Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. So, I’m starting to hear rumors that we have a big cold spell coming. I hope the prognosticators are wrong about this! Where are our weather nerds when we need them?
I’m not a huge fan of early polling. I think it usually tests name recognition. However, PPP Polling released some early poll numbers for the Republican 2012 presidential contest. The field so far is fairly weak, but Huckabee is the best bet so far.
So the GOP’s going to be best served by a fresh face. Still the odds are better than not for now that one of these folks will be the Republican nominee- and if it is one of them there’s no doubt in my mind that the best one for the GOP’s prospects next year would be Mike Huckabee.
Why Huckabee’s better than Gingrich and Palin. You could answer this question in one simple word: electability. In nine swing states where we’ve polled since November (Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida) Huckabee has trailed Obama by an average of 2 points. In those same places Gingrich has trailed by an average of 7 points and Palin by an average of 11 points. Huckabee is massively more viable in a general election than these two. That’s at least partially because he has the most appeal to Democrats of the Republican front runners.
Why Huckabee’s better than Romney. Romney has actually done a little better than Huckabee in these early swing state polls, trailing Obama by an average of just 1 point. In addition Romney has shown the most appeal to independents so far of the top Republicans. There’s a large difference in how much enthusiasm there is for Huckabee and Romney with the GOP base though. 73% of conservative Republicans have a favorable opinion of Huckabee, putting him just behind Palin’s 77%, and well ahead of Romney’s 58%. For all the hand wringing of the last two years you better believe Democrats are going to be excited about going out to reelect Barack Obama in 2012. Republicans need to be able to match that and they’re going to need a candidate they’re enthusiastic about to make that happen- for now Huckabee fits the bill on that front and Romney doesn’t.
Huckabee’s the only one of the top Republicans who has the combination of electability and base appeal it’s going to take to beat Barack Obama. Romney has the electability but not the base appeal, Palin has the base appeal but not the electability, and Gingrich sort of falls in the middle on both counts. A lot will change over the course of 2011 but at least based on the information we have so far Huckabee looks like the GOP’s best bet.
PPP doesn’t think any of the candidates are particularly strong. Huckabee is probably the most likable of the GOP candidates. He has real problems and he’ll have to get around his Wayne Dumond pardon. I think watching the GOP candidates annihilate each other will be a spectator sport.
This is an odd story. Rightwing funder David Koch was booed at a Swan Lake performance that he sponsored.
Koch, who has professed his devotion to “The Nutcracker” ballet performance by Alexei Ratmansky, made a matching grant of $2.5 million so that it could go on this season. At a special opening of the performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music shortly before Christmas, Koch made an appearance to talk about his donation. The Financial Times’ John Gapper was in the audience and witnessed a crowd of “harried Brooklyn moms and salivating balletomanes” erupting in boos at the sight of the Tea Party billionaire:
The excitement started even before the show when David H. Koch, the co-owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately-own industrial conglomerate in the US, came out on stage to talk about his $2.5m sponsorship of the production. Most people applauded but there were also boos from near where I sat in the balcony, followed by an angry debate in the row in front of me, with one of the booers declaring “he’s an evil man” and a couple next to her telling her to “shut up” and to leave the theatre. […] Once Mr Koch had left the stage, the booing stopped and the ballet started.
I think this is incredibly rude. I do find it interesting that the Koch brothers are getting well-known enough to get this sort of reaction. They’ve been funding the rightwing noise machine for decades (they were funders of the “Arkansas Project”).