Saturday Morning Politics Thread: Who Isn't Running? [Y-not]

I'm still working on the next installment in our "issues" series in which we've been examining the records and positions of our top 7 GOP prospects, so I thought this weekend we could just talk about how the field is shaping up thus far.

This tweet sums things up rather nicely, I think:

Yesterday Jeb Bush flew to Utah to meet with Mitt Romney. (Supposedly, this meeting was schedule some time ago.) And it has also been reported that Romney will be holding a pow-wow on Friday (in Boston) with some of his top advisors.

Incidentally, although I knew that Romney was building a house in my neck of the woods (in addition to the one he already has in Park City), I had not realized that he'd switched residencies. He's now registered to vote in Utah.

Well, at least he'll be able to carry his home state this time around.

Who else has made moves with respect to 2016? Here's a very handy roundup from WaPo. (It's so good I abandoned the news roundup that I had been compiling as soon as I found this one.) Make sure to follow the link, but here's an excerpt:

* Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is convening a strategy session with his finance team today in the Sunshine State. And he is bringing on Anna Rogers, who is currently the finance director for the conservative supergroup American Crossroads, to head up fundraising for his PAC.

* Sarah Palin said she was "interested" in the race while "serving wild boar chili to the homeless" at the Salvation Army in Las Vegas."

* Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker just signed on David Polyansky, who served as senior strategist for Sen. Joni Ernst's 2014 campaign, to be his lead man in the key state of Iowa.

The list is huge.

In case you missed it, Paul Ryan announced that he is notrunning. This had an interesting effect on me -- I like him more, simply because I'm so sick of these other folks who play coy for months or start raising money for races they know they can't win.

So a very big field is shaping up. But -- don't fear! -- Reince Preibus is putting his foot down with respect to the "debates." GOP hopefuls will have to meet certain criteria in order to participate:

Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman, says that potential presidential contenders will have to poll above certain levels to earn a spot in the GOP debates.

In a radio interview on the "Hugh Hewitt Show" Monday, the conservative host asked Priebus how the debates would work if there were 20 candidates vying to be heard.

"You can't," Priebus said. "You can't do 20 people. ...You have to have certain thresholds in place, so you have to be at 1 percent of the vote in Iowa, and that threshold can move like a slide rule based on the proximity to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primaries, just like it did before."

Priebus said the thresholds would be determined in coordination between the RNC and the media outlet conducting the debate and that none of the minimum requirements had yet been set.

(emphasis mine)

So the upshot is that once again Iowa -- and the networks -- will be playing major roles in choosing our candidates for us.

Awesome.

If Reince thinks that the biggest problem was who was on stage rather than who was asking the questions he must have slept through 2012.

In any event, here's the debate schedule:

1. Fox News, August 2015, Ohio
2. CNN, September 2015, California
3. CNBC, October 2015, Colorado
4. Fox Business, November 2015, Wisconsin
5. CNN, December 2015, Nevada
6. Fox News, January 2016, Iowa
7. ABC News, February 2016, New Hampshire
8. CBS News, February 2016, South Carolina
9. NBC/Telemundo, February 2016, Florida

PENDING
Fox News, March 2016, TBD
CNN, March 2016, TBD
Conservative Media Debate, Date TBD, Locations TBD

And, courtesy of Frontloading HQ, here's the current status of the 2016 Presidential Primaries:

The solid dark and solid medium blue states are scheduled for February and March, respectively. Quite a few states are working on legislation to determine their primary dates as well. (Follow the link above to read their rather detailed figure legend.)

For fun, let's have a few polls. First, whom do you expect to have thrown their hat into the ring by the time the first debate rolls around?

OK, out of that total field (ie: everyone listed; assume they all run), please choose your top four candidates*:

*Poll fixed: I had accidentally left off Scott Walker.

Finally, out of that entire field of candidates, for whom would you not be willing/able to vote in the General Election?

So what do you think? Do the good prospects make up for all of the bad ones?

Who are your favorites thus far?

See you next week!

posted by Open Blogger at 08:43 AM

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