Ground game? Lots of living rooms? Courting local opinion leaders?
Very good ground game and lots of volunteers. More importantly, when she wants she can come off as perfectly reasonable and moderate. She rallies the GOP faithfull with the red meat. But when independents tune into the debates they don’t see the bomb thrower, they see another version.
She rallies the GOP faithfull with the red meat. But when independents tune into the debates they don’t see the bomb thrower, they see another version.
Back-asswards block quoting. Now how the fnck did THAT happen?
Time for me to go home.
I’ve seen her twice on C-SPAN during those after hours speak to the camera speeches and she can give a good account of herself speaking without notes.
Bachmann won’t win for one reason and one reason only:
She was a “rev’noor.” A tax collector for the IRS? Really? Running in red states as a Republican?
She’s toast.
This is actually the most cogent argument against her victory I can think of.
“Revenuer” vs. “Mormon Obamacare architect”. There’s a chance that might actually be a tough call in a GOP primary race.
Nope, even I can see, that she can say that having seen the evil of the beast up close, she turned away from it.
Something about looking into the abyss and showing it that she is faaaaar crazier.
Not a problem.
A good conversion story is catnip for evangelicals.
Was not Thomas a tax collector?
Matthew was the tax collector.
I doubt it.
I have to get to these threads sooner.
I know, right? Those curve balls don’t hang forever.
Thomas was a physician. I remember that because Thomas actually had the good sense to want to see the wound. In the bible school version, this is supposed to reflect badly on “doubting Thomas”, but I thougt that was actually a pretty good thing for a physician to want to take a look at.
Which I’d agree with if it wasn’t for the fact that these are the same idiots of whom 45% are either still not convinced Obama is a natural born American citizen or Kenyan.
They hold grudges and are borderline pathologic about it.
Bachmann is a crazier Huckabee in a dress, and the money wing will crush her as they did him.
Romneycare will be a non-issue in the next election, as will the ACA. It’s the economy, stupid.
The biggest stumbling block Romney has is that he is a Mormon, but if he provides straw funding to enough crazy candidates the primary votes will be spread too thin for that to matter.
Come to think of it, when was the last time anyone saw a Republican go after the ACA in his public messaging?
They held one desultory repeal vote after the election, and I haven’t heard anything since.
The ACA will be a non-issue in the next general election…but not in the Republican primary.
“If you can site another frontrunner whose most famous policy accomplishment involves legislation that most of the party now considers a fundamental threat to the country, I’d love to hear it. ”
John McCain, of McCain-Feingold fame?
M-F is deemed a threat to the party, not the country, by many in the party. If they were honest, many in the party probably hate campaign finance as it now is.
The health law is probably different, at least to the degree it is a major success for the Democrats, which makes it bad for their opposition. Since it is a fairly conservative approach, honestly, I don’t know if “most of the party” really think it is a threat to “the country” either, though some probably do.
But, more in the party probably see it as a threat to the party, which is enough.
I’d edit this to say that to the degree Obama made campaign finance an issue (the tedious Alito thing etc.), it too is a political issue. But, some speeches and all is one thing. ACA was a major piece of legislation and a fail on the Republican side (its conservative nature is a success, of sorts, but Rs can’t rest on that). People were gleefully saying esp. with Scott Brown, it was doomed. It was not.
Tom Delay realized that a Medicare drug benefit was going to pass, and did what an intelligent politician does when it’s clear the tide is against him: led the charge and made it as friendly to his side as he could, because if he and his party just blocked it, they’d be thrown out of power and something even worse (from their perspective) would have gone through.
That’s exactly what Mitt Romney did as governor of Massachusetts with universal health care. He knew he couldn’t block a bill if the Democratic legislature passed one, so he took the lead to get the best deal he could.
But there are a lot of Republicans who are unable to wrap their heads around the concept. Those crazy Republicans, who can’t understand how anything other than completely shutting down any political development they don’t want, no matter the underlying political situation, can be the best thing for their side. What a bunch of loons, huh?
Campaign finance is a marginal issue, particularly when it was clear that the Supreme Court was going to gut it. Not remotely comparable to health care.
Hell, McCain-Feingold was dead letter by 2008, given the growth of “independent” expenditures.
Bachmann = Hitler?
This time may be different. When the elites and money people lose control of the party and/or nation, they don’t initiate or inspire a right-wing populism, but they do always have a choice whether to sign on. My question was always about whether the Koch’s started the Tea-Party or jumped on the bandwagon.
This is important. The bottom-up versus top-down is the critical difference between authoritarianism and fascism.
I will still stay home in 2012.
Staying home will help how exactly?
How can whether the Koch’s started the Tea-Party or jumped on the bandwagon matter if they eventually lose control? Either way, I actually agree with your concern. What I don’t understand is how you can offer that equality and then plan on staying home in 2012. When did political desperation turn you into a nihilist?
Everyone thought it would be novel to have a black president. Yeah, we could proudly show the world that we’re in the 21st century, progressive, etc.
I think having a woman president would help our standing in the world. As it is, there are several nations that have had or currently have female leaders.
Why not?
Couldn’t get much worse, anyway.
Apparently, this is how the proprietors of this blog want their comment threads to look.
Dear blog proprietors,
I will moderate the comments here for free. Anything so that I don’t have to read crap like these “Bill Clinton” posts.
Sincerely,
Walt
Here’s a vote for “registration only.”
Seconded.
How difficult can this be? Every single comment I’ve ever written has come from the same IP address.
But you have a life.
See also.
They could try deleting individual comments from “me” that don’t come from this address.
Yes, but the troll could spoof that address…and then where would you be?
You’d be fucked, that’s where.
Oh good, Normy has decided to be me.
Beats being him, I guess.
Joe,
Indeed, we do; but against trolls who have *much* more time on their hands than the blog owners, this is a strategy of limited effectiveness. Blanket IP pans don’t work against spoofers (although, in fairness, Normy/Hat leaves about seven comments in the spam file for every one that makes it onto the page).
Letting a third party moderate the comments is, I’m sorry to say, a non-starter; I’m not handing the keys of the blog to someone I don’t know, no matter how much I might like their comments. I also don’t care for registration schemes.
We will continue to delete/ban the comments that we see, but I’m pretty dedicated to the notion that I’ll live a happier life if I spend less time tracking down Norm than he does trolling this blog.
“someone I don’t know”
So no one in the LGM crew knows someone with a bit of time on their hands, so some stranger would have to come in?
Joe,
I don’t know why you think anyone at LGM would be interested in burdening any of our friends with the responsibility of tracking down trolls…
The whole situation does make me kind of sad. I’ve been reading the blog from the start and always liked the comment sections, but they have been really awful of late. That said, I pretty much agree with Rob. I’m pretty sure I could come up with better uses of my time than trying to prevent idiots from making asses of themselves by commenting on this blog.
The garden-variety trolling is one thing…the troll of many names has become familiar enough to the regular commenters here that he’s generally ignored. But sockpuppetry of other commenters is something else entirely, and it could very quickly render the comments on this blog useless. I don’t know what to suggest, but you’re obviously dealing with someone who’s determined to wreck this place completely.
although, in fairness, Normy/Hat leaves about seven comments in the spam file for every one that makes it onto the page
Wow.
But sockpuppetry of other commenters is something else entirely, and it could very quickly render the comments on this blog useless.
I’m going from memory, but I seem to recall that at one point, you could see all of a commenter’s other comments, even if they changed nyms. Is that feature still available?
I’m going from memory, but I seem to recall that at one point, you could see all of a commenter’s other comments, even if they changed nyms. Is that feature still available?
I’m pretty sure that was a feature associated with the old JS-Kit system that everyone hated. I suspect that it is no longer available in the current comment system.
I know Making Light does this.
They require an email address and attach the comments to that, not the nym iirc.
Some of us post from different places. That doesn’t quite work. The spam is tedious all the same.
I agree with Walt. Elevate those you trust to eliminate the nonsense.
Someone clearly is deleting his posts, so thank you.
For the sake of completion, could you zap this one as well? While not especially trolly, that was Normy, not me.
Thanks again.
Does having a Gravatar help to immunize one from imposture?
I don’t believe it, mainly because I remember reading the identical argument about how a moderate like McCain could not win the nomination last time, and half-way believing it. The media loves the Tea Party, so we hear about them all the time, but there’s a Silent Majority of Republican primary voters who aren’t so excitable. Bachmann is the Republican Howard Dean. (Though she really is a radical, while Dean was just perceived as one.) If she looks like she’s going to win, the knives will come out, and the moderates who haven’t been paying attention will be spooked away.
Only the chump media believed McCain was moderate. The Republican elite knew how he’d voted, and don’t kid yourself for a minute that promises weren’t made and rings weren’t kissed. That maverick stuff was a good image, good for business, but that has never been who he was.
I’m sure Romney is slobbering over those very same rings now.
I think the core of Scott’s argument is very correct. The GOP has turned so hard to the right in the past few years that Bachmann just isn’t that extreme. I think she has a real shot to win the nomination – the “women are subordinate” Christian crowd won’t like her, but that crowd has to be smaller than the “Mormonism yucky” crowd.
The only thing that might sink her is her IRS work. But at the same time, she’s saying it was a teaching moment for her and proved to her that we need to implement far right tax policy. The right loves their teaching moments.
Better than a teaching moment – it is a conversion story. And it is a lot less silly than dabbling in witchcraft.
I feel really special. My offhand smart-ass comment is the subject of a whole post!
Of course the Republican Party isn’t a static entity, but neither is it absent some historical trends. If this nomination process bears any resemblance to past nominations, the party is unlikely to nominate someone who didn’t get a ticket punched in a prior presidential contest, and it’s unlikely to nominate somebody who’s not the early-on frontrunner. The GOP has nominated a frontrunner, not a come-from-nowhere insurgent in every election in the last 100 years, with the possible exceptions of Harding in 1920 and Wilkie in 1940. Since 1940, with the exception of Bush and Eisenhower, they’ve nominated people who have run before. Bush and Eisenhower had some things going for them that Bachmann doesn’t have. My point is, the GOP nominating process does not historically produce surprising outcomes. Now, Romney is a pretty crappy frontrunner, so maybe Bachmann can beat him. But Dole was a pretty crappy frontrunner, too, and he got nominated.
Now, Ron Paul. I used him as an example of a candidate with some buzz who couldn’t get the nomination. I could just as easily have used Fred Thompson as an example. You can’t say Thompson had atypical views. In every cycle there’s a candidate that people get jazzed up as an alternative to the frontrunner, and the frontrunner gets the nomination anyway. I think it’s more likely that Bachmann will go this route than that she will get the nomination.
Sure, the sample size is small, but there have only been 44 presidents. Forty-four isn’t a statistically big number.
There’s an additional alternative – no sane person *wants* to recognize Crazy Eyes as a serious candidate, as it means we’re an election away from having a delusional lunatic with dreams of a Christian theocracy in the White House…
Bachmann will not be the
GOP nominee.
Perry has a good shot if he gets in.
They are equally nuts but he is a sitting Gov. she is a congressperson and a woman. That makes her at best qualified to be VP. The long knives are already out for Bachmann. I think it is noteworthy that the John Wayne Gacy gaffe story was broken by the Washington Times. The establishment GOPers are in hiding but by no means powerless. They will ultimately manage the process to ensure that Bachmann is eliminated. She is very vulnerable and will not bear close scrutiny. And close scrutiny is what she is going to get if she appears to have real electoral strength.
As the presidential nominee, she would be a disaster, I think but as a vp for Romney, she could be a formidable opponent. Much better than Palin was for McCain. I think a Romney/Bachmann ticket could be deadly.
If Perry’s in, I think it’ll be a head to head contest between him and Romney. Winner is very uncertain, imo, but I’m afraid it will be Perry.
Perry’s not going to be the nominee. He won’t win Iowa. Romney came in second last time, Bachmann has ties to Iowa. He’s not going to beat either of them there. Romney has ties in New Hampshire, and if Bachmann does well in Iowa, she’ll have some momentum. Then it goes to Nevada. Romney got 51% in Nevada last time. By the time the contest goes to South Carolina, Perry will already be cloaked in loser-stink. He’s not going to magically beat front-runners in South Carolina after losing three in a row.
I think it’s unlikely that Bachmann will get the nomination. I think it’s less likely that Bachmann gets the nomination if Perry runs. I think it’s less likely still that Perry gets the nomination. If Perry gets in, he just siphons off Bachmann-friendly whackadoodles. I see Perry as a Connally-esque failure.
Here’s the thing: if Iowa and New Hampshire get written off in the press as not really counting because there were “home town boys,” that isn’t necessarily true.
That’s what happened in 1992: Tom Harkin won Iowa and Beloved Lowell Icon Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire, and they were just written off as unimportant.
Sometimes I think the best thing for the left in this country would be a Bachmann presidency. Seems to me that the Republicans can only be stopped by encouraging them to go too far too fast. Slowing them down just long enough for people to get used to the new status quo and forget they ever had the rights/benefits, etc. they lost in the process does not seem to have been a successful strategy.
Heightening the contradictions is a bad strategy.
Nach Hitler, uns!
That was my Godwin there.
Heightening the contradictions is a bad strategy.
Seconded. And I say that as someone who used to believe in it wholeheartedly. But eventually I came to realize that “Let’s see how much worse it has to get before people wake up” is an attitude that can only come from a place of privilege. Actual living human beings will have to bear the brunt of that “worse,” and it’s unconscionable to wish for more human suffering in the furtherance of some loftier goal.
I certainly don’t wish for it to get “worse” – I just don’t see any way of avoiding it or any hope for turning it around.
I agree its an attitude that can only come from a place of privilege, but I also just don’t any viable path in a different direction.
If things will get worse (and I think they will), I hope they get worse as slowly as possible.
Ralph Nader would like to talk to you about how great the Bush Presidency was for the left.
That’s a good point. I admit my sentiment comes mostly from a personal need to give up what feels like banging my head against a wall.
I probably would have voted for Nader in a blue state. I lived in Missouri at the time and voted for Gore, which I must admit I have never regretted.
I admit my sentiment comes mostly from a personal need to give up what feels like banging my head against a wall.
I totally understand that feeling, Emily, in case that wasn’t clear. And it’s not like I have a better idea. But if 8 years of Bush/Cheney wasn’t enough to consign the Republicans to the political wilderness for several generations, I shudder to think what it would take.