Republican primary voters may be just stupid enough to believe Gov. Palin-in-Pants’ bogus electability argument. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The stupidest, most grotesquely corrupt GOP nominee since the Gilded Age (and possibly before) could do wonders for Hillary’s coattails.
Walker/Carson '16. I’am ordering my stick now.
Sadly, this is how the Right and many pollsters think. They believe this is proven by the two Obama elections, due to his overwhelming support from the AA community. It was viewed as, finally a black man in the White House will make it better for the black community.
Look behind the curtain: it is the basis for the GOP disenfranchisement movement, including the gutting of the Voting Rights act and State by State voter ID nonsense, to ensure that this can never happen again and the GOP removes an obstacle to the White House.
Let’s not forget, the article makes passing reference to it but some of the comment go further into on the GOP side, that “purity” is also an afliction on the Democrat/left side. This is what’s fueling a lot of Sanders support. He is for a vocal few the non-Hillary siboleth. If I hear one more insipid “Hillary’s Wall Street backers” piffery, I think I’ll puke in my soup.
And this I totally agree with. Thanks for expressing it so eloquently.
This all sounds good in a sensible world but the Republican Party isn’t that so this reasonable analysis is far from really reasonable. How does anyone calculate crazy? How can anyone figure lunacy, or hatred or ignorance. These things are as big or are the biggest factors of the right wing base, read voters, and they are castles built on sand. Totally unreliable IOW.
The nuts will flip on a dime for practically no reason at all so even though a somewhat firm grasp of their leaning or position this week might actually be achieved, next week is a whole new world.
It’s highly complimentary to suggest that the ‘current’ Repub voting base is predictable in any way at all or that they can be weighed and measured to any degree. It’s the same as picking sports teams that will win the championship because they have a prettier uniform, luck is as big a factor in your guessing/calculation as anything is.
History suggests Bush will be the establishment pick despite the growling base and the letdown they will endure yet again, and loss I might add. The colorful rest will occupy the loons and keep them amused while the Party does what the Party wants.
All the rest is too much and breaks the Party into too many camps. I’ll take camp Bush and go with the odds and I’ll guarantee that the, I want this and I want that, supposedly conservative base will not only fall in line, they will tumble over their tin foiled ball caps and confederate flags to hop on board their forced choice of JebBush.
The majority of the Republican voting base is rabid, but they aren’t making the big decisions in the end, the rich aholes that they adore are.
What’s the polling question? I don’t see any difference in the six photos!
Which of these is less dense?
Oh! The sixth, obviously. I was slow.
There may even be Ben Carson supporters who assume he’d break the Democratic monopoly on African-Americans.
You made a funny.
Similarly, if Hillary Clinton can’t “put away” Bernie Sanders in the early states, then assumptions about her general election strength could unravel.
This is nonsense. The important electability question is indeed who can win the general but there the question is not whether Hillary is vulnerable on the left but how vulnerable either Hillary or Bernie is on the right.
The Donald’s Surgeon is an artiste!
An entertaining catalog of the uses of “electability.” Are we to conclude that the word is nonsense, the concept too vague and various to be of serious service except as an empty debating point? The headline suggests that; the article doesn’t reach a conclusion.
The election of W. show anyone can win the presidency. Nobody currently running is less smart, or less articulate. Every single one passes the “electability” bar, if he did, and he did.
The RNC and almost all of the GOP’s growing field of POTUS wannabes regard Trump to be a boil on the backside of the GOP – and yet Trump has been polling well with their target electorate.
Therein lies the problem.
Once again, the Republican Party’s unenviable task will be to thread a ‘political needle’ – find a candidate irrational and inflammatory enough to get nominated by placating the ideologically self-serving corporate-controlled conservative base as well as the homophobic extremists of the Religious Right, the racist Confederacy-loving white Southerners, the xenophobic Latino-bashing anti-immigrant crowd, and the secession-happy Tea Party loons … yet rational enough to satisfy the rest of America in order to win in the general election.
Good luck with that.
A major unspoken factor in the 2000 election was the combination of much of the electorate thinking the country could run on autopilot and the POTUS didn’t matter. The economy was still seen as infallible (the tech bubble pop hadn’t really hit home yet)… no real wars… and the “no real difference between the parties” meme gained currency.
This. I would make one adjustment… Walker pandered left to get elected in Wisconsin and will try the etch a sketch routine if he wins the Republican primary.
He is personally repulsive to me so I have a hard time objectively assessing his chances.
That would be none other than Fredrick Douglass in 1888. Shirley Chisolm would hold that honor for the first major party black candidate in 1972.
Seems like you’ve reversed the descriptions for Graham and Fiorina.
you raise good points. Personally, I think Walker’s not “the one.” He’s playing a Midwest-roots strategy, which may flop in places like Alabama and Nevada. He probably won’t do well in certain key big states, like Florida and Texas. And the Koch network hasn’t fully committed to a candidate yet and could withdraw its support at any time.
But the primal id in the GOP is unpredictable. It’ll be fun to watch.
Pass the popcorn.
You are misunderstanding the “electability” use here. Its not a discussion or argument that anyone can be elected if they meet the very low bar of qualifying under the Constitution. Its an argument put forth by many candidates in nearly every primary, which is, “Vote for me, cause I can beat the opposition and the other guy can’t”. Like many arguments put forth during elections, its not necessarily based on facts (though it tends to be strengthened or weakened down the road when serious polling data comes in to support or discredit it), its just a way to woo your party.
And one of Mr. Kilgore’s points here is that it comes in many guises, as well as that it is often refuted by the counter argument, “Vote for me, because I won’t bow to pressure from people we disagree with”…and less compelling argument, except for activists within the party.
Kilgore’s premise is that Walker is presenting both arguments, not that this is the definition of “electability” for all time.
Brilliant! This gives E-jeb a whole new meaning.