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Republicans for POTUS, 2016 Edition

Image matters, but it's not the whole ball game. Mitt looked exactly like a President or CEO, but he was way too socially awkward. Walker doesn't have the curb appeal, isn't charismatic, and he doesn't have the raw candlepower of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. Think he'll do well in the GOP primary, but like Christie he has way too many question marks for a general election and still faced an unfavorable electoral college map.

'Pubs are quantitatively challenged, but Hillary's team still has no idea how to market her. Her late 2007 theme was, "experience for change" which cancelled out each other. Now she's trying to position herself as a wise grandmother which doesn't scream leader of the free world. They need to come up with a reason for her run and an image that resonates. Sizzle will have to come from her VP (Castro?).
 
Hillary: It's Her or Them

Hillary: Every Democrat But Obama is Scared of Her

Hillary: Not the Woman You Want, But the One You Can Get

Staying with the Pubs, I can't tell if Jeb is a Romney or a Guilani. Politicians who have been on the sidelines don't typically fare well for a variety of reasons. Jeb's best selling points as a politician happened over a decade ago. Yet he's still the safest choice compared to the rest of a crowded field.

Somewhat interesting take on Jeb from The Atlantic. The tone is spiteful, but these points are accurate.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/is-jeb-bush-buying-the-nomination/385433/

Jeb’s weaknesses are hiding in plain sight. They’ve just been obscured by his dazzling success in raising cash.


First, he’s not a natural politician. Jeb’s admirers consider him wonky, hard-working, and principled. But he’s also an introvert who doesn’t much like to campaign. As Peter Baker recently noted, “in political settings, he sometimes seems to eye the exit, calculating how to get from here to there with the least fuss.” Candidates who don’t enjoy politics can still win the presidency. Barack Obama, although a great orator, is something of an introvert himself. So was Jimmy Carter. But more often than not, the more gifted campaigner—whether it be Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush—prevails. Jeb, with his love of policy, distaste for politics and preference for sitting behind a computer screen rather than interacting with a crowd, has less in common temperamentally with his brother than with the guy his brother beat: Al Gore.


Second, Jeb doesn’t have a gut-level connection with his party’s base. Another lesson of recent elections is that candidates with strong emotional connections to their party’s activists enjoy more freedom to reach out to swing voters. George W. Bush’s born-again evangelicalism gave him a cultural connection to conservatives that John McCain and Mitt Romney lacked. That meant activists did not scrutinize his issue positions as carefully, looking for heresies. (Bush suffered little conservative backlash in either 2000 or 2004, for instance, for supporting comprehensive immigration reform). Obama has a similar rapport with liberal Democrats.
Jeb, on the other hand, although quite conservative, is widely distrusted by his party’s base. According to a January Wall Street Journal poll, only 37 percent of Republicans view Jeb favorably. That doesn’t mean he can’t win the nomination. After all, McCain and Romney did. But because of their fragile relationship with their party’s base, neither had much freedom to move to the center. Jeb may face the same problem. He claims he won’t pander to the Republican right, yet he’s already doing so. To win the nomination and mobilize conservatives in the general election, he’ll have to keep doing so while Rush Limbaugh scrutinizes his every move. All of which will it make it harder to win over those swing voters who view the Republican right with disdain.

Finally, and most importantly, Jeb can’t exploit Hillary Clinton’s greatest weakness. As the wife of a former president whose party has held power for the last eight years, Hillary is vulnerable to a candidate who embodies change. But given his last name, Jeb can’t do so. While other Republicans could frame 2016 as a choice between the past and future, Jeb would make it a choice between two pasts, one of which Americans remember far more fondly than the other.
 
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Rubio/Walker combo is prob the best the GOP is gonna muster.

I don't think Pence/Kasich will excite enough, although I've always felt Mike Pence would be an excellent President.
 
The large majority of Americans in both parties will likely end up voting for somebody they're not excited about.
 
Rubio/Walker combo is prob the best the GOP is gonna muster.

I don't think Pence/Kasich will excite enough, although I've always felt Mike Pence would be an excellent President.

Not charismatic, but I think Kasich would be the best of that bunch. Don't trust Pence seems to be opportunistic like Romney in saying whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear at that moment. Rubio would be a good contrast to Hillary, but too much a reminder of Obama's inexperience and learning curve. Looks like more crappy unexciting choices from both parties.
 
The large majority of Americans in both parties will likely end up voting for somebody they're not excited about.

This problem is only gonna get worse too. Need sharp people to start getting involved in local governments but they're all too smart and busy to do so!
 
This problem is only gonna get worse too. Need sharp people to start getting involved in local governments but they're all too smart and busy to do so!

This. But I understand. Our school board is basically made up of PTA moms with no experience in education who just fired the reigning state Superintendent of the Year, costing taxpayers $1.1 million. Four times her salary to fire someone who probably would have retired soon enough anyway. My wife asked me if I would consider running and I said no way. She responded, "And that's the problem. Someone like you should run, but you're too busy."
 
This. But I understand. Our school board is basically made up of PTA moms with no experience in education who just fired the reigning state Superintendent of the Year, costing taxpayers $1.1 million. Four times her salary to fire someone who probably would have retired soon enough anyway. My wife asked me if I would consider running and I said no way. She responded, "And that's the problem. Someone like you should run, but you're too busy."

If it makes you feel any better, none of us think you would do a good job.
 
So you agree with me and disagree with my wife.

The wife is always right.

We've had to deal with the local school board a lot for the last month, and I'm blown away by how useless some of the members of the board are. My wife has jokingly told me I should run to replace one of them, but no way am I putting myself under the spotlight like that.

I do think I'd be more useful than Elizabeth Motsinger has been so far.
 
We had to deal with the school board last year to get kids in our neighborhood zoned for the school located right outside of our neighborhood. It worked out well. Ends up the two school board members we worked with led the coup against the superintendent.

My wife and I are already known enough within our small neighborhood for working on these issues. I can't imagine what it would be like to represent people in one of the largest school districts in the country.
 
Just saw Condi Rice pop up on my TV while watching the Pebble Beach golf event today, and it got me wondering if she will ever pursue a career in politics again.
 
We had to deal with the school board last year to get kids in our neighborhood zoned for the school located right outside of our neighborhood. It worked out well. Ends up the two school board members we worked with led the coup against the superintendent.

My wife and I are already known enough within our small neighborhood for working on these issues. I can't imagine what it would be like to represent people in one of the largest school districts in the country.

Well done getting around that zoning issue. Way back when our 12 year old was getting ready to go to Kindergarten we petitioned the district for him to attend Whitaker over in the Buena Vista neighborhood and it was accepted. Once he was in, any siblings are also granted the same school assignment. I get my kids attending the best school in the district without having to pay the mega $ to live in BV.

The very next year the school in question put an end to accepting out of zone transfers due to the overwhelming number of them they were receiving. Were it not for my wife being on the ball back then, we wouldn't have pulled it off.
 
Keep your riff raff out of my local school's population, Karma.

I'm off to nom some caviar and sip Dom.
 
Well done getting around that zoning issue. Way back when our 12 year old was getting ready to go to Kindergarten we petitioned the district for him to attend Whitaker over in the Buena Vista neighborhood and it was accepted. Once he was in, any siblings are also granted the same school assignment. I get my kids attending the best school in the district without having to pay the mega $ to live in BV.

The very next year the school in question put an end to accepting out of zone transfers due to the overwhelming number of them they were receiving. Were it not for my wife being on the ball back then, we wouldn't have pulled it off.

We're not out of the woods yet. We were able to get priority school choice for our neighborhood. This school is the only A rated school in the neighborhood (out of 3 schools in a well-to-do suburb) and doesn't even appear on school choice, so whatever spots are left, we get. The school is located at the only road entering our small community, but the school is zoned for kids who live in more established neighborhoods about 10-15 minutes away. The established neighborhoods don't want to go to the lower-rated school they're zoned for that includes apartment complexes.

What's weirder is old documents seem to indicate our local school was built for our neighborhood but the builder didn't build enough homes to attract people before other neighborhoods took the school over. Meantime, our community is adding hundreds of homes over the next few years, so a priority choice situation won't work for long. We were planning on working on rezoning this year, but with the superintendent controversy, it's not the time to tackle a huge rezoning that would likely pit neighborhood vs. neighborhood.
 
The wife is always right.

We've had to deal with the local school board a lot for the last month, and I'm blown away by how useless some of the members of the board are. My wife has jokingly told me I should run to replace one of them, but no way am I putting myself under the spotlight like that.

I do think I'd be more useful than Elizabeth Motsinger has been so far.

Motsinger is about as useless as Virginia Foxx's birth control.
 
Wow. You rarely hear Helms brought up in national conversation.
 
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