What about Tom Ridge??

[pbrower2a]

Ridge has zero charisma. He's an old. It would be Bob Dole all over again with the only difference being that Bob Dole actually wanted to be President.

Kinda like McCain in 2008.

McCain wanted to be President. McCain wasn't that boring.

Exactly. Around July 2008, McCain ramped up his rhetoric, and began leading in polls, including polls asking "Who do you trust more on the economy?" He had the "DRILL NOW" issue that Obama was against in the midst of a gas crisis, and was making Obama out to be some Paris Hilton-type celebrity. Then he aced the Saddleback Forum, and after Palin and the GOP Convention...was on his way to pulling a Bush '88.

There was a two month period from July to September 2008 when things looked good...charisma was never an issue.

Long into 2008 people were more concerned about rising gas prices (likely the result of speculative efforts to replace dollars of depreciating value with a tangible and marketable object -- oil).  Such was but one of several bubbles operating at once -- and bursting at roughly the same time.

Sarah Palin may have had the right solution for rising oil prices -- but absolutely none for the economic disaster from the real estate and lending fraud that created quick profits while destroying the wealth of people other than the scammers.

Could any VP have made a difference in the 2008 election? Sarah Palin proved a disaster. Ridge? That implies a convoluted story.

[pbrower2a]

Ridge would be a good President.  He is deceptively intelligent, not afraid to go his own way, and has the nerve to stay in any fight.  I mean, the man fought in a war, and worked his ass off to make it through some of the top tier schools in the country.  He didn't get into the Ivy League because daddy set it up.

The problem is, he seems to lack charisma, depending on how, exactly, you define that (I would say he has presence even if he failed to light the room on fire), and since the selection process for Presidents has become increasingly shallow, I don't see how he wins in the general, even if he does pull in PA and Ohio.

Age is also a factor here.  He would be 67 upon assuming office.

In terms of the issues, in their utter stupidity, the "conservative" wing of the party seems determined to give the boot to anyone who isn't only slightly to the Left of Mussolini, and so Ridge would have a Hell of a time making it through a primary, because his record as PA governor was strongly in favor of supporting social programs... not huge ones, but he did start the CHIP program, and a few other initiatives, and since the current Right can't make a distinction between good and bad programs, that will hurt him, as will his good relationship with the Unions (which really just has more to do with him being someone who is alot like them). 

Of course, then you have the fact that he is not a screaming social conservative.  He has a very complicated position on abortion.  He is not anti-"fags".  Frankly, he is to the Left of McCain, and if people abandoned McCain, they would abandon Ridge.

I think we need someone to move the Party to the Left, socially, but I don't think Ridge has the ability to do that.

Ridge is in my top-5 of people I would like to see in the Oval.  I strongly supported him for VP in 2008.  But, I just don't see how he wins.

So far he is the only imaginable Republican nominee who could pull Pennsylvania in the general election (and he would likely pick up Indiana and Ohio and at least make Michigan close) -- if the partisan dynamics were as they were in 1996. A RINO could win as late as 2006 in Pennsylvania (Rick Santorum was not a RINO, but instead a dinosaur) But that is past. The partisan dynamics are very different. His performance as Secretary of Homeland Security was reasonably good for one of Dubya's appointees, but that might not be enough.   

He may be the least objectionable imaginable Republican nominee of 2012 except perhaps for Charlie Crist -- which means that he might take votes away from Mitt Romney and give Huckabee more of a chance of winning the GOP nomination. We don't have any polls on how Ridge would perform against Obama.

A Ridge-Crist ticket looks now like the dream ticket for beating Obama in 2012 should our 44th President falter -- but neither would win the nomination. 2016? Quite possible should the GOP rank-and-file give up on the idea that it is enough to pander to racists, anti-intellectuals, and rapacious corporatists  to win a nationwide election.  Obama will absolutely need at least three of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, and Florida to win in 2012; Crist could imaginably deliver Florida, and Ridge could deliver Pennsylvania, which has considerable pull on Ohio and maybe Indiana. I might come up with an interesting map showing Ridge-Crist against Obama-Biden, and it might look very pretty to Republicans.

[pbrower2a]

This is an embarrassing thread.  He is not up to the job and should not be considered.

He could have locked up that Senate seat for us if he had gotten in against Specter.  He's a wimp and I don't want a wimp in the Oval Office.

... or he might have salvaged one Senate seat for the GOP had he challenged Rick Santorum in the 2006 Pennsylvania primary. Santorum had no logical chance of winning Pennsylvania in 2006.

Until I see a poll on how he would do against Obama in Pennsylvania (if he can't win his home state then the entire rationale for even thinking of him as a GOP candidate vanishes, as the Favorite Son effect is worth at least ten percentage points, makes no sense) I assume that he has viability as a GOP nominee. I quickly dropped all talk of Pawlenty as a Presidential candidate once I saw him losing to Obama.

The future of the GOP is as a moderate alternative to excesses of Democratic liberalism -- or the GOP can go the way of the Federalists and Whigs.