President Pataki?

by JASmius



Nope.  But he's running anyway.

Or, "And then, there were twenty":

Ignoring the polls and pundits, former New York Governor George Pataki plans to announce Thursday that he’s joining the crowded Republican field for president.

The three-term governor will unveil his candidacy in Exeter, New Hampshire — which claims the birthplace of the Republican Party — and join a group of contenders who are inching toward the twenty mark.

Skeptics abound about Pataki’s chances.

He doesn’t register on national polls and has been out of elected office for nearly a decade.

“I just don’t see where he could win,” GOP consultant Ed Rollins told the Post. “I’m not sure he could win in New York anymore.”

But Pataki says he’s undeterred by the odds.

Of course.  What does winning have to do with running for the Republican presidential nomination anymore?  There are only two, maybe three, tops who have legitimate shots (Jeb Bush from the "establishment," solely because of his warchest, Scott Walker from the conservative/Tea Party wing, and perhaps Marco Rubio based on talent and ethnicity); the others are a clog of extraneous detritus tripping on their respective overfed egos.  Hell, I don't need a retirement nest egg to live on, impoverishedly, for the rest of my life, and I've got all kinds of free time; maybe I'LL announce MY candidacy, come out of nowhere, and run away with the top of the GOP ticket.  What's that expression?  "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

The only other time I've seen the very ex-New York governor mention a presidential bid was nine months ago, and I didn't even take it seriously enough to believe that he was actually serious.  Or maybe I was hoping he wasn't in an exercise of naive hope over cynical reality.

No matter; I will reprint here and no what I wrote there and then:

Of course, I'm more than a little baffled as to why Malzberg booked Pataki in the first place. This guy has been out of politics for eight years; though his electoral shelf life hasn't technically expired yet, and has enough time left for a conceivable run in 2020 if he so chose, and he is a multi-term governor of a still-major (if not swing) state, there are fatal handicaps.

New York's last-ever Republican governor would be seventy-one years old in 2016, older by two years than the oldest successful first-term presidential candidate (Ronald Reagan). Given that so many of the Right are scarcely any less presumptive about Hillary Clinton than are her own supporters, and that her age and health are more or less universally considered two of her biggest vulnerabilities, nominating a man that is two years her senior seems....counterintuitive at best, no matter how healthy he may or may not be.

And then there's the matter of Governor Pataki being....well, so resoundingly NOT a Tea Partier. If Jeb and Mitt are eliciting anti-"establishment" snarls from the GOP grassroots, I can only imagine the fatwas a RINO of Pataki's philosophical and temperamental base incompatibility would generate. And since I have no reason not to credit him with more than a rudimentary level of political acumen, I must conclude that, like Governors Bush and Romney, he is fully aware that his presidential candidacy would be received about as well as sprouts and tofu served at a Texas barbeque.

But he's running anyway.  For the hell of it, I guess.

At least he'll be another set of jaws biting at Jeb's ankles.  For a couple of minutes at however many debates he manages to get onto, if any.