The Candidates
In today’s online edition, The Prowler reports at The American Spectator that Oklahoma Republican United States Senator Tom Coburn, arguably the toughest spending and budget hawk in Congress, is contemplating getting into the GOP presidential field. We’ll see.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Coburn? Give me a break. Most Republican conservatives have reconciled with the strong probability that Giuliani will be their best shot at keeping the White House.
http://political-buzz.com/?p=209
May 29th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I’m still waiting for George H.W. Bush, Norman Schwarzkopf, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Bob Dole to jump in!
May 29th, 2007 at 10:24 am
PS — Ron Paul is the biggest spending and budget hawk in Congress.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:17 am
The chief complaint from all of these new entrants seems to be that there is not a “true conservative” in the race. At some point the power brokers need to get all these guys in a room and decide who that will be because otherwise half of these guys are going to end up with some support split, enough of the conservative vote to allow a Giuliani nomination.
I’m sure some will argue that a lot of these guys (i.e. Coburn, Brownback, Gingrich) won’t get enough votes to matter. But even if a Brownback or Coburn gets 2-5% of the vote in the end that may be enough to stop a Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney nomination if they are close with Giuliani.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:23 am
That first paragraph — that’s what I’m counting on, USADawg!
May 29th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
TLG, maybe we should withhold our exuberance on this. Could help convince pro-life power brokers to strong arm some of these people out of the race.
May 29th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
A Coburn run would be interesting, and I think it would take a lot of steam out of the F. Thompson, Gingrich, and Romney campaigns (maybe Rudy as well, but the type of voters Coburn would appeal to are wither with one of those three or a second-tier candidate).
May 29th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Coburn’s a good guy but, a president from Oklahoma in 2008? Seems pretty unlikely. Deep red and there’s not even a neat historical narrative to play off of. Obama is a lib from a deep blue state, but at least can wax poetic about Lincoln.
May 29th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Lets do a brief analysis on Coburn:
Positive
- would carry Oklahoma in a Presidential election
- is a Republican
- is a budget hawk
Negative
- almost all the other candidates he would be up against in the primaries are also Republicnas (I say almost as a small number of people would argue Giuliani or Paul aren’t)
- any Republican candidate would carry Oklahoma in a Presidential election
- is the budget the #1 issue today? I think not. Social issues are important (enter Huckabee, Brownback), Iraq is important (enter McCain), and climate change is important (enter McCain, probably).
- Furthermore, other candidates are successfully positioning themselves as budget hawks. Romney talks of cutting spending (”as I did in Olympics and Massa.”), Gilmore talks of cutting taxes, and other candidates point to their senate votes.
So I can’t see him gaining much traction.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I’ve been a Brownback supporter since before he announced. The country owes him a great debt for stopping arguably the least qualified nominee in the history of the Supreme Court. He’s rock solid on social issues and good on taxes. Having said that, I’d change horses in a hot second if Senator Trainwreck got in.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I think Coburn’s main problem is that his name recognition outside Oklahoma is very low. He would have a lot of ground to cover just to get people aware of who he is.