The Official US Politics Thread 'Ron Paul quietly amassing an army of delegates while GOP frontrunners spar' and 'Mitt Romney rebounds against the Santorum surge'

[Squilliam]

badgenome said:

Squilliam said:

badgenome said:

Squilliam said:

Isn't that the same as Democrats vs Bush Jr? We didn't see any decent candidates until Bush was out either.

Yeah. In fact, Mitt Romney is startlingly similar to John Kerry, and if Kerry couldn't unseat an unpopular Bush (though Bush only became epically unpopular during his second term), I don't see how Romney stands a chance against a similarly unpopular Obama who will have the media working overtime for him.

I suspect the bigger problem is that the Repub candidates have to appease the nutty core of their party, I.E. the ones who bother to vote in primaries when in reality they need to appeal to independents/moderates who aren't affilliated. Elections aren't won by appealing to your base, essentially X % of people will vote Republican anyway, the swing voters win elections. By the time they do actually manage to have a candidate, that person will be dripping with all the dirt and promises made to people who don't matter to the cause anyway and Obama can run a relatively clean campaign in comparison and pick apart all the various promises and indiscretions bought up.

I can't really comment on the media situation as I don't watch the news!

I don't really think so. Assuming it's Romney who wins, he's as bland and inoffensive as a politician can get. Even when he panders, he does it in a remarkably bloodless way. That lifeless, John Kerry like image is what's going to do him in because the most telegenic guy wins, period. That and the fact that it's incredibly hard to beat an incumbent. For all voters' bitching about how much they hate Washington insiders and all their giving Congress a 9% approval rating, 90% of incumbents cruise to reelection. Except for 2010 when it was a veritable bloodbath for incumbents and only 85% won.

That is probably caused by flaws in the human psyche. People naturally elect tall, handsome, charismatic men as leaders and this isn't because physical attributes make a better person but because they like people with better physical attributes. The ironic thing is that whilst you can claim that humans are smarter than computers, computers often make the better decisions due to the fact that 2+2 = 4 always for a computer.

For example:

Sportscaster: That was a fantastic 3 under par though the player will be disapointed he didn't match his previous 7 under the previous day.

Computer: The player regressed to the mean of his average performance.