After the 2006 midterm elections, my prediction was that Barack Obama would run against Newt Gingrich for the presidency this year.
Roberk Novak reports today that I may simply have gotten the year wrong:
Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012. But there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.
Even one of his strongest supporters for president in 2012 admits it is a "very risky choice." But Republicans are in a desperate mood after the fiasco of John McCain's seemingly safe candidacy.
Republicans appear chastened by the failure of seeking moderate, independent and even Democrat votes. They are ready to try going back to the "old-time religion."
Strikingly, the GOP seems to have "learned" the lesson that they were not conservative enough. As I've
mentioned before, generational demographics make this a serious mis-reading of the outcome.
At any rate,
this will be fun to
watch.
1 comment:
If Gingrich is indeed the nominee in 2012, it will certainly be fun to watch.
As to Novack's comments:
The Rs didn't fail because they courted the moderates and abandoned their base. They failed because they campaigned to the base with a nominee not of the base. Moderates didn't trust McCain anymore and the base never trusted him in the first place. It wasn't credible on any level.
McCain was the "safe choice"? I will admit that his nomination made me nervous for about a half a minute that the election would be a tough fight, but not because he was the safe Republican choice. He was a risky choice as far as appealing to the base was concerned (Rush Limbaugh fans have long been trained to believe that McCain's POW time warped his brain and emotionally unstable) but a potentially potent choice in the fight for moderates. The Rs picked McCain and then chickened out; they didn't follow through with their presumed strategy behind his nomination in the first place.
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