Myiq adds this parenthetical comment:
I’m guessing the next media darling won’t be a Democrat eitherThat barb got me thinking. Who will play that role? Who will be trumpeted as the man on the white horse? Who will be the focus of innumerable planted press stories designed to transform a mere pol into the stuff of myth?
Republicans dig Messiahs. That's why some of us were so pissed off by the cult of personality that grew up around Obama in 2008: Such cults are usually a Republican thing.
Reagan became the officially designated White Horse Guy (WHG) circa 1979. Throughout 1993 and 1994, it was clear that there was a behind-the-scenes decision to make Newt Gingrich the WHG. Fortunately for democracy, his negatives -- especially all of those stories about how he treated women -- knocked him out of the saddle.
GHWB, Bob Dole and John McCain were mere political candidates. They were not White Horse Guys, although one of them became a White House resident.
Dubya, I would say, functioned as a WHG for a long time, especially within the Jesusland alternative media. But he assumed that role only after the election; in 2000, he was just a candidate. His is an interesting case study, since he achieved mythic status (for a certain proportion of the population) only after 9/11. The "Mission Accomplished" photo op was a classic example of how Republican propaganda can transform a mere politician into a WHG.
There were a few desultory stabs at turning AH-nuld into a WHG, but that was never going to go anywhere. Right now, Huckabee has WHG potential for the wacko rightists. Romney? No way.
Who else?
44 comments:
Pawlenty.
It won't be Jeb Bush, his brother ruined the family name.
The lunatic fringe of the GOP (aka "the base") is already turning on Scott Brown for not being pure enough.
Jindal needs a charisma transplant, Huckabee and Paul are nutjobs, the media hates Palin and Gingrich has too much baggage.
Of course if you listen to the media Palin is the only person running.
BTW - remember when most Republicans were sane?
Interesting that you should mention Pawlenty, myiq. I just came across this story...
http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=12&a=440432
"Near the end of the 2009 legislative session, one of Gov. Pawlenty's budget cutting measures was to eliminate funding for the General Assistance Medical Care program (GAMC), a plan that provided health care coverage for the poorest and sickest Minnesotans.
"This population makes less than $8,000 a year, with most actually making under $3,000 a year. Almost 80 percent suffer from mental illness, chemical dependency or chronic disease, hundreds are homeless, and 8,000 GAMC recipients are veterans who have served our country.
"What many people may not realize is that this veto was also a cut in payments to hospitals, and a subsequent increase in the cost of insurance premiums and health care for everyone, higher property taxes, and a loss of jobs."
Yep, looks like Pawlenty may be the One.
With all due respect: No way. I live in MN and I can tell you--Pawlenty's a dweeb. No way is he the next Repug messiah. He doesn't even have a chin to speak of.
Yeah, he's cutting programs right and left here in MN, and sticking it to the underprivileged, saying all the things the Repugs want to hear...but you can tell his heart's not in it. It's all for show. Especially the newfound evangelism.
If you're looking for someone with legs--look no further than Michelle Bachmann...
Usually a rightwing thing? Naderites. Kucinich nutcases. Even arguably Larouchies.
The only common thread is that they ALL benefit the right wing. But the lefties, especially the YOUNG BONEHEADED ones, are just as susceptible.
And after the last election fiasco, that "man" on the white horse may well be a woman.
It seems that still many don't get the point that we don't have two different parties. There is only one and it was bought out a long time ago. I heard about it in the mid 90's.
But who will be man on the White Horse will only be someone who has been working on stopping the White House Coup. I'm sure this person, who ever they are will be running under the radar until it's time for them to pop out of a cake.
Thus it's concievable that when the Coup is stopped so will all the insanity with what the Banks have been doing.
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
Scott Brown
Lonni
Okay - I hate to disagree with the resident blogger...but I vote for Romeny. The mormon thing is problem for the jesusland loons - but they will be told to sit down, shut up and stuff envelopes after another year of double digit unemployment. Many will do just that. In 2011, look for a brief period of 'mormon normalization' in the media - like Obama/Wright but one with more finesse.
Wapo already called him the GOP frontrunner AFTER Paul won the CPAC straw vote. He, and his 'perfect' family, and his 'pro business' bonifides as a GOV (in Mass, no less) and as the head of the Salt Lake City winter olympics are both the ponies the Wall Street P.R. men will ride to sell the man. He will be the 'competent' savior of good old fashioned (read: white) American values. The middle won't show up for Palin and wall street knows it. romeny has legs in Michigan too. Romeny will get the south, mormonism and all if the other choice is Obama. He can also win Ohio, Indiana, and maybe PA. He peals away Nevada, New Hampshire and Florida if the economy is still bad.
Look for Romeny/McDonnell or Whitman on the off chance Brown doesn't eat her up and spit her out in California this year - and she manages to win. But romeny doesn't need CA.
Colin Powell? Oliver North? G.Gordon Liddy? Charleton Heston? (tho being dead may be a disadvantage?)
Huckabee HalfTruth? Oh, no. Too bad Mark Sanford screwed up or he would be right in there.
No one has charisma of Palin or Clinton, so I'll guess we will just have to turn to Hollywood.
JEB!!!
Mike Rounds. They can build the myth around an empty suit.
Since of late, "star power" seems to trump experience.....it's really scary that even after 2008 this trend may continue to give us a POTUS who is still just an empty suit.
Anyone think Mike Bloomberg will throw his hat in the ring? (My personal opinion on that would be ugh!)
White Horse Guy?
Are you kidding?
They killed off the white horse. They got nothing to ride in on.
The other Bob
@Lonni - The right wingers have already declared Scott Brown to be a traitor for voting to end debate on the jobs bill.
I read that Pawlenty seemed to be trying out for the 'man on the white horse' role at CPAC. But, it has been rumored for a long time that Petraeus has political ambitions, though his stance on torture might prevent him from being drafted by the Republicans.
I say it's an un-predictable personality. After all, Obama rose to prominence between the 2003-4 IL Senate race / Keynote address to the 2008 Presidential winner. He's still got a few years' usefulness an an illustration... then in '12 or '16 it'll be nice & ripe.
myiq I tend to agree with you about Jeb but I just had a nasty conversation with some 70 year old co-workers who think Cheney is the greatest and Obama is the devil. They were openly calling for the man's assassination and completely forgot all the horrible things Bush and Chaney did including the engineering the bailouts, bankrupting the country and lying so they could invade a country that now has over 500,000 dead. If these people think Chaney is a hero and Obama is the devil then I see no hope in this country. The propaganda has been so bad for so long that the populace will vote for whoever they are told to vote for.
David Petraeus. If he decides to run. And I'd vote for him, no matter which party he joins.
No one mentioned Palin, she is the darling of tne anti-choice, relgious neo-con crowd. Not a good choice IMHO, but a choice.
Brown is a traitor to republicans this week, next week might be a different story after Faux Spews tells them who to cheer and who to jeer.
One bit of information I heard tonite on the drive home. Arlen Specter has a big lead on Joe Sestak in the PA Dem primary. The same poll has republican Pat Loony Toomey wining over Specter in the general. Also Obama is losing the youth vote.
Gotta go with Jeb. The rehabilitation of the family name can't cost all that much.
An interesting WHG would be Rep McCotter.
Completely out of left field (no pun intended) so no baggage like the other big name GOPers, has FoxNews creds for the base, and can actually think on his feet so debates against Obama would be fun to watch.
It is going to be Palin.
She is the anti Obama-every characteristic he has she has in reverse but in a way that makes her formidable.
The democratic party seem intents on destroying itself by attacking Palin; everyday their overblown and at times crazy insults have allowed her to stay in the news and grow and grow like a a modern day 50 foot woman.
If she runs against Obama I'm sure she will win. It will end up being a contest on values and she will win easily with most of the public. Her lack of brain power is going to stop being an issue after 4 years of the brainiac in chief driving us into the ground.
If however Hillary runs-she may win. During the primary I saw a lot of republicans I knew who absolutely hated her turn and start to respect her. She could keep enough independents to win.
I can not imagine Obama being reelected at this point-he won't have money, he wont have his fairy tale, and he won't have the liberal creative class anymore. In November after the crushing losses, the party will turn on him-his foolish aides will be sent away-and he will become a puppet to Congress.
The spooky thing is I think the Clintons saw this over a year ago. Hillary's move to Secretary of State makes sense now. Those two deserve to be back in the White House-there is no one in Washington that is close to being their equal.
It'll be Jeb Bush. You heard it here first.
The latest WHG maybe Marco Rubio. They seem to be fluffing up his image in Florida as the new guy on the block. Should he win Florida, and the chances are he will, look to him as their Knight in Shining Armor. Young, Cuban, squeaky clean.
And it won't be Palin. Things haven' reached that level of vapidity yet.
No Palin chances.
70% of the population pegs her as unqualified, however otherwise attractive personally or as a candidate. A deathknell, especially when 51% or a little more of THE GOP says shes unqualified.
Far worse than a job approval number that bad (which would also be a deathknell, of course), an UNQUALIFIED number of any size, let alone that huge size, means the GOP won't give her the nomination.
Unless she starts barking in tongues and exhibits possession trance prophecy-- then perhaps.
XI
Jeb!Bush?
Noelle Bush will find Jesus and turn her life around ala Uncle George. The print and broadcast media will disappear the rest of the ne'er do wells in the family and Jeb! will sail into the White House.
Why?
I think there are some in the media that get a perverse pleasure out of making to voting puppets dance. It's a game of Who Can We Get Elected Next with each candidate being worse than the one before.
And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. - Revelation 6:2
For once, I agree with XI--Palin is dead in the water and the GOP will soon make a serious attempt to eradicate her already shaky image.
I'm almost afraid to post the person I think will be the Republican nominee next time around. Mostly because I don't want to jinx it. I want that sad, pitiful, faux-moderate POS to get nominated and get flattened. Hints: he's just made a bizarre shift in favor of gay rights, he's in a position to claim he's both leftish independent but conservative on most issues and is sternly, indefatigably pro-Israel.
I don't see how they can make him into WHG, but that's mostly because I don't think they'll be attempting that next time (too difficult).
May he crash and burn in '12.
I agree with Perry that it will be Jeb. Once the Republicans have finished pinning all of Bush's failures on Obama, with Obama's help, Jeb will arise and lead the Republicans to the Promised Land.
It's only a matter of time.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
As insane as it sounds...
I gotta go with Jeb.
Old money, old connections, and he's been rather low key as of late. When is the last time he's made any noise?
*pause for google search, THIS is scary!!!*
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/106737/Jeb_Bush_Dissing_Sarah_Palin
Published today.
Yep, Jeb. I guess the rehabilitation starts now?
Oh. Jeb HAS been making some noise lately.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/83386.html
This from January.
The capper came Thursday when, at the top of the 7 o'clock hour, right after Vice President Joe Biden, Bush made a rare network television appearance on NBC's Today Show. The intensely private Bush's interview with the overly familiar Matt Lauer rattled Florida political circles.
Was this the beginning of a Jeb juggernaut that would culminate in a 2012 presidential bid?
``My wife called me immediately and said he looked presidential,'' said Thrasher, who as the former House speaker helped Bush lay down his agenda. ``I said, `Who knows? We'll see.' I'm ready to go to Iowa any time he's ready.''
Bush's comments about Crist's support for President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan got the most attention, but his call for Democrats and Republicans to work together was the biggest clue to his national ambitions.
It's Jeb Bush. It's always been Jeb Bush. By the time 2012 rolls around Americans are going to vote for anyone but Obama. Palin and Brown might have the charisma to give Jeb a run for his money but they'll both get the smear treatment to put them out of contention.
And this has always been the plan. It's why Obama was installed. The only hope America has is if the Democratic Party finds a backbone and gives Hillary the nomination in 2012. But we all know full well that ain't gonna happen.
It's going too be Palin.
You have to look at where she was a year ago and where she is now and ignore her aw shucks acting to see that she is growing in power on a daily basis.
She is someone who should have faded away after the pres election. The full force of the democratic party was turned on her, the full force of the media was turned on her, all the blogs relentlessly attacked her-at best she should have limped away to Alaska and hidden.
Instead she seems to not mind much and has grown stronger and stronger politically.
There is something extremely unusual about her. If the dems had any brain power left they would pull her into the party by offering her an ambassadorship or something to try an deflect her course.
But they won't.
It's already obvious. Haley Barbour.
Wait and see.
By the way, if Barbour doesn't run for president (like he didn't run for 2008) it's a sure sign that the brains and insiders in the GOP view Obama as unbeatable.
It will be Sarah -- a few years in the Fox echo chamber will iron out those kinks in the delivery (sometimes hallucinatory in their disconnect from Planet Earth). She's got a kind of post-modern Sally Field look, enough physical grace as befits a star high school athlete and will race a boatload of bucks. Team O will take her for granted the way Gore took W until it was too late.
Ssnowflake, Palin is just tooo stupid, too lazy, too selfish to be able to withstand a long drawn out run. You see what you see, and I see what I see, but your view smacks of some teabagger simpathy from where I sit.
The Tea Party movement is a groundswell of grassroots discontent with Obama and politics in general. They deserve sympathy.I find the endless attempts to make them all look like fools to be tedious and usually rooted in class prejudice.
There has been a great disconnect in the past 40 years in the democratic party between the working class democrats and the wealthy democrats. The ultimate expression of this was in the Obama campaign where 20 year old yuppie trash attacked the working class mocking their values, their lack of education, and their lack of wealth and sophistication.
Part of the revulsion I feel for the Obama crowd is that the people the party was formed to protect were turned into figures of fun to be mocked and derided and herded like cattle to vote for their new chosen one-a man so superior to them that they simply could not be expected to understand him.
Well guess what-he is about as superior as a flat tire. And the people who gushed over him with such heated fervor are the ones who should now be mocked and derided.
So yes I do have sympathy for the "tea party" crowd and what has been done to them.
I suspect that Palin does as well which is why she embraced them. I think that she sees that damage the democratic party did to itself by attacking them, and I think she is exploiting the divide and that she has made herself more powerful by meeting with them.
But perhaps I am wrong. :)
And let's not forget: the Repubs still have their vote-flipping software and other electoral tomfoolery. Jeb will not be democratly* elected.
*adverb form of democrat, cf. "Democrat Party."
And let's not forget: the Repubs still have their vote-flipping software and other electoral tomfoolery.
For more on their shenigans go to:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/diebold-PRmachine.pdf
snowflake,
I do not doubt that Palin would gladly take advantage of any opportunity that presents itself to her. As for Dems, I see three groups. The first group like Joseph saw through Obama before he was elected. The second group (like me)hoped Obama would not turn out as the first group predicted. The third group still hopes that he will after an initial period prove to be all they hope him to be. I assume that the first and second group are disappointed because Obama has shown himself to be far to the right of principles of Liberalism they believe in. They must also have had some political awareness to have contemplated Obama's shortcomings and not fallen readily for the talking points. If so, how can these same people, however disappointed, fall for the teaparty charade and the phony Palin whose principles I assume they abhore. The third group has not yet turned on Obama, therefore can not be under the Palin spell and if they do turn against him, they may still escape the trap if only because of their own vanity.
I assume then that there must be a fourth group of Dems who are susceptible to Palin charm. Tell me about them please.
H/T Post Partisan Examiner
Thune/Ryan 2012
I knew you were an Obama supporter.
No offense, but I divide things up differently.
There are 3 kinds of dems- true believers, self interested dems, and narcissistic dems.
Narcissistic dems are dems who are democratic because it allows them to feel they are superior. They generally are rich, generally don't do much to help people, but they love to flap their jaws about how wonderful they are because they are liberal dems. They all voted for Obama.
Self interested dems tend to be poorer and less educated and vote democratic because historically the party tried to make sure that they were not abused.
True believers which includes me, perhaps joseph and I think a lot of the Hillary die hards, are people who genuinely believe in the historical principals of the democratic party, are not concerned whether they personally benefit but instead want to see justice prevail and are unswerving in their support of the common good.
Palin is seeking to exploit the fissure in the party the narcissistic dems created during the primary when they beat the self interested dems into submission and forced them to support Obama. She is succeeding.
The true believers are responding in different ways but the consensus that seems to be forming is that the narcissistic dems should lose their voice in the party-at least for the time being.
They are accomplishing this by directly undermining democratic candidates all over the country or withholding support and allowing the republicans to destroy them. The goal seems to be to silence the narcissistic dems once and for all by humiliating completely.
That's how I see it-but what do I know -I'm just a snowflake.
Historical principals =historic principles in snowflake talk-ooops
Just before the grammar police come to get me...
snowflake,
If we are going the "historic" route, I only see two groups.
The "HAVEs" and the "HAVE NOTs"(middle class being a recent addition) and this goes way beyond the Democratic and the Republican parties and US history. Liberalism to me then is the struggle to abolish any and all undo advantage given to one group over the other. Liberals then are (adopting your grouping) either self interested HAVE NOTs or principalist HAVEs because if you are a true believer of principals of Liberalism and belong to the HAVEs, you either give up your ill begotten advantage or suffer from cognitive dissonance and this latter group is what you call the narcissists. I call them self intersted HAVEs that use yet another ploy to secure their advantage.
Now back to reality. The fact is that propaganda (as Joseph has mentioned in a recent post) has played a major role in forming people's opinion of Liberalism and Conservatism. The middle class (depending on which end of the spectrum) may identify itself with the HAVEs or the HAVE NOTs. Religion has been hijacked by the HAVEs. Lines have blurred and people no longer understand ideologies or even self interest.
My point is:
I abhore and have no sympathy for Teabaggers who should be Liberals and yet are letting themseles be used as a pun to further the HAVEs interests as much as you abhore and have no sympathy for what you call the "narcissist Dems" for pretending to be Liberals. Furthermore, I see Sarah Palin as an opportunist who is using the ignorance of the people to pull herself up and attach herself to the HAVEs by using any and every trick possible including exploiting the less than logical anger of the "true believers" as you call them toward a sub group inside the Democratic Party to hand the country over to the HAVEs once and for all. To be sure there is disaapointment in the Democratic Party and self evaluation is called for but I rather drive a car with a big dent in it than go back to a bicycle.
As you always say-I may be wrong but I am willing to be educated.
BTW, if self interested Dems were fooled by the narcissists to vote for Obama and now are being manipulated by Palin to vote for Repubs, I would change the description from "self interested Dems" to "fools". And what responsibility falls on the shoulders of "true Believers"? Why not help the enemy without destroy the enemy within istead of handing the front door key to the enemy?
Post a Comment