{"id":19396,"date":"2013-11-07T14:58:36","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T14:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=19396"},"modified":"2013-11-07T15:35:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T15:35:52","slug":"no-retreat-baby-no-surrender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=19396","title":{"rendered":"No retreat, baby, no surrender"},"content":{"rendered":"

I despise making predictions about elections years before the voting starts, but I somehow can't help getting sucked into it...<\/p>\n

In the wake of his NJ win, there's been a lot of talk in political outlets of all stripes about Chris Christie's Presidential aspirations. It looks like he's gearing up for a run. Suh.Prize. And subsequently, there's been a lot of talk in lefty circles about how the GOP base would never accept him because he said nice things about Obama, and that people outside NY\/NJ\/PA wouldn't take kindly to his brusque, confrontational, and often rude personality. <\/p>\n

I think that's mistaken. I think there's a big market for brusque, confrontational, and rude, so long as people know that the abuse will be directed towards the right people.<\/p>\n

For evidence, look at the way so much of the liberal base adores Hillary Clinton. Even though there's little evidence that any of her positions are significantly to the left of Obama (and some evidence that she's to his right on some issues), a lot of the lefty base thinks she'd be a better President. Why? because \"she's a fighter<\/a>, and she won't take any of the GOP's crap!\"<\/p>\n

To many, it truly doesn't matter that the results she'd be likely to get are pretty much the same as what Obama's been able to get; that's more than balanced because it's assumed that she'd get those same results with a feisty stick-it-to-em attitude. She'd stand at the podium and wave the bloody shirt, call out those who needed calling out, point fingers, fight fire with fire, etc.. Given a choice between a fighter and an intellectual with the same basic policy preferences, they'll take the fighter.<\/p>\n

But this love of someone with a stick-it-to-em attitude is certainly not limited to the left. There are a lot of \"conservatives\" who would be OK with a less-than-Pure President as long as he pissed-off enough liberals along the way. And that's Christie. As long as he can make a convincing case that he's going to fight for the right things, his blunt and assertive personality would be an asset to those people who think the GOP needs a fighter. <\/p>\n

In other words: Christie or Hillary make for good entertainment. And that matters to a lot of people. Enough to get him through the primaries? I don't know. We'll figure that out between now and spring 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I despise making predictions about elections years before the voting starts, but I somehow can't help getting sucked into it... In the wake of his NJ win, there's been a lot of talk in political outlets of all stripes about Chris Christie's Presidential aspirations. It looks like he's gearing up for a run. Suh.Prize. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19396"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19404,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19396\/revisions\/19404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}