re: #142 doppelganglander

Excellent. In fact, I think Romney could be exactly the person to break the stranglehold the extreme religious right has on the party. They will obviously oppose him because he’s a Mormon. Huckabee is certain to be their mouthpiece. He has to hit back hard at that, very early, and expose them as bigots. If he can marginalize them, he’ll gain a lot of independent voters. The creationist politicians may or not genuinely believe what they say, but they do feel it’s politically necessary to support creationism in order to court the fundamentalist vote. Romney has a chance to stand up and say there’s no place for bigotry in the GOP. The fundamentalists are not exactly going to vote for Obama — they’ll just stay home, while moderates and independents would feel much more comfortable voting for Mitt. Everybody wins - Mitt, the GOP, and most of all the nation.

If that happens, there would be a real good chance that Obama would take the south. If the evangelicals stay home, and the Afro-American vote comes out strong for for Obama, the Democrats might pick up enough votes in the south to carve out a majority, even if the Republicans perform well in the swing states.

The best solution in my mind is for Mitt to pick a SoCon VP early in the primary season(possibly Hucksterbee) and use that to insure a boring primary. The VP candidate would have to keep from saying anything too stupid and possibly moderate some of his positions. Someone like Hucksterbee could do that and still draw southern SoCons. By keeping quiet and talking about “local” decision making in education, you keep the focus of the race in the swing states on the top of the ticket, while the bottom of the ticket is hopefully enough to keep the south in the red.