Ask, and ye shall receive! Last Thursday, I gleefully wished out loud for Ron Paul to get his moment in the GOP spotlight:
And how ’bout that Ron Paul at 18%!?! Most of the other nutberger candidates have had their fling with the pole position…Ron Paul should get his shot, too. And to top the whole thing off like a layer of creamy chocolate frosting, we should get Rick Santorum [the] next week.
And looky here:
Newt Gingrich’s campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has now taken the lead in Iowa. He’s at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich….
[…]Paul’s ascendancy is a sign that perhaps campaigns do matter at least a little, in a year where there has been a lot of discussion about whether they still do in Iowa. 22% of voters think he’s run the best campaign in the state compared to only 8% for Gingrich and 5% for Romney.
Romney is so unlikable that GOP voters can’t give him credit for running a persistent, reasonably professional, and not overly negative campaign in Iowa?!? Huh.
I’ll sure miss Newt as the front-runner. His reckless quirkiness, monster ego, and his deliciously rich past make him a dream opponent for Obama. Ron Paul makes a dream opponent, as well, but he has zero chance of becoming the Republican nominee. Seriously…if Newt crashes and burns, Mitt Romney is the only plausible alternative, and a lot of Republicans will be holding their noses supporting him.
(Seeing all the nose-holding, Mitt will, no doubt, assume they soiled themselves, throw ’em on the roof of the car, hose them down, and drive boldly onward to the general election.)
Yeah, I’ll miss Newt, for sure. But a Ron Paul win in Iowa has an acute payoff: GOP Mayhem! Don’t believe me? Let’s ask the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney, who recalls Pat Buchanan’s 1996 victory in the New Hampshire primary:
“It was awful,” Buchanan told me this week when I asked him about his few days as the nominal GOP front-runner. “They come down on you with both feet.”
The GOP establishment that week rallied to squash Buchanan. Just after New Hampshire, Gingrich’s hand-picked group of GOP leaders, known as the Speaker’s Advisory Group, met with one thing on their minds, according to a contemporaneous Newsweek report: “How to deal with Buchanan.”
No doubt, Ron Paul will be pummeled by his own party. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past them to start first thing Monday morning to head off any threat of a Ron Paul win in Iowa.
The most intriguing possibility out of all this is that Rick Santorum might get a brief stint as the next not-Mitt Romney. That would be awesome for a couple of reasons. First, every time the Republicans rally around a new not-Mitt Romney only to experience an abrupt case of buyer’s remorse, it diminishes the Republican primary process and, in particular, the Romney campaign’s credibility. That’s right…Republicans are engaging in an internal battle that can be described as (if I’m allowed to engage in a bit of hyperbole) mutual assured destruction.
A Santorum rally could also be awesome because of the timing of the Iowa caucuses. If the Republicans take out Paul before the Iowa caucuses, and Santorum hits the wave just right, he could actually take Iowa. And that would be an exquisite New Year’s gift.
I don’t know about you, but I’m just about out…so it’s off to the store tomorrow to stock up on more popcorn.
Romney the inevitable nominee? Yeah, logic would so dictate; but you may be underestimating the stupidity of the GOP base, Darryl. Personally, I think there’s at least 1 chance in 5.5 they’ll nominate Kim Jong Un a/k/a Dear Successor.
If it seems I’m mocking Republican voters, all I can say is, I’m trying to.
In addition, we need something like a KJU win in Iowa so the stock market will tank. Damn stocks keep going up when I’m trying to buy ’em! Fuck that, let’s get a (temporary) earth-rattling disaster going here, so I can buy stocks cheap.
Well I guess the right wing base bought Glenn Beck’s BS about Gingrich being “progressive”..
Or were too embarrassed by his silly antics over the years.
Now we’ll all be beating up on kooky grandpa Ron Paul..
Damn I even agree with the old coot on a couple points.
YLB @4, on Ron Paul:
You may agree with (some of) his conclusions, but not the “reasoning” behind them.
For instance, he opposed the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars not out of concern for misplaced aggression against Saddam and not out of seeing the futility of fighting an indigenous liberation force in its own territory. No, it’s because he’s a strict isolationist who dislikes the fact that the wide oceans no longer permit us the luxury of ignoring all international issues. It’s not just that he’s still mentally in the 18th century … in fact, his views are more feudal (say, 14th century) than colonial.
He’s a strict constructionist of (his bizarre misinterpretations of) the Constitution, as slavishly sure of its inerrancy as any Christian fundie regards (his bizarre misinterpretations of) the Bible.
Every once in a while, the outcome of his craziness bears a superficial resemblance to the outcome of well-reasoned progressive ideas. But don’t be fooled by those occasional examples.
5 – How about his war on drugs policy positions?
But I get your point, dig beneath the surface and you generally find the eccentric old grandpa who we all know and despite his kookiness love just a little bit.
That’s a pretty good description of RP.
@6:
How about his war on women policy positions?
The guy’s a “libertarian” only when it fits into his crazy preconceptions. Where’s the “small government” in his insistence on invasive government interference with what women do with their wombs?
This morning I was hearing a description of how much Ron Paul hates Gingrich. It seems that Ron Paul wouldn’t join the Gingrich chorus when Gingrich was Speaker. So when they talked a Texas Democrat into switching to the Republican Party in the mid-1990’s, Gingrich promised to put all the party leadership into supporting him in a primary contest to take Ron Paul’s seat. Ron Paul has never forgiven Gingrich for that.
But that does bring up an interesting question. Who in the world would be a VP nominee with Ron Paul? I can’t see any of the current Republican candidates agreeing to play second-fiddle to him, or that he would accept them in any event. My guess is he would pick a real unknown who’s almost as crazy as he is.
Maybe Fred Thompson would agree to be Ron Paul’s running mate. They could wake him up every time he needed to say something, and he could repeate a few memorized lines and then go back to sleep.
Dave Ross had an insightful commment this morning. Based on experiences from his run for the House, he explained that very few people make up their minds based upon debates. What you need are motivated people on the ground, a good organization which makes sure that your supporters go to the polls (or mail in their ballots). For the most part, elections are about which side turns out to support their candidates, and which ones sit at home.
With that in mind, the polling has to be taken with a considerable grain of salt. The Republican candidate who gets people to the caucuses in Iowa, or to the polls in New Hampshire, are the ones who will come out on top.
I don’t see Gingrich with that kind of organizing base in Iowa. He just hired and fired his campaign coordinator there in the space of six days. Only Romney seems to have built an organization to go the long haul to the nomination.
8 – Yep, that makes no sense at all.
He’d be a disastrous President.
Newt is on the attack again, but this time he is launching a “44 city” bus tour in Iowa, and his talking point is, well, that everyone is being mean to him.
That’s typical Newt – a man who has made his career out of non-stop negative campaigning, looking straight into the camera, and expressing his outrage at all the – negative campaigning. Over his entire career, Newt avoided having a real debate about issues, substituting instead name-calling and creating straw men he could easily knock down in debates with himself. Now he really wants to talk about ideas? Really, Newt.
One conservative pastor in Iowa said last week that his problem with Newt was that he demands forgiveness for his sins, claiming repentence. But he says that Newt should first run for lower offices again, and prove over time that he is a changed man and reliable, before he should be trusted with higher office. Instead, he swings right for the bleachers, seeking the highest job in the nation.
Of course, Newt probably realizes that this may be his last time at bat. He’s not getting any younger, and neither is his wife. He might be able to hold out for another year or so of campaigning, perhaps four more if he wins the Presidency, but he’s gonna trade her in for a newer model shortly thereafter. If he doesn’t make it this time around, his wife will be about fifty by the time he runs again in 2016, and he probably gets shudders just thinking about that.
Link for the above story: Newt Gingrich To Launch 44-City Iowa Bus Tour To Rebut ‘Reprehensible’ Attacks
By the way – does Iowa REALLY have 44 cities? I suspect that hit has a handful of cities and a bunch of incorporated towns that pretend to be cities.
Well, no matter.
If you can’t vote for Newt, you can buy any number of his blowhard books.
Regarding Ron Paul, while he makes sense regarding the US’ ridiculous foreign wars, bases and illegal occupations, the guy has a long history of sexist and racist failings.
Also too, his signature expertise in ‘economics’ is laughable.
But hey, Clowns gotta eat and the driver of the Clown Car gets the most food.
Sarah Palin yesterday claimed in an interview that “there is still time” for someone else to enter the race. She was teasing, of course, and refused to speculate as to whether she might run. She might be keeping it open for someone like Trump to mount a third-party ticket.
Can you imagine a Trump/Palin ticket? What a circus! But it would bleed off votes from whichever crackpot gets the GOP nomination.
Okay, heres the fight ticket:
* For the Democrates, it’s Obama/Biden.
* For the Republicans, it’s Paul/Bachman.
* For the Tea Party Circus, it’s Trump/Palin.
15-minute cage match, no rules. Last man (or woman) standing wins.
Biden gets tossed out of the cage in the first minute by Bachman.
Trump calls for time-out after his hair gets mussed. Everyone ignores him and tears into him, he’s lucky to escape with his life.
Palin and Bachman square off, and it’s a terrible sight to behold.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul and Obama attempt to bore the other to death with lectures on Constitutional theory. When that only puts the audience to sleep, they get serious. Paul’s a serious scrapper, but Obama’s young and in shape, and soon they are bringing in the wheel share for Paul.
Palin and Bachman are still fighting. Obama is watching, and smiling.
Eventually both Palin and Bachman have to be seperated and taken out on stretchers. Obama wins by default.
The Tea Party thinks he cheated – having brains, and using them, is offensive to their standards. The Secret Service removes the President as things get real ugly in the audience.
@17
Biden’s a scrapper. Bachmann’s all bark and no bite.
I really think Ron Paul is going to win Iowa. However the media is going to pretend it didn’t happen. Like the first couple of weeks of Occupy Wall Street. They will interview Mitts and Spewt and ask what their next moves will be. They’ll interview Sarah Palin. But no interviews with Ron. Fox News will go back to the “War on Christmas”.
@ 18
She’d have to ask her husband for permission first.
Ron Paul is correct: we should end the American empire by removing all our troops from all foreign lands. We cannont afford this empire any longer. Israel will have to take care of Israel, and South Korea will have to take care of South Korea. We have spent enough blood and treasure for other countries to avoid having a military appropriate to their individual security needs.
Ron Paul is also correct as the the War on Drugs: it’s time to end it. You have contro over your own body, not the government.
Keynesian economics doesn’t work.
Fad da, fad da, fa da deetin botin dotin raddi daddi boom! Obama, Obama, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!