Last week Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment published an unintentionally hilarious column that sought to offer Democratic alternatives to President Obama. The choices included non-Democrats like Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and Independent senator Joe Lieberman.
Not content to embarrass himself with his incoherent analysis of Democratic politics, the author and editor of Breitbart.com, Joel Pollak, followed up the story this week with even less plausible suggestions for his own Republican Party. Pollak advocates for a brokered convention that would nominate a candidate not currently in the field. He runs down the GOP wish list of familiar names like Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, and threw in some of the most unpopular characters the Republicans have ever hatched like Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, and Paul Ryan. These folks might get the Tea Party extremists sweaty, but they would alienate the general public to an unprecedented degree. However, Pollak saved his top recommendations for last, and they are doozies.
Pollak’s number two choice for president is one of the nation’s most ridiculed and disrespected politicians, Sarah Palin. Despite starring in a documentary bomb, ironically titled “The Undefeated,” Palin has a resume chock full of defeat. She bailed out of her governorship half way through her first term. She lost the 2008 vice-presidential campaign and is credited with having been responsible for the fall of the ticket. Her book sales have been declining with each new release. Her canceled Alaska tourism program on TLC lost viewers almost every week it aired. She is currently trying to pitch a new TV show featuring her husband’s snowmobile exploits, but no one is biting. When Republicans are polled as to whether they want her to run for president, majorities say unequivocally NO! So of course, she’s the perfect candidate.
Well, almost perfect. Palin was, after all, Pollak’s second choice. So who could Pollak come up with that would surpass Palin’s extraordinary credentials? He would have to dig deep to uncover someone even more ludicrous than Palin. And Pollak does not disappoint when he reveals his first choice, the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.
There may be no politician in America who is more reviled by average citizens and working families. Scott Walker is renowned for his arrogant attempts to roll back collective bargaining rights that were in effect for decades. He managed to anger nurses and firefighters, and even his own police departments, as he battled for lower wages, pensions, and budgets that would mandate extensive and dangerous layoffs. His state has lost jobs for five consecutive months as job creation grew nationally. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics place Wisconsin last in the nation.
But the biggest obstacle to Walker being drafted for a presidential run is that he is about to be recalled. The organizers of the campaign to recall Walker have already announced that in less than half the allotted time they have over 500,000 of the 540,000 signatures required for a recall election. Walker’s popularity in the state is abysmal and his prospects for fending off the recall are, let’s say challenging. Earlier this year Democrats successfully recalled two of Walker’s Republican legislative allies.
The notion of a brokered GOP convention is music to the ears of Democrats. It’s an admission that the candidates put forth so far are inadequate to the job. Should one of them prevail in such an environment they would emerge greatly weakened. Should a new name emerge, it would be someone that did not endure the primary process of vetting that is so critical to assessing the viability of a candidate. Imagine if any of the previous Republican frontrunners (Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Trump) had been selected by acclamation in a brokered convention. They would have been quickly dispensed with in the general election because their obvious flaws would not have been revealed until it was too late. That will surely be the fate of any of the candidates that Pollak is setting up now.
So I wish him well. I completely agree with his choices. It would bring me great pleasure if Walker or Palin or Christie or DeMint were thrust to the head of the line and were chosen to face Obama in the general election. Obama has some very real hurdles to overcome in his quest for another term. The economy has to continue to show signs of improvement. Unemployment has to keep going down. And any number of international hotspots need to be carefully managed in order to avoid tragic flareups. But the most consistently positive advantage that Barack Obama has over his prospective opponents is that he is running against the sort of contemporary Republicans that have lost all semblance of sanity. How lucky can a guy get?
