In fact we all know that that is what the potential candidates have to do. They must appeal to the more lunatic fringes of the party when they are campaigning to be the candidate. But the minute that they have to face the electorate in the Presidential election, all the nuttiest stuff has to be dumped.
It's just that this is the first time that a senior aide of any potential has actually come out and admitted that they intend starting again from zero if and when they are on the real campaign trail. As you can see from this video, the Democrats are having fun with it.
Incidentally, as Danny never tires of reminding me, the presidential starts in the snows of New England in January (although this year it started in Iowa on January 3), and it ends in November, with the actual election.
Who the hell would put themselves through that, and having done it, will they be in any fit shape to take over running the Western world?
I'll do Panda thing
ReplyDeleteeats, shoots and leaves.
"Who the hell would put themselves through that, and having done it, will they be in any fit shape to take over running the Western world?"
The question really should be,
are any of them in a fit state to take over the running of the Western World?
I would venture, probably not.
Well Wolfie, I doubt that very much, but that's before they even set out on the campaign trail.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, I wonder if there is a person alive who is up to the job. Perhaps in time as the Western world becomes less and less important, or influential, the job will become easier and do-able.
Tris:
ReplyDeleteIn a presidential campaign, 40% of the people would vote Republican if they nominated a head of cabbage, and 40% would vote Democrat if the Party ran the devil himself. So, exactly as you describe it, a Republican who has won by appealing to the far fringes of the cabbage faction must remake himself to appeal to the 20% center where general elections are won or loss.
This was expected to be a piece of cake for Mitt Romney, the most famously flip flopping candidate in recent memory. But after the senior aide went public with the iconic toy image, Santorum made a campaign stop at a Toys-R-Us store to ostentatiously purchase Etch A Sketches as campaign props. Newt Gingrich had some too.
At one of the early candidate debates, in front of the television cameras, the Governor of Texas forgot one third of the federal department closures in his own government reorganization plan. After a long embarrassed silence, he uttered a single word.
This prompted the Washington Post in its article about the Etch A Sketch gaffe to say:
“To quote that famous Texas philosopher Rick Perry: OOPS!”
BTW, a problem with that leading the western world thingy is that some of the western world won’t follow. When the French would not follow DubYa Bush into Iraq, we retaliated by renaming the French Fries in the Capitol cafeteria “Freedom Fries.” I don’t think that the French ever fully recovered from that blow. ;-)
Ah Danny. I was recently in France. It is but a shadow of its former self since the change of name insult.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember rightly, some French shops took equally childish revenge on the Freedom Fries (which, looking at Iraq today seems a rather inappropriate substitute name: Enslavement Fries might have been better), by charging €10 for a tin of Coca Cola, thus making it ridiculously expensive in comparison to other similar brands.
If you have any real cabbage heads spare, perhaps you'd be good enough to direct them to England. I have the notion that they might be more competent than than Clegg and Camergoon.