Political junkies like me almost always believe in one immutable law of campaigns: Candidates move to the right (for Republicans) or the left (for Democrats) to win the party faithful in the primaries, but move back to the center in the general election to win moderate and independent voters. Tod Kelly explains why Romney hasn’t followed that pattern in this campaign:
Of all the presidential elections I have ever witnessed, this is by far the strangest – and Romney’s campaign is the most obviously troubled. Think of all of the moves he has made over the past couple of months, long after having shored up the Republican nomination: He picked Paul Ryan, the darling wunderkind of the far right of his base, and he felt forced to do it way too early. He’s advocated preemptive war against Iran. He traveled to Europe and insulted them, then travelled to Israel and insulted the Palestinians. He’s gone above and beyond to paint himself (fallaciously, in my opinion) as the most socially conservative guy in the room. And now he seems poised to double down on his 47% gaffe, regardless of how it plays out to that part of America that doesn’t get its news from FOX, Limbaugh or Beck.
In other words, he is working his ass off to make sure that the base of his own party is willing to vote for him in November – even though he’s running against an incumbent his party views as the anti-Christ, in a bad economy with high unemployment.
Has this ever happened before in the modern-media age? Has a major-party Presidential candidate ever had to focus so much energy on getting his own party to be willing to vote for him? Last November, I would have bet you many rounds of top-shelf scotch that by now the GOP’s candidate would have been tacking to the center so hard and fast he or she would be breaking all kinds of land-speed records. But ironically, the only electable candidate of that entire bunch may turn out to be the least electable of all, because his party’s base doesn’t trust him enough to let him tack anywhere but further right. (And trust me on this – after attending last weekend’s Values Voter Summit I can assure you that the base does not like Mitt Romney, and they do not trust him – at all.)
But this is symptomatic of the situation the Republican party is increasingly finding itself in after 2010, when they made the decision to try to harness the energy of the Tea Party movement. It worked in that election, leading to a huge swing toward the Republicans at every level of government. But the celebration was far too early, for reasons I pointed out at the time and have continued to advocate for the last two years. By doing that, they also backed themselves into a corner.
They put a lot of Tea Party types in Congress, especially in the House, and then found that they couldn’t control them very well. It pushed the party strongly to the right, not just in rhetoric but in actual governing too. And when they actually started passing laws, especially at the state level, they got the inevitable reaction. That’s why Republican governors that were swept into office by riding the Tea Party Wave, like John Kasich and Rick Scott, are now very, very unpopular in their home states.
The problem they have is that they cannot appeal to the hard-right base of the party and to independent voters at the same time. They simply can’t. And as the Latino demographic grows and public opinion shifts even further toward equality on LGBT issues, it’s only going to get worse. The Republican party is facing some monumental choices that they can’t avoid, and either road they take will make it harder to form a winning coalition. They’ll eventually find a way to make it work, but there’s going to be some serious infighting along the way. And I’m stocked up on popcorn.
22 comments
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hexidecima
September 24, 2012 at 12:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
IMO, part of Romney’s problem is that his “base” think he’s the anti-christ too.
pass the popcorn.
Michael Heath
September 24, 2012 at 12:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mitt Romney’s now advocating we should means-test to set benefits for both Social Security and Medicare; that’s an effective center-left proposal. He revealed this position in his Sixty Minutes interview last evening. His motivation remains extreme right-wing – his obstinance in increasing the withholding tax for both programs; so even in this case his position favors the top income bracket at the expense of optimal policy.
During the primary debates no one was more strident in their promise to kill Obamacare the day they took office. Since then he’s been arguing he’d work to keep the most popular elements of Obamacare; I think prudent voters should act as if the former is true rather than the latter.
gshelley
September 24, 2012 at 12:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is a common theme, that Romney has moved right to appease the base. It is I think, less likely than at least two alternatives
1) Romney himself doesn’t stand for anything, so it isn’t that he isn’t saying what he actually believes.
2) Romney has always been like this but pretended not to be when his base was far more liberal – this seems likely to me, at least based on how quickly he moved once he was governor.
Trebuchet
September 24, 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What’s really bad for the GOP, but good for the rest of us, is that if Romney loses the far right wing of the party will be strengthened, because the loss will be blamed on his being to liberal. If they’d nominated Perry or Bachmann, the resulting debacle would have resulted in the far right wing losing credibility, as happened in 1964.
cry4turtles
September 24, 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It looked as if Romney was in pain last night on 60 minutes. I almost felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to sacrifice my vote.
Michael Heath
September 24, 2012 at 12:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Ed’s general theme about Romney’s apparent refusal to swing to the center.
A couple of interesting dynamics might make it more difficult for the conservative base to get their presidential candidates to swing even further to the right in 2016 if Romney loses this year. A shift the GOP base ardently desires.
First is the strawman conservatives have created of President Obama’s actual performance, which denies the existence of the years 2001-2008 and denies Republican obstructionism during the Obama era. They’re claiming it’s obvious to everyone Mr. Obama is a horrible president if not the worst. Scott Pelley challenged this notion in his interview with Mitt Romney last evening by noting GOP obstructionism in the Senate is hampering the president implementing policy that would for example improve the labor market. Mr. Romney then lied in that Sixty Minutes interview by falsely asserting that president enjoyed a filibuster-proof Senate during the entire tenure of the 111th Congress. In fact the Democrats only enjoyed such a quorum for several weeks when that Congress was in session given the ill-health of Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd*. Plus Romney lied by referencing the previous 111th when in the president’s jobs bills were presented to this Congress, where the Republicans can and are successfully filibustering.
Second, the Republicans who supposedly are competent, e.g., Jeb Bush, Rob Portman, and Mitch Daniels, still refused to run this year. That revealing that their most competent politicians do not accept that this president is so horrible and therefore vulnerable. So in 2016 we’ll continue to see conservatives run for the presidency who don’t act like the nuts that make up the base, so 2016 could be deja vu all over again when it comes to who wins the GOP presidential ticke; just like 2008 and 2012.
*Along with the fact four conservative Democratic Senators frequently filibustered their own caucus which led to the Dems inability to get to 60 cloture votes, those being Arkansas Senators Lincoln and Pryor along with Senators Ben Nelson and Lieberman.
busterggi
September 24, 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Leading Democrats is like herding cats.
Leading Teapublicans is like herding rabid weasels.
Raging Bee
September 24, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But this is symptomatic of the situation the Republican party is increasingly finding itself in since 2009, when they made the decision to create and finance the Tea Party movement.
FIFY.
Reginald Selkirk
September 24, 2012 at 1:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, but he tried. Around Sept 9, Romney said he would not reduce taxes on the rich, and that there are parts of “ObamaCare” he likes. The Etch-a-Sketch was in play! It didn’t take long before the media got distracted by more stoopid things Mitt said though.
.
Romney: I Won’t Cut Taxes for the Rich, Will Keep Some Measures of Obamacare
eric
September 24, 2012 at 1:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heath @6:
I’m not so sure about the horrible part. I’d agree that they didn’t see him as particularly vulnerable. But given that in the US the incumbent politicians win about 90% of the time, that’s not much of a stretch even with a bad economy.
That is a really interesting observation. I hadn’t thought about it so thanks for making it. I think you’re partially right and partially wrong. You’re right that if the 2016 primary ends up anointing a moderate conservative, the GOP will have the same problem cajoling tea party voters to the booths that they have now. But I don’t think it will be anywhere near as bad a problem. I think a lot of the animosity towards Romney is because he’s a Mormon and because he has a record of moderate/liberal policies while Governer – RomneyCare and supporting abortion rights being two big ones. Someone like Jeb Bush won’t have those issues. So even if he’s just as moderate in reality (and I don’t know if he is, I’m just using him as an example), he will be accepted by the tea partiers a lot more easily.
MyPetSlug
September 24, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It seems like Romney is following the Rovian strategy of “do everything you can to appeal to your base”. The plan is to try to highly motivate your base to show up at the polls and win 50% +1. Maybe he feels that if he does this, plus gets whatever percentage of the electorate is unhappy with Obama and will vote for him basically for free, he’ll have no trouble winning. After all, the motivate your base plan worked for Bush twice.
A couple things though. First, this seems like a strangely narrow strategy choice in a campaign environment with so many advantages for Romney. As Ed pointed out, his base already despises Obama and the economy is terrible. Second, I think Republicans in general vastly over estimate how disliked Obama is to the rest of the country. His personal favorability ratings remain high and most people don’t blame him for the economy, they still blame Bush, so there won’t be a huge anti-Obama protest vote. And three, as Nate Silver at fivethrityeight blog has pointed out, due to demographic shifts, the Republican base might be just slightly too narrow to win a majority now. You can’t just give away the Hispanic, black, and women’s vote and except to make up for it by winning 90% of white males. It’s just not going to happen. Bush at least got some support from Hispanics and had the “security moms”. Romney has painted himself into a corner. I don’t know how he gets out unless Obama flubs the debates or something.
pipenta
September 24, 2012 at 2:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bachmann? C’mon, no way, she’s like Palin, a warm up show. She’s like Gallagher or whatever his name was, going on before the metal band, smashing watermelons to amuse a callous and not particularly sophisticated crowd. FUCK YEAH! SMASHED MELON GUTS! She’s a freak. She’s whole circus full of clowns in one goddamn tiny car.
This is just a spin out election for them. It’s a practice run to see how many seats they can flat out buy. And, you know, if CitizensUnited stands, this is practice in which they rack up the data on how much love money can buy under the new rules of our not-so-brave new world. They kind of have to let the nutters do their thing and that energy to wind down. Sometimes you just have to sit out a round or forfeit one due to conditions.
Next time they are going with Jeb. I don’t know as much about Jeb as I should, but considering the POWER of that dynasty, that’s going to be a serious GOP assault.
D. C. Sessions
September 24, 2012 at 3:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, it wasn’t on Fox for starts.
Romney is by all accounts a very insecure person who not only cheats at solitaire but has to stack the deck to boot. When he’s not in a position to make the moves for both sides he gets really, really stressed.
thalwen
September 24, 2012 at 3:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have a feeling that Mitt recruited a strong Teabagger staff to help him in the primaries. That would explain the Ryan pick and the non-move to the middle. Since the teabaggers shun the idea of compromise and seriously overestimate public support for their agenda, if that is the case, they’d see no reason for Romney to move to the center.
neonsequitur
September 24, 2012 at 5:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“They’ll eventually find a way to make it work…”
Only after one side or the other (either the Tea Party or the GOP mainstream) figures out how to compromise.
Michael Heath
September 24, 2012 at 5:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wrote (in garbled fashion):
eric responds:
Nate Silver calculates the incumbency advantage to be 72%, not 90%. I’ve never heard 90% asserted by any expert. In addition the number one factor which drives this probability advantage down and provides the challenger with a superior opporytunity relative to the norm is a high unemployment rate. So my point stands in light of:
a) the Republican party arguing that President Obama is a horrible president,
b) the odds are better than the norm for a generic GOP candidate given the currently high unemployment rate, while
c) their supposedly most competent candidates are not taking advantage in spite of the existence of factor B and their’s party claim A is also true to the point of being obvious.
If President Obama wins something has to give with the above equation. I would argue that once again the Republican party is misrepresenting the president and their supposed competents know their party is misrepresenting his performance. Which is why those individuals are not taking advantage of this supposed opportunity but instead waiting until 2016 to take on the new batch of wingnuts, one of whom I predict will be Marco Rubio.
Michael Heath
September 24, 2012 at 5:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
D.C. Sessions responds:
Actually Mitt Romney’s come out looking worse in that venue as well. The first time was earlier this year when he had no coherent response to his flip-flopping. He appeared confused anyone would accuse him of such; talk about an epistemic bubble. However Roger Ailes and Matt Drudge have effectively worked to promote Mr. Romney over the other GOP presidential candidates and of course President Obama, in spite of a Fox interviewer or two ‘going rogue’.
leonardschneider
September 24, 2012 at 5:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, there was this guy back in 1972 named George McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota who had the same sort of problems.
Actually, McGovern’s problems were worse: rather than the boredom and complacency shown by the GOP towards Romney, he was actively disdained by the Dem power-brokers, especially in Chicago and New England. When your own party refuses any support, you’re pretty much screwed; Romney can at least count on an open door and a weak smile wherever he goes.
wysage
September 24, 2012 at 5:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have to second what MyPetSlug said about motivating his base (with lies to increase their fear), because without motivation they may not vote. The other part of the strategy is voter suppression. Also, they may use voter intimidation to further decrease votes for Obama. However, without their base motivated, voter suppression and intimidation may not be enough.
Area Man
September 24, 2012 at 6:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll agree that Romney’s problems are:
1. He’s been running the most rightward campaign he can, picking orthodox contemporary conservative positions on everything.
2. These positions are not popular, so they have to be left vague, include fuzzy math, or be written in code.
And naturally, if he loses, the right will blame him for being insufficiently conservative, even though the obvious problem is that their agenda doesn’t sell very well except among true believers. And this problem will persist until they either change their ways and evolve back into a boring center-right party, or a majority of voters decide, or can be tricked, into wanting what’s worst for them.
Modusoperandi
September 24, 2012 at 10:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Michael Heath “Mitt Romney’s now advocating we should means-test to set benefits for both Social Security and Medicare; that’s an effective center-left proposal…His motivation remains extreme right-wing – his obstinance in increasing the withholding tax for both programs; so even in this case his position favors the top income bracket at the expense of optimal policy.”
It’s worse than that. If they’re means tested they’re no longer retirement programs; they’re welfare, and that makes them that much easier to demonize. The only other advantage they have currently, is that the beneficiaries are mostly white, and that too will slowly change.
“I think prudent voters should act as if the former is true rather than the latter.”
It depends. If “a deficit hawk is a Republican under a Democratic party president” holds true, they can kill Obamacare and bring back the popular bits (those being everything except the bits that pay for it). And they’ll get enough Dems on board to pass it.
Area Man “And naturally, if he loses, the right will blame him for being insufficiently conservative, even though the obvious problem is that their agenda doesn’t sell very well except among true believers.”
It doesn’t sell very well even among the true believers. To sell it to their own Base they still have to pitch it as “Those people are getting your tax dollars (but we’ll protect it for you)”. I’ve only run across a couple of true believers who see the actual outcome (rather than the one that’s pitched to them) and are still willing to cut off their own noses to spite someone else’s face.
schweinhundt
September 25, 2012 at 12:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I absolutely concur that a number of potentially stronger Republican candidates took a pass on this election cycle.
However,
Absolutely. John McCain in 2008. He squandered his centrist cred by slavishly playing to the base after the primaries.
I think Mitt Romney is trying to mount an at least somewhat centrist campaign. Paul Ryan just said that reinstating Don’t Ask, Don’t tell would be bad (http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/political/paul-ryan-says-reversal-of-dadt-repeal-is-step-in-wrong-direction-sets-out-to-revive-american-dream).
Romney has criticized the President’s policies but doesn’t stoop to mislabeling Obama as a socialist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzhtBDhw85s).
His attempts to aim toward the middle have been sandbagged, though, by fellow Republicans (e.g. the Sandra Fluke distraction) and his own gaffes (47% remark, embassy attack response, etc.).
If Obama wins, the Republican response will be interesting to watch but I have no idea what pieces will fall where.