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PrintApril 23, 2011
Dr. Krauthammer's Bland Recipe
Obama has cranked up his 2012 campaign to full speed, leaving the media breathlessly chattering in his wake about whether he can recreate 2008 and whether the Republicans are finished before they start.
Charles Krauthammer's Friday column, which he calls "2012: The Racing Form," handicaps the players with his three-point theory of what it will take to defeat Obama, and seems to conclude that a couple of bland but capable, make-no-waves Republicans have the best shot of winning the election.
Krauthammer's "unified field theory of 2012," as he calls it, takes off from the 2010 shellacking:
Unified Field Theory of 2012, Axiom One: The more the Republicans can make the 2012 election like 2010, the better their chances of winning.The 2010 Democratic shellacking had the distinction of being the most ideological election in 30 years. It was driven by one central argument in its several parts: the size and reach of government, spending and debt, and, most fundamentally, the nature of the American social contract. 2010 was a referendum on the Obama experiment in hyper-liberalism. It lost resoundingly.
So far, so good.
The column's next two axioms are really one:
The less attention the Republican candidate draws to him/herself, the better the chances of winning...No baggage and no need for flash... the electorate is not looking for a thrill up the leg in 2012. It's looking for solid, stable, sober, and, above all, not scary.
And that's it.
Reminisce about the past and present a dummy. What a strategy.
Krauthammer, in fairness, does conclude that the Republicans should make the election about ideas and not about the Republican candidate. But that presumes Obama's campaign team would not focus on destroying the candidate to obfuscate the debate on ideas, regardless of who the candidate is.
Krauthammer forgets, too, that John McCain was vanquished by the big-talking Obama in the 2008 debates, and that any candidate facing Obama on the national TV stage had better be able to speak clearly and convincingly over the President's sonic hypnosis on big media's slanted stage.
Under the Krauthammer unified theory, any candidate willing to boldly articulate a pro-growth, pro-jobs, free market agenda, to champion the Roadmap for America, drill-here-drill-now, and the repeal of ObamaCare regulatory state, is out.
In short, any candidate willing to go to the mat for limited government, conservative values and American exceptionalism doesn't fit Krauthammer's grand theory.
Well, we didn't defeat Jimmy Carter with an "I'm-not-Jimmy-dummy," and it's not gonna happen this time either.
