Let The "Race" Begin

Remove all ads!

Show me one piece of evidence she quit because of how her job impacted the ability to take care of her child. She might have quit in part because of the endless attacks on her family, but that's different from her ability to raise her child.

 

Two points. First, you're not listening. What Roberts said in the passage you quoted, and what I tried to reiterate, was not that having a downs syndrome child disqualifies one from elective national office. It's that having a downs-syndrome child should be more important to you than running for office if your family is your number-one priority, as she has so repeatedly claimed. As invasive and destructive as political campaigns can be, any politician seeking national office is effectively imposing an enormous burden on their own family. The executive branch strains even the most normal and problem-free of families in ways you and I can't even imagine. Any politician is, at some level, selfishly putting their family at risk in favor of their ambition. The point is, few have done so as cravenly as Sarah Palin. You said she could handle both. Since she quit one, obviously, that's not the case.

Second, I gotta be honest, I've never understood this "endless attacks on her family" meme/whine. This is a woman who parades a retarded baby around as a campaign prop. Who thrust her pregnant teenage daughter onto the national stage, and further makes a mockery of her by casting her in reality TV shows and abstinence campaigns. Who picked and fought her own war of words in the tabloids with the troubled family of her daughter's teenage baby-daddy. Whose own daughters go on Facebook and call people "faggots" while she stays silent. Who vilifies the "lamestream media" for violating some vaunted "kids are off limits" rule while she lets cameras follow her and family around while they go fishing, in a TV show that bears her name. Who does all these things for her own enormous financial and political benefit, yet she can't open her mouth without complaining about how victimized she is.

If her family is off limits from press scrutiny, maybe she should stop painting bullzeyes on them at every opportunity.

 

Yeah, Sarah certainly knows how to work both ends: She holds up her family as props when it suits her, but when she's called on it, "It's her family should be off limits from the liberal, biased media."

---------- Added 3 hours, 11 minutes and 33 seconds later... ----------

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-17-2010/jason-jones--bayonne

 

To be fair, she didn't really quit to find more time for her family. That was just a cover. She quit because she was under investigation.

 

...and she wanted a TV show.

 

I hope this dosen't start a firestorm. One thing I have noticed a person needs in this era of media coverage is a good speaking manner and -voice-. Palin has to me a very anoying pitch and tone. As I do tend to agree with her in general if I don't like hearing her speak why would a person who doesn't like her views listen at all? Listen to Clinton speak and she is easy to follow as well as pulling your focus into what she says. Her I could never stand yet I still listen to what she says. This may sound like a bad reason for not running for president but debates often swing a lot of voters to or away from a person. Wouldn't republicans do much better with a good speaker who doesn't step on their own foot so often?

 

While no one can say for certain, we certainly know of at least a few. I cannot give you a comprehensive list, but I can probably give you 80% of it, off the top of my head.

The near certain to run:

Sarah Palin
Mitt Romney
Mike Huckabee

The quite likely to run:

Newt Gingrich
John Thune
Tim Pawlenty
Ron Paul

The dark horses who may run:

Marco Rubio
Rudy Guiliani
Jim DeMint
Rick Santorum

Let's look back a year from now. While it's highly unlikely that EVERYONE I listed will be in the race. I doubt there will be a competitive candidate in the race who isn't on that list.

 

Isn't Newt like 120 years old?

 

I looked up his up, and Newt is 67 - meaning he would be 69 at the time of the 2012 election. McCain was 72 when he ran in 2008. If Hillary Clinton decides to give it one more go (the nomination won't be competitive in 2012, but say she waits until 2016), she would also be 69 on election day. They would be considered "older" in terms of presidential candidates, but their age would not be unprecedented. Reagan, for example, was 69 when he won his first term, and was re-elected at the age of 73.

EDIT: The second oldest first-time elected president was William Henry Harrison, who was elected at age 67, way back in 1840. On the downside, he died of pneumonia on month after his inaugeration.

 

Do you guys really think that Mitt will take another shot at it? I highly doubt it.

 

Of course he will. Last time he dropped out early because he knew it would look better than losing and blowing all that money. But he's running.

 

Hmm, why wouldn't he? He was among the ones who performed better before... It's true that imo he doesn't have much of a chance, but he may try it for the publicity.

 

There's also a pattern amongst republicans to put forward the candidate whose "turn" it is to run. McCain followed Bush because he came in second in the 2000 primary. It was his "turn". Romney came in second in 2008, and if history is any indicator he will not only run for the party's nomination, but that he'll win it this time around.

 

This is absolutely true Drew, but the reason it was McCain's turn was because the previous incumbent (Cheney) decided not to run. If he had, it was Cheney's turn. I wonder if Palin didn't jump the line by being picked as VP on McCain's ticket...

 

A current poll shows Obama statistically tied with Romney and Huckabee, and leading Palin 48-40.

Pretty thorough breakdown of the poll results are towards the bottom as well.

 

That does surprise me, a little. I was expecting to see Obama behind both of them in the polls (except Palin), since the midterms were supposed to be "all about Obama." That's pretty good news for Obama. But the election is 2 years away, and that's a lifetime in politics (it was just 2 years ago Obama had a 70 percent approval rating).

 

I agree - given that his current approval rating is around 40%, you'd think that he'd behind behind somebody by a fair margin. Being ahead of Palin doesn't surprise me - as I have said, she has a fanatical base of supporters, but pretty much no one else likes her. Huckabee certainly has the religious right on his side, but I don't know who else he can pull from. (He's also a very funny, charismatic guy.) That leaves Mitt. We know his base of support is in the northeast, rust belt, and Rocky Mountain states. That might be enough, because of those three candidates, he probably has the fewest people who feel strongly against him.

 

Obama's approval rating has held steady at 45% for almost all of this year. Historically speaking, that's not bad. He's less unpopular than most people assume.

I think the dark horse to watch out for in 2012 will be Marco Rubio. Sounds unlikely, but when you think about it, he's a potential Obama for the GOP. Young, handsome, well spoken, pretty book smart, very conservative, and a guaranteed vote draw for a coveted demographic (in this case, the increasingly influential Latino vote). By the time 2012 rolls around, he'll have as much Senate experience as Obama did, plus he did about 10 years inthe Florida state senate. I think at the very least he'll be asked to run as someone's VP.

 

And he'd also help win Florida - the biggest swing state in the electoral college, and one that's about to get a bit bigger once the Census adjustments are made.

 

Romney seems like an effective politician and an upstanding guy. But there's just too many people who either
A: hate religious people in general or

B: hate Mormons

that he just doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever carrying enough votes to even make it past the primaries. Seriously, the guy should recognize when the cards are stacked against him. It's one thing to convince a state that you are a decent person and to look past their prejudices. A whole country? Not so much.