It occurred to me reading recently that the competitiveness of the Republican primary field could be a factor in the election. The thing that made me think of this, of course, is the sight of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, the presumptive front-runners, telling their mutual constituency why they should dislike the other.
While I’m sure that they’d rather they had an easier time of it, as almost every incumbent President has had, I wonder if this effect of the wide open field at all hurts the winner’s chances in the general election.
I’m not sure that it will, that much. A competitive primary field means that there are more news stories about the candidates. Look at 2008. The really competitive primary race between Obama and Hillary didn’t hurt Obama.
With a stronger pool of candidates, it probably wouldn’t. The debates, for example, would be good preparation for the more widely viewed debates against Obama, and the candidates would have had time to clarify their positions.
With this crop of candidates, the trend is initial enthusiasm followed by growing disillusionment as the candidates, you know, speak. And while Romney is still coming out the best of a mediocre lot, the constant harping on flip-flopping and “Romney-care” isn’t going to endear him to the base if he gets the nod.
None of this matters to the “Anybody but Obama” crowd, but the primaries seem likely to create an opposing "Anybody but {Perry, Bachmann, Romney, Cain, Paul}"crowd.
It will if the Dems have the sense to watch which messages resonate with Republican primary voters then have some PAC create ads tailored to make sure that whichever group liked the other candidates better stays home in the real election. I just don’t believe the Democrats are that sharp any more.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the Republicans this cycle are a bit more vicious against each other than Obama and Clinton were in 2008. The Dems mostly emphasized that they held mostly the same views, and were debating over who would be better at putting those views into practice-- I don’t recall them actually attacking each other.
No, I’m not counting Republican spoiler groups like Party Unity My Ass.
Since the field is open, all candidates think they can win the nomination. Even Palin can believe she can come out on top.
They will attack out of ego and greed. It will stay ugly.
Probably some affect on enthusiasm, but the primary voters aren’t going to vote for Obama in any case. Obama isn’t going to run an ad saying that Perry is in favor of educating the children of illegal aliens in an attempt to woo the far right.
The danger to the Republicans is that the candidates see a need to keep ‘out-righting’ each other. They’re going to have a hard time tacking back to the center to attract moderates.
The Republican primary voters won’t vote for Obama regardless, but if their preferred candidate tells them that whoever it was who ends up with the nomination is a good-for-nothing, some of them might just stay home.
Right. The balance is between, on the one hand, lots of name recognition from the primaries, which does help, and on the other, disillusioning the base instead of exciting them.
You need people to recognize and like you, but you also need them to care enough to vote. I’m not sure where the balance lies, though.
The tighter the primary race, the more pandering to the right the candidates will have to make, and this may hurt them in the general. As an example of this, I suspect Romney’s attacks against Perry on the in state tuition issue will probably drive away many Hispanic voters in the general.