Handicapping The Race

Looking at the Republican potential / declared candidates for President in 2012, here is how I see their chances:

3 to 1 - Paul Ryan: The economy is the single most important issue facing our nation going into 2012. Ryan understands the economics of our government the way few do - and he can explain the economics, albeit a bit woodenly. Most importantly, he has had the intellectual honesty and huevos grande to go where few politicians dare tread, proposing specific reforms to our entitlement boondoggles. Negatives - he says he won't run.
Ability to beat Obama: 54 to 46.

5 to 1 - Chris Christie: His winning wars with the unions and the democratic legislature in NJ have been the stuff of youtube gold. He is articulate and doesn't back down an inch. His ability to communicate is the best of any politician on either side of the aisle.
Negatives - He says he won't run. He wants to keep NJ pensions as defined benefit plans. Lastly, he seems to have RINO tendencies on issues such as gun control, as well as zero understanding of the threat we face from political Islam.
Ability to beat Obama: 53 to 47.

6 to 1 - Mitch Daniels: Daniels too understands economics, having served as Director of OMB. As a two-term Gov. of Indiana, Daniels has taken Indiana from a significant deficit to fiscal sanity. His first day as Gov., Daniels decertified all government employee unions by executive order and did away with the requirement that State employees pay mandatory union dues. In 2008, he passed laws creating a statewide school voucher program and merit pay for teachers. He also oversaw passage of laws penalizing companies who employed illegal aliens as well as denying illegal aliens in-state tuition.
Negatives: His earlier call for a truce on social issues has left SoCon's leery. Moreover, one of his first acts as Gov. was to submit a fiscal plan that called for tax increases. Lastly, he is still playing coy, promising to decide on whether to enter the race "soon."
Ability to beat Obama: 53 to 47.


8 to 1 - Mitt Romney: He is a well known quantity from the 2008 election. He was a very successful businessman and a former governor of bluest of blue Mass. He will likely be able to raise a huge warchest. And lastly, he is the "next man in line," which seems to be the way Republicans choose their nominees.
Negatives: Romneycare, Romneycare, Romneycare. Did I mention Romneycare.
Ability to beat Obama: 51 to 49.

10 - 1 Michelle Bachman: She is still a bit of a mystery to me. She has embraced the tea party and taken strong positions on social issues, leading others more knowledgeable about her than I to say that she has the SoCon vote largely sewn up. I have not heard her debate anyone yet. I do know that she has very strong money raising potential.
Negatives: She has already gotten a bit of the Sarah Palin treatment from the media, claiming that she is an intellectual light weight. If she does well in debates, she could easily move up the ladder.
Ability to beat Obama: 50 to 50.

10 - 1 Herman Cain: An extremely successful businessman and an arch-conservative talk show host. He is likable, well spoken and has the best business bona fides of anyone in the race. He is able to think quickly on his feet and is very knowledgeable about all of the major political issues.
Negatives: No experience in government. His health is also a concern.
Ability to beat Obama: 50 to 50.

15 - 1 - Sarah Palin: She is the most well known of all the potential candidates. She is intelligent, articulate and beautiful. But having been the subject of the most relentless leftwing media jihad in our nations history, she is a wild card. If she enters the race, and she might, I could easily see her placing second, if not first.
Negatives - She has already been successfully labled by the left as an intellectual lightweight. She would have to overcome that label and overcome questions regarding her decision to resign from the governorship of Alaska.
Ability to beat Obama: 49 to 51.

15 - 1 - Jeb Bush: He is the Bush that his family thought would be President. By all accounts, he did an excellent job as Gov. of Florida, making positive changes in the areas of education, medical malpractice and Medicare.
Negatives: He has indicated that he will likely not run. And of course, his last name is Bush - a liability for probably the next 4 to 6 years.
Ability to beat Obama: 49 to 51.

100 - 1 - Jon Huntsman: One of the key issues facing us is the left's insane push to treat carbon as a pollutant, with all the ramifications that has for our economy. A few days ago, Huntsman said he believes in man-made global warming. Moreover, while he was Gov. of Utah, he embraced the stimulus.
Negatives: I don't see much positive about Huntsman at this point.
Ability to beat Obama: 47 to 53.

999 to 1 - Ron Paul: From an uber-isolationist foreign policy to his embrace of the gold standard, Ron Paul is the Republican's crazy uncle.
Ability to beat Obama: 30 to 70.

1,000,000 to 1 - Chuck Schumer: I list Schumer simply to put the chances of Newt Gingrich in perspective.
Ability to beat Obama: 0.

1,000,001 to 1 - Newt Gingrich: Having gone on the Sunday talk shows and played Russian roulette with all chambers filled, Gingrich has destroyed any possible chance of winning the nomination for Republican candidate for the Presidency. But all is not lost. He could still mount a primary challenge to Obama.
Ability to beat Obama: 0

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Cap, Trade & Theft

The Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, sees cap and trade as a means for left wing states to steal from the rust belt in order to prop up their bloated social programs.
This from Gov. Daniels writing in the WSJ:

This week Congress is set to release the details of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that purports to combat global warming by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. . . . [I]t's clear to me that the nation, and in particular Indiana, my home state, will be terribly disserved by this cap-and-trade policy on the verge of passage in the House.

The largest scientific and economic questions are being addressed by others, so I will confine myself to reporting about how all this looks from the receiving end of the taxes, restrictions and mandates Congress is now proposing.

Quite simply, it looks like imperialism. This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers -- California, Massachusetts and New York -- seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies. Because proceeds from their new taxes, levied mostly on us, will be spent on their social programs while negatively impacting our economy, we Hoosiers decline to submit meekly.

The Waxman-Markey legislation would more than double electricity bills in Indiana. Years of reform in taxation, regulation and infrastructure-building would be largely erased at a stroke. In recent years, Indiana has led the nation in capturing international investment, repatriating dollars spent on foreign goods or oil and employing Americans with them. Waxman-Markey seems designed to reverse that flow. "Closed: Gone to China" signs would cover Indiana's stores and factories.

Our state's share of national income has been slipping for decades, but it is offset in part by living costs some 8% lower than the national average. Doubled utility bills for low-income Hoosiers would be an especially cruel consequence of the Waxman bill. Forgive us for not being impressed at danglings of welfare-like repayments to some of those still employed, with some fraction of the dollars extracted from our state.

And for what? No honest estimate pretends to suggest that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime will move the world's thermometer by so much as a tenth of a degree a half century from now. My fellow citizens are being ordered to accept impoverishment for a policy that won't save a single polar bear. . . .

Our president has commendably committed himself to "government that works." But his imperial climate-change policy is government that cannot work, and we humble colonials out here in the provinces have no choice but to petition for relief from the Crown's impositions.

Well said, sir. Read the entire article. Yet another reason cap and trade is just a horrendous policy. Plus there's this.

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