In France, Santorum would be a Legitimist -- God and King and if only we could reset the Enlightenment and return to the good old days of the Middle Ages when everyone did what they were told and women knew their place in the home and peasants knew their place in the field! If only we could get rid of all this equality and fraternity and people thinking their kids should get public education and public health and all that nonsense. Fortunately for you, he's been out of the mainstream there since 1830! But he's a familiar type. It's just that you got rid of that for once and all as a serious contender for power with the deposition of Charles X.
I also don't think he has a snowball's chance in hell of winning here. The uber-orthodox Catholicism isn't going to win a general election. It's still holding on as a contending political position, but he's stuck in the mid-nineteenth century and most of the electorate isn't.
Ron Paul has at least found the twentieth century! He's a 1930s style isolationist. Let the rest of the world tend to their problems and let's tend to ours! He really doesn't seem to understand that it's not a feasible position in a global economy. We can't just ignore Greece or economic problems in the EU. We can't just ignore the Middle East. We are not a country where most people produce what they use on family farms. (And for that matter we weren't in the 1930s, though we were much closer.) His policies make coherent sense, but they're not workable in the modern world. Also, his chances of winning are nil. His chances of running as a third party candidate and screwing Romney aren't nil, though! Ron Paul as a leader could in fact win some seats in Congress if a viable third party were to emerge.
Newt Gingrich is a crook. He's a good old boy crook, and we know his kind around here. He's for his own money and his own importance, and he'll be for whatever will win him both. He can't win a general election, but he's unprincipled enough to stay in because the longer he does the bigger his speaking fees next year and the bigger the sales of the book he writes about it. The bigger the splash he makes, the more comfortably he'll live with his third wife and his half a million dollar credit line at Tiffany's!
Mitt Romney is the likely nominee. He's not crazy. He's actually in this century. However, he's a big business Republican with no clue about how the rest of the country lives. His let them eat cake comments about how his wife drives "a couple of Cadillacs" pretty much demonstrate everything about him. Doesn't everybody who matters have several luxury cars? After all, she keeps them at different houses!
I don't think Mitt Romney can win. Neither does the Republican establishment, which accounts for the current Pundit Panic Mode. If it's Romney vs Obama, Obama will walk all over him. Republican pundits George F. Will and Kathleen Parker seem to have concluded this too, in no uncertain terms, as Will urges Republicans to spend their money on Senate races rather than the presidential. He's run up the white flag. I do think he's right. I think Obama is likely to be reelected.
Some Republicans are holding out hope for a different candidate to emerge at the convention. Maybe. It's possible. But who? Palin is still in the wings, and I don't put a convention bid past her, but that's more likely to split the party than unite it. Pundits and donors alike are shopping. But who? Mitch Daniels won't run. Mike Huckabee won't run. (Wisely, as it will be a slaughter for whoever tries it, and they're smart to save their energy for 2016.) It's possible that somebody will decide that this is their chance, but I don't think Romney will just move out of the way tidily and endorse someone else. It will be a party splitter, and I think that's about 40% likely at this point.
I think Obama will be reelected, but what happens after that I don't know. It depends on where the fault lines lie, and on whether the frayed coalitions within the Republican party actually split or not. The Reagan coalition has been falling apart for a decade. Will it end in peaceable separation or war? I don't know. That depends on the way this race and the convention play out.
I expect in the UK you'd be a Social Democrat and I'd be Labour. But they often vote the same way on issues, and I imagine you and I would. Apparently I'm not a liberal because I am not a pacifist nor do I believe intervention is always wrong. I believe it was supremely stupid in Iraq, but I don't believe it's always wrong.
Intervention in Syria. I'm a pacifist for moral, religious, and ethical reasons. I also, seem to realize that flowers and logic will not keep dictators from slaughtering their own people.
Ah! I am not a pacifist, as I think that sometimes the only way to keep people from doing horrible things is to bust their butt. It's good to turn the other cheek, but not to turn your back. So I'm with you on Syria.
In France, Santorum would be a Legitimist -- God and King and if only we could reset the Enlightenment and return to the good old days of the Middle Ages when everyone did what they were told and women knew their place in the home and peasants knew their place in the field! If only we could get rid of all this equality and fraternity and people thinking their kids should get public education and public health and all that nonsense. Fortunately for you, he's been out of the mainstream there since 1830! But he's a familiar type. It's just that you got rid of that for once and all as a serious contender for power with the deposition of Charles X.
I also don't think he has a snowball's chance in hell of winning here. The uber-orthodox Catholicism isn't going to win a general election. It's still holding on as a contending political position, but he's stuck in the mid-nineteenth century and most of the electorate isn't.
Ron Paul has at least found the twentieth century! He's a 1930s style isolationist. Let the rest of the world tend to their problems and let's tend to ours! He really doesn't seem to understand that it's not a feasible position in a global economy. We can't just ignore Greece or economic problems in the EU. We can't just ignore the Middle East. We are not a country where most people produce what they use on family farms. (And for that matter we weren't in the 1930s, though we were much closer.) His policies make coherent sense, but they're not workable in the modern world. Also, his chances of winning are nil. His chances of running as a third party candidate and screwing Romney aren't nil, though! Ron Paul as a leader could in fact win some seats in Congress if a viable third party were to emerge.
Newt Gingrich is a crook. He's a good old boy crook, and we know his kind around here. He's for his own money and his own importance, and he'll be for whatever will win him both. He can't win a general election, but he's unprincipled enough to stay in because the longer he does the bigger his speaking fees next year and the bigger the sales of the book he writes about it. The bigger the splash he makes, the more comfortably he'll live with his third wife and his half a million dollar credit line at Tiffany's!
Mitt Romney is the likely nominee. He's not crazy. He's actually in this century. However, he's a big business Republican with no clue about how the rest of the country lives. His let them eat cake comments about how his wife drives "a couple of Cadillacs" pretty much demonstrate everything about him. Doesn't everybody who matters have several luxury cars? After all, she keeps them at different houses!
I don't think Mitt Romney can win. Neither does the Republican establishment, which accounts for the current Pundit Panic Mode. If it's Romney vs Obama, Obama will walk all over him. Republican pundits George F. Will and Kathleen Parker seem to have concluded this too, in no uncertain terms, as Will urges Republicans to spend their money on Senate races rather than the presidential. He's run up the white flag. I do think he's right. I think Obama is likely to be reelected.
Some Republicans are holding out hope for a different candidate to emerge at the convention. Maybe. It's possible. But who? Palin is still in the wings, and I don't put a convention bid past her, but that's more likely to split the party than unite it. Pundits and donors alike are shopping. But who? Mitch Daniels won't run. Mike Huckabee won't run. (Wisely, as it will be a slaughter for whoever tries it, and they're smart to save their energy for 2016.) It's possible that somebody will decide that this is their chance, but I don't think Romney will just move out of the way tidily and endorse someone else. It will be a party splitter, and I think that's about 40% likely at this point.
I think Obama will be reelected, but what happens after that I don't know. It depends on where the fault lines lie, and on whether the frayed coalitions within the Republican party actually split or not. The Reagan coalition has been falling apart for a decade. Will it end in peaceable separation or war? I don't know. That depends on the way this race and the convention play out.
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