Okay, I found
this NRO article linked at HotAir and it is, for me, illuminating. I had no idea, for instance how closely Herman Cain is allied with Americans For Prosperity...
Cain’s senior staff, to be sure, is more than a band of amateur enthusiasts. Most are veterans of Americans for Prosperity, an influential group with close ties to tea-party leaders and high-profile donors, such as Charles and David Koch. AFP, in many respects, launched Cain as a national conservative figure in 2005, when it tapped him as a spokesman — and he has benefited from the association.
As he traveled the country, championing AFP’s free-market principles, Cain developed relationships with strategists who lacked reputations in Washington but had extensive experience elsewhere, especially in Midwestern conservative circles. Mark Block, Cain’s campaign manager, was one such operative (and has been the brains behind Cain’s White House hopes). Another is Linda Hansen, Block’s deputy.
AFP is full of some very serious people and I find it difficult to believe that they would invest in Cain if there was no "there" there. So that's somewhat encouraging.
Regarding the amateurish nature of his campaign the article offers this:
Florida state representative Scott Plakon, Cain’s leading Sunshine State booster...points out that Cain may, to a certain extent, be following an AFP model from Wisconsin, but thinks that, in a broader sense, Cain is adapting to the new way in which people now communicate, in the tea-party movement and beyond. Cain, he says, with very few official staffers in Florida, was able to win the state’s straw poll, due to his ability to connect blocs of voters who are eager to spread the word on social-media platforms. If Cain can win like that in Florida, he says, he can do the same across the country, even in states with expensive television markets.
So, I dunno. If he can stop with the verbal missteps or at the very least scale them back to one or two a month then maybe he can pull it off.
There are no perfect candidates. And, yeah, I do like this group much better than the pack of idiots from the last go round but I still can't help myself from wanting someone who can get through a media event without stepping on their own tongue in the process...someone who can clearly and proudly articulate the conservative POV. I don't want a lot. It's sort of a minimum level of expectation and I do get disappointed when someone fails to properly pull it off.
I thought that Bachmann could be that person until she jumped the shark with her retard-in-a-needle fantasy about Gardasil and then her subsequent refusal to walk it back which got even worse when she doubled down on it. Then we found out that that was not an anomaly but rather the most recent incident in a long history of making sh*t up on the fly. So even though I like her a lot and admire her conservative credentials, I can't get over a character flaw that makes her look ridiculous at any particular moment that she decides to let loose with a whopper.
With Romney I am on record from last time as to his weaknesses. Nothing has changed with him but circumstances have. Last time we knew about RomneyCare but then there was no such thing as ObamaCare. Now that ObamaCare is a reality RomneyCare takes on a very heavy millstone-like quality for Romney. His other lib positions from his MA days are as bad or worse. And then there's the whole Mormon thing. I will explain for those who weren't here three years ago: No, short of scientology, satanism and other pure cults, a man's religion
shouldn't have any bearing on his presidential aspirations but the reality is that the media will give Mormonism the full anal exam and it won't be pretty. That's just the way it is. Do a little bit of reading about some of the more arcane aspects of Mormonism and then you will know. I'm not going into that level of detail here.
Gingrich could be great and I would really like to see him debate the Dingus. But he has political and personal baggage: Failed marriages do not endear one to the conservative base...especially when
the breakups happen like his have. His political baggage is infamous and I won't bother discussing it here either.
Santorum is a great conservative but not quite great enough or he would still hold elective office. He got his ass handed to him in 2006 and hasn't done anything since. And he's getting no traction at all. That may be unfair but that's the way it is.
Perry may make a comeback. From a purely governing point of view he has the most experience and it's the right kind of experience. It may be too late for him but maybe not. He has issues some of which (immigration) are very bothersome for me.
Paul is a joke as are Huntsman and Johnson and aren't worthy of serious discussion.
So, except for the last three and Romney (the establishment RINO), the others are all serious contenders and any of them could mop the floor with Toonces. I think Romney could beat President Zero, too, but we can do better than him.
The question comes down to who would be the best representative of conservatism.
And at this time I honestly do not know who that person is.
