And So It Begins

CNN is out with a 2012 general-election poll of Obama vs. four different Republicans. Huckabee leads Obama by 8, 52%-44%; Romney leads by 5, 50% to 45%; Obama leads Gingrich 49%-47%; and Obama leads Sarah Palin by 8, 52%-44%. A few thoughts.

Mitt Romney does not worry me. Not especially because he wouldn't be a strong general election opponent, which he might be (though I think his negative charisma would hurt him in the end). Because it is categorically impossible that he's the Republican nominee. It's just too damn easy to accuse him of having supported a policy identical to ObamaCare, because, well, he did. No effing way he wins the Republican Presidential primary electorate over.

I have been saying for a while, conditional on his being the 2012 nominee, Mike Huckabee's the guy who scares me. (Also Marco Rubio, but he's more worrisome down the road, and boy is he...) Huckabee's persona doesn't emphasize the "let's screw poor people and give money to bankers!" aspect of Republicanism; in fact, his persona is almost the very embodiment of compassionate conservativism (remember that?). Now, I don't think he deserves that reputation, but he has it. And he certainly does occasionally say things that at least sound reasonable, like when he told Jon Stewart that we need government to that extent that we fail to govern ourselves (aha, I discover that the rebuttal I had meant to write up and post, I never did. That might come soon). I think Huckabee would indeed be a formidable opponent for Obama. I am somewhat skeptical, though, both that he runs and that he would win if he runs. I could be wrong, but I hope I'm not.

I also think it is possible that Huckabee's support is somewhat soft. He's never been in the very center of the public spotlight, and he certainly hasn't been near it of late. It's possible that, given the warm, fuzzy feeling that seems to follow Huckabee around, some people are feeling like they like him and aren't remembering the sometimes-crazy and rather-theocratic stuff Huckabee sometimes says. I'm not certain of this, and I look back at various of my optimistic election predictions from this last year and am somewhat legitimately humbled. But I think it's possible (also for Romney), and it's a noted contrast to the next person on the list.

Sarah Palin is running a net 16 points behind Huckabee against Obama. According to CNN, Republicans would, in nominating Sarah Palin, gift Obama a 16 point handicap compared to nominating their strongest candidate. I think she's running. I don't know if she wins the nomination; she could, but I don't think she's a lock. If she runs and wins, great: I'm happy to have those 16 points (though I suspect that's a slight overstatement), and she's not really all that much worse than any of the others in terms of policy. If she runs and loses the primary, I strongly suspect that she will go fully rogue, and pull a Teddy Roosevelt. And if so, get ready to watch Obama have some serious fun in 2012. In Colorado, Tom Tancredo was able to lose by only 15 points in a D-R-T match-up, but that's because Dan Maes, the nominal Republican, plummeted to 11%. I don't think either Sarah Palin or the nominal Republican could drive the other below 20%. Certainly not into the low-single-digits where they would need to be in order to come close to Barack Obama. So Obama would probably win upwards of 450 electoral votes. And if Palin runs, loses, and stays lost, or just doesn't run, well, no complaints here: she's sooooo dreadful. If she wants to stay away, less power to her.

And as for Newt Gingrich. He is running, I think. He could win the primary; I think he would have a good shot. But I'm fairly comfortable with seeing him run 2 points behind Obama right now. That's partly because it looks like Obama is probably at the nadir of his popularity right now (at least, I hope he is...), so being ahead at all right now is a pretty good indication that he'll be ahead on Election Day. But it's also because I think Gingrich probably has a hard ceiling, and a soft floor. And there's a very specific reason why I think he might have a soft floor. It goes like this: even I have had a kind of nostalgic feeling that Gingrich has gravitas, knows what he's talking about, sounds at least somewhat sensible the last year or two. But, as with Huckabee, that is 100% aesthetic and 0% substance: Gingrich has been giving Sarah Palin a run for her money in terms of pure crazy, and let's not forget that Newt Gingrich was kind of crazy as Speaker and kind of got clobbered on account of it. So I think there might be a few middle-of-the-roaders, or slightly-right-wingers, who have a similar nostalgia for the good ol' days when reasonable Republicans like Newt Gingrich were running the show, but who might have the wool pulled from their eyes if he ends up running for President.

Oh, and if there is a God, and if he/she/it is a Democrat, then please, please let Haley Barbour be the Republican nominee in 2012. He's basically a central casting prototype of a neo-Confederate type. Seriously, if it's Barbour vs. Obama, I think that Obama would be favored to easily beat his performance among African-Americans in 2008 (whom he won 95%-4%). I wouldn't be shocked if Barbour got less than 2% of the black vote. And boy would they ever turn out...