TSW #29

[JeffR]

Read the full article on the blog.
George Will, Washington Post, March 2:

From Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, Republicans have a rising generation of potential 2016 candidates. This does not mean conservatives should be indifferent to the fate of this year’s nominee, and it is perhaps premature to despair of Romney’s and Santorum’s political aptitudes. Still, the presidency is not everything, and there will be another election in the next year divisible by four.

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If merely being younger than the platoon of obtuse nincompoops in this year's Republican field qualifies someone as being part of a "rising generation of potential 2016 candidates" then I suppose Will has a point. What he doesn't seem to have noticed is that the GOP's youth movement, by and large, consists of nincompoops even more obtuse and, well, nincompoopish than their elders.

Remember Bobby Jindal's "response" to the President's 2009 speech before a joint session of Congress? If you do, chances are you're a Democrat; Republicans forgot that they had ever hyped it the moment Governor Jindal spat out the splinters of his last wooden sentence.

And of course the Republican stable of rising flops is rich with governors other than Jindal. Their names circle in the air like demons from some Fantasia outtake set to a Bartok string quartet played by meth-addled gibbons: Haley, Kasich, Snyder, Walker, LePage, McDonnell, Scott, Daniels, Christie... and, uh, Perry! That's a lot of high-priced lack of talent.

As to Paul Ryan, remember his rebuttal to the 2011 SOTU? It was so full of falsehoods that CNN could only address one of them before it realized that nobody really expects fact-checking from CNN these days. Ryan has plenty of company in the House, of course, vicious, snotty little punks like Eric Cantor and Joe Wilson. Presidential timber? A starving termite wouldn't consider that edible.

The Senate offers up an equally bleak range of names, although Will no doubt thinks otherwise, if his praise for "the canny Mitch McConnell’s legislative talents" is anything to go by. I suppose a person as stodgy as George Will might look at a person like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio or Scott Brown and see charisma, but even equipped with an electron microscope, the average voter won't.

Regarding his comments about Romney and Santorum, Will notes elsewhere in the piece that:

"Neither has demonstrated, or seems likely to develop, an aptitude for energizing a national coalition that translates into 270 electoral votes."

That's a much more discerning take than the wishful thinking evinced by:

"... it is perhaps premature to despair of Romney’s and Santorum’s political aptitudes."

When it comes to primary season commentary by Republicans about Republicans, I much prefer Ed Rollins:

“Six months before this thing got going, every Republican I know was saying, ‘We’re gonna win, we’re gonna beat Obama,’ ” says former Reagan strategist Ed Rollins. “Now even those who’ve endorsed Romney say, ‘My God, what a fucking mess.’ ”

Of course you won't find that sort of honesty in a George Will column.

[jaxx]

Damn good response Jeff.