politics

[psocoptera]

Dear LJ, I am confused by Republicans. Seriously, Gingrich? Isn't he primarily famous for screwing up badly enough as Speaker in the 90s that he had to leave office? And Santorum lost his seat, and Romney - I guess Romney chose not to seek re-election, but I don't exactly remember anyone around here being sorry to see him go. Is President of the US really now a consolation-prize job?? I'm not saying I was a fan of McCain, but he was at least a successful Senator, in the sense of holding his Senate seat, and Bush was a successful governor, in that same sort of pass-fail sense. Whereas it seems to me that Gingrich and Santorum have already flunked out of national office and Romney dropped out and these are really the strongest candidates the Republicans can field? It's like if Gray Davis was running for the Dems, like, wouldn't that just seem ridiculous?

Comments

[wayman.livejournal.com]

I think that's right. Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush ... all fit your definition of "pass", and all were encouraged to run and declined to run this election cycle (while not ruling out future ambitions). Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, and Michele Bachmann were the "pass" candidates by this metric that the GOP had this cycle, but they were all long-shots for one reason or another. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2016 of the GOP have a primary field of several strong candidates. Meanwhile, in 2012 we get a GOP three-ring circus with a number of briefly-popular sideshows.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Thanks you guys, this makes a lot of sense to me. (I haven't really been paying enough attention to catch who might have run and isn't, it just seemed like there must be *someone*...)