Decision Time

I was looking back through some old posts and noticed this one from July 2010.  There I was speaking about the potential slate of candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.  My conclusion was that Mitt Romney was the best chance the Republicans had and that was not good.  I panned Huckabee as unappealing and Newt as having too much baggage.  In fact, I panned all the potentials.  And I missed Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and others.  Time to re-examine this issue because we here in Iowa are quickly closing in on decision time.

In the older post I mentioned that we needed a Ronald Reagan but have nothing even close in the offing.  As it turns out, there is one candidate who has emerged as an acceptable substitute.  It is not:

• Rick Perry.  I had so much hope for Perry when he got into the race.  I had read a little about him but had never heard him speak.  Rightly or wrongly, a president in the 21st century has to be an excellent communicator.  Rick is woefully deficient in that department.
• Herman Cain.  Some of the most refreshing comments of the campaign have come from Cain.  When he was told that a good candidate needed to have political experience his reply was, "How is that working out for you so far?"  But the sad fact is that a candidate does need political experience.  Cain has no grasp on foreign policy.  Even if he surrounds himself with good people in that area he needs a base to work from.  He doesn't have it.  That is dangerous in a president as we can see from our current  . . . oh, I'm not going there.
• Jon Huntsman.  Who?
• Michelle Bachmann.  She has some good ideas but has been painted into a religious fundamentalist corner by the media.  This is mostly her own doing.  I don't understand why some Christians have to be wackos to convince themselves they are taking a tough stand.
• Rick Santorum.  I think he has a good grasp on many issues, especially Constitutional ones.  But he is garnering so little support because he is not very inspiring.  You have to be able to inspire and motivate.  This was McCain's problem in 2008.
• Ron Paul.  I'll tell you what, this guy understands the economic issues facing this nation like no one else does.  He knows the true causes and how they can be corrected.  This is the strength of the Libertarian position in general and Austian Economics specifically.  Unfortuately, Americans don't have the stomach to bite this big of a bullet.  Paul has a cult following but it is not large enough to give him the nomination.  He is viewed as too radical by most people.  Also, I think the world has become too small to move too far toward isolationism.  Whoever wins needs to sign Paul up as SecTreas.  Or maybe Fed Chair.
• Mitt Romney.  I am still not convinced that he will not win the nomination.  There seems to be a lot of money and behind-the-scenes voices pushing hard for Romney.  But his numbers never budge.  People are looking for the non-Romney candidate.  If it comes down to Romney vs Obama, I think most Republicans, myself included, will hold their nose and vote for him.  But we shouldn't have to.

So who does that leave us with?  A friend sent me a video clip a few weeks ago.  As soon as I saw that it was Newt, I dismissed it immediately.  But then, as a courtesy to my friend, I listened to the clip.  I have listened to dozens of clips since then.  Newt is the communicator we need.  Newt understands all the historical issues related to this campaign.  Newt is far and away the best candidate on foreign policy.  He understands all the domestic issues though he needs to adjust his positions on some of these.  His consulting firm has taken money from Freddie Mac.  Government needs to get out of the mortgage business.  Newt doesn't agree with this.  There are other issues Newt needs to think through better.  But overall, Newt is the best of the current candidates, even with his baggage.

Gingrich says that if he wins the nomination he will immediately challenge President Obama to seven Lincoln-Douglas style debates with no moderator asking questions.  Each will discuss the issues at hand without such a guide.  Newt seems to think that Obama's ego will lead him to accept this challenge.  It will not happen in a million years precisely because of the president's ego.  Newt will win any and every debate with Obama but he would absolutely destroy him in such a format.  The president can not let that happen.  Nor would the normal moderators want to be excluded from the debates.  It's a big ego boost for them too.  They like to see themselves as kingmakers.  Expect the usual debate formats with the usual stupid questions from the usual talking heads.  And if Newt is the nominee, expect him to thrash Obama.  This would be worth seeing.

Does Newt measure up to the Gipper?  No, but he is far closer than anyone else on the Republican slate.