Republican Presidential Candidates

[cos]

I've been saying it all year, so before the number dwindles too much more, I'll post it: All of the Republican candidates are unelectable in the primary. Not a single one of them has a chance of winning the nomination. And yet, if they're the ones running, one of them will.

This was true back when Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Sarah Palin, were part of the set. Still true now. None of them can win it, but apparently one of them will anyway.

Comments

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Depressing, but at least if none of them can convince the most fanatical part of the Republican core to vote for them (because no one else is going to bother to vote in most primaries), the chances of them actually convincing the swing voters and non-fans to vote for them in the real election are low.

[kirin]

As much as I want that to be true, what the fanatical Republican core wants and what swing voters want are very different things. And with the most obvious Tea Party Crazies flaming out one by one, whoever's left may end up looking moderate by comparison, to the casual eye.

On the slightly brighter side, even though Obama has been disappointing as a chief executive, he is a pretty brilliant campaigner, so he may be able to grab some swing voters back in the run-up, especially against an opponent with a lot of exploitable weaknesses.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Sure, but the current candidates have been trying so hard to appeal to the fanatical base and one-up each other on the crazy scale, they're going to be easy targets when it's time to convince the swing voters. It's hardly a locked-in victory; Obama's disappointed an awful lot of his core voters, too, and there's unlikely to be another serious Democratic contender. However, I do think the current reality-TV craziness of the Republican campaign is going to be easy to exploit.