re: #83 Targetpractice

Somehow, I imagine Christie’s ‘16 run going much like Howard Dean’s did: A lot of time spent on the campaign trail acting mean and “telling it like it is,” marked with controversial utterings that he waves off as “if you’re not angry, then you’re not paying attention.” Then he’ll have a big blowout when he fails to place first in the early primaries and that’ll be all she wrote.

As for Aqua Budda, he’s already trying to style himself as “different,” as something other than an opportunistic little weasel that will say whatever it takes to win. He should come apart as it becomes obvious that he can’t seem to hold the same position on any subject for longer than a polling cycle.

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I think Paul has hurt himself with both black voters AND far right white voters (who see any outreach to blacks as capitulation). His speech at Howard exemplifies this: he insulted the black students by presuming to give them a lecture on their own history, and he pissed off white conservatives, who think that republicans should never “grovel” for the votes of “those people”, by going to Howard in the first place.

I think his appeal is still quite limited. Broader than his dad’s maybe, but not broad enough to get the nod. The socons, neocons and moneycons all have reasons to distrust him. And none of those groups is really fired up about him.