Can Any Republican Beat Obama?

15 April 2011 |permalink | email article

Donald Trump is becoming a problem for the Republican establishment. As Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight column in The New York Times points out Trump’s share of the Republican primary vote is rising in some polls but that he might never have been the first choice of that group. “It might have been more natural for him to do so as a social moderate but fiscal conservative touting his executive experience and the virtues of free-market capitalism.”

Instead, Trump’s made a fool of himself, running far to the right and giving voice to false and misleading statements about President Obama’s birth certificate, and reversing his more moderate positions on abortion and gay rights. None of the would be nominees so far besides Trump – Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee – show any sign yet of catching fire.

Chris Christie, the freshman New Jersey governor, is often mentioned as a presidential candidate but the former prosecutor says he’s not ready to run in 2012.  It’s just as well because the Rutgers-Eagleton poll shows fewer than one in four registered voters back him. That includes fewer than half of Republicans and a quarter of independents.

A budget for Century 21?

A scary Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, in a Thursday op-ed piece in The Washington Post, repeats the Ayn Rand credo perpetuated for 18 years by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Ryan says Obama’s proposals are aimed more at empowering government than strengthening the free market – “If he gets his way, the nation will endure huge tax hikes, seniors’ access to health care will be reduced – and we will experience an epic collapse of our health and retirement programs that would devastate our nation’s most vulnerable citizens.” Ryan refuses to grasp that his prescription for seniors puts them at maximum risk in a so-called free market.

California Notebook

“Where are the two votes? Everyone is saying we can get them under these conditions. Or we can get them under that condition. We don’t have them under any conditions.” – Gov. Jerry Brown, battling Republican lawmakers who continue to resist putting a tax increase to voters.

“I can step very comfortably into the entertainment world and do an action movie with the same violence that I’ve always done…(and) have the same amount of heads coming off – and any other body parts, as far as that goes. I don’t blink.” – Ex-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first post-politics project – a violent animated series for kids.               
     

 

 

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