Memories of Mitt
It seems like just yesterday that John McCain was the “not Romney.”
And has it really been 4 years since we really first grasped how bigoted and crazy the GOP base had become?
I’m old enough to remember a time before Cain, Bachmann, Newt, and Perry we had a whole roster of other “not Romneys” who had their day in the sun including Fred Thompson, Rudy Guliani, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback.
It is as if the GOP has been boiled down to two bricks of highly condensed hatred. One brick of hate for President Obama, and one brick of hate for Mitt Romney. And make no mistake, Republicans know how much they suck. Listen to the baleful tone of this journalistic heavy sigh courtesy of The New Republic:
Take a moment to imagine the following GOP presidential field: two popular, former big-state governors (one a former U.S. Treasury secretary, the other a hero of the conservative movement), two Hall of Fame senators (one of them a former vice-presidential nominee, the other a future White House chief of staff), a former CIA director, ambassador, and party chair, and a couple of miscellaneous House members. Not bad, right? That’s your Republican candidate field in 1980: Ronald Reagan, John Connally, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, John Anderson, and Phil Crane.
By the same token, however, one could not imagine a Democratic field today like the on in 1976 (I picked that over 1980 because of the lack of a Dem incumbent to reduce the field): Jimmy Carter, Jerry Brown, George Wallace, Mo Udhall, Frank Church, Scoop Jackson, Sargent Shriver, Fred Harris, Birch Bayh, Lloyd Bentsen, and Terry Sanford.
That’s a much broader spectrum than the Dems offered in 2008 (although that Wallace thing might be a little too broad for everyone’s taste), and I can’t imagine Scoop Jackson or Birch Bayh being considered acceptable Dems today.
For good reason (if Birch was half he fraud of his DLC off spring).
BTW, Typical Republican move there. ” But…but…but they do it too.”
To an extent this is a media created narrative to spice up what otherwise is a boring race. There are no significant policy differences among the viable candidates and the lack of consistency prevents a clear story line like “Clinton vs. Obama.”
Look at the 1980 field referenced in the article. It featured a Texas governor who was a former Democrat who flamed out as the brief front-runner (sound familiar?), Reagan entered the race with universal name recognition yet was temporarily eclipsed by Connally and then lost Iowa to Bush, Bush in turn faded quickly thereafter. The rest? John Anderson was on the left of the GOP. Bob Dole? As the party’s previous VP nominee he also entered with universal name recognition and yet was a non-factor. The idea that in every cycle a party immediately falls head over heels for a particular candidate is simply a myth.
The 2008 Republican field also had a revolving door of weak front-runners–Giuliani, Thompson, Romney, and McCain. Eventually McCain, who was in the low single digits late in 2007, took the lead when voting began (after first losing Iowa and Wyoming.) but even then he benefited from Huckabee and Romney splitting the more conservative wing of the party.
The 2008 Democratic field was very consistent until that fateful October debate in Philadelphia. Obama was stuck at around 20-25% just like Romney, with Edwards consistently around 15% and Clinton in the 30’s. For all the talk of Obama being a juggernaut he spent the bulk of 2007 much closer to Edwards than he was to Clinton. Clinton fumbled the ball and Obama was there to pick it up and take it to the end zone. Even then Obama it bears remembering that only narrowly won. Clinton almost certainly had slightly more raw popularity but Obama won by having a far superior campaign strategy, particularly with respect to focusing on caucuses and competing in every state, thanks to Plouffe and Axlerod.
The 2004 Democratic field was even more fluid than either of the 2008 fields and the 2012 fields. There was a revolving door of leaders and the margins between the top 4-5 candidates always was minimal until the late Dean surge.
In a large field it is not surprising to see the leader in the 20’s. The notion that the 75-80% of people supporting one of the other 7 candidates constitutes an “anti-Romney” vote is false. Look at what happens when the race settles down to 2 candidates. Was the 65-70% of the electorate that supported Obama, Edwards, Biden, Richardson, et al. an “anti-Hillary” vote? That theory was given some play in 2008, although not nearly as much as the “anti-Romney” theory. Obviously it was not an anti-HRC vote. As those candidates dropped out their votes went primarily to Obama but not exclusively. Enough of them went to Clinton to create a 50-50 split between her and Obama with Clinton actually enjoying a majority in primary states. A similar thing will occur when the Republican race is down to 2 candidates.
Romney’s problem is he has a very high level of distrust among a significant portion of his party and that could come back to haunt him in a two-way race. Of course, Clinton also had this problem but she started from a base of support in the mid-30’s, not the 20-25% range like Romney. Romney’s nomination would be bizarre in that he has no identifiable set of beliefs and values. His rhetoric has shifted dramatically depending on the office he is seeking and his four year record as governor contrasts with his presently espoused policies. One would have to go back to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 to find a nominee with no known set of beliefs and he was nominated due to Republican desperation to break the 20 year Democratic hold on the White House. How enthusiastic will the Republican base be to support an unknown quantity like Romney? Hatred of President Obama would cause many conservatives to support him but there will be some level of slippage in turnout with Romney compared to a more trustworthy nominee. The question, should he win the nomination, is how much? Of course the other possible nominees have their own issues. Perry and Cain have questionable competence levels and Cain and Gingrich have significant personal baggage.
It is interesting to see how much emphasis there is on ideology among Republicans, whether it is this year’s presidential race or last year’s O’Donnell-Castle primary at the state level. The same type of emphasis does not exist on the Democratic side. Clinton vs. Obama was a battle of style, not substance. The Republicans take it to ridiculous extremes by demanding universal agreement with the party platform, though. Reagan himself could not win a Republican primary today due to that. Governor Reagan raised taxes to close a large budget deficit, signed an abortion law that resulted in the number of abortions skyrocketing in the Golden State, and habitually compromised with Democratic legislators.
We do not see the same ideological rigor applied on the Democratic side. Ideology was a non-factor in the 2008 presidential race. Obama was perceived as more progressive than Clinton, and indeed his Illinois record and his rhetoric was more progressive, but his campaign platform was identical to Clinton’s. The ideological progressive was Edwards 2.0 and he was mired in the 13-17% the entire race. At the state level, last year the Republicans had two bruising ideological primaries for House and Senate while Democrats unified behind Coons and Carney without a primary.
Democratic primaries seem to be more about comfort level with a candidate than a debate over policies. It is interesting, though, that it is rare in the modern Democratic party for a viable candidate of the left to emerge. As readers of this blog know, there are issues that can be used to run from the left yet it does not happen. Dean in 2004 was a rare exception–and he placed third behind the DLC’s Kerry and Edwards 1.0. The last competitive Democratic presidential candidate (sorry, winning only Vermont does not qualify Dean…) from the left was second place Jesse Jackson in 1988. At the state level, when is the last time Delaware had an ideological Democratic primary?
This was a lengthy post that went off track to an extent but I wanted to throw some thoughts out there!
With regards to Democrats picking based on style rather than substance you may be right with regard to Clinton/Obama. There was a desperation to win after 8 years of Bush and that desperation pushes issues lower on the list of primary voters concerns.
Someone could easily win a Dem primary based on ideology. Dean would have easily trounced Kerry except for the media takedown that Rove orchestrated. The Bush team wanted no part of Dean.
I think the point that you lost track of was that the 80’s GOP contenders had credentials which made them reasonable candidates for the high office of the Presidency. You don’t hear Republicans talking about credentials, only about purity.
A shorter answer to your question would be….Duh, I knew the bigoted and racists permeated throughout the GOP since the days of Welfare Queens and Big Black Bucks Eating T-bones on the gov’t dime during the early 80s…and I was twelve!
The crazy part came to a head when Bu$hCo asked to play toy soldiers without raising revenue, aka Tax Increases. First time in history, I believe, where a country, empire, whatever actually decreased taxes while fighting a foreign war, let alone two! Shit, Caesar couldn’t even pull that off!
BTW, Typical Republican move there. ” But…but…but they do it too.”
Shorter jason: anybody who notices weakness in my argument is a GOPer.
I concur. They strangely do talk about credentials–but only when bashing Obama’s light credentials circa 2008. You are correct they do not care about them now and their field is weak in terms of credentials. Gingrich and Huntsman have strong credentials, Pawlenty had a solid record, Paul has a lot of experience and Gary Johnson was a two-term governor. Yet Pawlenty is already out the race, Johnson banned from the debates, Huntsman mired at 1% and Gingrich is only competitive as the latest flavor of the month. To have Herman Cain, who clearly is unqualified to be president, and a one-term governor leading the pack says it all about the value the GOP places on candidate resumes. Yet they attack Obama as an inexperienced lightweight? By 2012 Obama will have nearly 4 years of experience in the toughest job in the world, 4 years as a U.S. senator and several years as a successful state legislator to boot. I suspect the right-wing rhetoric about Barack Obama being unqualified is a coded message…
I agree there was a desperation to win in 2008 and Obama came out on top to an extent due to being perceived as the most electable, although Edwards actually polled the best against the Republicans. Republicans, though, have the same desperation this time and yet still are featuring ideology heavily in their primary. Their most electable candidate clearly is Huntsman and he is at 1%. Their next most electable candidate is Romney yet he has faced a revolving door of candidates with low electability as his chief rival: Gingrich, Cain, Perry, Bachmann, Trump and Palin.
Could someone win a Democratic primary as the candidate of the left? I definitely think it is possible. Dean came from nowhere to front-runner by running an ideological campaign. I agree, had the media not taken him down he likely would have been the nominee. In 2008 Edwards 2.0 had some success running as a leftist candidate, although he was limited in his appeal because of credibility issues given Edwards 1.0 was among the most conservative of the 04′ candidates. Obama played an interesting game: he posed as a progressive while promulgating the same policies as Clinton. It worked: after Edwards exited he dominated the progressive vote yet he was able to run as a centrist in the general election based on his Clinton-like platform.
What about at the state level, though? We had an open senate seat and a great pickup opportunity for the House seat due to Castle’s move last year. If a candidate of the left ran against Coons and Carney how much success do you think that individual would have had? Let’s assume a credible candidate with decent funding. I find it interesting that our party had no primary challenges for these races while there were bruising primaries–with upset winners–on the Republican side for the same races.
Coons could have credibly shifted to the left to head off a challenge from the kind of person you are talking about. Plus even the most ardent progressive would not want to risk the Senate seat. Carney would have had a tougher time with a primary.
Carney vs. a credible candidate with decent funding from the left? Carney can depend on the unions which appear to be reactionary when it comes to supporting insider Dems. It would be tough. But if someone caught Carney sleeping, it could happen.
“Obama played an interesting game: he posed as a progressive while promulgating the same policies as Clinton.”
I have to strongly disagree on “same policies.” Obama is very much to the right of Clinton.
Clinton fought for and won a tax increase on the rich in his first year, which immediately reduced the deficit, boosting the economy and making the rest of his term easier. Obama did none of this.
After 1994, Clinton consistently fought against the Republican agenda, vetoed much of it, and certainly didn’t open negotiations with Obama’s MO of the pre-compromise. I personally agreed with the welfare reforms, given the context of broad job creation at the time. But I disagreed with the capital gains tax cut. And Clinton actually WON his budget battles.
Obama flew to Afghanistan while his signature middle class tax cuts were failing on the Senate floor, then he chose not to execute the backup plan of letting them all expire. Obama is the first Democratic president to put safety net cuts on the agenda.
He is talking about the other Clinton.
Credible Republican candidates might do more to move Democrats to the left than primaries from the left.
Remember Coons positioned himself to the left to run against Castle (expiration of Bush cuts), but but pivoted to the right (temporary extension) against the non-credible opponent in an October surprise, once polling assured him of a win. And unlike Carney, Coons actually had a vote on it, so it was a very relevant move.
D’oh! Another excellent analysis wasted.
In that case I agree. Obama actually criticized Hillary in a debate because her health plan had an individual mandate without a public option, if I recall correctly.