Is Huckabee finished?

[tarheel-leftist85]

I would say he his.  His involvement with the Lakewood, WA police massacre suspect will hurt him, as will his staunch conservatism.  You cannot win a presidential election in this day in age by being on either extreme.  One has to campaign close to the center and then slowly move to toward one-sided governing, like President Obama has done.  He campaigned from the center-left, but is governing from the left.  President Bush even campaigned from the center-right, but governed farther to the right from where he campaigned.  I just don't think Huckabee knows how to campaign from the center just like Sarah Palin wouldn't know how to.  You can win the primaries from the fringe, but not the general election.

No. Obama is governing from the right.

Obama's governing for his 2012 run, not any ideological standpoint.

Precisely. In general, that means his policies are right-wing.

It would be hilarious, from a conservative perspective, if the 5% who believe this shoot themselves in the head again with Nader (or a Naderite) and cost Obama the election.

I'm prepared to cost Obama the election by voting independent or third party.  I'm willing to let the other legacy party in to get Obama out.  Really, if we can collapse one party, the other will follow--and maybe, just maybe people we'll pay attention to policy and to the matter of who owns this country.  How will collapsing one party take down both?  They are nothing more than advertisers to niche markets.  Instead of offering up substantive leftist policy, the Democrat™ Party enacts corporatist/neoliberal policy with pseudo-intellectual "technocratic" "expertise" and markets itself basically according to Republican stereotypes (on DailyKos, you'll probably see more Palin-bashing than anything of substance).  They are marketing to people with severe cases of status inflation.  The Republicans affect a populist and folksy demeanor and market themselves against whomever the leaders of the Democrat™ happen to be.  That is, both avoid substantive policy discuss and instead market themselves as a religion or status elevator.  And both want "close" "elections"--the duopoly thrives on faux competition.  It optimizes the plutocratic donations and the promises they get to be a lobbyist/board member following defeat/retirement/conviction.

We're about to make it a federal crime not to purchase private junk insurance (Romney care), we guaranteed the banks $22 trillion in future bailouts, and we're about to privatize Medicare and Social Security.  Republicans would do the absolute same things.  How would voting independent or third party not optimize my chances of changing things?

[tarheel-leftist85]

Except your entire approach to the subject is flat-out wrong -- and I say this as a libertarian who hardly sees a difference in the major Parties.

Political science is empirical at least to a degree. History shows that, when one Party enters an extended period of decline, the other most emphatically does not "follow" - observe the lengthy twilight years of the Democratic Party between 1860 and 1884, or between 1896 and what is really 1932 - or, conversely, the state of the GOP for the twenty years between Roosevelt and Eisenhower. The "other Party" remains, simply waiting in the wings.

I agree with a lot of what you say. But the way you say it is absolutely asinine.

"Political science is empirical to a degree."

Quaint statement.  Good political science/economics is entirely empirical/theory-based. 

Those periods that you mention are periods of dormancy, not collapse.  The party out of power was still seen as viable.  The main thing Democrats had going for them 2000-8 was overcoming weak Republican majorities.  It was their marketing strategy.  Twenty years before that split control of the executive and legislative branches was one of the means by which both parties stayed "viable" to the public.  Republicans will no doubt employ the same marketing strategy in 2010/2.  A positive feedback model best approximates the symbiotic behavior of the legacy parties.  The corporatism intensifies with every "realignment" (realignments are becoming less accepted in political science), or with every successive administration.

"It's not what you said but how you said it!"  How should I restate the corporate takeover of the country and global bankster thuggery via the legacy parties "competition"?  Maybe I should look to Obama's Hallmark card grandiloquence.  Oh, Smart Leader Obama!  Show me thine ways of Chicago!  I think it's an "asinine" attempt/argument to employ ad hominen attacks by condescending someone's style when the arguments they are making are logically sound.  Condescension comes easy to the Obama Fan Base.