GOP Candidate: None of the Above

Will the Republicans choose someone else at the convention?

Found here: [The Real G.O.P. Dark Horse: None of the Above - NYTimes.com]

" I think there is a small but nontrivial chance that the Republican nominee could be someone like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie. (In fact, I was speculating about these scenarios as long as a month ago.)

I’m not going to describe the means by which this would occur; Mr. Cook covers that in great detail. Instead, I’m more interested in the motive.

The motive is simple: Republicans are dangerously close to having none of their candidates be acceptable to rank-and-file voters and the party establishment. It’s not clear what happens when this is the case; there is no good precedent for it. But since finding a nominee who is broadly acceptable to different party constituencies is the foremost goal of any party during its nomination process, it seems possible that Republicans might begin to look elsewhere."

tnb here...

Choosing someone who's not been in the race to this point also offers the republicans a clean-slate for the general election. Over the last four months, the current crop of candidates have been broadcasting their collective stupid for all the world to see. The Democrat's war machine will have hundreds of hours of video to mine for controversial, hypocritical, or stupid comments to use against any of these jokers. They will be easy targets.

However,a Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush, both of whom have both remained relatively quiet and on the sidelines so far don't really have much of a recent history for Obama to run against. There won't be hours of debate, or talk show video to pick through for campaign ads. Does either have a history of supporting a socialist health care plan like Romney or Gingrich? Does either have a Santorum-like Google problem? A Ron Paul Israel problem? A Gingrich child-labor problem? Are either as dumb as Perry or as crazy as Bachman? Sure, they're both connect to "Bush" but other than that they both have pretty clean slates at this point and the Democrats would have to scramble to build an effective campaign. If the Republicans choose one of these two (or someone similar), it effectively moves the goalposts on the Democrats rendering their growing collection of campaign moments useless.

The conservative machine is a very well funded, ruthless, win-at-all-cost machine that, since Obama's win, has been very good at forcing the Democrats hand by constantly moving the goalposts. I wouldn't put it past them on this one.

I'm betting Mitch gets the nod.

tnb