Well, first, I want to praise Carl’s doing so well in making so much out of THE RAMONES. He’s not yet ready for the cover of THE ROLLING STONE, but he has been linked by the magazine’s website, apparently. I saw the Ramones live in Baltimore in 1978. I enjoyed the crowd. But they really were boring. All the songs did sound the same, after all. Individually, on the radio, those songs can make me smile, but more than an hour of that stuff….
Poor Tim Pawlenty didn’t come to Pistol Pete for advice. He just dropped out. Obviously, he acted too soon. We’re still months from any voting that actually counts. And the candidacy of Bachmann, as Pete has explained, is pretty darn precarious.
But by taking Tim out, Michele probably killed her own chances. The TEA PARTY buzz is already that switching to RICK PERRY is the right thing to do. He has a better chance of beating Obama, and he’s almost as principled as Michele. That makes sense from a certain view.
Michele now has to turn her verbal guns against Perry. I wish her luck (because I’m not a Rick fan at this point), but surely it’ll be clear quite quickly she’s met her match.
So we’ll very likely be very quickly in a PERRY vs. ROMNEY situation. Some conventional wisdom give the edge to Romney–because Republicans like to nominate seasoned moderates who’ve lost at least one contest for the nomination: Bush the elder, Bob Dole, even John McCain.
But the unconventional wisdom seems more like real wisdom: The TEA PARTY has changed the game. It’s true they want a winner, but not the Romneycare flip-flopper. Romney’s campaign is much better this time, but he’s actually doing worse. It’s hard to see how he wins a one-on-one against the aggressive, highly ideological (and highly evangelical) Rick.
I could be wrong, though. I, for one, am quite likely to vote for Mitt.
The best reason for Tim dropping out: Why should he waste his time with people who overwhelmingly believe that both Michele and Ron Paul would be a better president than he would? With all his shortcomings, Tim, after all, was the most plausible president (except maybe Romney) among the active candidates. And now he’s gone.
August 14th, 2011 | 9:25 pm
Wow, you really think Mitt “Flip Flop” Rommeny would be a good president. Just because he looks presidential doesn’t make it so. Maybe all the candidate should drop out besides Paul. That would make me happy.
August 15th, 2011 | 7:12 am
Learn all about the Ramones in the book;
“ON THE ROAD WITH THE RAMONES”.
Throughout the remarkable twenty-two-year career of the Ramones the seminal punk rock band, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famers and Recording Academy Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Monte A. Melnick saw it all. He was the band’s tour manager from their 1974 CBGB debut to their final show in 1996. Now, in this NEW UPDATED EDITION he tells his story. Full of insider perspectives and exclusive interviews and packed with over 250 personal color photos and images; this is a must-have for all fans of the Ramones.
August 15th, 2011 | 1:54 pm
Yes Peter, it seems some sort of promotional robots are excited about our Ramones talk. My Ramones concert( ’85 or ’86) lasted about an hour and it would have been boring had it gone longer, but it was great fun.
Pete, I love your “how to attack Bachmann advice” over on NLT, which is really an attack on Big Talk conservatism, an attack which the likes of Levin, Limbaugh, and Hannity need to think more about.
Perry v. Romney, huh?
I am NOT giving up, and it causes me great pain to say this…but conservatives need to start thinking seriously about, and preparing themselves to respond rationally to, the political and legislative landscape an Obama victory (with the House remaining Republican) will produce. Obama is now known by almost everyone to be an outright failure and a very annoying person to boot, but his base remains stubbornly loyal, and we now know our side is unlikely to nominate a candidate with much centrist appeal. The negatives of the T-party anti-RINO mindset (which has many positives, and gave the nation November 2010) are coming home to roost at a strategically un-opportune moment for us.
Or maybe Pawlenty and Daniels just didn’t have it in them…
August 15th, 2011 | 2:59 pm
Carl, you gotta cheer up. The TP/anti-RINO faction may be just beginning. I mean folks really may have had enough of this big gummint silliness.
I’m just now beginning to pay attention to Michelle B. and I like what I’m hearing. She slaps the librul media around and treats them like a bunch of kids and she’s the strongest candidate when it come to the quirky idea of the sanctity of life. A definate plus is that she’s very much smarter than Barry. I mean, what’s not to like?
August 15th, 2011 | 3:05 pm
Pete has posted some deserved semi-positive stuff about Michele on another channel. But Rick Perry will take her out.
August 15th, 2011 | 3:41 pm
Peter, you convinced me on the top thread that folks are going to see through the governors faux-evangelicalness.
And, I have to ask if you might not be just a little less impressed with the leaderless TP Movement, that collects no dues, nor sign people up, then you might be in a year or so? Folks are not only angry about the crazy spending, they’re frightened of what Barry and his cohorts may do next. Fear and anger, now that’s a powerful combination. I’m pretty sure they gave us a preview in the mid-terms.
One is either a TPer or one is not.
August 15th, 2011 | 6:34 pm
Carl, Pawlenty certainly didn’t have it in him as it turned out. I confess that I worry that Daniels might have run on too radical of a policy agenda. I’m not ready to be as hard on voters who affiliate with the Tea Party. They aren’t being given much of a choice and even politicians who know better are making really cheap appeals to their support.
There are so many dimensions along which to worry. One is that Obama will be reelected and will have a veto pen as we slide toward a fiscal crisis. Another is that we might have a Republican elected in the midst of a second banking crisis who is unable to deal with the problems.
August 16th, 2011 | 1:54 pm
I am grateful to the T-partiers. I smile when I see those yellow “don’t tread on me” stickers. I loved the original R. Santelli rant, believe with Breitbart that the movement was slandered (even by John Lewis!), and I am in broad agreement with Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny book.
But the RINO angle and the (continually redefined) purism that goes with can be a problem…I was fine w/ Nevada Republicans taking a gamble on Sharon Angle for one Senate seat, but I do not want a similar dynamic picking the GOP presidential nomination.
August 16th, 2011 | 7:11 pm
You are especially right about the CONTINUALLY REDEFINED part of purism. I remember a silly moment when some folks (who were generally supportive of Palin) were ready to read Daniels out as a wimpy, RINO, squish because he gave way on Indiana right to work in order to pass a pretty radical set of education reforms. He had already broken the Indiana state government unions his first day in office. When Palin was in office, not only did Alaska remain a non-right to work state, the state government unions continued to operate during her tenure (as they do today.) But she was the real fighter.
Someone should build a monument to Angle to remind everyone on the center-right of how we can lose even under very favorable circumstances. Lest we forget.
August 16th, 2011 | 8:03 pm
I dunno, but I think the big gummint spending bidness is the primary focus of the TPers. They aren’t stupid, they know it’s immoral. Enough is enough and they see the RINO’s, especially with Bush’s unfunded, untaxed war as among the final staws, along with Barry’s spending insanity. America’s broke.
The TPers blame both Barry and his commie associates as well as Bush and the Neocons/RINOs. For them the purists are those that now must do the heavy lifting of changing America’s directions with, as Peter rightfully suggests, as little pain as possible.
We’re not only broke and can not continue with these silly, ten year wars and federal spending on state union thugs, but we must now cut not only defense, but address all the third rail entitlements as Peter implies and we must begin to wean off ‘welfare’ those feral folks who threaten order in our major cities.
America is about to change. If we choose cautiously we can actually change for the better. A restoration of the old republican principles and virtues, a reduction in the size of the general gummint, a strengthening of the States, a return to a real, honest-to-goodness federated republic.
This time there is ‘hope,’ but it will require ‘change.’
Now, who is the best candidate to lead these most difficult times?
August 24th, 2011 | 2:10 pm
[...] Chait writes that Perry has made the Bachmann campaign obselete. Peter Lawler picked up on it first. Comments [...]
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