That means this is it. Republicans are stuck with the group they have: The Imperfect 10. They are so lackluster that most people can’t even name the front-runners. According to a poll released this week by the Pew Research Center [ http://people-press.org/2011/10/05/gop-candidates-hardly-household-names/ ], unlike in 2007, 1999 and 1995 when about half of Americans could name a Republican front-runner at this point in the campaign, this year little more than a quarter can.
This was supposed to be a cakewalk for Republican voters. Instead, they find themselves poring over a platter of options as dense as dough, as hollow as choux and as thin as phyllo.
This has to be incredibly frustrating. All the other conditions are ripe.
The economy is stubbornly resisting resuscitation, and even the White House predicts that the unemployment rate will remain above 9 percent through Election Day. (No president in modern history has faced re-election with an unemployment rate that high.)
• The new laws are likely to make it “significantly harder” for more than five million eligible voters — “mostly young, minority, and low-income voters as well as voters with disabilities” — to cast ballots in 2012. They point out that that number is “larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections.”
• “The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 — 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.”
• Most of the 2012 battleground states have either passed or are considering new restrictions. Some that have passed them are considering passing even more.
The White House should be the Republicans’ for the taking. And it would look more likely if their current crop of front-runners weren’t so utterly inept and fallible.
Then there’s Perry, who during the last debate was pushed back on his spurs. All of America had a chance to see what many have known from the beginning: that dog isn’t smart enough to hunt. Ever since then he’s been sinking in the polls. Adding to his troubles, The Washington Post revealed on Sunday that the Perry family leased a hunting camp with a most un-P.C. name, which sounds like a cover band for a Klan rally.
Lastly, there’s Herman “Big Daddy” Cain, the former C.E.O. of Godfather’s Pizza, who recently told Chris Wallace of Fox News that “when” he becomes president, he’s going to remix [ http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201110020001 ] “Hail to the Chief,” possibly with “some gospel beats.” He won the Florida straw poll and has surged ever since.
He has never been elected to public office and has demonstrated a woeful lack of understanding of international affairs. But what gets my goat is how he plays with the shiv of racism like a circus clown. He complains about people calling him names because he is a black conservative, while simultaneously offering up sweeping racial generalizations about other blacks. He describes the Democratic Party as a “plantation [
]” and says that two-thirds of blacks are “brainwashed [
]” into voting Democratic.
He has also raised the tired trope that Obama isn’t black enough and that the news media is scared that he, “a real black man [
],” might run against Obama. When Jon Stewart mocked him for saying (“joking”?) that as president all bills would have to be three pages long, Cain accused Stewart of crossing the line by using the “dialect of the old Amos ’n’ Andy [
].” Yet when shrugging off criticism, Cain quotes his grandfather using poor grammar: “I does not care.” What kind of dialect is that?
He says he wants to avoid racial politics, but he ensures that his campaign is soaked in racial politics.
If these are the best the Republicans have, they may miss their moment. Then again, there is that opening caveat.
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