{"id":8970,"date":"2011-09-09T10:16:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T17:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=8970"},"modified":"2011-09-09T10:16:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T17:16:59","slug":"did-i-miss-anyone-gop-race-to-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2011\/09\/09\/did-i-miss-anyone-gop-race-to-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Did I miss anyone?  GOP Race to White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s sometimes important to back up to the real presidential process.\u00c2\u00a0 Running back to 2004 and the Democratic nomination, there always felt something kind of synthetic about Dean&#8217;s collapse &#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/webcache.googleusercontent.com\/search?q=cache:46R4gI7m2oAJ:www.democracynow.org\/2008\/8\/25\/rick_macarthur_you_cant_be_president+%22You+Can%27t+Be+President%22+%22527%22+%22Americans+for+Jobs,+Healthcare%22&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;gl=us\">and remember, the intra-party organization that ran negative ads against Dean was funded by Clinton stalwarts<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 &#8220;Americans for Jobs, Health Care, and Progressive Values&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 I suppose you could say that if Dean couldn&#8217;t withstand fire from the Clintons, how would have he withstood Bush?\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s an interesting conundrum of our curious political system.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a little dicier to suggest that what was fully going on was getting Kerry nominated to keep ensure Hillary Clinton 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 The clearer issue was to maintain fund-raising control of the Democratic Party apparatus.<\/p>\n<p>The 2008 presidential nomination from the Republican vantage point seemed as much a punt as anything else, even more so than Kerry being nominated by the Democrats in 2004.\u00c2\u00a0 Though, I suppose, Romney did well by not winning the nomination.\u00c2\u00a0 And so we enter 2012.\u00c2\u00a0 Romney versus Perry.\u00c2\u00a0 Perry gets applause lines for executing a lot of people.\u00c2\u00a0 WEEEEE!\u00c2\u00a0 Romney shuffles through, deliberately, waiting for the fracus to die down.<\/p>\n<p>There were eight presidential candidates on the stage at the Reagan Library.\u00c2\u00a0 The culling has commenced &#8212; the media framed it as Romney versus Perry.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe it&#8217;s just as well.\u00c2\u00a0 <strong>Michele Bachmann<\/strong>&#8216;s campaign &#8212; IMPLODING, you say?\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-503544_162-20103207-503544.html\"> They say<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0911\/62827.html#ixzz1XTacGLxp\">Oh well&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<em>Michele Bachmann Overdrive is a concept, and the concept is to have a band that captures the spirit of Michele Bachmann by being somewhat ill-prepared, not really up to the challenge ahead of it but going full speed ahead,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mike Sager said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The round-up from the NYTs and Washington Post dutifully fills out the bottom of their columns with quick snappers for candidates 5 through 8.\u00c2\u00a0 The gist of the liners<\/p>\n<p><strong>Newt Gingrich<\/strong> came out swinging &#8230; against the media&#8230; claiming the debate was too debate-y &#8212; media is creating riffs.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes this an apt criticism &#8212; but at its highest level, a debate showcase like this is supposed to sharpen the distinctions.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0911\/63089.html\">What is the point?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have this theory about <strong>Jon Huntsman, Jr.<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 He is helpful in Mitt Romney&#8217;s campaign, as he provides Romney a centralizer &#8212; Romney needs someone who is perceived as &#8220;to his left&#8217; in the race so that the Republican Party won&#8217;t feel that let down when they eventually nominate him.\u00c2\u00a0 So it is Huntsman &#8212; Romney &#8212; Perry.\u00c2\u00a0 Huntsman is guaranteed media coverage, even though his road to the White House settles on something like &#8212; winning every single Independent vote int he New Hampshire primary.\u00c2\u00a0 The process is ludicrous:\u00c2\u00a0 see &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cabinet.com\/bedfordjournalbedfordnews\/932104-308\/huntsman-attends-popular-politics--eggs.html\">Politics and Eggs<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rick Santorum<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.first-draft.com\/2011\/09\/oh-rick-santorum.html\"> is sick of being called a bigot<\/a>, and having the full thrust of political campaigning against him coming from outside any Republican rivals and coming out of the &#8220;Gay Jihad&#8221; against him.\u00c2\u00a0 It won&#8217;t really get any better.\u00c2\u00a0 For whatever reason the media decided that his showing at the Iowa Straw Poll allowed him to &#8220;hang around a while longer&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Herman Cain<\/strong> is <a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2011\/09\/05\/herman-cain-hoffa-dems-using-vitriolic-rhetoric-because-they-have-no-plan\/\">campaigning on the Hoffa rhetoric non-issue<\/a> that has gotten Fox News &#8212; conservative radio&#8211; blogoland hot and bothered.\u00c2\u00a0 Puzzlingly enough, HNN <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/articles\/9-5-11\/herman-cain-the-man-from-pizza.html\">has an article putting him in historical perspective<\/a>, next to Henry Wallace &#8212; <em>because they both had jobs dealing with food<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ron Paul<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/slog.thestranger.com\/slog\/archives\/2011\/09\/08\/did-rick-perry-assault-ron-paul-last-night\">supporters are the worst, part three hundred<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile &#8212; off stage:\u00c2\u00a0 <strong>Thaddeus McCotter<\/strong> claims <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/blogs\/politics\/2011\/09\/rep-mccotter-musicians-concerned-obama-administration-will-confiscate-guitars\/\">Musicians should be worried that Obama wants to take away your Guitars<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s how far the the Regulatory State is reaching these days.\u00c2\u00a0 <strong>Buddy Roemer<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.seattlepi.com\/monsoonmasala\/2011\/09\/07\/sane-republican-jon-stewart\/\">made an appearance on Jon Stewart<\/a> &#8212; anywhere he can find, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnd.com\/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&amp;pageId=334765\"><strong>Roy Moore<\/strong> may actually be making himself useful, though its a curious reasoning.<br \/>\n<\/a><em>A trial is scheduled for two sidewalk counselors in Montgomery, Ala., who were charged with trespass when they stepped around a water jet that operators of an abortion business had aimed at the public sidewalk they were using.<br \/>\nJudge Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, is arguing through his Foundation for Moral Law that it&#8217;s an abuse even to cite the men.<br \/>\n&#8220;The law is being abused to silence these men protesting the deprivation of the right to life, which is one of our unalienable rights given by God and recognized in<br \/>\nthe Declaration of Independence by our Founding Fathers,&#8221; he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<div><strong>Fred Karger<\/strong>&#8216;s campaign <a href=\"http:\/\/my.firedoglake.com\/teddysanfran\/2011\/09\/05\/petition-to-nbc-news-let-fred-karger-into-the-gop-debate\/\">charges along its path of<\/a> &#8230; clever stunting.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s sometimes important to back up to the real presidential process.\u00c2\u00a0 Running back to 2004 and the Democratic nomination, there always felt something kind of synthetic about Dean&#8217;s collapse &#8212;and remember, the intra-party organization that ran negative ads against Dean was funded by Clinton stalwarts.\u00c2\u00a0 &#8220;Americans for Jobs, Health Care, and Progressive Values&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 I suppose [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8970"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8972,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8970\/revisions\/8972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}