Two Candidates In The Time Machine

Two Candidates In The Time Machine



Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman can BOTH get elected this cycle... provided they can get the 1.21 jigawatts and the speedometer up to 88.

For Huntsman, it's The Future:

The Huntsman strategy here is obvious: position himself as the moderate and reasonable guy on the off chance Republicans decide to be moderate and reasonable. We must assume he is aware that his odds on this are rather long, so what he’s really hoping for is to be the consensus candidate of 2016. Maybe the party just has to go through this purge, this Reign of Terror; so just let it do that, and once it does and nominates an extremist who can’t beat a weak incumbent during a time of 9 percent unemployment rates, and the heads are piled high enough in the tumbrels and enough people finally have returned to their senses, he will ride the Thermidorian wave to victory after Obama leaves town.

The I Told You So strategy. Nixon used it in `64 and it worked in `68. One catch in the theory: if Romney is nominated and loses, does religion get blamed and used against Huntsman in `16? It was 32 years between Al Smith and JFK. And if the GOP does win (shudder) Huntsman's screwed like all the Democrats who though HW couldn't lose and waited for 1996.

For Bachmann, it's Back:

In brief, my theory is this: Michele Bachmann is traveling backwards through time.

Now, before you get all dismissive, I’ll ask you to examine the facts. It’s certainly true that as seen from the perspective of a person for whom the normal universe’s past is her future, the spectre of the Soviet Union looms large. In the coming decades they will confound the west by removing nuclear weapons faster than we do, extract warheads from Cuba despite our protests, pull out of Eastern Europe and unsuccessfully invade Afghanistan (that last one looks the same in both directions). They will shamelessly copy our pursuits in the space race – we put a man in orbit, they’ll put a man in orbit – and they will be at least 50% responsible for creating Nazi Germany by withdrawing from Central Europe. This menace will persist for the better part of a century, at which point a royal family will appear from nowhere and squelch this accursed Revolution of the People. I can’t blame Michele Bachmann for wanting to warn America about this looming threat which lies only a few short decades behind us.

But if Bachmann does contact Doc Brown, she can use the DeLorean to get to her events on time.

Three of her four public events in the past two days were outdoor rallies in mid-90s midday heat. She was at least half an hour late to each, and audience members invariably began drifting away in search of shade before she was finished speaking. In Mt. Pleasant (SC), at least one person in the audience passed out from the heat.

Especially important in Iowa; remember Rudy Giuliani getting to events on New York Fashionably Late time?

There may not be any flux capacitors involved but we finally found science Rick Perry believes in:

Over the course of that year, the eggheads, as they were known within the campaign, ran experiments testing the effectiveness of all the things that political consultants do reflexively and we take for granted: candidate appearances, TV ads, robocalls, direct mail. These were basically the political world’s version of randomized drug trials, which had been used by academics but never from within a large-scale partisan campaign.

The findings from those 2006 tests dramatically changed how Carney prioritized the candidate’s time and the campaign’s money when Perry sought reelection again in 2010 and will inform the way he runs for president now.

But no science is gonna get Perry that Steve King Endorsement.