Attention, Bandwagon Jumpers: All Aboard the Fatty McAwesome Express!

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The biggest news today? The Florida poll showing Rick Perry in a distant fourth place (!) behind Newt Gingrich (!!), while Herman Cain has surged to within 4 points of Mitt Romney in the Sunshine Evil State.

And in the unscientific (but not insignificant) Hot Air Straw Poll, it’s Herman Cain 39%, Sarah Palin 32%, Rick Perry 12%, Mitt Romney 5% (hat-tip Gary Jackson).

The Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst implosion of the once-vaunted Perry juggernaut explains two things:

  1. Erick Erickson’s first baby steps toward a walk-back of Red State’s “Perry über alles” totalitarian solidarity motif; and
  2. Rumors that Perry allies are planning a scorched-earth smear campaign against Herman Cain.

Remember you heard that rumor here first and, when the hit-piece on Cain comes out, remember that Perry’s supporters are behind it.

Meanwhile, Matt Lewis hears that Chris Christie’s supporters have been told to gather in Trenton for a Thursday announcement, which would match Steve Forbes saying a Christie announcement is expected within 72 hours. (Both via AOSHQ Headlines.)

Those of you who’ve been jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon — T-Paw or Bachmann or Perry — this might just be the last bandwagon leaving the 2012 GOP station. And if you like ’em large, loud and kinda Romney-like, Christie’s your man.

You might want to wait until Thursday, however, before jumping aboard the Fatty McAwesome Express, because his announcement may be “no.” He’s said “no” over and over again, and I have no idea why he’s letting himself be talked into a “maybe,” but if he says “yes,” then you can expect him to become this year’s Giuliani, sucking up lots of MSM attention and getting praise from the Peggy Noonan types. And then he’ll lose badly, but only after providing three or four months of employment for Republican campaign operatives who couldn’t get hired by Romney.

I’ve got nothing against Christie, per se. He seems affable and smart and about as conservative as any New Jersey Republican can be, but that’s not going to win him any primaries, The upside? By becoming the MSM favorite, Christie could finally push Huntsman off the debate stage, which is long overdue.

The shake-out? If Christie gets in, I expect Bachmann finally to quit, with many of her Iowa supporters going to Rick Santorum. Depending on how bad the Perry hit on Cain is — and I’m told they expect to hurt him bad — there could be a lot of flux between now and the end of the month. There are many variables in play (some people say Sarah Palin might still jump in), but by Sunday we’ll know whether or not Christie’s in the race, and by Oct. 13 or 14, we’ll have some polls to measure the impact.

The next debate is Oct. 18 in Las Vegas. We’re planning to be there and by “we,” of course, I mean me, Smitty and Wombat. He’s been doing good work; he deserves the trip; hit the freaking tip jar.

UPDATE: After about three hours sleep, I wake up, check the comments and see some of y’all going after each other with knives down there. People need to chill with the accusations of bad faith against, e.g., Pagan Temple, who’s been commenting here forever. I mean, I’m not offering to co-sign a loan for PT or anything, I just don’t think attacking him personally helps anyone’s cause.

Furthermore, the reason I tipped y’all to the rumor that an anti-Cain attack was coming — and that Perry supporters were behind it — is that I’ve seen campaigns do oppo-research dumps in the “no fingerprints” way, so that when bad stuff comes out on a candidate, you don’t know where it came from. The tip I got was both vague and specific: While I wasn’t told what they were going to hit Cain with, or where it would be published, I was told that a hit was coming, and that it was Perry’s supporters who were pushing it. Notice I said Perry’s supporters, not Perry’s campaign, because I don’t know whether there was that kind of official involvement.

And let’s face it: That “N–rhead” rock story had to come from somewhere. Your natural instinct would be to blame the Romney people for it, of course. But then I remember that many key people on Perry’s team dumped all over Newt on their way out the door of Newt’s campaign, so this could be payback for that. On the other hand, maybe this was Texas enemies of Perry getting their own revenge for whatever reason.

We should look on the bright side of all this, however: This is what’s called “vetting,” and a hyper-competitive primary where the candidates are all cutting each other to ribbons is sure to produce a battle-hardened nominee when it’s finished. If the Democrats try to bring up something ugly during the general election campaign, let’s hope it’s something that has already come out during the primnary campaign, so even the liberal media will say, “Old news!”

110 comments

  2. Christie is just the “flavor of the week” among conservatives unfamiliar with his record on Cap-‘n’-Tax, Ground Zero mosque, gun control, etc.  Most definitely to Romney’s left.

    I don’t see how his entry would have much effect on Bachmann, Perry, or Cain, though.  They appeal to different people for money and votes than Christie.  Bachmann just collapsed and it is a matter of time before the money runs dry.  Perry has a national network and can hang in and try to jump-start his campaign, but another debate disaster and he’ll have dug too deep a hole.

    If anyone “smears” Cain they should be exposed for it.  But would anyone be tipping something like that if the “smear” weren’t true?  And if it’s true . . . hard to call dirty pool for good oppo research, better we catch the weaknesses in the primaries, because Obama’s hit squad won’t miss anything.

    Another reason it is bad for the party to move the primary schedule up due to Florida’s stupidity:  less time to thoroughly vet people before they face the Alinskyites.

  3. A legal system and a non-stop campaign by friends of Obama trying to bankrupt a sitting governor who, due to the same legal system, could not verbally fight back.
    Well, now that she’s out of office, she has set the conservative narrative on many of Obama’s issues.

  5. I like Cain, but he just got used by the MSM to trash another candidate over a phony story. Cain also said he would back Romney over Perry which is not very Tea-Party of him. Cain is having one of those “please love me MSM” moments when he should be promoting Tea-Part ideals.

  6. Damn straight! I don’t want to hear anymore of this race baiting bullshit from the media. I’m blaming them, not Cain, but evidently you’re another one with a reading disability.

  7. That smear on Cain is probably that thing Cool Change posted from Mother Jones. Something about how he did something similar to Enron that wrecked a lot of his employees retirement plans. Trading energy or something. Who knows? Like you said, its better to get it out in the open now. Plus spare us the drama of any further niggerhead rocks from the msm, which is nothing but a colloguial term for quartz rocks. You break them open they’re filled with quartz crystals. I just wonder how long the WaPo spent searching for a potentially racial story before they stumbled on that one.

  8. You are inverting his point.  There are staunch, pro-life Catholics who are repelled by the Tea Party.  There are pro and ex military types who didn’t really fit in with the military, but nevertheless support and love their fellow military brothers.  Many of them are Obama voters.

    Both of those types of folks kind of keep their heads down around the radical left, but still send money to the DNC.  A lot of them will vote for a Republican this time, but not the next.

  11. I see your point, but I really don’t give a damn what the media will be doing this time around.  They will bring the circus clowns, but they’ve lost control of all the ticket booths.

    Cain lost me with his tax scheme.  A national sales tax is forever (or until the next major world war ends).  It’s a horrible idea, and the only thing good about it is it would never get through congress.

  12. When was the last POTUS from the North east? JFK (and Nixon in 68 if you count his NYC apt). 

    Since then, the onl;y GOP who win are from the South and the West.

    The only folks who want Christie in are the same folks who think New York City is the center of the world (as a former New Yorker, let me say, no, it isn’t). 

    Cristie is no Guliani who built up relationships within the GOP, he’s still a newbie Governor. 

    This is the Sprawl media playing all of us — don’t fall for it.  Hold your fire until after the last candidate is in.  Reagan did not announce until November 79. 

  13. All one NEEDS to know is that this shows once again how the establishment is up to it’s dirty tracks. Not surprising because the GOP Establishment bought and paid for Candidates ( Like Perry/Romney and Christie if he gets in ) has ZERO to offer and because of that and the fact many are waking up to the sham that is the establishment because of all the special interest influence they have to go the dem route of trying to smear Mr Cain. You see unlike them Cain HAS  a plan and he is not bought and paid for either which means most know he will do what he says vs giving more lip service like the others. THAT is driving the establishment ( and especially it’s big money donors aka special interest ) nuts. Hate telling them but people in this country REALLY ARE tired of getting more of the same. They don’t want another Bush ( aka establishment type  and thus YES MAN ) anymore then they do 4 more years of Obama. This is also very telling of their so called conservative values. So hey let them bring up another item that i am as well near certain has already been brought up before to try and smear Mr Cain. See how it works out for them. As a Cain supporter I hope they do.

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  17. If the resultant tax burden is smaller and less opaque than the current tax burden, why should we care if it’s ‘forever.’ His plan also mandates a 2/3rds vote to change ANY of the percentages, which means they’d be locked in all but permanently as well.

  18. And there’s the rub. Christie is pro gun-control. Pro-Climate Change, and washy on SoCon issues as well.

    So what is he other than a good foil for the unions? He’s a great Red-in-Blue State Governor. That does not make him electable, or even palatable, as a GOP Presidential nominee.

  24. It is not “smearing” a candidate to criticize his policies.  But I generally like Cain’s policies.  Christie’s?  Not so much. 

  25. You are absolutely correct.  Now if Christie was really conservative I think he could overcome the handicap of being from New Jersey.  But he isn’t, so he can’t. 

    And Guliani, while having spent a lot of time building up relationships, could not over come not being conservative enough where it counted.  So he failed. 

  26. Simple:  “Forever” means that we make a deal now, and they shaft us later so that we end up with high income taxes AND a stupid sales tax.

    We all know that Reagan-style, lowering of tax rates is never going to be permanent, until and unless it’s in the Constitution.

    But for some damn reason, everyone assumes the sales tax is “background noise” and after a while it ceases to factor into discussions about taxes, and they begin raising the income and other taxes, so that in ten years time we are taxed like Europeans, coming and going.

    The only way a sales tax would be OK would be to have a constitutional amendment that sets the national sales tax at something really low, like 2%, and declares income taxes and value added taxes to be disallowed except in wartime, AND that tax comes with a sunset provision.

    (All taxes and fiscal policy should have a sunset provision built-in, by the way.)

  27. Remembering these two eternal truths will serve one well: 1) You were put on this earth to work and to suffer. 2) all politicians, even ones you think think highly of, will disappoint you on occaison.

  28. These kinds of folks can be found in both parties, and they sort of represent the muddled middle, politically speaking.  They are big on tradition, which means that if they come from Democrat families, they vote Dem, and same for the Republicans.

    Catholic and Jewish cultures are both full of religious, fairly conservative “progressives” who often vote Democrat, but sometimes vote Republican. They are not folks that spend a lot of time at places like this, debating political philosophy.

    These sorts of folks can get behind a Christie-type Republican because it doesn’t force them to ask themselves what the Tea Party is, or what being Conservative really means.

    None of them are libertarian, I would say.

  33. No matter what his plan “mandates,” Congresses cannot bind the hands of future Congresses (except with the help of the States via amenments).  The Fair Tax folks at least acknowledge this in their quixotic tax plan.

    I think it’s important to understand the sorts of plans the candidates come up with, but we have to avoid magical thinking.  And that includes conservative wet dreams doomed to die in Congress.9-9-9 would be an improvement over what we have, but raising one of the sales tax option seems to be too easy to do, as witnessed in countries with VATs.

  37. Paul here’s how I look at it. The two are related. While I don’t believe we were “put here” for that purpose, I do believe suffering, like pleasure, goes with the territory. A person will experience both in their lifetimes, and if they’re really lucky, or really work at it, they can achieve some type of happy medium between the two. But you’re only going to sabotage those efforts by putting too much faith in any one individual or group of them, and that includes politicians. I don’t put an inordinate amount of faith or even hope in any of them, because like all of us, they too are trying to achieve that balance in their lives. It’s a very very rare politician who has the courage and integrity to seek out public service with no regard for their personal needs and happiness. We can only hope that during those occasions when those hopes are of paramount importance they don’t conflict too greatly with our own or the national interest. All of which by the way is just one more reason among many to push for a small limited constitutional government. 

  38. Yeah they’d rub his tummy all right. You could set the fat-ass fucker in the middle of a room and poke him hard enough in the belly he’d be like one of those old-time dolls that would fall to the floor and pop right back up. Yeah, I’d see where that would be hours and hours of fun but that would probably be all that obese piece of shit would be good for.

  44. I would agree with you, if you were talking about the past, but I think this time it’s different.  We TEA Party folks aren’t going to take a whacking this time and say ‘Thank you sir, may I have another’.

  45. Jean and CoolChange sittin’ in a tree…

    Neither one of you do Mrs. Palin any favors by your braying.  I’m starting to suspect that you’re both Bolshe trolls trying to sow discord among the Cain and Palin folks.

  47. Actually that’s not at all true K-Bob. Believe it or not, the majority of Americans still get the bulk of their news and political coverage from television, either cable or network. The average American unfortunately doesn’t spend a lot of time on internet sites like this one where they can see and take part in discussions on an intellectually honest level.

    Ask yourself what the most conservative television news channel is, and you’ll probably correctly come to the conclusion that would be Fox News. That should tell you something. That was actually the first place I’d heard this stupid “Niggerhead rock” controversy mentioned, by Chris Wallace.

    Fox News is getting more and more liberal, in my opinion. Once you get past Sean Hannity, who is a buffoon, what have you got that is truly conservative? Red Eye? How many people stay up for that?

    They’re more concerned with this “fair and balanced” shit than they are about presenting a true conservative alternative. One Sunday I had it on and there were a bunch of women pundits yapping. It was seriously as bad as The View.

  48. I met 4 Bronco cheerleaders this past summer. They are grotesquely underweight, but very beautiful though.

  49.  Enh.  Cain is smart enough to break through the MSM spin and talk directly to the people, like Reagan did.  Palin is the only other one that seems to be able to do that.

  50. You lucky guy. You should have told them something like “you girls should come to my place and let me cook you some dinner. You know, let me put a little bit of meat on those bones.”

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