yeah, he will.

This would be a nightmare.

It sounds like Oklahoma must have been a bitch for ballot access even back then.

I remember in ‘92 Ross Perot spent like $65 million. I believe that the Democrats and Republicans that year each spent around $120 million.

“Oh yeah? What if the Bloomberg campaign pays $100 per valid signature. Even if a million signatures were required (which they’re not), that would be $100 million or 1/10 of one billion. He’d still have $900 million for the race—and that’s assuming he’d only spend $1 billion.

Money can solve a lot of problems.”

It is going to take around 690,000 valid petition signatures to get national ballot access in 2008. Since signatures can be disqualified for a variety of reasons it is necessary to get more than what is required to cover the margin of error. So I’d say that to have a comfortable margin they’d probably have to go for at least 1.2 million raw signatures.

This is not easy to do, especially when one considers that there are all kinds of rules in different states, however, if one has enough money behind them, which Bloomberg obviously does, this could certainly be accomplished. Money talks.

“I HAVE SOME SERIOUS PROBLEMS with Bloomberg, mostly on the issue of gun control.”

That’s a pretty major flaw.

“I also get the impression that he is more of an elitist than most pols, i.e. thinking he knows better than the crowd (because he’s made his billions doing exactly that). But I would certainly CONSIDER supporting him if he made a balls-to-the-wall run, and if the GOP/Dem/LP candidates truly sucked (Romney/Edwards/Root).”

Bloomberg is a jackass. There’s no way in hell that I’d vote for him.

He is an ethics scandal waiting to happen. Last week’s Rolling Stone had a huge spread about it, and if the campaign turns negative, he’s toast unless he has AMAZING dirt on his opponent.

Look at it this way. The Religious Conservatives in the GOP are now in a bind. If they balk at Rudy, they risk causing Bloomberg to jump in as a “Centrist New Yorker.”

So, it almost causes the Conservatives, who’ve been skeptical of Rudy, to be more pragmatic.

Can you imagine 3 NEW YORKERS running at the same time: Hillary, Rudy and Bloomberg? Add Wayne Root in there on the Libertarian Party ticket and that would be 4!!

Then again, stranger things have happened in politics.

I expect Arnold will be behind him, and that might be enough for at least double digits here in Cali.

If Ron Paul fails to win the Republican nomination, I intend to either vote for the Libertarian (if the LP candidate is Kubby – or certain others) or just not vote.