Why Romney Should Go for the Kill in Iowa | Democratic Strategist

More generally, a long primary season is a very bad thing for the Republican Party. At this point, Barack Obama's best, and perhaps only, strategy for re-election is to make this a "two futures" choice, in which the extremism of the GOP gets as much attention as the current state of the economy. Nothing will play into this strategy quite like months of Republican candidates barnstorming through Tea Party-dominated state primaries accusing each other of being reasonable instead of right.

The "quick-kill" scenario may be the only way out of this trap, and only Mitt Romney can trigger it by hunkering down for an intense holiday-season drive through the right-to-life fundraising banquets and local-supporter potluck dinners of Iowa. We'll soon know whether he has the stomach for it.

Haley, We Hardly Knew Ya

A plain blog about politics: Winnowing

I can only repeat what I've been saying: it's not that the field is small; it's that the winnowing has begun early.

....

But, look, we call this period the "invisible primary" for a reason: just like in the state-by-state primaries to come next year, the current contest has winners and losers, and the losers tend to drop out. Now, some potential candidates really haven't contested the invisible primary...I haven't read anything, for example, about Jeb Bush. So I'll chalk him up as a "did not run." But those who hired staff, sought endorsements, traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina -- they contested the invisible primary. They were candidates for 2012. Even if they didn't quite make it all the way to 2012.

Chasepack Screed of the Moment is by Joe Klein

American Embarrassment - Swampland - TIME.com

This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party's banner. They are the most compelling argument I've seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can't let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know. Mick Huckabee, the front-runner if you can believe it, might have to negotiate a trade agreement, or a defense treaty, with the Indonesian President some day. Newt might have to discuss very delicate matters of national security with the President of Pakistan. And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot--please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you. And you seem to respect yourselves enough not to behave like public clowns.

Trots for Sanford?

(h/t: le Ben Smith)

Wait, a Republican governor is refusing stimulus for his state, likening said stimulus to Weimar/Stalin, and stirring up a stim-based bash with Dem. Whip James Clyburn?

What could this possibly portend, a 'Trots for Sanford' faction? Or maybe something a little more 2012-ish?

Trots for Romney: Victims of their Own Success?

Chicago, IL

The (nonetheless thriving, imminent) movement for a workers' state in the US of A suffered a dramatic blow yesterday, as two prominent socialist-activists abandoned the surging, Situationist-inspired "Trots for Romney," citing the former group's "bonapartist tendencies" and a generalized anxiety about the ranks of the Romney-Trots having grown past 10 members. The dissident former members, now working under the provocative heading of 'Trots for Blago," aired their grievances yesterday in the predictable format of mimeographed theses:

As our former comrades began to deploy bourgeois forms such as speakers' lists and take-out pizza at our meetings, we knew that even a project as potentially radicalizing as our Steve Forbes for Mayor of San Francisco campaign would be reduced to so much Spartacist-ish white noise: further fruit of a Trotskyite (not Trotskyist), surrealist (not dadaist) poison tree.

The "Trots for Blago" leaders have promised to have their very own shitty newspaper up and running by next Wednesday.

MR for Car Czar?

Mitt Romney, anybody? I've almost totally lost touch with the "Trots for Romney" elements that co-edited the Prisonsheep, but I'm certain they have something to do with this whisper campaign. How else can one explain somebody like Ezra Klein entertaining the idea?