So It's Going To Be Mitt Romney V Barack Obama.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Boy, that Rick Perry sank like a stone. Don't say I didn't tell ya so...

[still_one]

1. He sank like a stone because the republican establishment wanted him to. Just like the Democratic

establishment didn't want Howard Dean, so they worked with the media to portray him as unstable, a complete distortion and misrepresentation if not outright lie

Perry on the other hand is unstable, but that is the republican party today

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. I "Almost" Feel Bad For Him

It has to be humiliating; to go from first to worst.

But it happened to Wes Clark too.

[still_one]

17. I have no sympathy for perry. Though I do believe the President would have a better chance against

perry than romney

[rurallib]

3. "Tis a long way to next August. At this point 4 years ago I think it was

a sure-fire Clinton v. Romney match.

[RockaFowler]

19. I thought it was Clinton vs Guiliani

[Hutzpa]

4. Wait

they are still waiting on Gov. Christie to join the race, not so fast,
and then maybe Sarah Palin will finally join too.

This just shows how disorganized the Republican party is..

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. I Was Going To Call Them Fat Man And Little Girl But That Would Be "Weightist" And "Sexist"

So I won't.

That's a play on words because the code names for the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were called "Fat Man an Little Boy".

Anyway those two ain't beating Mitt. The only Repub who can beat Romney is John Ellis Bush and he isn't running.

[KeyserSoze87]

6. I wouldn't rule out Perry just yet.

I agree that Romney will be the nominee; however, I have a feeling he is going to pick either Perry or Bachmann as his running mate so he can get teabagger support. And then, once he wins, America's transformation from a democracy to a corporatocracy will be complete. Unless that uprising on Wall Street gains a lot of traction, our country is screwed.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. I Remember Governor Weld Was On Hardball During The Lewinsky Brouhaha

And Chris asked him how things would work out for Bill Clinton. He said a politician is finished when folks laugh at them. It was great insight. Folks are laughing at Rick Perry.

[RBInMaine]

8. CRAZY to make predictions now. And to throw in the towel like that at this stage? ULTRA CRAZY !

Please, let the R's hold the monopoly on crazy.

[KeyserSoze87]

9. Anything could happen. Republicans have no limits.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

23. Who Is Throwing In The Towel ?

I am just naiming the inevitable nominees.

Perry is done.

Stick a fork in em...

[stockholmer]

11. Romney, if he wins, will pick Marco Rubio, or the ultimate wild card, Jeb Bush

This will actually be trouble for Obama, as Rubio or Bush will all but guarantee Florida, and will draw in serious amounts of Latino votes. Either will also give Biden a really tough time in the VP debates.

There is no way Romney will pick Perry.

bet it

[BlueStater]

13. Bush? Really?

And how would Rubio give Biden a tough time in a debate? He's a mediocre senator who hasn't accomplished a damn thing in the nine months he's been in office.

[stockholmer]

21. I say Jeb may take the VP slot based on the following

Let's say that Romney wins the Republican nomination and picks Rubio. If Romney loses, Rubio is automatically the front runner for the 2016 Republican slot. Bush and Rubio cannot run on the same ticket, as both are from Florida, thus constitutionally barred. If Romney wins, then the earliest that Jeb could run for POTUS is 2020, and quite possibly not even then (if Romney wins in 2012 and 2016 with Rubio as VP, Rubio will be the 2020 Republican pick). In 2024, Jeb would be almost 74 years old, and I doubt he will wait that long, if he has any desire to be POTUS. If Romney picks another VP, (not Rubio), and loses to Obama, then Bush has to deal with that VP candidate, PLUS Rubio in 2016. Much brain grinding going on in BushCo land atm.

I fully believe that the Republican true powers will not be heartbroken to see Obama re-elected, as the next 4 years will be hellish for the USA. Obama already is basically a Republican-lite POTUS in governance (ie taxes, wars, dismantling incrementally the social safety net, police state, lack of Wall Street prosecutions, big business takeover of health care, etc etc). Plus, Obama and the Democrats will get the brutal blame for the collapse of the US between 2012 and 2016, which guarantees at least 8 straight years (if not more) of Republican White House rule.

As for Biden in a VP debate, unless it is some fool like Palin, Perry, or Bachmann, I wouldn't expect it to end well for Joe, barring some huge gaff, which could occur of course (although again, it is usually Biden making the gaff in the past).

[KeyserSoze87]

14. He's definitely going to pick some right-wing extremist as his running mate.

And don't be fooled by his "moderate" approach. If he gets elected, he will move to the far, far, far, FAR right after becoming president. Trust me, Romney is just as bad as Perry or Bachmann. I mean, look at his "jobs" plan. It's the same nonsense that's been done to the economy for the past 30 years. Romney and all the other republicans running are not part of the solution; they're part of the problem.

[coalition_unwilling]

16. We should be under no illusions. A Romney presidency, combined

with Repuke control of at least one house of Congress, will mean a U2 unemployment rate of 25% (and a U6 rate approaching 50%). It will make today's stagnation look positively rosy by comparison.

A 25% unemployment rate would allow Repukes to finish off once and for all the labor unions and their legacies.

[stockholmer]

18. about your UE numbers : 25% U2 (I think you meant U3) and 50% U6

1. There is no way that U6 will go to 50%, barring a semi-world extinction event (ie nuclear war, Yellowstone mega eruption, comet/asteroid impact, etc). Long before 50% is approached (I would say 30% U6 would be the limit), there will be massive civil unrest, bordering on civil war, and total martial law will be declared. The same goes for a 25% U3. There has never been a situation in modern nation-state history where there has been over 30% unemployment (similar to the U6 number) without civil war breaking out.

2. If these numbers are going to be seen in the USA, it is not just the Republicans fault, it is the Democrats fault too. In a 2 party system, to utterly destroy a nation, it takes BOTH parties playing their respective roles. To think otherwise is to wander into the land of delusion. The Democrats (along with the Republicans) passed NAFTA and other 'free trade' agreements, repealed Glass-Steagall, passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, have failed to prosecute the trillions in system theft of the bankers over the last 11 years, and also supported in lockstep every single empiric war that came down the pike. They are just as much to blame (albeit sometimes in different ways) as the Republicans. I look at what the Dems DO, not what they say. Both parties are mere puppets of the systemic controllers.

3. Given all this, if the USA is indeed headed towards your 25% U3 rate, (and much higher than that in U6), it will not matter if Obama is re-elected, the gears of the machine are already in motion. No one POTUS from either of the 2 sham parties can or will do anything to stop the collapse. All that will occur is the party not in the white House will blame the one in power, yet do nothing substantial to correct things.

4. The USA has lost 87% of its industrial manufacturing base over the last 45 or so years, it has practised horrific 'absolute-advantage' models (not the necessary 'comparative-advantage' ones) in its free trade policies, it has engaged in empiric war after empiric war (killing millions of people of colour), it has become the greatest debtor nation in the history of the world, and has set up a technetronic track-trace-database police state grid internally to monitor and crush all true dissent. BOTH the Democrats and the Republicans supported and passed each one of the nation-destroyers every step of the way.

5. In regards to labour unions, if you remove government/public-based sectors, the US has roughly 4% of the private workforce unionized. These unions are primarily in the rapidly still-disappearing industrial sector. These type jobs (as long as the Republicans/Democrats are in power) are not coming back. The only way to get them back is to undertake a 10 to 20 trillion dollar Marshall Plan-style rebuild of the USA infrastructure funded by interest free 50 to 100 tranches of loans directly from the treasury, NOT the Federal Reserve (unless the Fed was nationalized, which it should be). This will NOT be occurring, as the banking overlords would never allow it to pass. You can't rebuild a broken nation around a service sector-based jobs model. nor can you spend and tax your way out of debt in the manner that BOTH parties (2 different approaches, same end result) do.

[coalition_unwilling]

30. You're absolutely right about the measure being 'U3' and not 'U2' I hope.

my misuse of the BLS metric does not totally discredit my forecast though. Modern history contradicts you on several particulars. In January, 1933, for example, when FDR took office, U3 unemployment stood at just over 25%. (Not sure what U6 was then.) There was no 'revolution' or 'civil war'. There was an orderly transfer of power from the Hoover to Roosevelt administrations.

While I think we agree on far more than we disagree on, most mainstream economists concede that the ARRA act (Obama's 2009 economic stimulus package), while not priming the economic pump to the degree I and many others would have preferred, did avert an imminent depression and pull us out of the recession we were in at the time (albeit somewhat anemically). I do agree that the Democratic Party is a bourgeois party and has pretty much abandoned even the pretense of acting on behalf of the working class and, as a result, I will be swinging further left at the top of the ticket in 2012. However, had McCain been President and Repukes controlled one or both houses of Congress post-2009, I think it is fair to say that by now we would be seeing a Depression (contraction in GDP of more than 10%). So I do not hold both parties equally responsible for this mess. We are witnessing the apotheosis of Reagan-Bushism now, a regime with which far too many Democrats meekly collaborated. But these were and are Republican policies that were enacted with the connivance of Democrats.

I like your idea of an economic Marshall Plan. I would propose, in order to appease deficit hawks, that it be coupled with measures to restore the marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to levels they were at pre-Reagan.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

24. Why Would The Pugs Want A 50% Unemployment Rate?

Their are unemployed Pugs you know. Plus a 50% unemployment rate would spell the end of the United States as a nation, never mind an empire...

[coalition_unwilling]

33. Repugs would not "want" a 50% U6 or 25% U3 rate, but that is

exactly where the policy of cutting government spending when consumer and business spending are also declining inevitably leads. Standard macroeconomic theory.

If we get President Romeny and Repuke control of one or both houses of Congress and my forecast comes to pass, you can bet they will be blaming Obama and the Dems for it. Repukes excel at preaching 'personal responsibility' to others while failing to take any themselves.

[KeyserSoze87]

32. Romney is just as dangerous as Perry and Bachmann.

The only difference is that he isn't a Christian fanatic like them. If he becomes president, he'll do more damage to the economy than Bush did, and that's saying a lot!

[coalition_unwilling]

34. I would actually argue that Romney, by presenting the "professional

competence' mien, is actually far more dangerous than Perry or Bachmann. Agrree that he will do more damage to the economy than Bush did and maybe even more than Reagan did in his first two years in office.

[KeyserSoze87]

35. He's dangerous in that he actually has a good chance of beating Obama.

Scary thought.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

10. Have the Republican primaries concluded already? WOW! That was fast!! n/t

[totodeinhere]

12. They might nominate someone we're not even thinking about now.

These are strange times we are in. I wouldn't rule anything out including a draft of Jeb at the convention.

[stockholmer]

29. another possibility is that there is a false-flag massive terror attack and they draft David Petraeu...

along with Jeb Bush as VP or vice versa.

The next 4 to 6 months will be interesting (in the Chinese curse sense of the term).

[SwampG8r]

15. i dont know who it will be but

i dont think it will be romney

[vaberella]

20. He is? I honestly don't think he will be. I stil believe Perry has a strong chance. n/t

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

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[DemocratSinceBirth]

25. See Post Seven

Rick Perry has committed the cardinal sin in politics. He has made himself a punchline.Like his female counterpart, Annie Oakley, errrrrrr, Sarah Palin, he is unelectable.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

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[DemocratSinceBirth]

28. I Don't Understand

.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

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[WI_DEM]

31. I'm not yet ready to concede that Mittens will be the nominee.