We better prepare to run against Ben Carson in 2016

[jmowreader]

By then, he'll be the only big-name Republican who isn't named Bush and isn't in jail.

[drray23]

1. i would not characterize him as big name

But yes you are right. The GOP clown car is running out of passengers.

[pnwmom]

2. I absolutely agree. He's the perfect person, in their warped minds, to absolve them

of their racism. And, at the same time, to turn African Americans into a crucial swing vote.

[merrily]

4. More the swing vote bit. Go ask Maitlin or Limbaugh or any of the professional

Republicans if they want absolution from their racism. I bet you will not get one yes. I bet you will get noes before you get a yes. Mostly, denials, though.

[pnwmom]

9. You're right, maybe they won't be conscious of that need. But it's obviously

part of why they're so attracted to that candidate. Then, they think, no one can accuse them of being racist.

[merrily]

11. Some of them are damned obstinate, if not downright proud,

of their racism, only they deny its racism. At least, they deny it in public.

But, you bet, they want the African American vote. For one thing, as a general proposition, it's a loyal vote.

From Lincoln to JFK, it was Republican because of Emancipation though there had been some switching because of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Truman's integration of the military. Then, MLK Sr promised to switch if JFK got MLK Jr out of jail. And the vote has, for the most part, been Democratic ever since.

Too bad for Republicans that the states that loved Jim Crow laws, opposed Truman's integration of the military, opposed the the Civil Rights efforts of King and the other Civil Rights leaders and the efforts of the Kennedy's and passage of the Civil Rights Act are now red states for the most part. Connect the dots.

Ethnics, other than Hispanics, have not been that loyal by far. They were once a solidly Democratic group, too, looked down on by WASP Republicans. However, many of them or their kids or grandkids switched on acquiring the degree of financial success that leftist policies enabled them to get.

[merrily]

3. Can you guaranty he won't be in jail or under indictment or under investigation?

Wait....

Has he ever looked squarely into a camera and said sincerely, "I am not a witch?" Had demons cast out of him while in a church in Alaska? Been a secessionist or married to one?

Called a person of color a macaca? Distributed racist articles under his name, then claimed to have had no knowledge of them?

"Hiked the Applachian Trail," if you catch my meaning? Had his parents pay a bribe in violation of tax law to keep the husband of his mistress quiet? Heard on Saturday that his married intern had passed on in his office overnight?


I mean, there are certain things Republicans seem to look for in their politicians, especially those deemed to have Presidential potential.

[pnwmom]

10. He has looked squarely into cameras and said he feels called by God.

People like that are always scary.

[merrily]

12. Republicans like that are.

People used to feel that way about Carter, when he'd say what God told him, but he turned out not be scary after all.

Scariest of all, IMO, is the The Family, because they believe not only that they are called by God to lead, but also that those called by God to lead are not bound by the laws of man OR God.

[Barack_America]

5. He'll be forced to have Ted Nugent as his running mate...

...who I don't think will have the same appeal as Sarah Palin.

[MohRokTah]

6. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

IF Ben Carson is the nominee, we'll take 40 states!

[gratuitous]

13. I've decided to stock up on Depends

Because I will be wetting myself from laughing.

[TlalocW]

7. I don't see it

Yes, there might be a point to be made that some of the higher-ups in the GOP machine could look at him and say this will help us get over our racist image, etc., but there are just as many other higher-ups who are racist or base campaigns partly on appealing to the racism of the vast majority of their voters. The republicans really, really, really want an old white guy in the presidency again. Right now, it looks like to everyone like Hillary will be the nominee on our side - I'm not saying she will be, but that is the conventional "wisdom" right now, and their tactic for her is and will be partly, "Look at what the last non-white person did to the country! Do we want to chance it again? Vote Whitey McWhiterson in 2016."

Carson is a more erudite, less Marvin the Martian-sounding Alan Keyes. As long as he can keep parroting the GOP line, they're happy to have a Black guy on their side as long as he keeps the eyeballin' of the White women - and the presidency - to a minimum. If he were the candidate, the republicans would have to work harder than they ever have just to keep the South, leaving them unable to put up much of a fight in swing states.

And Jindal is kidding himself as well.

TlalocW

[merrily]

16. They want to win. And this is a party that did a post-mortem on itself not all

that long ago. If they see their option as Carson or dying out like dinosaurs, they'll run Carson.

They were salivating over Cain until his mistress surfaced.

[TlalocW]

18. I think Keyes created some hype as well at the beginning

Most of it falls into the category of, "See? We have Black people on our side too!" It's along the same lines of what they were hoping for with Palin in 2008 - they look at minorities and women so demeaningly that they're too stupid to vote the issues as long as the candidate matches their color/has the same sex organs. They actually thought Palin's having ovaries would pull women voters upset over Obama beating Hillary away from the democrats, no matter how stupid she was or Cro-Magnon her political stances.

If Carson did get the nomination, I think it would be likely that
1) a LOT of republicans in the south would stay home
2) he wouldn't do any better with Blacks than past GOP candidates
3) possibly a few percentage points of independents would swing to the GOP but not enough to matter

The only way Carson - or more likely Jindal since he's younger - becomes president is sometime in the 2020s if the GOP wins 2016 with one of them as the veep candidate, and assuming the GOP does win 2016, then barring anything happening to the president, that's 8 years before they can run for president because either the GOP wins re-election with one of them on the ticket, or they lose re-election after their first 4 years and are locked out for 4 years while the democrats are back in power. Maybe sometime in the 2020s, the GOP will be able to stomach a non-white candidate for president, but after 8 years of letting their racist bile rise as high as it has, it's going to be hard to tamp it back down in order to get their racist nutjob base behind Carson.

TlalocW

[jmowreader]

20. Getting over racism won't have anything to do with it

Unless they have someone stashed in the corner no one knows about, Ben Carson is really all they have.

Bob McDonnell is definitely going to prison.
Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Scott and Chris Christie have a good chance of going.
Scott Walker and Rick Snyder have an outside chance of seeing the inside of a cell.

Palin won't run because it wouldn't be any fun to actually be president, and because if you can impeach someone for shit they did before they took office, like they tried to do with Clinton, she'd be the first president whose impeachment inquiry started before she was inaugurated. (And unlike Clinton, Palin committed real McDonnell-style crimes.)

Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are too scary for mainstream America.

Nikki Haley and Pat McCrory are essentially unknown outside the Carolinas, and they're too well known inside them.

The only other name-brand contender they've got is Jeb Bush, who's got enough baggage he should get a Samsonite tattoo.

The GOP has been scraping the barrel so long they done wore through, and they're not finished.

[KinMd]

8. Last Republican ticket to win WITHOUT a Bush on it..

was Nixon-Agnew in 1972

[merrily]

14. Weeelllllll

[merrily]

15. Also.....

The arm of the Bush Crime Family is long, amici, and reaches deep in US history. Especially re: war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Bush

[Enrique]

17. i agree, Jeb

the base loves Carson, but he has zero political experience.

And Jeb has the bankers behind him, and that's what really counts. Same with Hillary.

[Ken Burch]

19. How do we prepare for that?

Should we practice keeping a straight face?

[jmowreader]

21. I have given this question serious thought

The people who would vote for Carson see him as a Man of God. You are not allowed to talk smack about Men of God. But we can attack his stances:

http://www.ontheissues.org/Ben_Carson.htm

The humorous thing is: Conservatives love to vilify the man who "doesn't want" to work, but they have no problem with the man who fires ten thousand people and moves their jobs to a low-wage state or a no-wage foreign country who "doesn't want" to forego a nickel of extra profit.

[ZX86]

22. They will run Mitt again.

1. He's not named Bush.
2. He's not a convicted criminal or facing a criminal conviction.
3. He's not a complete psychopath (close but no cigar).

TPTB are not going to allow some fruitcake like Cruz or Paul to get in there and decide to end the Fed because of some internet conspiracy theory their father told them about. Christie and Perry are closer to the jail house than the White house and the name Bush is synonymous with fail.