About that Flawed Republican Field

The latest round of PPP's national poll finds that while Republicans are rather happy with their current top 4 crop of major Presidential contenders, Palin, Romney, Huckabee, and Gingrich, independents seriously think they ought to reconsider and nominate someone else. In other words, the people you supposedly need to win to win elections do not like what the Republican Party seems to be selling so far. And the Republican Party, or at least its elites, knows this, and would really like to start selling something else.

These four candidates, we are told, are deeply flawed. Palin is divisive and inexperienced and flaky and, well, sports a neat 19/57 approval rating. Gingrich nostalgia will soon wear off and people will remember him for the fickle, temperamental firebrand he used to be and still is. Huckabee's probably the strongest, but he's thought to have regional problems (I think these are overestimated) and he seems to be polling just as badly as the others anyway. And Romney, well, is a shape-shifting Mormon robot who used to support ObamaCare. So these aren't great candidates.

Is the Republican Party screwed? No, no, they say: the fact that these four candidates are so flawed just means that a dark horse candidate would have that much better a chance to come from behind and win the nomination. Someone like Tim Pawlenty, or John Thune, or Mitch Daniels, or Haley Barbour, or whoever. But funny thing... those guys are flawed, too. And I don't mean that they're getting 3% in the polls if they're lucky. Barbour's kind of a racist, and people have noticed. Also he looks the part. Pawlenty, Thune, and Daniels, meanwhile, are mind-numbingly boring. What's the track record of mind-numbingly boring Presidential candidates? Kerry lost (I dispute his boringness, but I'm going by popular impression). Gore won, but should've won a hell of a lot bigger given the great economy. Dole lost badly. George H.W. Bush lost to Clinton, but beat Dukakis. Oh wait, Dukakis was the more boring of those two. Mondale lost. Ford lost. That's a pretty bad track record. And of course, both Pawlenty and Daniels have shown glimmerings of moderation or reality-basedness over the years, which rules them out as contenders for the nomination.

So Republicans hoping for a white knight dark horse to save them from the Palin/Romney/Huckabee/Gingrich mess: you don't have any white knights waiting in the wings. Your starting lineup sucks... and your bench sucks, too! If you want a candidate that I as a Democrat will worry about, nominate Huckabee (and convince him to run first); no one else who's even remotely being talked about for this cycle scares me in the slightest.