"Obama Is Likely to Lose"?

I like Peggy Noonan. Yes, I know she was reagan's speech writer back in the day, and she is, for all practical purposes, a wingnut---- albeit a more educated and somewhat reasoned one.

Anyway, I read her piece in the Wall Street Journal today (yes, I read the WSJ) and I found her comments about O to be quite interesting.

Basically it was a cheer up fellow republicans note, and it came with the usual things that you would expect from someone trying to give their base hope.

I am paraphrasing here, but she writes things like the following: Obama will lose because he was too focused on his health care plan. His foreign policy is confusing and muddled, and he is getting all he can handle from Gaddafi in Libya. He was outgunned and outclassed by republicans domestically because their budget proposal was serious and offered a unique approach to solving our fiscal problems, and his did not. The polls show that 69% of Americans say that we are on the wrong track and only 38% of Americans say that O deserves reelection. Throw in the fact that his numbers are down among folks he could count on in the past such as....(Gasp!) African Americans, and, well, you can see where she was going.

And yet, in spite of all that gloom and doom predicted for his O ness, she finished her column with a warning:

"You would think Democratic professionals, who read the same numbers Republicans do and pick up similar trends, would be hanging their heads in despair. They are not. They have hope.

Their hope is that Republicans in the early caucus and primary states will go crazy. They hope the GOP will nominate for the presidency someone strange, extreme or barely qualified. They hope that in a mood of antic cultural pique, or in a great acting out of disdain for elites, or to annoy the mainstream media, Republican voters will raise high candidates who are unacceptable to everyone else.

Everyone else of course being the great and vital center, which hires and fires presidents. The Democrats' hope is that centrists will look at the Republican nominee and, holding their nose, choose the devil they know. Especially if the one they don't know seems to have little horns under his hair.

Republicans voting in recent presidential primaries have tended to pick the candidates who are viewed as the moderate in the race—Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008. But in truth, there are some pretty antic candidates out there this year.

The great question of the coming year is not, "Will Obama reignite his base?" or, "Will the Democrats outraise and outspend the GOP?" It is: Will the GOP be serious? Will Republicans be equal to their history, their tradition and the moment? If they are—if they recruit and support candidates who can speak to the entire country, who have serious experience and accomplishments, who are grounded and credible, then they will win centrist support. And with it they will likely win the thing without which they cannot achieve the big changes they seek, and that is the presidency." [Source]

As a fellow republican Peggy is worried that there are no adults or serious candidates in her gang. I can't say that I blame her. When their great weight hope is a guy who can't control his own appetite and yet they want him to control the nation's budget, there just might be a problem.

A problem that doesn't look like it can be fixed with the gang lining up to ride the elephant in 2012.

Good luck wingnuts, at least half of the country is counting on you.

*Pic by Chad Crowe in the WSJ.