With enemies like these, does the President need friends?

[marmar]

from the Independent UK:



With enemies like these, does the President need friends?
The Republican nomination race started like a train – but became a train wreck. As the primaries loom, David Usborne charts how the GOP became the gaffes and 'oops' party

David Usborne
Monday 02 January 2012


The experience was probably the same whether you were in the "spin-room" adjacent to the university auditorium in Michigan where the rivals were debating or watching on television. It was agonising. For myself, I just knew, even as Rick Perry started his sentence, that the tail-end of it was going to elude him.

Of all the clangers and boobs of the pre-, pre- presidential campaign that has brought us to the eve of the first actual voting in the Republican nomination derby, the failure of Governor Perry to identify the third of the three federal agencies he was vowing to shut down was the most astonishing. It lasted 53 seconds. You can hang yourself comprehensively in 53 seconds.

The remarkable thing is, in spite of the comedy and the errors, nearly all the Republicans who started on this slog for the right to challenge Barack Obama this November, are still standing. True, Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota, threw in the towel in August but because of problems with money. Get ready to see others stop in the pits and not reappear.

Credibility did not seem like it would be an issue for Mr Perry. The serving Governor of Texas plunged in late – two days before Mr Pawlenty quit – and seemed to be the most potent challenger to Mitt Romney, the ex-Governor of Massachusetts, who is smoother than an anaesthetist's lance and about as numbing. But it quickly became so. The reviews for his debating skills were bad enough before Michigan. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/with-enemies-like-these-does-the-president-need-friends-6284011.html

[Tomay]

1. It's just amazing...

...how do the Republicans keep producing these deranged and moronic candidates? And even more amazing, how do they continue to survive to campaign after lethal mistakes like those Perry makes constantly? Are GOP voters that desperate?

[City Lights]

2. Republicans would vote for a cheese sandwich if it ran as a Republican.

Compared to most of the candidates they're running, I gotta say that a cheese sandwich would be an improvement.