Premature 2008 Handicapping

I wrote a comment for Daniel Larison's blog, but the server won't tell me whether it posted or not, so I've woven it into this-here post.

Larison wrote that none of the leading GOP candidates is worth a damn, and none is likely to win, but Tommy Thompson's hour has come and gone, so someone else was likely to emerge from the woodwork. None of this is a surprise. Daniel's a Young Fogy, albeit a smart one, and knows how to write, as do most of his commenters, unlike the maniacs who comment on Marc Cooper's blog.

Larison is a graduate student specializing in the Byzantines. His affectation of British spelling--"favourite"--is his way of boasting how really reactionary he is. Why he doesn't use ligatures--"Greenfleeves"--I'll never know.

The people of São Paulo, Brazil, once elected a rhinoceros, Cacareco (pictured above), as their mayor, although they didn't swear him in.

"None of the above" won't get the GOP nod this year, and the age of the "dark horse" and the "smoke-filled room" are, alas, gone. The baton will thus likely pass to one of the trio of leaders. McCain and Giuliani have been out collecting IOU's, and Romney's been gallivanting, too.

They all have handicaps. McCain is old news, and has the carcasses of McCain-Feingold, judges, and amnesty rotting around his neck. He does, however, have longevity, something that counts with the GOP (remember Dole?). Giuliani is a New Yorker with whiffs of sexual scandal and Big City liberalism about him on guns and gays, but the secret of randy Presidents is out, McCain's also divorced, and to many voters, Romney might as well be a polygamist. Giuliani's a better speaker than the others, which will be refreshing after W's lateral /s/. Romney's personable and is a governor, which historically has helped, but the phrase "Mormon from Massachusetts" just isn't accompanied by "Hail to the Chief" in my unimaginative brain.

I do remember prosecutor Giuliani perp-walking stockbrokers for the TV cameras, which I thought was a cheap trick, but he had his moment. 9/11 could have been a Katrina, but it wasn't.

As for the rest of the pack, Thompson's old news, Tancredo's a one-trick pony, no one even on the Left Coast has heard of Duncan Hunter, and one ex-Governor of Arkansas was too many.

Obviously, then, what we need is a native-born rhinoceros over 35.