UNLIMITED GOP 2012 PRIMARY CANDIDATE THREAD

[Cain]

Rep. Paul Ryan delivered a fabulous speech Wednesday night. No doubt he benefitted from the skills of speechwriter Matthew Scully, who also helped to carpenter former Gov. Sarah Palin�s well-received acceptance speech at the 2008 convention. But Ryan�s delivery of the text, his winning persona, can�t be discounted. He was by turns energetic, reflective, funny, and, at all times, utterly assured of his worldview.

He hit on all the themes that will feature in the coming campaign against Obama: the wasteful spending; the lack of leadership; the cronyism; Obamacare; the self-regarding verbosity. Ryan, to his credit, acknowledged the economic crisis that Obama inherited and his own party�s lack of fiscal discipline.

There is, however, a great disconnect between Ryan�s reality and the reality that the rest of us inhabit.

In Ryan�s intellectual bubble, Obama is �spending money we don�t have� � unlike, say, his running mate�s budget plan, which does not even attempt to mathematically reconcile its tax cuts, new defense spending, and undefined spending reductions.

In Ryan�s intellectual bubble, there are job creators and entrepreneurs on one side and parasites on the other. There is no account of the vast gray expanse of janitors, waitresses, hotel front-desk clerks, nurses, highway maintenance workers, airport baggage handlers, and taxi drivers. They work hard, but at the end of the day, what can they be said to have �built�?

In Ryan�s intellectual bubble, there is a grand conflict in American life: that between those who believe in an all-powerful government and those who believe our rights derive from �nature and God.� (I wonder: was �nature� capitalized in the text?) This is the sort of windy rhetoric that appeals to the earnest college sophomore on the pre-law track. But what does it have to say about the complexities of global financial capitalism and the moral authoritativeness of its outcomes?

In Ryan�s intellectual bubble, there are pent-up energies in the American economy just waiting to be unleashed by just one more supply-side goosing by the ghost of Jack Kemp.

In Ryan�s intellectual bubble, Obamacare is the a �power play� that �came at the expense of the elderly,� while his and Mitt Romney�s 2010-reprising plan to scare seniors in the short term, while in the long term reducing Medicare spending by the same amount as projected by the Obama administration (but in reality by far more once the crutch of his magical asterisks are kicked away), is a model of courage and intellectual honesty.

In Ryan�s intellectual bubble, Obama blithely chooses to do nothing about long-term debt � even as Ryan himself squelched a budget deal because it raised new revenue (without raising income taxes).

Paul Ryan is a talented, well-intentioned man who has been groomed by, and cultivated in the eco-system of, Washington�s conservative intelligentsia. His speech, for all its many fine qualities, is an emblem of the superficial attractiveness and substantive bankruptcy of this intelligentsia.

Source.

The American Conservative is really actually a very good read.  Rod "crunchy con" Dreher aside.  Daniel Larison and Noah Millman there are on my daily reading list.

[AFK]

Oh shit just keeps getting funnier.

http://www.examiner.com/article/sarah-palin-was-kicked-from-fox-news-lineup-all-interviews-canceled

Someone needs to tell her that her 15 minutes have been up for quite awhile now.  I would hope getting bumped from Fox News would be a pretty good clue.

[LMNO]

Just because it's nice to have it all in one place...

Mittens tells 533 lies in 30 weeks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Just because it's nice to have it all in one place...

Mittens tells 533 lies in 30 weeks.

Woot!

[Bu🤠ns]

Anyone post this yet?

Not Even The RNC Can Beat 'Honey Boo Boo Child'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/honey-boo-boo-ratings-top-republican-national-convention-rnc_n_1846155.html

[AFK]

Heh, I read that somewhere else.  You know the DNC is going to get absolutely slayed in the ratings.  They don't have any fire-brand, angry white guy speakers.  Well, unless they get Maher or Moore up onthe podium,but even then,it wouldn't really be a big TV draw.

[Juana]

Mittens's campaign slogan is an old KKK one, used starting in 1922. This is honestly even better than Eastwood's speech.

Proof:
http://books.google.com/books?id=44UKwOoPB7sC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22keep+america+american%22+kkk&source=bl&ots=MRLDHX6IVE&sig=7rhRyWIDB5b4EKsILKBZYfu8d9E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fp5BUPv5HKmI6AHZtoDgAQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22keep%20america%20american%22%20kkk&f=false

[Cain]

Cutting-edge political science research: Mitt Romney is really, really good looking:

Mitt Romney is better looking than almost everyone reading this blog.  Back in 2008, I wrote about how Sarah Palin's looks put her in the 95th percentile of politicians.  Romney has even Palin beat—he scores above the 99th percentile.

These results come from a study with my colleagues Matthew Atkinson and Seth Hill, in which we developed a method for obtaining the ratings of the facial competence of governor and Senate candidates from 1994 to 2006 by showing the images of these candidates to undergraduate students for 1 second, as pioneered by Alex Todorov.  In 2007, when we collected this data, we removed highly-recognizable candidates so that opinions about the candidates, other than their appearance, would not affect the ratings.  However, as with Palin, we are fortunate that Romney was a relative unknown at the time (at least to the undergraduates in California that we used), so we obtained a rating of his face.

And what a face it is!  We gathered the ratings of 728 candidates for Senate and Governors' seats and Romney outscored all but four of them.  The only persons to win election that beat him are Russ Feingold (the best looking Democrat) and John Thune (the best looking overall).  Romney also appears to far outdo Paul Ryan, who came in in the 67th percentile of the 2004 House candidates (although the photos did not include abs).  (Also, that study only included white male candidates and the House was not measured on a common scale with Senators and Governors, but I'd feel pretty confident saying the 67th percentile of the House puts you well behind Romney).

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Cutting-edge political science research: Mitt Romney is really, really good looking:

Mitt Romney is better looking than almost everyone reading this blog.  Back in 2008, I wrote about how Sarah Palin's looks put her in the 95th percentile of politicians.  Romney has even Palin beat—he scores above the 99th percentile.

These results come from a study with my colleagues Matthew Atkinson and Seth Hill, in which we developed a method for obtaining the ratings of the facial competence of governor and Senate candidates from 1994 to 2006 by showing the images of these candidates to undergraduate students for 1 second, as pioneered by Alex Todorov.  In 2007, when we collected this data, we removed highly-recognizable candidates so that opinions about the candidates, other than their appearance, would not affect the ratings.  However, as with Palin, we are fortunate that Romney was a relative unknown at the time (at least to the undergraduates in California that we used), so we obtained a rating of his face.

And what a face it is!  We gathered the ratings of 728 candidates for Senate and Governors' seats and Romney outscored all but four of them.  The only persons to win election that beat him are Russ Feingold (the best looking Democrat) and John Thune (the best looking overall).  Romney also appears to far outdo Paul Ryan, who came in in the 67th percentile of the 2004 House candidates (although the photos did not include abs).  (Also, that study only included white male candidates and the House was not measured on a common scale with Senators and Governors, but I'd feel pretty confident saying the 67th percentile of the House puts you well behind Romney).

"Facial competence"? Is this something to do with "teabagging"?

[Juana]

I don't even understand why someone would waste research funds on something like this.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I don't even understand why someone would waste research funds on something like this.

I don't even understand why someone would think Mitt Romney is good looking. He looks like a fucking mannequin.

[AFK]

I don't even understand why someone would waste research funds on something like this.

Because marketing plays a huge role in political campaigns, particularly at this level. 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I don't even understand why someone would waste research funds on something like this.

Unfortunately, measures of physical attractiveness are surprisingly predictive of election outcomes.

[AFK]

It's true, if the Internet and TV had been invented back in Taft's day, he wouldn't have had a prayer.


It will work heavily against him if Christie ever decides to run.  That and the fact he's a gigantic POS.

[BabylonHoruv]

Mittens's campaign slogan is an old KKK one, used starting in 1922. This is honestly even better than Eastwood's speech.

Proof:
http://books.google.com/books?id=44UKwOoPB7sC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22keep+america+american%22+kkk&source=bl&ots=MRLDHX6IVE&sig=7rhRyWIDB5b4EKsILKBZYfu8d9E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fp5BUPv5HKmI6AHZtoDgAQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22keep%20america%20american%22%20kkk&f=false

Snopes disagrees.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/slogan.asp

Romney's campaign slogan is actually "Believe in America"