Joe Klein goes full-on shrill:

[elfs]

American Embarrassment:

This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party's banner. They are the most compelling argument I've seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can't let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know. Mick Huckabee, the front-runner if you can believe it, might have to negotiate a trade agreement, or a defense treaty, with the Indonesian President some day. Newt might have to discuss very delicate matters of national security with the President of Pakistan. And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot--please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you. And you seem to respect yourselves enough not to behave like public clowns.

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Or: "you know things are bad when you're suddenly desperate for Jeb Bush to run."

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

All parties sometimes follow the mantra of Ideologues before Electability. Dukakis. Dole. Stockdale (Who am I? Why am I here?) Palin. Party after party sometimes loses sight that holding up an idiot who is idealogically pure but otherwise worthless means that even those of the same idealogy will vote against you, because even if those voters agree with the ideals, they know that running a country takes more than just the right set of beliefs. Then again, i firmly hold that the only people who should be allowed to govern are people who don't want to have the job.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think Klein's point is that there are ten little dwarfs here, not merely seven (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_1988), as we had with the Democrats in 1988. (One of whom was Joe Biden!) This is why a first-rate politician but second-rate charismatic like George H. W. Bush got elected after Reagan. And not one of them is heading in the direction of the American people.

Philip Premeau, who I recently described as knackered in his approach to the Gnu Atheists, says as much (http://bigtentrevue.org/2011/03/30/conservative-not-right-wing/) in his recent post about how America is "conservative, but not right wing." I think he's right about that. These are right wingers. They're going to scare even the standard conservative to voting for the calm, collected black guy.

Even if he recently had to down a turd sandwich (http://wonkette.com/441768/why-didnt-obama-just-tell-the-rest-of-us-he-thinks-libya-is-a-turd-sandwich).

[tagryn]

What's interesting to me is how in '92 Clinton was regarded as a dark horse without much chance of winning up through the initial primaries, but now if a person doesn't declare at least a year beforehand they're at a distinct disadvantage. Such is the dramatic increase in the amount of $$$ it requires to run now (plus the 24/7 news cycle that was still emerging back in '92).