Palin on Oprah

[bellcurve]

YUCK.

Romney is downright frightening.

[DRW50]

Yes, he is. I think he may have a good chance because he can run on the economy, and the biggest factor against him in 2008, his being LDS, may not bother the far right as much anymore, since the Mormon Church is so much on their side regarding one of their big issues (gay marriage).

If for no other reason, I can never vote for the man because of the story he told, to try to show how no-nonsense he is, of strapping the family dog to the roof of the car on a crosscountry trip, and stopping only to hose the car down when the dog used the bathroom.

I also find Pawlenty very frightening, as he is very hard right, and very opportunistic, like Romney, but the media excuses them both by talking about their "good looks", and unlike Romney, they can go on about what a "working class hero" Pawlenty is.

[Max]

CarlD2, Christie didn't just "barely manage" to win against Corzine: his margin of victory was over 98,000 votes (over 4%). In a state where there are 700,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans (and which Obama won by over 600,000 votes), such a victory is extremely impressive. (By contrast, the last Republican to win a statewide election in NJ--Christine Todd Whitman--only won by a mere 26,000 votes, which was slightly more than a 1% margin of victory.) Futhermore, gay marriage was hardly a cornerstone of his campaign; his campaign almost exclusively focused on economic issues and voter dissatisfaction with Corzine.

Although Romney and Pawlenty are no doubt opportunistic, it is nearly impossible to be more opportunistic than the current occupant of the White House, who didn't even have the decency to serve out his first term in the Senate before deciding to run for president. And, Obama's "good looks" were also talked about during the campaign, which no doubt helped him (witness the "Obama Girl" sensation on YouTube where a young woman professed that she had a crush on Obama).

Finally, I have never before heard that story of Romney strapping his family dog to the roof of his car. Exactly where and when did Romney say this?

[DRW50]

Romney was pro-choice up to somewhere around 2003 or 2004, then he had an epiphany just in time to be a national player. I think his wife had even once been involved with Planned Parenthood. Tim Pawlenty suddenly seemed to lose interest in fighting carbon emissions once he wanted to run for national office. He supported gay rights legislation until he wanted to run for governor. Then he said voting for them was his biggest regret.

To go back and forth on such core principles just because you suddenly want to run for a bigger job seems very opportunistic to me, especially in a party which has criticized flip-flopping. It's the same as criticizing Obama for being a celebrity, yet trying to build hype for names and star power, like Palin.

Here's the Romney dog story. It's been a few years, so I got a few bits wrong.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part4_main/

Considering Corzine was supposed to be dead man walking, with Christie a candidate who had been groomed for years, it seemed close to me. Even the Wall Street Journal basically wrote an editorial a few weeks before the election which, to me, all but said Christie had not bothered with a campaign and if he won he would have no mandate.