Liberal Talk Radio

The right-of-center swoon for Bill Richardson continues. How long can a Democratic primary candidate possibly last with this much Republican support?!

First the Weekly Standard praises his fiscal discipline, and now David Brooks gets smitten:

…it becomes absurdly easy to picture him rising toward the top. He is, after all, the most experienced person running for president. He served in Congress for 14 years. He was the energy secretary (energy’s kind of vital).

He’s a successful two-term governor who was re-elected with 69 percent of the vote in New Mexico, a red state. Moreover, he’s a governor with foreign policy experience. He was U.N. ambassador. He worked in the State Department. He’s made a second career of negotiating on special assignments with dictators like Saddam, Castro and Kim Jong Il. He negotiated a truce in Sudan.

Yeah, yeah… we know he’s got the goods. The question, for Richardson supporters, is how a center-left guy with no money makes a splash. A left-wing long-shot could raise money from the Netroots, but it’s unclear how a center-left guy could do the same (unless, of course, that center-left guy is Al Gore, whose rise-from-the-ashes story and newfound Hollywood love has inspired lefties to rally around him).

Brooks offers two answers on that score. First, Richardson is “small and nimble” compared to the Obama and Clinton machines. That doesn’t seem all that important to me, unless it means he can take risks. Second, Brooks argues that Richardson could ride the free publicity of being a McCain-style media darling. Slightly more promising, but I don’t know how Richardson gets there from here.