The Republican Presidential Hopefuls and Obama

I want to thank all the readers who are following my commentary on the events in Egypt and the Middle East and I'll get back to these really critical events tomorrow, but today I would like to talk a little about the 2012 US presidential race, because it's closer than we think.

Fox News published the results of its latest Republican presidential candidate poll this weekend. The results were all over the place, with no really clear frontrunner. The poll was taken on 9-11 February with a sampling of 911 people.

Here are the results:

Mike Huckabee -- 55 percent
Mitt Romney -- 54
Newt Gingrich -- 43
Sarah Palin -- 40
Jeb Bush -- 39
Donald Trump -- 23
Chris Christie -- 29
Tim Pawlenty -- 21
Haley Barbour -- 16
Michele Bachmann -- 16
Rick Santorum -- 15
Mitch Daniels -- 13
John Thune -- 12
Jon Huntsman -- 10

The GOP has a problem vis-à-vis the 2012 presidential election because it has not had a real leader since Ronald Reagan.

I do not count either of the Presidents Bush because, while they were elected, neither of them was the leader of the GOP. George W. Bush ran on the coattails of President Reagan, under whom he had served as vice president. He was a moderate Republican who “changed” his mind on abortion and other items required by the GOP conservatives so that he could pass what was then called the conservative “litmus test.”

His son, George was barely elected the first time and probably would have been defeated in his bid for a second term if there had not been a 911 disaster. He was loved by GOP conservatives but had no broad appeal to moderates or to independents or the Democratic opposition.  

Thus, the Republican Party has wandered in a wilderness from 1988 when Reagan left office to today. The above poll seems to support this idea. That ten percent would vote for Jon Huntsman, a man who has been Obama’s ambassador to  China for the last three years, and who has not yet even indicated that he is considering a run at the presidency shows the incertitude in the minds of GOP voters.

I’ll put my bet on the line and say that neither Romney nor Huckabee nor Palin nor Gingrich nor Jeb Bush could defeat President Obama. We can also eliminate those who polled at less than 20 percent.

That leaves Governor Christie of New Jersey and Donald Trump. My guess is that either of them would give Obama a run. One proof is that media political analysts, most of whom believe that Obama will be elected, are pooh-poohing Christie by saying he has said he will not run. This weekend, they went after Trump by making fun of his hair. It reminded me of the fun poked at Ronald Reagan by the professional political analysts when he announced he was a candidate.

When the media feels compelled to turn to belittling tactics with Donald Trump, or to try to push Christie aside, I feel they probably have already decided that either one could beat Obama.