Hillary Clinton will be the next President unless....

[Sam Spade]

Just FYI, the person who wins the 2008 election will not be a Southerner.  That torch has passed, for at least a couple of elections.

So then it's only going to be Obama, Giuliani or Romney?

Hillary is no more from New York than Alan Keyes is from Illinois.

Of course she's not from New York, she's from Illinois (as one could tell through her accent).  Which, last time I checked, was not part of the South.  Alan Keyes is from Neptune, or somewhere like that.

I still suspect the only people who have a shot at winning the election are Hillary, Obama and Giuliani.  I await being proven wrong, of course.

[Person Man]

Just FYI, the person who wins the 2008 election will not be a Southerner.  That torch has passed, for at least a couple of elections.

So then it's only going to be Obama, Giuliani or Romney?

Hillary is no more from New York than Alan Keyes is from Illinois.

Of course she's not from New York, she's from Illinois (as one could tell through her accent).  Which, last time I checked, was not part of the South.  Alan Keyes is from Neptune, or somewhere like that.

I still suspect the only people who have a shot at winning the election are Hillary, Obama and Giuliani.  I await being proven wrong, of course.

He's actually from  Europa. Illinois seems like a pretty non-offensive place to be from. It's not the butt Fucking coasts or the sister Fucking south or high plains, is it? It's supposed to be the between the Missouri, Ohio and the Applachians...the Midwest, the NORMAL part of the country.

[ag]

Hillary won' t be hammered over the war in the debates as much as a Republican candidate who supports it will.

Paul doesn't support the war. He voted against the war, whereas Hillary voted for the war. Also, Paul doesn't want to keep residual forces there, whereas Hillary does.

Irrelevant. Paul is  not going to be elected or nominated  (by a major party) to any national office.  If he were, Dems would have a feast - they wouldn't have to talk war, it would be enough to talk Ron Paul.  Actually, it would be enough to let him talk himself.

It's a miracle that under the U.S. FPTP system he is in Congress.  His chances of ever becoming President are equal to exactly zero, no approximation needed. His chances of getting nominated by a major party to run for president are exactly the same (unless, of course, right at the end of next January they release a tape of all other Rep candidates engaged in a homosexual orgy).  He might have a better chance of being nominated by Communists than by Republicans: at least, the former would have their vote up if they did it.

[Beet]

Ron Paul?  lol

Huckabee could perform decently well, though he would be anathema to suburbs outside the South, thus hindering his chance to win.

Just FYI, the person who wins the 2008 election will not be a Southerner.  That torch has passed, for at least a couple of elections.

Or maybe, at least not a Texan. A Texan has been on the Republican ticket on almost every single election since 1980.

The current proliferation of non-southern candidates to the top of the polls merely reflects a backlash against an unpopular George Bush.

It's not an anti-southern backlash but a deliberate calculation among Republicans that a conservative Republican is unlikely to win next year, which just happens to favor non-southern Republicans.

The long term trends that benefit the south, which are it's relatively rising population, will only grow in the future. While Bush's unpopularity affects only this one cycle and will be forgotten by 2012 (by which time Ohio will no longer be able to swing an election and the Democrats will not even be competitive without winning something in the South). We are in an era where a northeasterner can really only be elected in special circumstances, if at all; which, given the small geographical size of the northeast, does not altogether lack sense.

[gorkay]

Why does the geographical size of the Northeast have anything to do with it?