Will the Giuliani Surge Last?
The latest polls on the GOP nomination suggest that we should no longer refer to McCain as the "frontrunner." Not when Giuliani has 44% compared to McCain's 21%, and when McCain has lost about one-quarter of his support in the same poll in about a month. Also, it's time to stop covering "the Mormon candidate" as a top tier candidate, not when he's polling four percent.
The meme I keep hearing is that GOP voters want a "strong" candidate and that Giuliani is "strong." I also hear that, at the same time, they don't want someone too close to the Iraq clusterfuck--but someone who supports the surge. McCain is "too close," Giuliani has some distance from all that (for now).
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I still don't see how many GOP voters can get behind a pro-choice, gay-friendly, three-marriages, ethnic Northeasterner. Which means that someone will emerge as the anti-Giuliani. OK, but who? Could be Gingrich. If he's included in the polling question, he polls almost as strong as McCain (15% to 21% in the latest poll).
That Gingrich might emerge as a major candidate in this race indicates, I think, how played out the GOP is at this point.
posted by Number Three @ 7:07 AM
6 Comments:
Rudy's at his peak. He lacks McCain's charm and has a far more liberal record plus a closet full of personal skeletons. Most GOPers don't really know about all that yet. His advantage is that the field is so weak there may be no one to challenge from the true right.
But if someone were to make such a run, I'd bet on Brownback.
One other possibility: draft Jeb. You know it's who the wingnuts REALLY want. They may decide that if they're already saddled with the Bush legacy, they might as well run a Bush legacy.
Brownback is ruled out by Number Three's Third Rule of Incredibly Small Probability: The GOP will not nominate two different senators from Kansas for president in the same century. Brownback should already be the candidate of the Religious Right. That he's not means that he isn't going to be.
Jeb is ruled out by incurable Bush Fatigue. Jeb knows this as much as anyone.
I tend to agree that Giuliani is at his peak (and I now refuse to call him "Rudy"). But does that mean a McCain comeback, or a Gingrich surge?
I would think a GOP outsider with no name ID would be a better bet than the candidates they have now. Name ID problems will go away eventually if the big money donors and party elite back someone forcefully.
Of course, there is an alternative story: the culture war was nothing but a GOP cover story all along. It may be that evangelicals don't care about Giuliani's views on gays and abortions at all, really. It may be that they only use those issues to gin up self-righteous moral outrage about Democrats.
After all, it is notable how little attention has been given to the moral failings of Republicans, failings that would create howls of outrage if committed by a Democrat? Does drug addiction hurt Rush? Does sexual harassment hurt the married O'Reilly? Did divorce hurt Reagan? Did serial divorce hurt Gingrich? Where's the discussion of whether or not the divorced, gay-friendly, abortion proponent Giuliani has the right to receive Catholic mass? I'm beginning to think it's all ok if you are a Republican.
You guys are all so wrong. It has nothing to do with substance or history or ideas. It's all name.
Starting with Johnson (so Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush), all of the presidents have had names that sound like they could have been signers of the freakin Declaration. Giuliani? McCain? Hucakabee? Brownback? Are you people nuts? Honestly, President Brownback?
It's Romney, unless Jim Edgar gets in the race.
On the other side, it's Clinton.
I actually think McCain is still the guy to beat. Surprisingly, I largely agree with Curat about names mattering, but I think we Scots-Irish got grandfathered in a long time ago (at least since McKinley). But Brownback is still my GOP darkhorse. Romney may have the better name, but he was also claiming he would out-gay Ted Kennedy only a decade ago. A big G-oops.
#3: Dole was LAST century, if you want to get technical, and the GOP had two Kansas nominees in the 20th century (Alf Landon, even if he was a Gov not a Sen).
I meant 100 years, not centuries, in a technical sense. And you are right, Landon was governor. And, if you want a refinement of the rule . . . no way Kansas gets three GOP nominees w/in 100 years.
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