Gingrich Might Drown in Clinton's Sugar

In my last blog entry, I raised the issue of Vice President Joe Biden serving as President Barack Obama’s trump card as far as blue-collar relations go. In this entry, we’ll take a closer look at why Obama is still positioned to win next year’s election and why the Republicans are failing.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight recently wrote about why Obama is likely to be a one-termer. He faced some opposition from Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, who claimed that Silver’s conclusion is wrong: emphasizing the unacceptability of the other candidate does have an effect. As an example, Chait mentions the George W. Bush campaign’s effort to paint John Kerry as a flip-flopper in 2004. The Obama campaign had better point out the victories of its first term… but it is obvious already now that a) they have selected Mitt Romney as winner of the GOP primaries, and b) they will borrow a page from the Bush campaign’s flip-flopper book. And they might just have found their unacceptable candidate.

Any Republican who expects 2012 to be a cakewalk should pause and reflect on the following: Just wait till the campaign starts for real. You will be facing Barack Hussein Obama, a youthful, charismatic president who’s married to a beautiful woman and has two young daughters. How about that for PR points? His victories, after all, do include killing Osama bin Laden, ridding the world of Muammar Ghadafi, pushing through health care insurance for millions who had none and dropping the symbolically important “don’t ask don’t tell” policy.

There’s the all-important economy, of course. But what are the Republicans offering?

Here’s why no GOP candidate can win against Obama (fingers crossed). The hottest candidates right now are Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Cain is the oddball candidate everybody considers for a while and then drops, simply because he doesn’t know how to handle Washington or the challenges that come with a presidential campaign; most of his crises have been handled appallingly bad. Perry is a disaster in the debates; you don’t have to be a genius, but you need at the very least to come across as credible and forceful in them and his “oops” moment seems to have destroyed his chances. Gingrich is still popular, with Bill Clinton pouring some sugar on him today (CNN)… but it’s a lethal dose, because it only serves to undermine the former Speaker’s position. Clinton only wants to sow discord and rightwingers know it.

As for Romney, he’s the toughest candidate to beat because he’s closer to the center and looks more reasonable to independent voters. But in the end, the Democratic campaign against his flip-flops is likely to be successful and, standing next to Obama in next year’s debates, this stiff, well-coifed Republican will look more like Kerry than the man he now suddenly idolizes – Ronald Reagan.

The YouTube clip shows Romney flip-flopping on… everything… in a DNC ad.

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Published by Stefan Hedmark 2011-11-27 18:10

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