Inside the Roach Motel--Election 2012

Barack Obama's approval rating according to the AP is 53% and over 84% of Americans like the man even if they disagree with him. The latter is a stunning figure when you consider that a certain cable station attacks him ad hominem every hour of every day. Gallup has his tracking poll about 49%. Only the Quinnipiac poll of Obama at 42% got any media attention. So we are now beginning to hear the rustling of people who may or may not run against Obama. But there appears to be a problem.

The Ronald Reagan Center postponed their May Republican debate until September for lack of any serious candidates. The press release was a classy number emphasizing the seriousness of the Center's debate and their pride in presenting top notch presidential contenders. In other words, folks, there are no serious people yet in the race. But why let that spoil all the fun?

Right now--both at the Congressional level and the nominations level we are seeing the cultural warriors stake out their ground for their eventual blackmailing of the actual nominee. We haven't seen the entry of the corporate interests yet at the presidential level. My word of advice to Marco Rubio is that he better start speaking up Jesus if he's going to be Romney's vice-presidential candidate. Right now the Republican strategists are gaming the 2012 elections and realize that Barack Obama may need far less white votes than last time because of the increase of the Hispanic vote. The immigration laws have severely wounded the Republican chances right now.

In Christianist Steven King's Iowa Freakathon, the Jesus crowd loved Herman Cain and adored Michelle Bachmann. Bachmann has managed to outraise Mitt Romney this past quarter. But the bad news is that even though she was the media star, she lost the straw vote to Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. OK, there were only 240 votes cast.

Bachmann's own staff is defecting to Tim Pawlenty,her fellow evangelical Christian from Minnesota. TPaw is gaining ground in the Beltway as the low-key figure the Republicans need to sell their toxic policies to the public.

Waterloo Jim DeMint is seriously concerned that the current Republican crop of contenders are missing something. He wants another governor or two to enter the race to make it meaningful. In a Farleigh Dickinson poll, only Chris Christie of New Jersey makes it a close race with Obama but Christie says he will not run. He is eyeing re-election in 2013.

Mitt Romney is rumored to be entering the race mid-April. To be viable he has to disown almost every political position he has ever taken. And it appears that he will do so for a chance to grab the gold ring. However, Republicans consider Romney an empty suit.

The Gallup organization has created a new index to measure the positive intensity a candidate has among his party's base. This measure takes into consideration name recognition, approval rating and factors in percentage of strong supporters. Their first attempt is out: Mike Huckabee -26 Mitt Romney-20 Michelle Bachmann-20 Herman Cain-19 New Gingrich-19 Sarah Palin-18 Pawlenty-16.

In almost every poll, Mike Huckabee does the best of any Republican against President Barack Obama. But so far,there are few indicators that he is taking any steps to put together an organization to run for the nomination. Insiders are beginning to be skeptical that he will make the move and instead enjoy his new comfortable lifestyle. There does not seem to fire in the belly.

From the Republican point of view, there is amply time to pass enough voter restriction laws to repress Democratic voters in key swing states. And money will absolutely not be a problem because of the Citizens United case. It's really a matter of whether they can demoralize anough of America to get the electorate to acquiese to whoever the corporations want as President. That's why in light of the raw pro-corporate policies of the new Republican Party,the insider choice is Mitt Romney with Marco Rubio being the younger Vice President, who would bring in enough Hispanic voters to capture Florida and cut into Obama's base. In other words,they will play idenity politics like they did with Sarah Palin.

But to get there is going to be problematic. Florida is already causing problems with vowing to move up their primary. The RNC is already threatening to throw Florida out of the RNC and even change the venue of the convention. The Florida site also makes Rubio the hometown favorite for Vice President.

Then Mitt Romney is considering by-passing Iowa, which will be dominated by Jesus freaks. The longer he can avoid frontally addressing why he believes Lucifer is the brother of Jesus the better.

The Republican Party has several almost terminal problems looking forward to 2012. They rebounded too soon and now have the teabaggers around their neck. Almost all the early candidates are birthers. (The state of Hawaii released President Obama's live birth certificate--the infamous long form--in 2009.) Almost all the current candidates think Barack Obama is a Muslim. All of the current crazies are either Christian fundamentalists or pandering to them. Both Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich swear by David Barton,the Christian prevaricator, pseudo-historian, that we are a "Christian nation".

Every candidate will be against a woman's right to choose--let alone have privacy in a doctor's room. All of the candidate will support union-busting. All the candidates must be against evolution, against the science of climate change and against alternative energy sources. These are the threshold values that a candidate must have.

So far, all of the pretend candidates have argued against same-sex marriage and want to restore Don't Ask Don't Tell. Many of the minor candidates have come out even more aggressively against gays and desires to make homosexual activities illegal again.

It's going to be quite amusing for them to discuss healthcare. Remember both Obama and McCain campaigned on the need to reform the healthcare system,as did Mitt Romney in 2008. Now what are they all going to say. We've seen that the House GOP's "Repeal and Replace" quickly dissolved to "repeal". There is no more replace. Yet, major issues with the healthcare system will remain front and center in 2012.

Also, on national security, it's going to be fascinating to see the contenders wrestling with this. Here, they will have to come to grips with the George W. Bush years--Iraq, Afghanistan, torture and the expenditure of trillions. Romney is already sounding the calls to increase defense spending because of threats posed by such places as China. The neocons are struggling to get back into the game, even to the point of claiming credit for any use of force by President Obama. But airing these issues out on the campaign trail will show how vacuous they are. Once the party of national security, the Republicans have forfeited this strength because of the haywire antics of the last administration. Watching them discuss the Middle East peace process will be tortuous. They will have to turn themselves into pretzels because they have to be more zionists than their Christian Right.

Barack Obama's weakness is going to be the economy, even though by the time of the election he will have created more jobs than all 12 years of the two Bush administrations. The reality will be that unemployment will be about the same as when he came in. But the ideas to change that he has offered and so far the Republicans have rejected them.

The other debate will be over the so-called entitlement programs. The Republicans at every level of the government now are really committed to eliminating Medicaid, cutting Medicare and phasing out Social Security. This is a debate Democrats will have to forcibly join. In the mid-terms, we saw how the Republican corporate wing run by Karl Rove spent millions trying to convince voters--successfully--that it was the Democrats who wanted to eliminate these programs.

But so far all those who have entered the Roach Motel have embarked on a journey of cultural warfare and embraced a Christian nationalist message. It's tough to see how you then moderate once the process is over. Stay Tuned.