George Pataki For President?
George Pataki, who served three terms as New York’s Governor from 1995 to 2006, is apparently thinking of running for President for some reason:
Former New York Gov. George Pataki told Fox News on Monday he’s “seriously” exploring a 2016 Republican bid for president.
The former governor said he plans to travel to New Hampshire on Tuesday to meet with political figures and citizens, and “lay out my ideas” for the country.
“I’m thinking about it very seriously,” Pataki told Fox News, when asked if he might run.
The move comes just days after 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney told supporters he would not run for the GOP nomination in 2016, after flirting with a potential candidacy for much of January.
While Romney’s exit left former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as a likely favorite for the so-called Republican establishment, a new Iowa poll released over the weekend showed Bush ranking only in the middle of the pack. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was on top of the field in that survey.
Whether Pataki, who for more than a decade was a major figure in the Republican establishment and is cut from a similar partisan cloth as Bush and Romney, could carve out his own niche in the primaries is an open question.
Pataki isn’t the only former Republican Governor flirting with the idea of running for President. Former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrilch and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore have both said that they are considering the possibility of running as well. None of them has a realistic chance of winning, of course, and at best one can consider this an effort on their part to increase their visibility in the hopes that they might be considered for a cabinet position in a Republican Administration.
Update: One of the “Related Posts” to this one reminded me that Pataki had also considered entering the race in 2012. Ultimately, he didn’t enter the race.
At first I read the title as “George Takei for President”.
@Stormy Dragon:
That would be awesome on so many levels 0
@Stormy Dragon: At first I read the title as “George Takei for President”.
As God is my witness, I had the exact same thought.
Oh, my…
@Stormy Dragon: @Jenos Idanian #13:
Yup.
On consideration, the actual scenario is a bit more ridiculous.
After I took Romney off, I still have 22 people on my list of GOPs who have been mentioned with some degree of seriousness as presidential candidates. And I’m not counting Palin or Trump. Nor Pataki, Ehrlich, or Gilmore. This is ridiculous. Can you really make that much money pretending to run for prez? Like somebody said, now it’s a Klown Bus. A short bus.
Pataki says it’s time to get the nation back on track.
Is he talking about the 9% GDP contraction in a single quarter track losing 650,000 jobs a month invading sovereign nations for no reason track???
Is it too late for me to get in? Sure I’m a Democrat, a liberal, have a bit of a record, a history of recreational drug use, and no relevant experience, but hell, if everyone else is getting in. . .
@michael reynolds:
Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, but have you and your children starred in a series of ineffably tacky reality shows? Have you and your family crashed a birthday party and initiated a drunken brawl? Are you capable of giving a thirty-five minute speech that contains no punctuation and consists of a 10,000 word dangling participle?
No? Sorry. Next!
Somebody needs to take over for Harold Stassen.
@Stormy Dragon:
Include me in on that one.
@al-Ameda: I’m beginning to think almost everyone did.
@Matt: I didn’t, but I’d vote for him!
Yeah, I thought Sulu as well.
And what does it say about a candidate if none of us can even recognize his name?
@Pinky: “Who?” is a perennial candidate. We seem to get at least one every cycle.
@gVOR08: This seems different. He isn’t some businessman or freshman congressman. He was three-term governor of a huge Democratic state who beat Mario Cuomo. And we all thought Trek.
I think Newt is running too. My dad got a Polling call about Newt asking him about whether he’d vote for Newt.