Won't happen if the Republicans can't get a real (ie electable) candidate in the field. Extreme-right tea party candidates won't ever win, and everyone knows it. They have just as much chance as Howard Dean did for the liberals.
Yeah, lots of us are less than thrilled about Obama. But while he's crappy at keeping his promises to the people who put him in office, he's still more likely to pursue legislative and political goals that I'm in favor of than any Republican (especially a Tea Partier) I've seen.
I'm actually partially with you. I'm not a huge fan of "blaming Bush". It's been long enough, shit that's happening now is happening on Obama's watch.
However, a few things.
1) How do you (personally) measure "the economy"? There's a myriad of indicators, which everyone on both sides can point to to claim that the economy is either coming along swimmingly, or sinking faster than a rock. That's not to say that I disagree that it's still in bad shape, but I'm curious what specific measures you're looking at, since I'm not certain I'd agree that it's necessarily "worse" or even "as bad" as when he took office, so much as that it's still far less "better" than everyone wanted.
2) He's the president. Just as I don't buy that Bush had anything to do with the country going into a recession, I don't buy that Obama had all that much control over which direction the economy went, either. You can claim he chose policies that didn't help it, but I've certainly not seen any numbers indicating that anything he's done has either helped or hurt the economy. The biggest thing I could see would be health care, and I don't believe at all that that was bad for business. At the least, it was a huge boon for the insurance industry... :roll:
This, and what I said above - presidents don't have much of any control over the economy either way.
I doubt it. He's got much lower name recognition than some of the other Tea Party candidates (who may or may not run). If either Palin or Bachmann runs, I'd be shocked if Cain gets even a fraction of the Tea Party vote. And ultimately, when it comes down to it, the primaries are for party members to vote to decide which candidate they think can win. Many Tea Party members will vote for a "safer" candidate who they think can actually beat Obama, since they know someone like Cain hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of beating him.
Uh... Definitely not "primarily". It was one of many things that liberals liked about him (and one of many that we were later disappointed by him on - the invasions of privacy that his administration have advocated for are far more damaging, though), but far from the only thing. And while I'm sure his promise to close it also definitely helped him win the Nobel, the overall sentiment appeared to more be because of his (also now missing, though I blame this equally on both parties) "post-partisan" rhetoric and espoused openness to international diplomacy.
Unsubstantiated facts, which have been in dispute. And the whole "who gets credit" thing is just childish. Who cares?
See above re:economy.
I don't think anyone is saying that "if we just say that it's all Bush's fault, then the economy will get better". And by certain measures, the economy has picked up, some. Just not as much as expected/hoped for.