I'd love to hate **** his daughter, but vote him, awwwww no.

Keep the Bush royal lineage going in this land of democratic freedom.

Probably, but I haven't thought that deeply about it.

Something like that. As I said, he's ~0% in 2016 but if he wins reelection, I think it's a question of when he runs, not if. As I said, it's hard to envision him surviving a trip to the GOP primary circus. He thumbed his nose at Grover Norquist when he ran in 2010, said he sided with Bloomberg's immigration reform (read in GOP circles: AMNESTY) thing at the National Process Club last month, supported the auto-bailout, vetoed voter-ID laws.

Just really hard to envision him winning in the current climate. He's probably well served by waiting and hoping the GOP moderates or just demographic shifts change the party into something different by 2020 or 2024.

But he might want to raise his profile and tries to run in 2016 to raise his profile and introduce himself nationally, understanding that in the GOP, historically the 2nd or 3rd attempt can be more successful.

There's something like, 29 GOP governors and 45 GOP Senators and maybe another 10-15 other notable GOPers with a profile to plausibly entertain running (i.e., Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Rudy Giuliani, Santorum, Peter King, Trump, Palin, Bachmann, Huckabee, whoever).

If you start putting an imaginary laundry list of qualities needed to be successful and just get through the nomination process, Snyder is missing like half of them, but what he has is a personal fortune to try a couple of times ala Romney.

What he needs now more than anything is what digby (a leftist blogger type, if you read left blogs) refers to as "a hippie to punch": in another thread, I noted that so much of our current political ethos remains informed by the social revolutions of the 1960s. Well, so the theory goes, what GOP primary voters and right-wingers want more than anything is hippie punching. They don't want policies. They don't want debates. They want to know which of their candidates are going to punch a hippie the hardest. Walk into a Vietnam sit-in and just punch those kids in the face for not loving America. Or a black, or a Mexican, or a gay, or all of them together. Whatever their various angerbear issues are, what the right wing writ large wants is a candidate who empathizes with all their various hangups about gays and blacks and women and peacniks being uppity and bothering them and enjoys figuratively punching them. It's not about who's getting a benefit or who wants a law to change as it is hippies made them feel bad and they wanted to punch them, and they want to channel their desire to punch someone into a politician who is foaming at the mouth, looking to punch a hippie for them.

Snyder has seemingly already thrown away his opportunities to punch a black by casting himself against voter ID laws. He's a pretty notable proponent of amnesty and immigration preform, so "punch a Mexican" is out. He's super flip floppy on gay marriage, I can't make out where he stands there.

Where I think he really has a chance to shine for the right is the "punch a poor slob" and/or "punch a union worker" metric. That's his schtick, he's something like Scott Walker lite. His sell to the right is something like, those unions and poor people came looking for handouts, using big words and talking about their hungry sick children, I just punched them in the face and made them go away. That's the sort of story the right understands and wants to hear.

Unfortunately that's probably not enough, the right really wants someone who then went to the next bar looking to fight a black children's school teacher, and then punch a gay and deport a Mexican on his way out the door. Secondarily and related, this is where I think the pundits note Snyder's lack of charisma, and highlight say the fact that Christie has it in spades: Chris Christie is the ultimate hippie puncher. Like Snyder, he's a little too friendly to Muslims or whatever, but man, when he gets rolling on YouTube yelling at a teacher or some fruity journalist or whatever, you can tell the right's collective erection is at full tent-pitch mode, he just looks like he thrives yelling at hippies for giving him lip and running their mouths like that, like he's really gotta restrain himself from walking off the podium and punching a hippie in the face. That's really channeling the inner right-wing Id, and that's not Snyder at all.

In the end, imo, Snyder needs the climate to change in the GOP to be successful.

They didn't happen.

He was just the tallest dwarf but he was still a dwarf.

You need to reassess from the past tense to the present. Moderates don't like corrupt and/or incompetent scumbags.

If the federal investigation gives any one of the bridgeghazi suspects immunity which they will probably have to do to break a deadlock the investigation and they say Christie lied during his pressers (like when he found out about the closures and who did what when) let alone if he knew about the closure before it happened he is instantly dead.

I think it was more that Huntsman was the only one who seemed like even an OK dude. All the rest were clearly insane, ******ed, or pure evil.

A lot of the hippie-punching(or it's substitute, faux victimhood martyrs) is either distasteful or actively harmful to business interests.

The one thing that satisifies both is the anti-union stuff. Walker's got some skeletons in his closet, I could see someone like Snyder or Haslam or whoever trying to capture the middle of that Venn diagram.

Yeah. "Democrats" liked him best of the bunch but he was in the bunch.

Its not like Huntsman on a ticket would pick up Dem votes over Obama, he was a moderate Republican but still a Republican. Stating that "Democrats were completely down to vote for this guy who wanted to cut taxes, repeal ACA, strong on gun rights, and is pro-life" is just 100% plain wrong.

The Republican party could steal a lot of relevance (and Hispanic votes) from the D's by moving partially on immigration reform. Not sure if they have the will, though. Jeb and Rubio are both advocates.. and Boehner recently said it's an issue they're willing to work on.

Maybe with the demise of the tea party..

How many Hispanics do you think would vote Rep if only they were slightly closer to the centre yet still nowhere near Democrats?

ok seriously, how does abby huntsman not have a tv show (she's actually legitimately smart)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Huntsman

Abigail Haight "Abby" Huntsman (born May 1, 1986) is a co-host of The Cycle on MSNBC. She is the daughter of 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Jr. and Mary Kaye Huntsman.

whoops

DVOWNED!

Wrekt

I doubt he runs but unless dad is feeling generous it will end in the same way at the same time. It takes a lot of effort to make a serious run and he ain't gonna work that hard.

They'd have to take all of the Jan Brewer, Sheriff Joe Arpaio types and straight up kick them out. They'd have to start giving speeches saying that racism and xenophobia will no longer be allowed to have a place in Republican rhetoric. If they do that as well as change their position on immigration, they might pick up a large portion of Hispanics. Of course if this happens, Billy Bob is going to just spend Election Day at home ****ing his favorite sheep.

I'd be interested in who suzzer supports in a race between someone like Snyder and a pro-union Democrat (Sherrod Brown?)

DVaut with the POTY

Now that the ACA is probably entrenched I'd be ok with a non-insane republican. The only problem is if we get a republican senate then he'd have 5 bills of completely bugger-all insanity crossing his desk every day. So I'd have to think about it. If God-forbid Scalia dies before 2106 that could factor in as well.

At this point I am pretty comfortable with Hillary. Hoping her economic platform is as centrist as Bill's.

Chiefsplanet will go rage supernova if Hillary wins.

There will be talk of taking up arms, with butts never leaving comfy suburban couches save maybe one extra trip to the shooting range.

c'mon son

Would they dislike Christie (even without the bridge) or Jeb Bush? If your heart is set on Paul/Cruz and think Romney lost because he was not a true conservative then yeah you won't like Hillary. She wins if she runs so they better get over it.