Political & Elections

catahoula · Guru

RE: Electability

hope · Guru

Sorry, it's nonsense

Was Howard Dean deemed electable? I don't think so.

And, like pima, I will not hold my nose and vote for Gingrich. I will stay home.

Not a good sign.

hope · Guru

True. though imo it's doubtful that group is as large as the group who will not crawl to the polls and vote for Newt, and that's excluding independents. Take a gander at his likeability numbers that I posted earlier. They might be even worse now.

-- Edited by hope on Friday 3rd of February 2012 05:28:30 PM

winchester · Guru

I mostly agree with your first comment pima.

I'm not so sure the dividing line is between the educated and the ignorant/insecure. With that said, I'm also not sure I can offer a better one.

Maybe there's no dividing line at all.

I agree with the notion of Americans being sheep, with the following exeption: it's not just Americans. It's humans.

We tend to search for "logic" and "facts" that support our views. If we find some we stop looking. If we don't find some, we keep looking.

Or maybe the topic, like electability, gives us a "not quite right" feeling, but the feeling isn't bad enough, or the issue isn't meaningful enough, for us to spend the energy to keep looking.

And then an article like this one, which scratches our "not quite right" itch, comes along, and we say "Aha! THAT's what was bothering me!"

Either way, I agree with Yates Walker. The topic of electability is a meaningless distraction; much ado about nothing.

-- Edited by winchester on Friday 3rd of February 2012 01:13:10 PM

hope · Guru

If this article is an apology for Newt, I'm not buying it.

I think I heard recently that people just don't like him. Sounds to me as if that makes him kind of unelectable.

Gallup now has Newt Gingrich doing as well against President Barack Obama as Mitt Romney. Yet he still would be the best general election candidate to run against, by far. Why? Take a look at these numbers:

CBS News/NYT, 1/12-17

Newt Gingrich: Fav 17, Unfav 49
Mitt Romney: Fav 21, Unfav 35
Barack Obama: Fav 38, Unfav 45

Fox News, 1/12-14

Newt Gingrich: Fav 27, Unfav 56
Mitt Romney: Fav 45, Unfav 38
Barack Obama: Fav 51, Unfav 46

CNN, 1/11-12

Newt Gingrich: Fav 28, Unfav 58
Mitt Romney: Fav 43, Unfav 42
Barack Obama: Fav 49, Unfav 49

Newt's brutal numbers means he has little, if any, upside. That 48 percent nationally Gallup gave him today (against Obama's 50) is likely his ceiling, while Romney's 48 percent still has room to grow, particularly against a president with mediocre public ratings.

Conservatives have convinced themselves that Newt will be the better nominee because he'll crush Obama in debates. In fact, Newt is fueling this fantasy by claiming he'll demand seven three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with Obama.

But bottom line, people don't like Newt, and there's nothing about him that will make him more likable.

pima · Guru

I have stated I am an Independent that leans R. Honestly, I cannot and will not hold my nose and vote for Newt. I see him as a Bully on the playground. I think he is smart, but he is arrogant. Arrogance is not what I want in a leader. We are not isolationists. To me Newt is our country's Putin.

OBTW I won't vote for Obama either. I will abstain.

-- Edited by pima on Thursday 2nd of February 2012 07:57:26 AM

pima · Guru

Yrs ago I bought a book by Judge Napolitano where he calls Americans sheep. That is the truth and unfortunately most of us will buy whatever is being sold or accepted as the norm. As much as people want to say "electability" is a joke, for the educated that is true, for the ignorant and insecure it is not true. They want and need the media to spoon feed them and tell them how to think.

They want to make sure that they are normal. They want to hear that they are on the winning team. They don't want to "waste" their vote if society tells them they are on the sinking ship. That is what people hear and read when it comes to electability.

As far as the Obama and Hillary "electability" maybe my memory is going, but I recall in the primaries both candidates were seen that way. How many times was the question is America ready for the 1st woman or the 1st African American posed in the media? Biden when he was a candidate was asked a question like this by George on This Week. That was when he answered: "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy".

People wondered if Hillary was electable because of her hubby's baggage.

It happens all the time, we are just taking note of it now because Obama has no D opponents and is the sitting President. The same was true in 04 with Bush, nobody discussed electability for him, but they did for Kerry. We saw this in 00 with Gore and Bush. Gore had the Clinton's tied to him like a noose around his neck and people wondered if he was electable.

-- Edited by pima on Thursday 2nd of February 2012 06:27:12 AM

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

I am kind of tired that the media destroys candidates by the electability factor. As the article so clearly states, "electability" is a joke.

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

True, that.

winchester · Guru

I like this.

We can be lemming-like, we humans. Fads and fashions happen with ideas as much as they do with pet rocks.

But if something just doesn't feel right, even if you can't quite put your finger on why you feel the way you do about it, you may be right.

Like with "electability," for example:

The truth about ‘electability’

By Yates Walker 11:20 AM 02/01/2012

Republican voters need a therapeutic slap across the face.

In exit polls yesterday, Florida Republicans revealed that their top reason for choosing their candidate was “electability.” After screaming at my TV for 10 minutes, I had several drinks and sat down to write this column.

John McCain was electable. Wasn’t he?

Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Keith Olbermann, The New York Times and The Washington Post all said he was. McCain was “a great guy” according to Chris Matthews. So why aren’t we in year four of the McCain administration?

Because electability is absolute, unadulterated, straight-out-of-the-cow bull****. And I can prove it with two questions.

1.) Did anyone ever ask if Barack Obama was electable?

Potential candidate liabilities: Obama has a weird name. He’s aloof. He’s an elitist. He spent his formative years in Indonesia. His father was a Muslim. His mother was a Marxist radical. He won’t release his college records. He never served in the military. He never held a job in the private sector. He had a negligible impact as an Illinois state senator. He had a negligible impact as a U.S. senator. He had no foreign policy experience. He had no executive experience. He spent 20 years of Sundays with a lunatic pastor who despises America. He’s a product of the notoriously corrupt Chicago political machine. He had close personal ties to domestic terrorists and other unsavory characters.

2) Did anyone ever ask if Hillary Clinton was electable?

Potential candidate liabilities: She’s a left-wing feminist. She’s not attractive. She has a cold demeanor. She’s not charismatic. She and her husband were scandal-ridden and scandal-prone. She had well-known, shady business dealings. Her life’s major political achievement was staying married to a husband who cheated on her every chance he could. She was an unpopular first lady (until the Lewinsky sympathy). Her only major leadership role (Hillarycare) resulted in abject failure, ultimately causing the Democrats to lose their majority in Congress for the first time in more than three decades. She was a junior senator from New York in the second term of a legislative career without much distinction.

And the answer to each of those questions is no.

The list of potential political liabilities for Hillary and Barack could go on for days. Each had an ideology far to the left of mainstream America. Neither had an executive’s pedigree. Yet, somehow, electability wasn’t an issue for them.

It ain’t a mystery, folks.

The electability question is a liberal media con. It is posed only when discussing Republicans. And it is posed often. The purpose of the question is to cast doubt on conservative candidates and, ultimately, keep them out of office.

And, tragically, it works.

The electability meme doesn’t merely haunt Republican office seekers. It has slithered into the minds of Republican voters, leading them to be unnaturally anxious when conservative candidates take strong stands. The result of this anxiety is manifest. We either lose (see: Bob Dole, John McCain, etc.) or elect callow, mealy-mouthed imps (see: the hordes of GOP congressmen who think compromise is a cardinal virtue). In short, the electability con has been a destructive, weakening force in the conservative movement for generations. And, as dupes, Republicans continually harm themselves.

The 2010 tea party wave crushed the spirit of the Democrats. It was their biggest loss in 70 years. A more limited government was clearly the will of the people. For a few trembling months, the lame-duck Dems and a dispirited President Obama thought the world was ending because fiscal restraint was coming to town. All of the political winds were at Republican backs. Then, John Boehner insisted that he wasn’t in charge. And the capitulations of our just-elected electables soon followed.

That’s the worst part of the electable meme. It’s hard to root for weak candidates. Conservatives love America. And our country wasn’t founded and built by mealy-mouths and second-guessers. America was founded by ass-kickers, men and women who took hard stands, come hell or high water. That’s the type of candidate we want, the type they call “unelectable.” And here’s the kicker: the last one we nominated won 49 states and was re-elected in 1984.

If conservatives can learn anything from Barack Obama, it’s this: Anyone is electable.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/01/the-truth-about-electability/#ixzz1lAdkzPi3