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Human
Events...
Old Rules Won’t
Determine GOP Presidential Candidate
by Michael Barone
01/27/2011
The weakest part of our political system, by a considerable margin, is
the presidential nominating process. It tends to exclude from
consideration those with the greatest experience in what is uniquely
the president’s responsibility, foreign policy and military strategy.
It tends less strongly to exclude members of Congress, particularly
House members but also senators, whose extensive voting records
inevitably contain material that is politically damaging at some point
in the process. The process has become so lengthy that candidates often
come up with strategies and programs that are rendered obsolete by the
time of the next presidential inauguration.
All that said, we are stuck with it -- or stuck with the version of the
schedule that the national Democratic and Republican parties, acting
for once in concert, and the various state parties and state
legislatures can agree on.
So it may be worthwhile, before trying to assess the chances of likely,
putative and possible Republican candidates in the 2012 cycle, to
dismiss some of the rules of thumb that have arisen over the years.
The first is the notion that Republican nomination always goes to the
candidate next in line in seniority.
Yes, Republican primary voters and caucus-goers are probably more
inclined than Democrats to defer to seniority. But when you look back
at the Republican nominating contests in the post-1968 era, and there
are not many of them, you find that most of the nominations were
close-run things.
Ronald Reagan came within a few convention votes of upsetting incumbent
President Gerald Ford in 1976 and would probably have won if he had
gotten 2,000 more votes in New Hampshire. Reagan’s victory in 1980 was
contingent on a number of close calls, as readers of Craig Shirley’s
“Rendezvous with Destiny” know.
The first George Bush’s victory in 1988 depended on a big win in the
South Carolina primary rescheduled by his campaign manager Lee Atwater,
which would probably not have occurred if Atwater’s premature death had
come a few years earlier. In 1996, 8,000 more votes in New Hampshire
would have made Lamar Alexander rather than Bob Dole the chief
challenger of Pat Buchanan and hence the party’s nominee.
The next-in-line candidates did win in 2000 and 2008. But George W.
Bush only narrowly survived a rout in New Hampshire, and John McCain’s
strategy eight years later -- wait for all the other candidates’
strategies to fail -- is one that usually guarantees defeat rather than
victory.
As for 2012, the next-in-line candidate is said to be Mitt Romney, on
the basis of a successful business career and a single term as governor
of Massachusetts.
The next rule that needs to be debunked is that Republican candidates
must pass a litmus test on cultural issues, especially abortion. This
was true in 1988, 1996 and 2000, when religious conservatives were a
newly energized political force and one stirred to action by Bill
Clinton’s misconduct.
But Sept. 11 changed a lot of things, including this old rule. A
pro-choice stand on abortion didn’t prevent Rudy Giuliani from leading
Republican polls until November 2007, when his appointee as police
commissioner Bernard Kerik was indicted. And going to all 99 counties
swearing he was a right-to-lifer didn’t save Mitt Romney in the
majority-religious conservative Iowa caucuses in January 2008.
The financial crisis and protracted recession have once again changed
the focus of Republican voters. Polls have showed that tea party
activists, who number in the hundreds of thousands, tend to be cultural
conservatives, but they moved into politics to oppose the stimulus
package and Obamacare, not abortion and same-sex marriage.
The third rule that may not be applicable this time is that you have to
start early to win. Tell that to Bill Clinton, who announced his
candidacy in October 1991, just four months before the Iowa caucuses.
Many potential and putative Republican candidates this time seem to be
biding their time. You may be able to ramp up a campaign pretty quickly
in the Facebook era.
The presidential nominating process is a zero-sum game in which all but
one of the competitors must lose. In looking over the possible field of
candidates, it’s not hard to come up with a reason why each of them
cannot possibly win. But it is also a feature of zero-sum games that
one player must win. But it’s too early to say who yet.
Human Events
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