Anyone else feel like Giffords may, if she makes a full recovery, run for president in 2016?

I know, it's a long way off... but I get the feeling she may indeed become America's first woman president.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Who knows, Obama got elected with little to no resume, so I don't see why America wouldn't be dumb enough to elect a woman just because she got shot.

wait, foog...

you don't think you're going to get your first female president in 2012?

just because Sarah Palin's Alaska show is over, it doesn't mean she's gone!

I tend to lean towards tea party economics, (to much ayn rand as a school boy)
but Palin scares the squishy brown stinky stuff out of me!

*Rolls eyes*

Obama was a professional politician holding public office for 11 years before becoming President, and had been a University Professor and practicing civil rights attorney for 5 years before that (both of which he continued doing for several years after getting elected).

If by "little to no resume", you mean he hadn't spent his whole life with no real responsibility working in the Federal Congress, you're absolutely right. But that's a bullfluff definition.

There's plenty of things you can criticize Obama for... God knows I'm not his biggest fan... but to say he had no resume just shows your ignorance.


*Edit*
(And no, Pang, I don't... I have strong doubts that Palin could beat Obama. Their responses to Giffords' shooting definitively demonstrated how juvenile Palin will always appear when contrasted directly to Obama. That's hard to over come. I can't think of any other woman in the Republican party likely to mount a serious campaign for the nomination)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

uhm no? not at all...

Does that make 50 cent 9 times more qualified than gifford?

My theory exactly Chevs. Americans are stupid and blind when they see the stars and stripes.

no. if anybody could do it it would be harry reid. with his approval rating (or lack thereof) and still somehow able to win his seat back. he clearly knows the right people and how to run a campaign...

I dunno - I would actually vote for Tim Pawlenty over Obama. He's a bit on the conservative side for my taste, but less so than Obama is on the liberal side.

I dunno - I would actually vote for Tim Pawlenty over Obama. He's a bit on the conservative side for my taste, but less so than Obama is on the liberal side.

SS - how the hell did you pull that from a 50 cent joke? Even YOU have more chance of getting elected president than 50 cent...

I want to go one day, ONE DAY, without someone making a retarded statement about Obama. I bet I never will.

NOW3P, do you live in Minnesota? I don't pay a lot of attention to politics, but from what I've gleaned, Pawlenty is a total fluff.

Hate when I hit the quote instead of edit button.

What I was trying to edit was to say, I'm not an Obama supporter or denouncer.

i liked the 50 cent joke...

I actually do live in MN.

The guy is kind of a prick, no doubt about it. BUT...he also managed to give the state a balanced budget before he left office (well, close enough) which was an impressive feat.

Whatever he was doing (or continued to do), MN has ranked very high in quality of life the last few years, so it must have been working.

New documentry... "Get elected or die trying"

No one said anything retarded about Obama.

Ah, I was under the impression that he screwed us over before he left, budget-wise...but like I said, shows how much I know about that kind of stuff. :P

Where abouts do you live in MN?

I don't see her becoming the first.. there will be sympothy votes, but then the focus will shift from that to actual political stuff.. she'd probly end up like Hilary

Sarah Palin: The biggest IRL troll to ever grace American politics, apart from Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'reilly

I'm not being quite as cynical as you all seem to think... I'm not saying Americans will elect her simply because she was shot. However, I do think it's an event that highlights her and gives her a huge advantage politically.

In the same way that Rudolph Giuliani became a star in the Republican Party thanks to 9/11, she'll become a star because of this. Except, unlike Giuliani, she doesn't seem like a complete tool.

Look at it this way:

- She has 4 full years in Congress, and has at least another 4 before the earliest point at which she'd be likely to announce her candidacy.
- Her committee assignments include Armed Services and Foreign Affairs as well as the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
- She's a moderate democrat who's managed to hold a seat in a very conservative district.
- She's extremely popular in her home state of Arizona (11 electoral votes) where she was first elected to office in 2001.

Now, up until now she's done very little in Congress that I can see. But now she's a star. Any position she takes will be reported ad nauseum by the media -- and criticism of those positions will always be muted. She's got three substantive committee positions to weigh in on issues from, and will be asked to co-sponsor all kinds of bills by other members in order to bring more media attention to them.

Beyond that, she's going to be the first person news agencies try to get on when they need a democratic politician for panel discussions. Also, because she's so far right in what is (still) a very liberal democratic party -- she's going to be the person that Conservatives highlight as the "voice of reason" that other Democrats should take their lead from.

Again, this is assuming that she makes a full recovery. But she has 4 years to pile up legislative achievements -- and that won't exactly he hard with how many people will be begging her to endorse their bills. I'm willing to wager that she'll be credited with "hammering through" every major bill and "brokering" every major compromise that takes place in Congress over the next four years.

Both sides of the media will love her. All she has to do is avoid appearing as radical as Giuliani... who almost got elected despite being a complete nut job.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

One of the basic rules of politics is this: line up every voter in the country, ordered by their political opinions, ideas, and mainly who they would vote for. Pick the person in the middle of the line. The person that that person would vote for will win the election.

Giffords, from what I've seen, is a person who liberals can rally behind and conservatives can tolerate. There aren't that many politicians in the country who can claim that.

... that might be one of the most worthless statements I've ever read.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

lol

I could see Giffords being someone that would get the widespread appeal, but she might be one of those candidates that would be swept out during the primaries.

It always seems so silly that the primaries are about "Is this person conservative/liberal enough?" but then once the person wins the nomination, they have to backtrack from everything they said and go straight for the center to have a chance at winning.

Regardless though, considering she's a Democrat and we have a Democrat incumbent, 5 years is a LONG time from now. Afterall, five years before Obama's election to the White House, he was still an Illinois State Senator that no one had heard of.

So ultimately, this idea is intriguing, but we're so far off that it's not very meaningful.

She has no chance.

2 days before the shooting, liberals were claiming Giffords was dead to them on liberal websites like dailykos, partially because they felt she was too conservative.

She'll never make it out of the primaries because her views aren't left wing enough.

Mn's quality of life is directly tied to its highly educated workforce, which developed over a period of decades...mostly under a democratically (though not totally) controlled state legislature.


Quality of life has nothing to do with Pawlenty.

He did fair, nothing outstanding,
didn't screw anythign up totally...

Spent more time campaigning for President than actually being Gov
:P

I was about to say the same.