2012 Republican Challengers Taking It Easy

At this time four years ago, there were already five candidates running for the Republican nomination for the Presidency: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Tommy Thompson (they announced in November), Jim Gilmore, and Sam Brownback. Today, there are no announced candidates.

There could be a few factors contributing to this. For starters, the process got started way to early for everyone last year except for Mike Huckabee, who needed every second he could to build his following. As a result, Iowa has moved the date of its caucuses back more than a month to February 6, 2012 (from January 3 last time).

There's more to it than that, however. Even if we move the time line back a month, there would have still been three candidates running on the Republican side. To better understand what's happening, we need to first look at the potential contenders. In no particular order:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
Former Governor Mike Huckabee
Former Governor Sarah Palin
Former Governor Mitt Romney
Governor Haley Barbour
Governor Tim Pawlenty
Governor Mitch Daniels
Former Senator Rick Santorum
Senator John Thune
Representative Mike Pence
Representative Ron Paul

First and foremost, there are certain would-be candidates who probably don't want to run if one of the others end up running. Doing so would split up the political demographic they'd need to get elected. Rick Santorum, for example, isn't going to want to run if he has to compete with Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and John Thune. Sarah Palin already dominates the people he would need support from and John Thune is essentially the same candidate as Santorum, with the only difference being that John Thune hasn't been kicked out of office by voters. (Although Thune did lose his first bid for US Senate)

By that same token, Mitch Daniels is a copy-paste operation of the candidate Mitt Romney markets himself as. I think Mitt is going to run no matter what, and if he does, Governor Daniels probably isn't going to throw his name in the hat. I wish it would work the other way, but Daniels remains a relatively unknown figure in Iowa and he's not making the moves necessary to change that in the national media or by actually going to Iowa. Keep in mind that after Iowa, the candidates are going to New Hampshire, which is Mitt Romney's backyard, making the challenge even greater for Governor Daniels. If Mitt runs, Mitch won't. If Mitch runs, Mitt may still run, but he'll lose. In addition to everything else, Mitch is going to have a lot of questions to answer about the horrible education policies that have gone into effect under his watch in Indiana. This could be enough to sink him in a General Election if he won the nomination.

Also worried about Mitt Romney is Mike Pence. I predict Mike Pence will stay in the House of Representatives and wait patiently for Senator Lugar to resign - or rise through the ranks of the House of Representatives and become Speaker of the House when Boener is admitted to the D.C. psych ward. Especially if Newt Gingrich is in the race. Romney and Gingrich are going to rely on the same loyal to the establishment Republicans with Newt benefiting from conservative outsiders and Romney benefiting from defects who think Newt has gotten too old. Pence is an establishment conservative, which makes him likable to a lot of people, but not more people than Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

Newt Gingrich, I strongly believe, didn't run in 2008 because he thought (like the rest of the world) that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. There hasn't been much talk of it, but Newt Gingrich was having an affair while he was Speaker of the House and while he was leading the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for fibbing about his affair. A Gingrich-Clinton face off would have brought that out. Gingrich might be waiting to see who the Vice-Presidential nominee of President Barack Obama is. If Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap positions (Biden's expertise is foreign policy), Gingrich could inadvertently wind up in race against Clinton anyway. If she remains as the Secretary of State, there's enough going on in the world that Secretary Clinton won't have enough time to pester Gingrich on the campaign trail. If there's a chance Hillary is on the 2012 ticket with President Obama, Gingrich won't run.

Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi is a former Chairman of the RNC and a more successful one than Mike Steele, who has been one disaster after another. If he runs, Haley Barbour is going to be a strong contender if Iowans know who he is. Governor Barbour, like Newt Gingrich, can make a strong case that he helped save the GOP from imploding in the 1990s. However, unlike Gingrich, Governor Barbour can make a very strong case for his conservative evangelical background and policies. This means Barbour will be able to compete for voters with not only Gingrich - but Palin, Huckabee, Santorum, and Thune, as well. From my observations, Barbour has been spending the most amount of time in Iowa of any of the potential 2012 candidates. If 3 or 4 of these 5 candidates run and Barbour continues to be comparatively unknown, I doubt he will run.

We have now explained why several candidates haven't yet announced. This leaves:

Former Governor Mike Huckabee
Former Governor Sarah Palin
Former Governor Mitt Romney
Governor Tim Pawlenty
Senator John Thune
Representative Ron Paul

I hate Ron Paul. The guy is just a moron. So there's no point in analyzing him.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee
Former Governor Sarah Palin
Former Governor Mitt Romney
Governor Tim Pawlenty
Senator John Thune

Let's talk about Senator John Thune. I personally expected Thune to be spending a LOT of time in Iowa because, let's face it, he IS interested and although 2010 was an election year for him, he doesn't have a challenger. Additionally, he managed to build up a 12 million dollar war chest with no responsibilities to spend it anywhere he doesn't want to. Shockingly, Thune spent the majority of his time in Washington, DC instead. Thune's strategy appears to be framing. Thune has spent a tremendous amount of time offering amendments, proposing new and very conservative legislation (like spending freezes on all non-security items). Essentially, he's backing up his platform and defining himself with the legislation he's pushing. Thune's problem is that he made a few bad votes that I suspect he would take back if he could. This could lead to a conflict with the Tea Parties.

All's not lost for Thune, though. For starters, the Iowa tea party groups are not as strong as they are in other areas. Granted, they're not as pathetic as the Northwest Indiana groups led by Faith Jones and Mark Leyva... but that's an extreme example of worthlessness. The Iowa groups are still something to worry about, but they can't make a candidate and they won't be able to break more than one or two candidates. This is Thune's opening. Although Thune has made a couple of bad votes; relative to Mitt Romney pushing ObamaCare in Massachusetts before it became known as ObamaCare, Huckabee increasing taxes and pushing for free-tuition for illegals, and Mitch Daniels' aggressive infrastructure spending; Thune could actually be 3rd or 4th on the Tea Party hit lists, preventing any sort of nagging problems on the trail until it's too late for the Tea Party radicals to stop him. However, in order for him to get in the race, Thune actually needs one or two other people with worse records to run against him as cannon fodder.

Mike Huckabee probably isn't sure if he even wants to run. He has a pretty sweet gig right now. He's set for life and he has millions of adoring fans despite letting rapists and murderers out of prison for them to continue their reign of terror on innocent victims. Running for President again means risking everything he has. Additionally, Huckabee 2012 will be nothing like the fairy tale that was Huckabee 2008. Consider this. In 2008, Huckabee entered the race as a nobody and he fought the system to win Iowa and nearly upset the entire Republican Party system. Huckabee's biggest logistical problem in 2007 and 2008 was that he couldn't raise money, but at the time, supporters said that was because he was a nobody and an outsider who couldn't get the big donors before they committed to other candidates.

If Huckabee runs for 2012, he's going into the race as a front runner, if not THE front runner. Nobody has any expectations for Third Tier Candidates. When Huckabee would raise just $100,000 in a quarter, nobody cared because he was a nobody in 2007. As a front runner, on the other hand, everybody has very specific expectations. If Huckabee raises just $2 million in a quarter, he's going to fail to meet a very VERY important expectation of a front runner. And when front runners fail to meet expectations, they don't stay front runners.

To make a long story short, Huckabee's political action committee (Huck PAC) has underwhelmed a lot of people. It's strength has been in phone banking for the candidates it's supported. Although having an in-house phone banking solution is definitely nice, phone calls are not as fungible of a resource as cash. Unless Huckabee magically solves his fundraising issues, it doesn't matter if he runs or not because he won't win.

Now, what happens to Huckabee will by far have the greatest impact of Governor-turned-quitter Sarah Palin. For the life of me, I don't get the attraction to this woman as a politician. Maybe I would like her more as the Chairwoman of the GOP, but she scares the piss out of me as any politician I can think of, including Ron Paul. At least with corrupt politicians, you know it's in their best interest not to destroy the country. But when you have an irrational idiot immovable in her ideology of idiocy, the safety of the country takes a back seat to right vs. wrong. And judging by the rhetoric of Sarah Palin, I'm honestly scared to death of the idea of this woman starting a nuclear war. Seriously, I can't think of one time she has even hinted at the consideration of showing restraint.

With that said, people love her... moreso than even Mike Huckabee's supporters - who seemed to be convinced he's the 3rd coming of Jesus Christ. Every time that Huckabee falters and loses a supporter, that person is more than likely going to join Cult of Sarah. For Huckabee, there's no getting them back, either. So Huckabee needs to seriously consider whether or not he should run again if Palin runs.

I'll be shocked if Palin doesn't run. She's pretty much the Hillary Clinton of 2004-2006. Everyone has been expecting her to run for so long that she almost doesn't have a choice. The only other things she might have done instead were fulfill her commitment to the people of Alaska and finish her term as Governor or run for Chairwoman of the Republican Party. Although she still could run for Chairwoman (and win), she's showing no interest in that at all.

What's she waiting for? Well, let's face it. Nobody wants to be the first one to arrive at the party. The same can be said of Mitt Romney, although I suspect he's probably a little worried about the prospect of running against Newt Gingrich. Additionally, Mitt wasted a LOT of his personal money the last time around and got nothing to show for it except the reputation of being a bit of a prick. Mitt is in the same boat as John Thune. He needs more people to run against him. The best case scenario for Mitt Romney is that Newt Gingrich stays out of the race and Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and John Thune divide the people who beat Romney last year. Romney is essentially positioning himself to be the survivor of the demolition derby, which was how McCain won in 2008. If 2012 doesn't yield a lot of conservative candidates, Mitt might just sit 2012 out.

This leaves Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. To be honest... I know nothing about this guy besides the fact that he's a man and a Governor from the state of Minnesota. His name is being thrown around a lot, but never about the things he's done. That troubles me and suggests he's the George Allen of 2012 - the guy that the establishment wants but people know nothing about, but because his name is thrown around constantly, people just assume he's the guy - and therefore vote for him.

Wow, that's a long post.