Is Huckabee finished?

[fezzyfestoon]

I would say he his.  His involvement with the Lakewood, WA police massacre suspect will hurt him, as will his staunch conservatism.  You cannot win a presidential election in this day in age by being on either extreme.  One has to campaign close to the center and then slowly move to toward one-sided governing, like President Obama has done.  He campaigned from the center-left, but is governing from the left.  President Bush even campaigned from the center-right, but governed farther to the right from where he campaigned.  I just don't think Huckabee knows how to campaign from the center just like Sarah Palin wouldn't know how to.  You can win the primaries from the fringe, but not the general election.

No. Obama is governing from the right.

Obama's governing for his 2012 run, not any ideological standpoint.

[Хahar 🤔]

I would say he his.  His involvement with the Lakewood, WA police massacre suspect will hurt him, as will his staunch conservatism.  You cannot win a presidential election in this day in age by being on either extreme.  One has to campaign close to the center and then slowly move to toward one-sided governing, like President Obama has done.  He campaigned from the center-left, but is governing from the left.  President Bush even campaigned from the center-right, but governed farther to the right from where he campaigned.  I just don't think Huckabee knows how to campaign from the center just like Sarah Palin wouldn't know how to.  You can win the primaries from the fringe, but not the general election.

No. Obama is governing from the right.

Obama's governing for his 2012 run, not any ideological standpoint.

Precisely. In general, that means his policies are right-wing.

[CJK]

I would say he his.  His involvement with the Lakewood, WA police massacre suspect will hurt him, as will his staunch conservatism.  You cannot win a presidential election in this day in age by being on either extreme.  One has to campaign close to the center and then slowly move to toward one-sided governing, like President Obama has done.  He campaigned from the center-left, but is governing from the left.  President Bush even campaigned from the center-right, but governed farther to the right from where he campaigned.  I just don't think Huckabee knows how to campaign from the center just like Sarah Palin wouldn't know how to.  You can win the primaries from the fringe, but not the general election.

No. Obama is governing from the right.

Obama's governing for his 2012 run, not any ideological standpoint.

Precisely. In general, that means his policies are right-wing.

It would be hilarious, from a conservative perspective, if the 5% who believe this shoot themselves in the head again with Nader (or a Naderite) and cost Obama the election.

[Poundingtherock]

Palin should be hoping for Bloomberg to enter the race as a third-party candidate.  Bloomberg is the type of guy who can win 30% of moderates in a Palin/Bloomberg/Obama contest, potentially making it a race between conservatives and liberals.  He would probably take very little from the 43-44% that Palin is winning right now.

Bloomberg would hopefully run on a explicitly pro-gay marriage/moderately pro-environment/moderately anti-war platform.

[Хahar 🤔]

Bloomberg won't run.

[Psychic Octopus]

Bloomberg won't run.

But there's always hope.

Although, he would never win and Obama is preferable to Palin.

1. Bloomberg
2. Obama
3. Palin

[Bo]

Yes

[Zot]

No. Mike Huckabee's voters don't care about law and order issues. The people to be angered/repulsed by this were already angered/repulsed by his belief in creationism and his squirrel-eating.

1) As someone who voted for Huckabee, I can say he's finished.

2) I admit squirrels don't have much meat on their bones but there is nothing wrong in eating them.

[milhouse24]

Not if chuck norris has anything to say about it.

[Inoljt]

It might hurt him in the primaries. But in the general election, I could see Huckabee getting black support (in 2016, that is).

Did you know that 48% of blacks voted for him in the 1998 Arkansas gubernatorial election?

Link: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/1998/states/AR/G/exit.poll.html

[Mjh]

I think yes, but I don’t beleive Huckabee could ever win the nomination in the first place. As we saw in the 2008 election, Huck have real trouble reaching beyond his base of evangelical Christians. That might have been enough if Huck was the only show in town for the Christian Right, but that is hardly the case. He will most likely have to compete with Palin, Pawlenty (who have conventiently decided to run as a socially conservative culture-warrior) and maybe even Rick Santorum.

[Speaker Perez]

if Huckabee runs, it will be like Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton, for the republicans

[tarheel-leftist85]

I would say he his.  His involvement with the Lakewood, WA police massacre suspect will hurt him, as will his staunch conservatism.  You cannot win a presidential election in this day in age by being on either extreme.  One has to campaign close to the center and then slowly move to toward one-sided governing, like President Obama has done.  He campaigned from the center-left, but is governing from the left.  President Bush even campaigned from the center-right, but governed farther to the right from where he campaigned.  I just don't think Huckabee knows how to campaign from the center just like Sarah Palin wouldn't know how to.  You can win the primaries from the fringe, but not the general election.

No. Obama is governing from the right.

Obama's governing for his 2012 run, not any ideological standpoint.

Precisely. In general, that means his policies are right-wing.

It would be hilarious, from a conservative perspective, if the 5% who believe this shoot themselves in the head again with Nader (or a Naderite) and cost Obama the election.

I'm prepared to cost Obama the election by voting independent or third party.  I'm willing to let the other legacy party in to get Obama out.  Really, if we can collapse one party, the other will follow--and maybe, just maybe people we'll pay attention to policy and to the matter of who owns this country.  How will collapsing one party take down both?  They are nothing more than advertisers to niche markets.  Instead of offering up substantive leftist policy, the Democrat™ Party enacts corporatist/neoliberal policy with pseudo-intellectual "technocratic" "expertise" and markets itself basically according to Republican stereotypes (on DailyKos, you'll probably see more Palin-bashing than anything of substance).  They are marketing to people with severe cases of status inflation.  The Republicans affect a populist and folksy demeanor and market themselves against whomever the leaders of the Democrat™ happen to be.  That is, both avoid substantive policy discuss and instead market themselves as a religion or status elevator.  And both want "close" "elections"--the duopoly thrives on faux competition.  It optimizes the plutocratic donations and the promises they get to be a lobbyist/board member following defeat/retirement/conviction.

We're about to make it a federal crime not to purchase private junk insurance (Romney care), we guaranteed the banks $22 trillion in future bailouts, and we're about to privatize Medicare and Social Security.  Republicans would do the absolute same things.  How would voting independent or third party not optimize my chances of changing things?

[Scam of God]

Except your entire approach to the subject is flat-out wrong -- and I say this as a libertarian who hardly sees a difference in the major Parties.

Political science is empirical at least to a degree. History shows that, when one Party enters an extended period of decline, the other most emphatically does not "follow" - observe the lengthy twilight years of the Democratic Party between 1860 and 1884, or between 1896 and what is really 1932 - or, conversely, the state of the GOP for the twenty years between Roosevelt and Eisenhower. The "other Party" remains, simply waiting in the wings.

I agree with a lot of what you say. But the way you say it is absolutely asinine.

[tarheel-leftist85]

Except your entire approach to the subject is flat-out wrong -- and I say this as a libertarian who hardly sees a difference in the major Parties.

Political science is empirical at least to a degree. History shows that, when one Party enters an extended period of decline, the other most emphatically does not "follow" - observe the lengthy twilight years of the Democratic Party between 1860 and 1884, or between 1896 and what is really 1932 - or, conversely, the state of the GOP for the twenty years between Roosevelt and Eisenhower. The "other Party" remains, simply waiting in the wings.

I agree with a lot of what you say. But the way you say it is absolutely asinine.

"Political science is empirical to a degree."

Quaint statement.  Good political science/economics is entirely empirical/theory-based. 

Those periods that you mention are periods of dormancy, not collapse.  The party out of power was still seen as viable.  The main thing Democrats had going for them 2000-8 was overcoming weak Republican majorities.  It was their marketing strategy.  Twenty years before that split control of the executive and legislative branches was one of the means by which both parties stayed "viable" to the public.  Republicans will no doubt employ the same marketing strategy in 2010/2.  A positive feedback model best approximates the symbiotic behavior of the legacy parties.  The corporatism intensifies with every "realignment" (realignments are becoming less accepted in political science), or with every successive administration.

"It's not what you said but how you said it!"  How should I restate the corporate takeover of the country and global bankster thuggery via the legacy parties "competition"?  Maybe I should look to Obama's Hallmark card grandiloquence.  Oh, Smart Leader Obama!  Show me thine ways of Chicago!  I think it's an "asinine" attempt/argument to employ ad hominen attacks by condescending someone's style when the arguments they are making are logically sound.  Condescension comes easy to the Obama Fan Base.

[Scam of God]

Quaint statement.  Good political science/economics is entirely empirical/theory-based.

Not hardly. The social 'sciences' are not nearly deterministic enough that they can be called truly empirical - it is impossible to account for the vagaries of the election cycle because of the sheer amount of random foam inherent to it. It's only empirical to the extend that trends can be generalized and extrapolated for a given period of time, but even this does not hold.

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There is no practicable distinction. The present Party structure has ossified to such a degree that these institutions will probably far outlast the nation they allegedly serve.

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Which is precisely why that hoping for a "collapse" of either major Party is utterly ridiculous. The Parties are structured to exist in perpetuo; the Democrats and the Republicans need each other, and this model affords to us a stability that simply does not exist in parliamentary governments. You're utterly mistaken if you think you can take either Party permanently out of action, or that both would collapse if one did. No, the other Party would simply enter into remission for a number of years like pancreatic cancer before resurfacing when the times called for it. This is demonstrable; it has happened before. Your fantasy has not, and almost certainly never will.

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I'm now a member of the "Obama Fan Base"? Shove it up your ass, you petulant twat. Did I not say in my initial post that I am, and I quote -

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You can take your populist good-ol'-boy rhetoric and violate yourself with it.

[21st Century Independent]

He recently said that Obama was going to ge reelected.