The Race for 2012--Continued

Charlie Cook has come out saying that the Republicans will hold the House in 2012 and take back the Senate. But he said that his discussions with top Republican strategists indicate that President Obama will win re-election. With a wing-nut Congress that would be interesting if not absurd. James Carville's Democracy Corps has polled and found that voters have buyers' remorse and that GOP freshmen in the House are so vulnerable that the Democrats have a chance to win back the House. Others dispute this saying that redistricting totally favors the Republicans and that buyers' remorse may not turn into votes.

A Pew Poll shows that President Obama beats the generic Republican rather handily and that specific Republican names don't help much either. Public Policy Polling of swing states show Obama winning his states but not with some of the large margins he experienced in 2008. That's one of the reasons that Republican strategists believe they will have a lock on Congress because the Presidential coat-tails will not be so long. The actions of the Midwest Republican Governors have swung the region's direction back to the Democrats and may help save a few Senate seats.

One of the fascinating things to observe is that the approval ratings of the most visible Republican potential candidates have seriously dropped since 2009. The suggestion is that the more people know them the less they like them. I'm not one of those who believes this race is totally wide open as some have suggested. Basically, I believe it is a Huckabee versus Romney contest at this point.

For the first time, Gallup has Mike Huckabee taking the lead over Mitt Romney. The results of the full poll are fascinating.

19% Mike Huckabee
15% Mitt Romney
12% Sarah Palin
10% Newt Gingrich
6% Ron Paul
5% Michelle Bachmann
4% Mitch Daniels
2% Haley Barbour
2% Rick Santorum
2% Jon Huntsman
2% Gary Johnson
1% Donald Trump

Notice the absence of Tim Pawlenty, who announced his exploratory committee this week. Evangelical Christian Tim Pawlenty just finished his stint as Governor of Minnesota, creating the largest deficit in their history. Pawlenty is known among hunters for gut-shooting a deer and letting his aide clean up after him because he had to go to a fund-raiser.

People claims that Haley Barbour has a good shot because he is well-known for his fund-raising and his ability to exploit every loophole in campaign finance laws. Barbour has been out in Iowa this week pledging to reinstate DADT to avoid the battlefield dangers of an "amourous mindset." The return of DADT has been pledged by Gingrich,Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty.

Mitt Romney facing criticism for his Romneycare program in Massachusetts is going to stay away from Iowa because his handlers fear he will be ambushed by the social conservatives, who dominate the Caucus. He claims he will be creating a strategy that focuses on New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida. However, he will be risking his front-runner status if he stays away from too many primaries.

If there is an emerging pattern to the Republican race, it is that it will be fought over "values" issues and not the economy. With House Republicans and Governors sabotaging the recovery, they are betting that a sour economy will doom President Obama. However, they risk the voters actually waking up and discovering the implications of their actions by then.

The key component of the Republican strategy is the ability to raise astronomical sums of money from people like the Koch Brothers and Rove's billionaire donors to overwhelm the Democrats. The second part is being implemented by the Republican Governors, who are implementing Voter ID laws that will dramatically affect the ability of the young,minorities and the poor to vote. Republicans are hoping they can suppress these key constituencies, who vote overwhelming for Democrats but more importantly for President Obama. A big liability for Republicans is the new census figure showing that Hispanics have grown to 50 million people and are now the largest minority in the country. With the immigration laws proposed by the Republicans in over two dozen states,their one-time dream of capturing the Hispanic vote has faded.

The most interesting new possible candidate is Donald Trump. Trump epitomizes Republican economics at this point in time. Trump inherited a fortune from his father, leveraged enormous debt from it, declared bankruptcy several times but paid 10cents on the dollar, each time increasing his wealth, and actually managed to let a casino go bankrupt. In many ways, he is the most suitable candidate of them all.