Candidate list redux

It's been about a month since I posted my thoughts on the Republican candidates, and already much of what I wrote is out of date. Even with a giant bushel of caveats about how this stuff is impossible to predict, we are already comfortably outside the realm of where I thought this thing was going. Hopefully everything I'm about to write will be turned on its head again-- this is still at the stage where I find this lower and middle school tumbling show immensely entertaining.

Once again, I will list the candidates in the order of likelihood (according to me, obviously) that they will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States in 2012. Top up my wine, if you will.

1. Mitt Romney
Every narrative below him has changed, but Mitt Romney is still The Frontrunner. He is polling in first in Iowa and New Hampshire, he's raised the most money by a healthy margin, and, going by the media narratives, no one cares all that much that he's Mormon. He still seems plenty beatable, but that will likely require a shrewd, focused campaign, which, as we will see, has been tough to come by so far. I would still take the field over Romney, but no individual candidate has convinced me they will take him down.

As with last time, I am confounded by who to pick next. There are three people I am thinking about here, and they are all fairly problematic. Let's go with...

2. Rick Perry
There are two problems with this pick. One is that Perry, the current governor of Texas, is the media narrative du jour, and those always look better than they are. The other problem is that he is not officially in the race yet. This is a very clever campaign move. It keeps him in the news (every day there is a headline like, "Perry Hints to [news source] That He Is Close to a Decision), and it also keeps him intriguing. One of the hardest things about campaigns is having people still like you once they actually know you. By not entering yet, Perry is holding off the more substantial vetting for a little while. It also keeps him separate from the narrative of this field of candidates, which is similar to that of airplane coffee (that said, I had a coffee on a Virgin America flight, and it was stellar).

There's another thing about Rick Perry, something that may come more into play when he announces: he is super super religious. Enough to possibly freak out less religious republicans. I don't have all the details on that one right now, but I bet he is already out-Godding all the other candidates. I hope his presence in the race forces Tim Pawlenty to say some hilariously awkward stuff about God. I hope this for my own amusement.

3. Michele Bachmann
I started another post about the power of Iowa, largely because the somewhat arbitrary gift of being the first state to vote- or more precisely, to caucus- makes certain candidates viable, and one of them is Bachmann. I still don't think she can actually win, but hell, she's being considered. She's polling second to Romney in Iowa. She has, so far done the most to consolidate the large swarm of voters more conservative than Romney. Remember, only the republicans are voting here, so it doesn't matter that half the country thinks she is insane. It does matter that she is probably too much for the "mainstream" wing of the party. If Perry doesn't run or doesn't take off, and neither does Cain or one of the others, she will be in decent position. The fact that Bachmann has at least some chance to be president, is a symptom of what ails this country. I don't think it will metastasize, but... geez, things are weird right now.

4. Tim Pawlenty
I don't know why, after hearing the Pawlenty car make so many noises that would make you pull over right away, I still think he has a shot. He was "supposed" to be the main challenger in the same way that Romney was supposed to be the frontrunner. Instead, he has been polling in single digits since the beginning, and he was replaced by Rick Perry in Public Policy Polling's polls because his support was too low to warrant inclusion.

SIDE NOTE: Polls can be self-fulfilling prophecies, of course, but this was the first time I have thought about how a polling agency can affect viability just by who they include. Would Buddy Roemer start to gain traction if people started asking about him? Could someone tell republican voters that they have a candidate named Buddy Roemer?

Back to T-Paw, he does have a few things going for him. His foil is now Michele Bachmann, who is just about the easiest person to look reasonable in comparison to. Romney is trying to downplay the meaning of Iowa (his loss there was the beginning of the end for him last time), and Pawlenty is going hard for it. Bachmann may be peaking, and once her 17% support wake up from their collective, "I just had the strangest dream," perhaps they will see that Pawlenty is well organized and very conservative, and they won't mind his unexciting, vaguely annoying personality. If he can get Romney one on one, I think people would start to like him more, because enough people can't stand Romney.

On that note, I think everyone's strategy is to get Romney one on one and them treat him like a sucky incumbent. I think Mitt tries to have a big enough lead before that happens for it not to matter.

5. Jon Huntsman
Running for president requires a major commitment of time and energy. Whatever happens, the world will probably never look at you the same way. For these reasons, I'm sure everyone on this list is taking the task seriously. For other reasons, I can't tell if Jon Huntsman is. For starters, before he officially started his campaign, it was really difficult to find his website. Once you did, you got to watch this. Go ahead and watch. Then watch the next two. I'll wait.

If you are tuned into this sort of thing, you might be thinking, "this is the most surreal political ad since I am not a witch, or the epic and peerless Demon Sheep." (Watch those too, if you haven't, they are A-MAZING.)
 All three were made by the same guy, Fred Davis. Now, all of those ads make me really happy, but if I were seeking the office of president, I would not hire Fred Davis. If an aide suggested I do, I would probably think they were joking. If you go to Huntsman's website now, you get to watch walk up some stairs, greet a few people in a large, otherwise empty room, then one of them (Carol Campbell- I'd never heard of him) announce to about ten people that he is endorsing Huntsman.

6. Herman Cain
On my last list I had him second. Bachmann has basically done what I thought he would. Cain's top person in Iowa quit because Cain "wasn't trying hard enough in Iowa." Dude, Iowa is where you should be trying the hardest. What I want to know is if he is still saying he would not sign any bill longer than three pages. That's every bill, so maybe he has replaced that with, "I will not sign bills."

7. Everyone else
Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, Roemer and the rest of you, just have a poker night, winner gets everyone else's voters. Buddy Roemer wants to remake our campaign finance system, and is not excepting donations larger than $1,000. Someone please vote for him.