For any analyst, covering this GOP Presidential Nominee race is a humbling experience. Almost everybody – myself included – has made bad predictions. It has been so wildly unpredictable and erratic experiencing swings up and down in the polls for almost every candidate. While the eventual winner, Mitt Romney, has long
Continue readingTag: 2012 GOP Nomination
Progressive Proselytizing: How the GOP candidates choose who to attack
Ron Paul: There has been a lot of buzz recently about the fact that Ron Paul, while viscously attacking his other opponents, seems to give Ron Paul a free pass. And vice versa. ThinkProgress has a count which shows that Ron Paul has, despite 20 debates and 39 attacks on other
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Rick Santorum’s us vs them mentality
During the Arizona CNN Republican debate, Rick Santorum passionately defended two items: earmarks and his voting on No Child Left Behind. The way he defended them demonstrates his hyperpartisan nature. Earmarks (which allow members in Congress to earmark specific projects for spending in larger bills opposed to letting the executive
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Iran and the CNN Arizona GOP Presidential Debate
CNN Arizona GOP Debate As it often has been in the past, Iran was the principle foreign policy topic discussed in what may well be the last GOP Presidential Debate that we have to suffer through. If it is possible, the hyperbolic, warmongering rhetoric reached a new low. Additional debate
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Rick Santorum signals the declining relevance of the Tea Party
Rick Santorum’s recent rise to the number one contender spot versus perennial front-runner Mitt Romney has frequently been described as simply being the last in line of a long list of not-Romney flavor of the months. As in, there is nothing particularly special or meaningful in his recent and likely
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Romney’s lack of concern for poor people
Campaign coverage often likes to jump from gaffe to gaffe as if this (and poll data) is the only relevant thing to talk about in a Presidential race. Perhaps it is just a function of the overly polished, trite vacuousness of the rest of their tightly controlled campaigns that the
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Thoughts on the GOP South Carolina Debate
Despite the GOP nomination contest being all but over, there is still some entertainment value to the sports team contests that are the seemingly never ending debates. What follows is a few miscellaneous thoughts on the most recent South Carolina debate. Attacking Romney’s Bain Record: Following a couple weeks of attacks
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The SuperPAC charade is getting tiresome
Can we please drop this SuperPAC ruse already? It is the first election season post Citizens United and so these new political groups are allowed to collect unlimited, undisclosed amounts of money from people and corporations alike and spend it in the elections. Only there is a technical catch: they
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: On Obama’s rich vs poor framing
Since 2010, Obama has made a very deliberate shift to increase the rhetoric and policies with regards to a rich vs poor framing. It has always been a part of his message, but it really ramped up in intensity starting with the deal to extent the Bush Tax cuts for
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The appeal, and vacuousness, of sports team politics
Last Tuesday, the second game of the playoffs took place in New Hampshire with front runner Massachusetts Mitt leading the pack going into game three in South Carolina. For six months of the regular season the candidates squares off again and again and again, jostling for position in the rankings going into the playoffs. It
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The Left and Ron Paul
There is an ongoing debate amoung the left on how to view Ron Paul. Should we like him or hate him, support him or reject him? The fundamental distinction in my mind is between viewing Ron Paul as sometimes useful in the propagation of certain ideas in the larger political discussion, and between finding Ron
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The biggest loser in Iowa: the Tea Party
Among the Iowa winners were Mitt Romney (establishment candidate), with Rick Santorum (Evangelical candidate) trailing by 8 votes, then Ron Paul (Libertarian candidate). Trailing significantly was Newt Gingrich, an old guard brand all to himself. Where then was the Tea Party candidate? For several decades, there has been an establishment
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Iowa ABC GOP Nomination Debate Analysis
The following is an assortment of unordered commentary on the people, politics and policies from the Iowa ABC/Yahoo GOP nomination debate. Gingrich vs Romney et al: This was the first debate where Gingrich was now a clear front runner and it showed by many people going after him much as
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: A note on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism
GOP front runner Mitt Romney In the GOP presidential nomination contest, the long standing front-runner, Mitt Romney, has never managed to really break out of the low to mid twenties in national polls, and now faces considerable competition for the nomination from a surging Newt Gingrich. One problem for him
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: GOP Leadership Contest: The Likeability Factor
Pundits seem to love to profess multitudes of differing explanations for the see-sawing GOP leadership contest that has seen, respectively, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich surge to the front of the pack in challenging Mitt Romney. These alternative explanations range from the simple to the complex,
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: GOP Foreign Policy Debate: Iran, Covert Ops, and Sanctions
While most of the CBS GOP Presidential Nomination debate on foreign policy in South Carolina was predictably following the standard script, there was one issue that somewhat surprised me. That is, the extent to which multiple candidates were very empha…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Obama, Cain, and racism
When Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th President of the United States, the simple fact that he is black was itself symbolic, momentous and meaningful. As Obama was a member of the Democratic party, there remained some question as to whether a bla…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Occupy Wall Street vs the GOP leadership contest
Since the 2010 midterms, the dominant topic in American domestic politics has been on deficit reduction. The rhetoric built up for a while and then culminated in the twin crises over the potential government shut down and then the raising of the debt c…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Herman Cain’s motivations for running
In a leadership contest like the GOP one that has multiple contenders who have nearly zero chance of winning, it is worth investigating various possible other motivations they might have beyond actually becoming President. As it turns out, there is qui…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Thoughts on the Nevada GOP debate
This post is a collection of miscellaneous thoughts regarding the Nevada GOP nomination debate. There is no particular order or theme.
Cain and 9-9-9:
In the previous New Hampshire debate, just after Herman Cain’s ascendancy in the polls, he sp…