Romney or Bachmann Will Be Our Next President
My first serious look at the 2012 Republican primary field was a bit of a wake-up call. Two of the candidates I thought were longshots for the nomination looked pretty good, and coupling that with the latest rotten economic indicators, some long-term scenarios began forming in my head that conflicted with what I've thus far accepted as conventional wisdom.
First, the candidates that didn't impress....Santorum and Gingrich were never and still aren't serious players and they reinforced that on Monday night. Ron Paul is interesting and one-of-a-kind, but nobody will see him as Presidential. Herman Cain is only interesting in that he has the chutzpah to expect the American people to promote him from CEO of a second-rate regional pizza chain to President of the United States. And least impressive of all was Tim Pawlenty, the embarrassment that was the two-term Governor of my home state, whose lame performance was magnified given the degree of stature the media has given him as a "serious candidate" and Romney's top challenger. In one sense, I've always had the same back-of-my-mind impression that so many others have had about TPaw...that he's a minor-leaguer competing with grown-ups. Unfortunately for him, that perception was reinforced in the debate.....
It's not too late for Pawlenty, but he didn't win himself any support Monday night and my general sense is that it's always gonna be a hard for him to stand out in the crowd. He's always had a knack for clever wordplay along the lines of "Obamneycare" but he'll need more than that to be taken seriously by voters who have thus far resisted the media and party insiders' demands to do just that. I get the sense that Jon Huntsman is gonna prove to be as big of a dud as Pawlenty, if not bigger. Perhaps he'll surprise me, but nothing he's said or done so far has led me to believe he'll stand out in the crowd, and his refusal to compete in first-in-the-nation Iowa will hobble him at a time when he desperately needs headlines.
How about the "maybe later" crowd of candidates? History has showed those who aren't fully invested in the race early on make lousy candidates. Wesley Clark or Fred Thompson anyone? Sarah Palin's not running. Chris Christie's not running (and I suspect he'd be a disaster for the GOP if he did). Rudy Giuliani may run, but would go over like a fart in church just like last time if he did. I'd take immediate bets on Mike Huckabee to be America's 45th President tonight if he was running, but he isn't. That just leaves Rick Perry. On paper, he has a good story to tell, but frankly I don't know enough about him to qualify his political skills in a national election, but taking into account his secession comments and the fact that he only managed to eke out a 39% plurality in a four-way gubernatorial election IN TEXAS a few years back suggests to me he probably won't live up to the hype.
With all these candidates discounted, time to move on to those who I think have the clearest path to the nomination as well as the Presidency. First Willard Romney...up until the past week I bought into the conventional wisdom that his past support of the Massachusetts health care plan that was the boilerplate for Obama's health care plan would assure his defeat by hard-right Republican primary voters, but I had an epiphany on this issue a few days ago. These voters' opposition to health care reform is skin-deep and rooted in one source....Obama supports it. Up until January 20, 2009, the now-scandalous-in-Republican-circles "individual mandate" was a component in the health care reform plan of every Republican who every addressed the issue of health care reform. They don't really oppose the "individual mandate" or the general structure of Romneycare in a serious way....they're just against it because Obama's for it. For that reason, Romney is probably gonna get a pass on this issue if Republican primary voters otherwise reach the consensus he's their best chance to beat Obama. Sure, the other candidates will all try mightily to exploit Willard's health care connection to Obama, but in the end it will ring hollow....because Republican voter opposition to Obamacare is entirely artificial.
My pathway to the Presidency for Willard nonetheless hinges on a scenario where Republican primary voters are inclined to play it safe. Any false hope of a sustained economic recovery withered away a couple of weeks ago, when America had its "oh shit...things aren't gonna get better" epiphany with the release of troubling economic indicators. But one of two things is likely to happen between now and early 2012. The scenario of continued plodding 1% to 1.5% growth with unemployment rates lingering at the 9% range is the scenario where Republicans are likely to opt for Willard as the same choice. But what happens if the economy declines more significantly and the final two quarters of the year measure zero growth or a double-dip recession? That's when Michelle Bachmann comes in....
Bachmann is consistently underestimated by her opponents, including myself. I decreed she was too conservative for Minnesota, even her Republican MN-06 district, when she first ran in 2006. Even in that Democratic year, she topped a strong Democratic challenger by eight points. And keep in mind that her district, while always advertised as crimson red, is roughly the same degree of Republicanism as NY-26 recently won by Democrat Kathy Hochul in a special election. In other words, she can be persuasive even in places where she's well to the right of her constituents, and her charisma was on full display in Monday night's debate.
Bachmann's path to the nomination is still perhaps a longshot, and will be borne only if the nation's situation is worst-case scenario dire, at which point Bachmann's red meat rhetoric will be all the more delicious to Republican primary voters, who will be more willing to risk her candidacy if Obama looks especially vulnerable. If she's nominated, Democrats will foolishly breathe a sigh of relief, thinking she can't win nationally. Under normal circumstances she couldn't, but I venture to say she's no worse of a candidate than John Kasich or Rick Scott, the respective governors of Ohio and Florida, the nation's two foremost swing states, who were nonetheless elected in the wave election of 2010 as a vote of no-confidence against the incumbent party. If candidates as awful and unapologetically hard-right as Kasich and Scott can prevail in the two most electorally important states in the country, so can Bachmann.
Even under both of the described scenarios, I'd only give Romney or Bachmann 60-70% odds of victory, however. The wild card here is the Republicans' foolish trigger finger on gutting Medicare, which was pulled in 2011 instead of 2013 and thus leaving the Republican Party's true agenda exposed to a voting public that overwhelmingly opposes it. The Republican Party's key to electoral success has been making the casualties of their budget cuts an "other guy" problem....the guy across the tracks who "doesn't work as hard as I do" and who deserves a lower standard of living. Now they've shown that their 2011 equivalent of the welfare queen is grandma, and suddenly it's hitting home to Americans that when Republicans talk about freeloading parasites they're now talking about the overwhelming majority of their own voters. Couple this with the even worse messaging that ending Medicare will help finance yet another reduction in the top tax rate applicable to millionaires and Republicans have an easily exploitable messaging problem ("tax cuts for me and Medicare cuts for thee") that has the potential to derail their chances in 2012 no matter how badly voters hunger for Obama's scalp. If the Republican nominee is able to effectively distance themself from the Paul Ryan plan or muddle the issue in some way, it could reduce its impact, but right now it's the only thing standing between Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann and the Presidency.
First, the candidates that didn't impress....Santorum and Gingrich were never and still aren't serious players and they reinforced that on Monday night. Ron Paul is interesting and one-of-a-kind, but nobody will see him as Presidential. Herman Cain is only interesting in that he has the chutzpah to expect the American people to promote him from CEO of a second-rate regional pizza chain to President of the United States. And least impressive of all was Tim Pawlenty, the embarrassment that was the two-term Governor of my home state, whose lame performance was magnified given the degree of stature the media has given him as a "serious candidate" and Romney's top challenger. In one sense, I've always had the same back-of-my-mind impression that so many others have had about TPaw...that he's a minor-leaguer competing with grown-ups. Unfortunately for him, that perception was reinforced in the debate.....
It's not too late for Pawlenty, but he didn't win himself any support Monday night and my general sense is that it's always gonna be a hard for him to stand out in the crowd. He's always had a knack for clever wordplay along the lines of "Obamneycare" but he'll need more than that to be taken seriously by voters who have thus far resisted the media and party insiders' demands to do just that. I get the sense that Jon Huntsman is gonna prove to be as big of a dud as Pawlenty, if not bigger. Perhaps he'll surprise me, but nothing he's said or done so far has led me to believe he'll stand out in the crowd, and his refusal to compete in first-in-the-nation Iowa will hobble him at a time when he desperately needs headlines.
How about the "maybe later" crowd of candidates? History has showed those who aren't fully invested in the race early on make lousy candidates. Wesley Clark or Fred Thompson anyone? Sarah Palin's not running. Chris Christie's not running (and I suspect he'd be a disaster for the GOP if he did). Rudy Giuliani may run, but would go over like a fart in church just like last time if he did. I'd take immediate bets on Mike Huckabee to be America's 45th President tonight if he was running, but he isn't. That just leaves Rick Perry. On paper, he has a good story to tell, but frankly I don't know enough about him to qualify his political skills in a national election, but taking into account his secession comments and the fact that he only managed to eke out a 39% plurality in a four-way gubernatorial election IN TEXAS a few years back suggests to me he probably won't live up to the hype.
With all these candidates discounted, time to move on to those who I think have the clearest path to the nomination as well as the Presidency. First Willard Romney...up until the past week I bought into the conventional wisdom that his past support of the Massachusetts health care plan that was the boilerplate for Obama's health care plan would assure his defeat by hard-right Republican primary voters, but I had an epiphany on this issue a few days ago. These voters' opposition to health care reform is skin-deep and rooted in one source....Obama supports it. Up until January 20, 2009, the now-scandalous-in-Republican-circles "individual mandate" was a component in the health care reform plan of every Republican who every addressed the issue of health care reform. They don't really oppose the "individual mandate" or the general structure of Romneycare in a serious way....they're just against it because Obama's for it. For that reason, Romney is probably gonna get a pass on this issue if Republican primary voters otherwise reach the consensus he's their best chance to beat Obama. Sure, the other candidates will all try mightily to exploit Willard's health care connection to Obama, but in the end it will ring hollow....because Republican voter opposition to Obamacare is entirely artificial.
My pathway to the Presidency for Willard nonetheless hinges on a scenario where Republican primary voters are inclined to play it safe. Any false hope of a sustained economic recovery withered away a couple of weeks ago, when America had its "oh shit...things aren't gonna get better" epiphany with the release of troubling economic indicators. But one of two things is likely to happen between now and early 2012. The scenario of continued plodding 1% to 1.5% growth with unemployment rates lingering at the 9% range is the scenario where Republicans are likely to opt for Willard as the same choice. But what happens if the economy declines more significantly and the final two quarters of the year measure zero growth or a double-dip recession? That's when Michelle Bachmann comes in....
Bachmann is consistently underestimated by her opponents, including myself. I decreed she was too conservative for Minnesota, even her Republican MN-06 district, when she first ran in 2006. Even in that Democratic year, she topped a strong Democratic challenger by eight points. And keep in mind that her district, while always advertised as crimson red, is roughly the same degree of Republicanism as NY-26 recently won by Democrat Kathy Hochul in a special election. In other words, she can be persuasive even in places where she's well to the right of her constituents, and her charisma was on full display in Monday night's debate.
Bachmann's path to the nomination is still perhaps a longshot, and will be borne only if the nation's situation is worst-case scenario dire, at which point Bachmann's red meat rhetoric will be all the more delicious to Republican primary voters, who will be more willing to risk her candidacy if Obama looks especially vulnerable. If she's nominated, Democrats will foolishly breathe a sigh of relief, thinking she can't win nationally. Under normal circumstances she couldn't, but I venture to say she's no worse of a candidate than John Kasich or Rick Scott, the respective governors of Ohio and Florida, the nation's two foremost swing states, who were nonetheless elected in the wave election of 2010 as a vote of no-confidence against the incumbent party. If candidates as awful and unapologetically hard-right as Kasich and Scott can prevail in the two most electorally important states in the country, so can Bachmann.
Even under both of the described scenarios, I'd only give Romney or Bachmann 60-70% odds of victory, however. The wild card here is the Republicans' foolish trigger finger on gutting Medicare, which was pulled in 2011 instead of 2013 and thus leaving the Republican Party's true agenda exposed to a voting public that overwhelmingly opposes it. The Republican Party's key to electoral success has been making the casualties of their budget cuts an "other guy" problem....the guy across the tracks who "doesn't work as hard as I do" and who deserves a lower standard of living. Now they've shown that their 2011 equivalent of the welfare queen is grandma, and suddenly it's hitting home to Americans that when Republicans talk about freeloading parasites they're now talking about the overwhelming majority of their own voters. Couple this with the even worse messaging that ending Medicare will help finance yet another reduction in the top tax rate applicable to millionaires and Republicans have an easily exploitable messaging problem ("tax cuts for me and Medicare cuts for thee") that has the potential to derail their chances in 2012 no matter how badly voters hunger for Obama's scalp. If the Republican nominee is able to effectively distance themself from the Paul Ryan plan or muddle the issue in some way, it could reduce its impact, but right now it's the only thing standing between Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann and the Presidency.
posted by Mark at 3:20 PM
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