The Occasional Observer

3 comments:

Fredo said...

A Bloomberg candidacy may attract more Dems than Republicans, so I'm not too afraid there. But the Post is chasing unicorns. Not. Gonna. Happen.

McCain is the only potential indy candidate who keeps me up at night--both b/c he might actually do it and he would injure our chances to retain the WH, probably fatally. Rudy will not run as an independent. You heard it here first. Well, you heard it now, anyway.

9/14/2006 10:32 AM

SheaHeyKid said...

I agree that Rudy will not run as 3rd party, he probably stands to lose too much if he alienates Republicans, and he knows it's highly unlikely he will win.

McCain is quite likely to run as an indy if he doesn't get the nomination, since he has little to lose and believes he deserves it at this point.

I disagree a little in analysis of who will vote for McCain and Bloomberg though. McCain will steal a ton of Republican votes, but I think he would also be damaging to Dem candidate, especially if he paired up with Lieberman. I know many Dem voters who say they'd choose an indy McCain over Dem nominee, especially if it's Hillary. On the other hand, I also know some Republican (and libertarian) voters who say someone like Bloomberg is exactly what they are looking for: strong fiscal record, ability to work across party lines. There are at least some number of people in the Republican tent who are more concerned with seeing the party regain its standing on small government than they are about social/moral issues. Interestingly, though, it may be that those people are somewhat irrelevant because they might be predominantly located in states that usually go Dem anyway (NY, MA, CA).

9/14/2006 10:45 AM

Fredo said...

Yes the great demise of the Yankee country-club Republican. A much discussed phenomenon.

Moving to a differnt GOP subset, you talk about the small-government libertarians. True enough, they have been effectively pushed away from the GOP by the W wing of the Republican party, and it represents a major challenge to our electoral chances. Those voters were a major part of the former Reagan coalition. While they won't be enticed to vote Dem, it's tough to lose a whole block of voters, so I think the '08 candidate will have to find a way to bring this group back to the table.

As for Bloomberg, he's not a libertarian Republican, he's a Democrat, by most measures. He's shown himself to be a somewhat effective reformer of some elements of the city of bureaucracy (and I'm thinking specifically of how he's rolled up middle management in the City schools), but can you really call him for "small government"? NYC probably still has the highest marginal tax burden in the country, plus outrageous government fees (like $125 parking meter violations). Bloomberg's stopped the city from sliding deeper into red ink, but has he done anything truly conservative? He hasn't privatized any substantive public services. Or broken the stranglehold of the public unions to improve the productivity of public employees a la Reagan (much was made of his fight with the teachers, but was actually accomplished?). Or allowed for real school choice with private schools and vouchers (choosing one crappy public school over another is not the solution). Or stopped the financial sink hole that is the NYC Housing Authority (not to mention the cultural decay that festers there and is a root cause of future hardships--financial and otherwise). His "solutions" have been to raise property taxes and call it a "cut in a property tax rebate," raise fees, increase the commuter tax, squelch a vouchers debate at the behest of UFT, waste a ton of federal $ on ineffective security programs like Operation Atlas and then complain that NYC isn't getting its fair share of Homeland Security payouts, etc. True he's improved the balance sheet, but they way he's done it shouldn't be called "conservative" in any way.

9/15/2006 12:34 AM