Lady Gaga to Speak at Rick Perry's "Day of Prayer?"

Before Texas governor Rick Perry became this week's Great White Hope for the Republican presidential nomination, he organized a National Day of Prayer for this Saturday.

There are a lot of questions associated with the event. Should Perry be inviting gay-baiting hate groups like the American Family Association? That question can also be asked about flame-throwing religious figures like John Hagee of "the Holocaust was a good thing because it brings us closer to the Apocalypse" fame.

Likewise, wouldn't identifying with the religious right undermine Perry with independents and moderates if he won the GOP nomination? According to Alex Castellanos:

One thing Republicans are going to demand this election is a candidate who can beat Barack Obama . . . The election is all about him. A candidate who establishes his identity on the fringe, talking about social and religious issues, when the economy is going over a cliff, risks marginalizing himself, becoming unacceptable to independents and unelectable. That would be the kiss of death.

And Alex Castellanos knows extremism, having made his career by doing racist ads for Jesse Helms during Helms' last Senate campaign.

Another problem is that Perry booked 65,000 seat Reliant stadium but only has 8,000 reservations. As Bobby Jindal could tell him, epic fails are real buzz-killers.

But the biggest question hanging over Rick Perry's Day of Prayer is whether Lady Gaga is going to make an appearance.

It certainly seems like Perry is teasing a Gaga performance.

"There will be folks who think it's [politics], that there are other motivations. But it's not about me," Perry said. "It's about Him," the exact same divinity Lady Gaga references in "Born This Way."

"It doesn't matter if you love him/or capital H-I-M."

Perhaps Perry had an inspiration while singing along with Gaga's lyrics (what rising politician doesn't think "you're on the right track baby, you were born this way?) and decided to put out an invitation to the hottest singer on the planet.

Now THAT would be a sensational way to launch a presidential campaign.

Clever of Perry to keep it a secret so long.

Huntsman and the Prom Queen

A pretty dumb moment from Jon Huntsman. Yesterday, Huntsman claimed that the media only paid attention to Michele Bachmann because she was pretty.

In a long story running in this week's New York, Huntsman -- who recently abandoned his lackluster Mr. Nice Guy campaign in favor of taking direct swipes at his opponents -- suggested Bachmann, the only woman officially running for president, gets the attention she gets in part because she's good-looking. "She makes for good copy--and good photography," Huntsman told New York's John Heilemann. The quote came in the context of talk about Bachmann being "more an object of media fascination than a plausible nominee," as Heilemann put it.

Actually, I follow commentary on Bachmann's campaign fairly closely and there's none of the "librarian porn" fascination surrounding Bachmann that was the case with Sarah Palin. Actually, this is the first discussion I've seen of her standard-issue, politician look. I remember somebody commenting that politicians all look like class presidents or prom queens and Bachmann looks like she could have been queen at a home schooling prom.

But who besides Jon Huntsman, who really cares?

The main things about Bachmann's candidacy is that she has a constituency in the religious right and Tea Party factions, works very hard, has a potential path to the Republican nomination, and would lose the general election to Obama by about 25 points.

But why exactly is Jon Huntsman running?

About all I can see is that he has a career-killing resume as a moderate Republican, good hair, and an interesting story about growing up as a rock n' roll Mormon.

Not exactly presidential material there.

The Republican Plot to Re-Elect Obama

That's pretty much what the debt limit talks look like right now. Boehner, McConnell, and Eric Cantor are doing their level best to turn Obama into a "strong leader who stood up to the reckless bullying of the Republicans."

Will Sarah Palin Ever Hire a Republican?

Golly! That liberal media is tough. Newsweek puffs Sarah Palin to the hilt. They even have a couple of cheesecake wilderness shots.

The hard-bitten journalism crew at Newsweek also makes it sound like Palin's a lock to run for president but hasn't decided how she's going to run a presidential campaign without actually doing any campaigning. Is Palin doing to run a stealth campaign where she swoops into a town or state without notifying anybody? Or is it going to be a Zen campaign where she sits on her porch in Wasilla (or is it Phoenix?) and focuses on her breathing.

"Sarah Palin is now breathing."

These are all questions that I'd like to see answered but that Newsweek was too breathless to address. Maybe they were just too excited by their exclusive access to ask any questions.

My own biggest question is whether Palin is going to bite the bullet and hire a living, breathing Republican to work for her campaign. Palin seems to have developed a phobia for all the consultants, campaign operatives, opposition researchers, and local officials associated with the Republican Party. She avoided them like the plague on her swing through the Eastern historical sites and didn't contact anybody in the Republican Party about her trip to Pella, Iowa ("an old Dutch town with the country’s largest working windmill") to see her campaign video "Undefeated."

To be honest, I can't blame Palin. Like a lot of Americans, I'm not particularly fond of the Republican political apparatus either. They're the kind of people who give dishonesty and corruption a bad name. But I really think that Sarah Palin has to hire at least one Republican if she's going to run for the Republican nomination.

Jon Huntsman Throws His Snowball into the Deep Pit

In one of the most insignificant presidential campaign announcements of 2011, Jon Huntsman has announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination.

The media gives Huntsman a lot of play because he's a "different kind of Republican" who has moderate views on social issues and served with Barack Obama as ambassador to China.

But Huntsman is almost as bad a no-hoper as you can get.

First, Huntsman doesn't have much name recognition among Republican voters. Of course, that's not necessarily fatal. But the easiest ways to pump up name recognition for an ambitious GOP politician are to drop about $100 million into advertising or make firebrand pronouncements about how Barack Obama is destroying the country because he isn't a real American. Huntsman comes from a wealthy and prominent Mormon family, but doesn't seem to have the ability to drop 50 or 100 mill like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Likwise, he just came off a sting as Obama's ambassador to China. So, he can't make himself into Obama's "enemy from hell" either. Making things worse, Huntsman has no juice with the religious right, no cache with foreign policy neo-cons, and very little connection with the Republican religious establishment.

So, what is Jon Huntsman's constituency?

At first glance, it looks like Huntsman is going to compete for Mitt Romney votes. I should be clear that Huntsman's not going to compete with Mitt Romney for Romney votes. Huntsman has absolutely no chance of competing with Romney at this point. Instead, Huntsman is going to compete with Tim Pawlenty for the "I agree with Romney, but would never vote for Romney" vote.

That's the only competition Tim Pawlenty is going to win all year.

Huntsman Agonistes

Matt Bai of the New York Times claims that the Jon Huntsman candidacy for the Republican nomination should be taken seriously and that he has Republican insiders who will stake their careers on Huntsman's chances.

A few deeply knowledgeable Republicans I talked to (if I told you who they were, they wouldn’t talk to me anymore) gave him something like a 1 in 5 chance of getting the nomination. Their view is that Mr. Huntsman, who is regarded as a moderate on issues like immigration and climate change, isn’t nearly as likely a choice as Mr. Romney, but he’s not substantially less likely than, say, Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota.

Ok, claiming that Huntsman has as good a chance as no-hoper Tim Pawlenty is not exactly taking a big leap.

But Huntsman doesn't have a chance at all.

What Huntsman wants to be is the Barack Obama of Republican moderates--someone who can appeal to a broad coalition of Wall Street guys, Main Street Republican businessmen, and traditional conservatives who don't like too much progress but aren't interested in re-enacting either the Boston Tea Party or the attack on Fort Sumter.

But Mitt Romney pretty much has those constituencies sewn up. That leaves Huntsman and Pawlenty fighting over the scraps of Republican voters who think like Romney but don't want to vote for Romney.

That's not a very big group.

If Jon Huntsman has a purpose in running for president at all in 2012, it's to put himself in position to be a consensus elite candidate in 2016.

But he doesn't have any chance of accomplishing that either.

Bachmann Disappoints

Elite political commentators are pretty much unanimous in agreeing that Michele Bachmann helped herself last night.

To the extent that any candidate stood out as a potential anti-Romney, it was . . . Rep. Michele Bachmann, who started the debate with the surprise announcement that she had filed to run for president of the United States. The TV-friendly conservative, beloved by the tea party, introduced herself to a national audience as a “former federal tax litigation attorney” and “businesswoman,” repeatedly mentioning the 23 foster children that she and her husband have raised. And unlike the other candidates, who are largely former officeholders, Bachmann was able to point to her voting record as a sitting congresswoman to show she’s in the midst of pitched fights over health care reform, financial regulation and federal spending.

That was Politico. Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post goes on.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann came into Monday night’s presidential debate in the Queen City as an unknown commodity. She left it as the most talked-about candidate in the 2012 GOP field.

That translates to me as Bachmann "beat expectations" by sounding better than Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich, and thus stood out.

That's true.

But Michele Bachmann isn't running against those guys. She's running against Sarah Palin to be the candidate of the religious right and Tea Party against Mitt Romney.

If Palin decides to run, Bachmann will have to go toe to toe with her. But even if Palin doesn't run, Bachmann's has to show that she can catch fire like Palin did in 2008 if she wants to be beat Romney.

And Bachmann didn't do anything to indicate that she could catch fire.

As a result, I rate Bachmann's night pretty much as a failure. If she really wants to compete for the Republican nomination, she'll have to raise her game.

Herman Cain: Clown Candidate

It looks like Herman Cain is replacing Donald Trump as the leading clown candidate in the Republican presidential race.

What's a clown candidate?

Putting on my political scientist hat, I would define a "clown candidate" as "a presidential candidate who is seeking to gain support by making the most provocative statements in the field."

What made Donald Trump a clown candidate was the fact that his appeal was based solely on questioning whether President Obama was born in the United States or not. There's apparently a large constituency for clown candidates among Republican voters and Trump's birtherism pushed him up to 26% in the polls at one point.

Now, the same Republican constituencies are looking at former Godfather's Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain as the answer to their dreams of confronting President Obama in the most provocative way possible.

Here's the kind of thing Republican voters like:

“Stupid people are running America,” Cain complained on Saturday night. “We will put a conservative in the White House, and I've got a good feeling his name is going to be Herman Cain.”

Given that Cain's economic plan is basically to empower the wealthy even more than they already are, I have a strong feeling that Cain's not going to beat Obama in 2012.

But he's got a decent enough shot at being the Republican nominee--definitely better than Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

Who's Afraid of Sarah Palin?

Lots of people according to Rush Limbaugh (Being interviewed by the always scary-looking Greta Van Susteren).

You know the effect that she has on establishment Republicans. They are just as frightened in their own way as the Democrats are of Palin. And I -- one thing I think that is inescapable, particularly with when looking at the Democrats. The Democrats will always -- and the media -- will always tell us who they are afraid of by virtue of who they spend time trying to destroy . . . Bottom line is she scares them. She also scares the Republican establishment.

I can see where Sarah Palin and the Tea Party might scare some Beltway Democrats. They're pretty much scared of everything, including people like me. But progressives are part of the Democratic establishment as well and progressives would think they've died and went to heaven if the GOP nominated Palin next year.

I know I would.

Maybe It Would Be Better to Pair Turner with Bachmann

Washington insider Ed Rogers is floating the idea of a Jon Huntsman/Michele Bachmann presidential ticket. Here's the fluff Rogers wrote about Huntsman.

Former governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman is an articulate, attractive, cerebral, urbane internationalist. He’s a proven conservative with a reassuring, moderate tone and a model family. His vast experience in state and federal government, including service as a diplomat, clearly makes him qualified to be president.

I have a hard time understanding anybody in the Republican elite would push Jon Huntsman. A moderate Republican who served as Obama's ambassador to China, Huntsman isn't any more likely to be win the GOP nomination than a socialist/atheist like me.

Michele Bachmann is another matter. Somewhere between rising star on the right and joke candidate with terminal foot-in-mouth disease, Bachmann is flirting with a long-shot presidential run and would be an attractive VP candidate because of her ability to fire up the GOP base.

The GOP would be better off nominating Paul Ryan for pres and pairing him with Bachmann. Ryan would represent the economic wing, Bachmann the religious conservative wing. It would be a balanced ticket and probably a lot more honest than what the Republicans will actually do.