Have conservatives forgotten entirely about November?
Conservatives dithering about whether they can find an ideologically perfect presidential candidate suitable for drubbing by Hillary or Barak ought to consider the onle viable alternative to that option: actually winning.
Comments
Bob Waters, I respect you immensely but the argument you gave has been put forward throughout 2007 by a number of people regarding a number of candidates and never once was it not disingenuous on some level.
Let's start with a basic assumption that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the Democrat nominee.
I'll track back to a Karl Rove interview where he stated that no matter what, whoever is the GOP nominee they will be less well-known that Clinton and have much much less in terms of funds. It doesn't matter who the nominee is, except that he will have an uphill battle in terms of name recognition.
Now, recognizing that to be true, Hillary Rodham Clinton has 50% negatives and is probably the most hated woman in America.
Let's combine that with the fact that whichever Republican candidate faces her, she will be facing the entire Republican Party, for the most part, united behind the Republican Candidate.
Whoever the GOP runs in November can beat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The only way Republican Candidate X cannot defeat Hillary in November is if the Republicans royally screw up in the campaigning come October and beyond. It doesn't matter who the Republican candidate is, unless of course the candidate is someone who can actually divide the Republican Party base and the outliers. I'm not certain if any of the four remainders can do that or would do that, but I would not rule it out, either.
But to automatically assume that the GOP and others won't unite under an anti-Hillary banner unless a certain uber-candidate does his bit in getting nominated is mildly silly.
There is no savior candidate who will automatically or reflexively pull us towards "actually winning".
No relative micro-poll can actually accurately reflect the level of antipathy a candidate can muster.
And Karl Rove was the one who was so sure that, by getting out the base, we would retain control of Congress in 2006!
Believe me- George W. Bush will muster quite a bit of antipathy!
First, let's address the side issues, just to get them out of the way. We're not talking about a "relative micro-poll." We're talking about the consistent findings of the polls in general over the course of the last year.
You will find Mitt Romney's track record in such polls here.
Rudy's is here.
Here is Fred Thompson's.
Here
is Huckabee's.
And John McCain's is here.
Obama
gives McCain a consistently tougher time. But McCain is the only Republican who's competitive. The results on this page expand to year- long by clicking where indicated at the bottom of each box.
It is simply beyond argument that the polls show John McCain to be a consistently stronger candidate against any Democratic opponent than any of the others. Moreover, there can be no denying the fact that this has been demonstrated by the polls at large to be the case over at least the past year!
Yes, who we nominate does matter. It matters especially because delivering the base isn't going to be enough. The candidate who wins this November will be the candidate who succeeds in convincing the independents and the detachable voters from the other party to vote for him (or her.)
Hillary being the nominee would help- but she won't be the only unpopular figure in this campaign. We Republicans are a minority at this moment in history. We are running this election not only as the party that's been in power for two terms (which historically has lead to defeat), but as the party of an enormously unpopular president for whose policy failures any Republican is apt to be blamed.
Some Republicans might boycott McCain or Huckabee, but I doubt that in the end there will be that many. Even Rudy Giulani, who I and a great many others would have a very tough time swallowing, would probably get the votes if not the active support of even pro-life Americans. Ron Paul is about the only Republican behind whom the Party wouldn't rally, and he doesn't matter; he's not going to be the nominee.
But the critical question- the question upon which the outcome of this election will hang- is whether, in an election we are so well-placed to lose, any of the candidates can reach out beyond the base to bring in votes we ordinarily wouldn't get.
And the evidence is overwhelming that McCain is the only such candidate. If we depend on winning because our opponent is Hillary, we will blow it.
article.
Don't show me national polls taken anywhen from Feb 2007 to Jan 2008 and insist that it is a reflection of life and voter turnout in November 2008.
National polls taken 10 months before the actual election are next to worthless. Polls taken nine months are worthless. Eleven months. Eight months. Seven months. Six months. Five weeks. 12 months.
This is what I have been trained in. This is what I do (nominally) for a living. There are no polls now or in a few weeks that will tell me a candidate's singular and comparative viability in the far future. None. Don't link to them, I won't read them. The only purpose of the publically-aired polls now are to crush the hope and thus voter turnout for your rivals.
Unless of course you think that more people have heard of the Tenn Sen and actor, the Arizona Sen, the New York mayor more than the former First Lady of the US.
I know my studies.
I never said that what has happened consistently over the course of the past year will necessarily happen this November. But neither is the information nearly as worthless as you imply. McCain appeals to independents and even some Democrats; the others don't. That, and not name recognition, accounts for the fact that he wins where the others lose.
Again, nobody ever said that the situation will be the same in November. But the evidence we have is reflected in those polls- and you know as well as I do what it shows: McCain, for whatever reason, is a stronger candidate thatn Huckabee or Giuliani or Romney or Thompson, and has been for the past year.
Whether he will continue to be over the course of the next nine months, nobody knows. But there is considerable evidence in those polls to suggest that he might, and none at all to suggest otherwise.
More than that: horse. race.
There is no considerable evidence for how an election is going to so far in the future. If that kind of evidence panned out, my Governor's name would be Dick Posthumus and/or Debbie Stabenow wouldn't be a Michigan Senator any more.
I've only been at this for a few years but one of the few lessons that stuck is you cannot predict November in January. Ever. A candidate and pleasant poll results are no substitute for a strategy and right now nobody has a strategy that they're ready to implement.
Besides... the most hated woman in America with 50% negatives? If that isn't defeated it isn't the Republicans' poor choice in a candidate. Of course John McCain could defeat her; so can the other candidates I didn't vote for.
It's not entirely clear what you mean by "horse.race." If you mean that any poll is only a snapshot of the race at a given moment, of course you're right. And what we have here is a long series of snapshots going way back into the past and pretty much constituting something close to a motion picture.
You seem to be under the wholly mistaken impression that the Republicans hold the whip hand in this election. We don't. This is an election which, by rights, we ought to lose. We have been in power for two terms. We are led by an extremely unpopular outgoing president. The generic ballot for president has favored the Democrats for months- a fact which supports the premise that the one and only candidate who doesn't consistently lose matchups against the likely Democratic nominee- unpopular though she is-
Chris, you can't have it both ways. If Hillary's unpopularity works against her in a race with McCain, it also works against her in the races with the other candidates that she wins. And while nobody claims that a poll in February can adequately predict an outcome in November, it can predict what the outcome would be in February.
Unless something drastically changes, the opinion of virtually every expert in either party who is not on the staff of another Republican candidate- namely, that McCain is the strongest possible opponent for either Hillary or Obama- is supported by the evidence of the polls to date. Sure that could change.
But something is going to have to change it.
As of now, polls or no polls, you're pretty much alone in your conviction that anybody but McCain has better than a fifty-fifty chance of beatint Hillary. And the logic of your argument contradicts itself. Hillary isn't less popular when matched against McCain than when matched against candidates like Romney, whom she consistenly defeats in the polls.
The poor choice of a candidate would be anybody but McCain.
There is no "but".
The only way to avoid the victory would be failure, but the candidate doesn't matter.
No series of snapshots can change that, especially when polls haven't been reliable since New Hampshire.
The only sign of victory is victory. Everything before that is empty narrative and working progressivism.
and if I were alone in it then I'd certainly be crazy for remembering conversations and letters exchanged that tell me I'm not alone.
However unpopular Hillary is, W is more unpopular. The economy is going south. Republicans have held the White House for two terms. By every measurement, this is an election the Republicans figure to lose. Hillary will only help so much; if you seriously think that by nominating her the Democrats are going to cease to be the favorites, you're living in a delusion.
McCain is the one candidate whose credentials say he can win. You can deny that those credentials matter, but that doesn't make the fact any less true.
In any event, after tonight, the matter will be academic.