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Why The Republicans Are Likely To Pluck Defeat From the Jaws of Victory In 2012
Nov 3rd, 2011 | 23 responses
Shortly after midnight exactly one year from this Sunday the first voters will go to the polls in two tiny New Hampshire towns to vote in a presidential election that will be singularly significant in defining the course of American politics in the years to come. Before the sun sets in Hawaii on November 6, 2012, 130 million or so people will have voted on whether to give Barack Obama a second term or return to the White House — and possibly the Senate, as well — to the Republican Party.
A year ago, Obama’s chances of re-election seemed iffy. In returning control of the House to the GOP in the mid-term elections, voters rode a wave of Tea Party rancor and sent a message to Washington: They were frustrated and angry over how big government was messing with their lives, and with voters in general becoming more conservative, Republicans smacked their lips over a potentially big pick-up for their party and its alarmingly shrinking base.
It was a seminal moment for a party that not surprisingly had received a drubbing in 2008 following the eight dark years of the Bush-Cheney interregnum. The only surprise was that the next occupant of the Oval Office would be a young African-American upstart from Illinois who not unlike the Tea Party seized both the moment and the imagination of many voters.
With the economy still in the crapper and unemployment hovering around 14 million because of the lingering effects of the Great Recession, Obama’s chances of being re-elected would seem even dimmer than a year ago, yet the Republican Party has made four tactical decisions that virtually guarantee Obama will be a two-term president.
* It saw its 2010 victories as a mandate, but it was no such thing. Voters were angry with Washington — that is, Republicans as well as Democrats. It’s just that an inordinate number of Democratic congressfolk got caught in the cross hairs.
* Building on this non existent mandate, it decided not to boldly legislate and govern and instead set out on a course of obstructionism of historic proportions with the sole goal of defeating Obama at any cost. Yes, even if it meant driving the economy further into the ground.
* A subset of this obstructionism has been a fawning obeisance to Wall Street and the wealthy and an undisguised contempt for the middle class, the poor, the elderly and the infirm at a time when the Occupy Wall Street protests are drowning out Tea Party caterwauling.
* It willingly allowed itself to be wooed and then taken to bed by a conservative wingnuttery that has drowned out more moderate voices. Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and now Herman Cain have dominated what has passed for discourse, and the war of words over allegations that Cain made unwanted advances toward women in the 1990s (which appear likely to be true) has now spread to the Perry and Romney campaigns, both of which have been accused of leaking the story to Politico.
Long story short, having been wooed and bedded, the Republicans seem to be well on their way to being screwed, squandering an historic opportunity by performing some sort of demented Kabuki theater instead of showing that they’re capable of taking back the keys to the national car.
A taste of what they will face next year was on display recently at town hall meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin when Representative Paul Ryan was roundly booed after one of his constituents explained that he could not survive if Ryan’s deficit reduction policy proposals were enacted.
David Drath, a 53-year-old kidney transplant patient who relies on support from Medicare and Social Security, faced down Ryan and said, “I could not survive on the proposals in your policy. If they’re put in place, you might as well put a gun to my head.”
Ryan countered that a pre-existing condition like Drath’s would be covered under his plan, but he did not acknowledge an important qualifier: Drath would pay considerably more. This is because Ryan’s plan represents a huge transfer of funds from the have nots to the haves in the form of substantially lower taxes for the 1 percenters who are the targets of Occupy Wall Street protester wrath.
Yet Republicans as a group are willfully blind to what is happening on that other street — Main Street.
Ryan is a GOP darling, a Person To Be Taken Very Seriously who is occasionally mentioned as a go-to guy if the 2012 national convention deadlocks over a nominee. This despite the fact that his deficit reduction plan — a blueprint for rewarding the rich and screwing David Drath and everyone else while removing all controls on Wall Street and other financial markets — died in its crib earlier this year when voter focus groups told GOP consultants that it was a recipe for electoral disaster.
Party leaders nodded solemnly and then went back to business as usual.
At this juncture, the Republicans’ best chance of beating Obama is Willard Mitt Romney, but even this one-time moderate has succumbed to the siren call of the party’s hard right-wing base.
While not particularly likable, Romney has loads of executive and government experience, raises tons of money, has a strong religious background, good looks, hasn’t claimed that he invented the Internet, and is scandal free if you don’t mind that he put his family’s Irish Setter in a car carrier on the roof of a station wagon before setting out on a family vacation.
The problem for the former governor of Massachusetts, among the most liberal of states, is that many conservatives have long memories. They simply do not trust Romney, whose Bay State health-care reform plan was a model for ObamaCare. They believe that having tacked to the right, he would tack back to the center if he was the nominee. Which of course is what anyone who wants to beat Obama would have to do.
Romney’s Mormon faith (a bogus issue if there ever was one) and notorious flip-flopping aside, he simply may not be conservative enough even though the rest of the wannabe field — Jon Huntsman being the conspicuous exception — range from loons to mediocrities. In fact, he is a pariah to some Republicans and even Homer Simpson knows Romney cannot get the nomination without conservative support.
There are only two comparables in the last five decades, and both are a stretch. Neither George McGovern in 1972 and Barry Goldwater in 1964 were considered pariahs by much of their base, McGovern merely was somewhat to the left and Goldwater somewhat to the right of their bases.
Other candidates who had shots at unseating an incumbent president in this time frame were John Edwards and John Kerry in 2004, Bob Dole in 1996, Gary Hart and Walter Mondale in 1984, and Hubert Humphrey in 1972, and all were personifications of the mainstreams of their parties in those years.
The Republican Party, having chosen the Rent-a-Center route (gotta have that big-screen TV for the Super Bowl party) rather than careful consensus and coalition building that would enhance the chances of if not guarantee future electoral success, now figuratively finds itself like an elephant trying to balance itself on a beach ball with one foot.
Of all the ironies packed into this parlous if predictable state of affairs, none is larger than the fact that Ronald Reagan, hailed by virtually all Republicans today as the Great Conservative Father, wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the 2012 nomination.
Reagan believed in science, supported environmental initiatives and was reasonably good at budget math. He understood that debt ceilings sometimes have to be raised and did so. He nominated a moderate, Sandra Day O’Connor, to the Supreme Court, who went on to provide the key vote in finding a strict Pennsylvania anti-abortion law to be unconstitutional. He gave the Religious Right some of what it wanted but by no means all it wanted. And he raised taxes 11 times while in office, including the largest tax corporate tax hike in American history when he determined that trickle-down economics (a discredited concept recently rebadged as “income mobility” by a leading Republican fiscal light), would be disastrous for the economy.
The Gipper was nothing if not a pragmatist, something sorely lacking in today’s Republican Party. Its collective tone deafness prevents it from understanding that a new populist tide epitomized by anger against Wall Street, as opposed to anger against Washington, is rising as the old tide runs out. And that is likely to spell defeat on November 6, 2012.
23 Responses to “Why The Republicans Are Likely To Pluck Defeat From the Jaws of Victory In 2012”
Well, I have to disagree with your analysis. First of all, as of right now, the presidential race is a coin-toss, but the Republicans are *very* likely to gain a Senate majority and keep the House. And I thought the Bush Jr years were fantastic, I gave money to the Bush campaign in 2004 to ensure another four years of that administration.
One of your other TMV authors yesterday put me in the camp of “ignorant, crazy cretins.” I’ve heard worse, but just because I never finished high school and have a mail-order college degree doesn’t make me dumb.
Now, I do believe some things that aren’t too popular in some circles, but I know them to be right. I’m all for letting local school districts in Alabama choose to teach creationism instead of Darwinian evolution, but I don’t see how that makes me scientifically illiterate. And I think Roe v Wade was decided incorrectly, but that don’t mean I’m against womens’ rights. I also think feminism is an abomination to be eradicated root and branch, but again, that doesn’t mean I’m against womens’ rights. Oh, and that PA case written by O’Conner? It’s just awful, at least as a work of juris-prudence.
And how can you say Mitt Romney isn’t likable? I thik he’s a fine, decent person, and he’s about No. 5 on my list of my favorite politicians. Of course, Dick Cheney is No. 1 on my list, probably forever and always.
At the very least he (Reagan) would be treated with suspicion and reservation – just as Romney is now. What used to be considered conservative by those folks is now considered liberal.
Oh, Nate Silver agrees with me, it’s a coin toss for the White House:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/nate-silver-handicaps-2012-election.html?pagewanted=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
mn:
You are entitled to your opinion, but I find your view that the Bush-Cheney interregnum was “fantastic” to be not only very much in the minority when it comes to many Republicans and virtually all historians, but to be astonishingly myopic.
Nate Silver is basing his analysis on the here and now. I base mine on the longer view between now and next November.
Oh, I wanted W to win re-election for my own idiosynchratic reasons. I thought that it was hilarious enough that a nation of fools would elect a moron for their president, and even more hilarious that they’d re-elect him after a series of pathetic fuck-ups left and right. So for me it was eight years of cheap amusement. Plus, it was obvious to me back in 2004 that John Edwards was a slimey weazel, and I judged Kerry to be a weazel as well. And no, Silver is basing his analysis on various scenarios that are likely to work themselves out over the next year. Did you read the article???
Cough, cough:
http://themoderatevoice.com/127377/washington-post-abc-news-poll-both-parties-sag-but-republican-brand-suffering-more/
mn:
Silver is the best when it coming to reading polls and tea leaves, but the bottom line of his analysis is that:
“Obama has gone from a modest favorite to win re-election to, probably, a slight underdog.”
Got that? Despite everything that has gone wrong that the incumbent cannot and can control, Silver says that he is only a slight underdog and he hasn’t even begun campaigning. If you want to know why that is so, reread my post.
Silver slips a bit in several spots, including when he parses Obama’s so-called Jewish problem.
He correctly notes that the Wiener defeat was not a bell weather and correctly notes that Obama’s favorables among Jews overall are depressed because his approval ratings are. But if you think that Jews in sizable numbers are going to vote for a Rick Perry, who has made it abundantly clear that there is only one God and it happens to be his, then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
Incidentally, the headline on his article is extremely misleading in asking “Is Obama Toast?”
Well, I think you beed to study a) statistics and b) history. Your opinions would be much better informed if you did. And there are plenty of crazy fundy Jews who would vote for a right wing Christian opposed to any (good faith) negotiations with the Palestinians than a reasonable pragmatist who thinks Israel should in fact do so. And when I saw crazy and fundy, I include a lot of Jews who claim to be good ole fashioned Democrats and not at all crazy and fundy.
It’s still way too early to be making predictions with any confidence — a year is an eternity in a campaign. Otherwise 2008 would have been Hillary vs Giuliani contest.
Also, no president could have been first elected based on their record (re-election is a completely different story). Reagan got first elected on his speeches, which were very much libertarian to conservative. No one really knows what a candidate will do once they take office.
Shaun, even the liberal talking heads are pounding on Obama for selling out to Wall Street and renigging on other promises.
Where are the transaction fees that O stated he was going to impose on WS transactions to not only generate billons in revenue, but but the brakes on foolish day trading by hedgefunders and speculators?
Where is Elizabeth Warren? Why did O push her out into the street? I think it is because he gets his marching orders from Big Money, just like his Repub opposition does.
Once the Repub’s get rid of all the loons running for prez, there will be a stout person opposing O. Then the old clips will start to be broadcast with all the promises O made that have never materialized. Couple this with another recession looming and unemployment still around 10%, and watch what the polls show then.
John Johnson:
http://themoderatevoice.com/119630/high-expectations-promises-unfulfilled-why-we-are-disappointed-with-president-obama/
Changing the topic slightly, does anyone else think the GOP isn’t bringing their “A” game because there is an incumbent? Are good candidates and good campaign managers simply sitting this one out?
Their is a campaign slate of fools the like of which I’ve never seen in my lifetime. Every other primary season I can recall had decent candidates in both parties, at least in terms of actual experience & some semblance of sanity. This slate of GOP candidates is, well, not good.
If this is NOT the case, then the only other answer is the GOP has jumped the shark.
Barky:
You make a very good point which to which I will add a caveat. While candidates better than the current bunch have decided to sit out 2012 knowing how tough it is to take on an incumbent, by and large those candidates are moderates who probably would have been unable to pass the dread right-wing purity test.
I acknowledge, as commenters have suggested here and in previous posts, that with a year to go I am really reaching, but in my mind’s eye I predict a post-2012 election bloodbath for the heart and soul of the Republican Party which, I hope and pray, will help grease the skids for a Republican candidate in 2016 whom even I might be able to vote for.
So another question comes to mind: is the GOP hopelessly stick in the mud of conservatism, spinning their wheels and digging a deeper rut? Will they ever be able to “go moderate”, even in your 2016 scenario?
As a self-described moderate, I find the GOP hell-and-gone from moderation and not likely to return.
MN said “Of course, Dick Cheney is No. 1 on my list, probably forever and always.”
Would you also jump at the chance to go hunting with him if they gave him a loaded gun?
Shaun said: “he hasn’t even begun campaigning.”
Who said that? You or Silver? Who ever did, deserves a Bronx cheer from anyone with a grade-school education.
I am not sure why the Tea Party leaders (though they do not want to admit there is one) are delusional to event fathom that their view is representative of the majority of Americans. The America of our founding Fathers changed signficantly, and I dare say for the better. Trying harken back to the good old days does not work. The GOP needs to wake up and put in place a visionary whose forward-looking is in synchronization with the realities of today’s World and Globalization. As a Christian, I think it is dangerous for these religous zealots to think that the Bible is not compatible with science, and that creation and evolution are mutally exclusive. Abraham Lincoln forced Americans to face the realities of slavery as a form of commerce was economically flawed, in addition to being morally wrong. I am sick and tired of right wingers who take the name of Christ in vain. Had He been alive today, He would certainly be like me, an Independent who would curb spending, impose a fairer distribution of the tax burden for all Americans (to include the 1%), and get us all involved in solving our common problems by reminding us that we are homo sapiens sapiens (wise, wise) and not instinctive animals. So to the Tea Party loyalist, I say, for Christ’s sake, please grow up. To the far left wingers, I say becareful that your lack of moral standards take you down the path of Sodom and Gomorah.
Polling the ‘sabotage’ question
Now the real question is do 25 percent of Repugs hate Obambi enough to vote for them after they have done all that they could to crash the economy?
“To the far left wingers, I say becareful that your lack of moral standards take you down the path of Sodom and Gomorah.”
I guess a person who says:
“Had [Christ] been alive today, He would certainly be like me…” has every right to be so righteous
My thoughts exactly Dorian, a “holier than thou” talking about a lack of moral standards… Too funny and oh so sad.
Jesus would not be like him. Jesus stayed out of national politics and said, “Pay your taxes”.
Getting back to the original subject: The quantity of ‘us vs. them’ attacks going on is a major hindrance to the political discourse in the country. As a journalist said a few days ago [paraphrased], back in the 90′s politicians would disagree with each other but come together to solve problems. There are congressional aids telling [the journalist] that their bosses won’t even speak to each other anymore.
QF, that’s a telling survey! I’d love to see a national poll on that question.
Weasel, not weazel. Please. (they get a bad enough rap as it is)
Well, a good strategy might be to read “How to Talk to a Tea Party Activist”. It’s an ebook on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Party-Activist-Hoagy-Wilson-ebook/dp/B0062W7ZOY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320370423&sr=8-1