Bryan Fischer is doing people like me an enormous favor. He is handicapping the 2012 GOP field and will apparently in his next column tell us who he thinks would a great GOP candidate for President. Knowing what I know thus far, this should be a pretty good sign of not to vote for in 2012.
First, he claims evangelicals are key to the next election. This could be true if they voted as a group. However, as Fischer points out, 2008 saw erosion in this demographic with seven million evangelicals preferring Obama over McCain. Two years from now, a case could made that evangelicals will continue to fragment with moderates and social justice evangelicals going one way and social conservatives another. Fischer’s prescription seems to be an inspiring candidate that is even more socially conservative than McCain. I doubt evangelicals who were attracted to Obama in 2008 (and to be clear, I was not one of them) will rally around someone who is farther to the right than McCain.
Fischer then rules out Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich for various reasons, some of which are on target, some of which are questionable. For instance, for the same reasons Fischer rejects Mitt Romney, I suspect the party as a whole might make him the nominee. He will almost certainly look reasonable and mainstream next to the far right candidate preferred by Fischer.
He promises to reveal who he thinks the GOP should select soon. I suspect it will be Mike Pence or Jim Demint. I know it won’t be Mitch Daniels (someone I believe is a compelling figure). In any case, the revelation will likely help my process of elimination.