So why Palin?

Great Debates
141

It’s almost axiomatic that when you ask a liberal what Republicans need to be more successful, you’ll be told that they have to move closer to the liberal position. And if you ask a conservative what Democrats need to be more successful, they’ll tell you they have to be more like Republicans.

The fact is, we don’t really know where the public’s going to be in four years. I am reminded of the Republicans claiming that the Democrats were going to be out of power for two decades after Bush won the Presidency and Republicans gained control of Congress. They said the same thing in 1991 after 8 years of Reagan, and Bush I having an approval rating of 91%. He was out of power a year later, and many Republicans with him.

I know a lot of people on the right who think the problem with Republicans is that they governed like Democrats, except without the Democrat’s principles. They don’t believe in bigger government, but they voted for it. They don’t believe in welfare, but they pushed a prescription drug entitlement. They don’t believe in deficit financing, but they ran up huge deficits. In short, they were unprincipled and undisciplined. If you want the things they did, you’ll vote Democrat. If you didn’t, you’ll be disillusioned by Republicans. So they basically got into power, then just punted. And now they’re deservedly out of power.

That kind of thinking says that if Republicans figure out that they represent people who believe in smaller government, more fiscal responsibility, and support of traditional American values (not religious right values, but values like hard work, entrepreneurism, and rugged individualism), they’ll regain their support and rise to prominence again, because a lot of Americans yearn for that kind of leadership.

But I think it really comes down to what the economic situation looks like. If the economy turns around, GDP growth goes where Obama says its going, employment returns to levels below 6%, and deficits start coming down, then Obama will take the credit and Democrats will expand on their majority. If, on the other hand, Obama continues raising taxes, and inflation starts to be a factor, and interest rates go up, and the economy stagnates and we wind up with 70’s style ‘malaise’ and stagflation, then the Democrats are in big trouble.

Basically, the Democrats are engaging the country in a grand experiment. If it works, they’ll be heroes. If it doesn’t, they’ll suffer the consequences. It’s as simple as that.

142

Sam Gingerich is a good example of those who think the GOP needs to be true to those “smaller government” etc values.

Maybe he could tap Palin as VP for a third party run? :slight_smile:

Also some cynics would believe that no matter a President does the economy will cycle through and be in recovery phase by the next election cycle. Those who think that Team Obama’s plan is wrong headed are I think most fearful that the economy will recover significantly despite the plan and justify the transformative changes that Obama will have gotten through by then in the eyes of many voters. (Please note, that is not my POV.)

143

Wow. I actually agree with pretty much everything in that post. I believe airborne swine will be coming any moment now.

Also, as Gosling said, it’s not a message problem. If you were in power, and now you’re not, people obviously heard and were receptive to your message. The issue is that they don’t like your message, or your behavior, and in either case you have to change, not do what you’ve been doing, only more so.

I seem to recall that a bunch of Democratic bigwigs sat out the race in 1992 because they all figured nobody could beat Bush.

144

“…if Obama continues raising taxes…”

Where are you getting that from. Obama’s a tax CUTTER, buddy. And no one cares if some multimillionaires lose the irresponsible cuts they got from Bush.

Obama’s approval ratings are back up to 66%. The DOW is soaring since Obama’s been in Europe. It’s all good for Barack, man. In spite of all out, relentless, scorched earth attacks from the right (Fox News is just blatantly making things up at this point. They accused Obama – in an ostensibly straight news report, not as a commentary – of wanting to institute Shariah Law in the US a day or two ago), Obama is still extremely popular and the market is showing signs of life again. The Republican strategy to resign from the process and pray for catastrophe has not, thus far, shown any indication that it will pay off.

The era of Limbaugh-style, angry, illiberal conservatism as a controlling majority is over. It doesn’t have the numbers anymore. The current, Obama-bashing right wing media echo chamber – as fevered and as hysterical as it is (how can any of you guys take Glenn Beck seriously?) is still a self-contained minority. They can delude themselves with all the “tea parties” that they want, but they’re a declining political power, not a growing one. They’re all just talking to themselves. They’ve lost the center.

The Republicans can still get the center back, but they have to change their focus from the kind of shrill, alarmist, “culture” issues of the past to hard-headed and reasoned economic issues. Shrieking about the queers and the Mexicans isn’t going to cut it anymore. God-hustling isn’t going to cut it anymore. The longer the GOP allows itself to be enslaved by that segment of its party, the longer its going to take them to get back into power.

145

Holy fucking hell, Sam. Maybe you should read some posts from the 2005-2006 era about how the Democrats had to rove as Rightward as possible to have any chance of getting elected.

You really are completely blind to your own partisanship, aren’t you?

-Joe

146

Ignore above. Hangover and bad day.

-Joe

147

Sure we do–they will have elected someone who is in his third month of serving from 2013-2017. The fact is, you’re talking about THREE years (or less, probably less) as the time for Palin to make her moves or not. Three years is a long time, but it isn’t forever in terms of rehabilitating a damaged political image.

If she wants to run as a hard-right wing candidate, she can plan on getting thirty to thirty-five percent of the vote. If she wants to build on that core, she needs to make some different noises, and fairly quickly, too. I’d guess she can cop a few “centrist” votes, but only at the risk of giving up a somewhat smaller number of extreme right-wing votes–and of course if she goes too centrist, she’s totally fucked because a significant portion of her base will abandon her once she’s seen as just another pol.

The more interesting move, from my perspective, would be if, say, Gingrich and Palin (maverick-style!!) decide “The Pubs are dead” and announce in late 2011 an Independent run (to make it more interesting, they’d announce that the Maverick Party will decide at its convention which of them is POTUS and which is V-POTUS, just to keep things lively.) The Pubs themselves will not just roll over and die, and would probably put up a moderate (Romney? Who else has “moderate Pubbie” cred?) who would get maybe another 30-35 % of the popular vote, which could result in a 40-30-30 victory for Obama, but which could conceivably clog up the process and result in a slim victory for one of the Pubbie splinter parties, if Obama is in electoral deep doo-doo in 2012.

148

I don’t think Palin is going to be the nominee. Not unless she spends the next three years immersed in textbooks and becomes more educated and works on her speech mannerisms and develops some gravitas. I don’t see that happening. But in politics, three years is an eternity, and anything can happen.

My guess is that the new Republican standard-bearer will be someone who’s not even on the radar right now. Mark Sanford is the closest to the kind of person I think will wind up leading the Republicans. But it is really going to depend on what the world situation looks like in two years, when the campaigns will start up. I think there’s a good chance that defense will become an issue. Hard economic times lead to political instability, which leads to military pressure. In that case, I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone like David Petraeus suddenly become a front runner.

If the country is in malaise and stagflation, an optimistic right-wing leader with good communication skills a la Reagan could rise up.

If the economy is seriously in the tank and getting worse, then I would expect to see someone like Eric Cantor or some other young intelligent fiscal conservative leading the pack.

If people feel good about the economy, then the Republicans won’t have much of an opening, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Mike Huckabee style social conservative/populist take a shot at the Presidency. That’s probably Palin’s opening as well, but neither of them would be very likely to win.

As of today, I have no clue. But I wouldn’t put the odds of Palin being the next Republican presidential candidate at higher than 10% today, and maybe even lower - 5% or less. Lower than Gingrich, Romney, Sanford, Cantor, and even some dark horses like Jeb Bush. I’d put the odds of her trying for it at greater than 75%, but the odds are very stacked against her.

149

I don’t find it at all unlikely that Palin could be the Pub candidate. Many people just aren’t “fact based” and love people like her who stick it to those know-it-all intellectuals. It’s not that people will support her despite her shortcomings, they’ll embrace her because of them.

All she needs is a slight majority of a group that is less than 50% of the population (and arguably contains more than their share of shallow thinkers). What’s so hard to believe about Palin being the choice of 25% of the population?

150

Well, nothing, except such a message won’t play that well in California or the densely-populated Northeast states and the Electoral College will be her undoing, despite an expected Red swath from Idaho to the Carolinas. Even with Texas, and possibly wildcard Florida, this won’t cut it.

Of course, all kinds of crazy things can happen in three years. If Obama fucks up in some major way (or if the economy fails to recover and he takes the blame), how many states are likely to flip Red in 2012? Palin’s potential primary bid will suffer the same fate as Dan Quayle’s, I figure.

151

That’s kind of what was said about Kathleen Harris… and who really did her in? Not Democrats. Not Independents. Republicans who recognized she was a political disaster. Karl Rove said she couldn’t win when she got the wild hair to run for the Senate in 2006. Then the GOP establishment stopped supporting her. Then she was done.

Palin is somewhere in the same ballpark as Harris of being someone who is just unprepared and ill-suited to higher office. I think very, very few Republicans, seeing the disaster that 2008 was for them, would want to revisit anything about that year in 2012. Palin isn’t an indispensable asset to the Republican party, and even if she was, as de Gaulle said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.” Regardless of the charm she may have, my bet is that you’re simply not going to find any of the Republican establishment willing to support her for higher office.

152

Piyush Jindal and Tim Pawlenty both want it pretty bad too. It’s intersting this time around in that the Pubs won’t have the usual elder statesman whose turn it is, and, just like last time, everyone they have is flawed. They have no one who really appeals to all elements of the party, or who can appeal to the party base without turning off anyone who’s center-left in a GE (Huckabee might come the closest. Liberals at least sort of like him, even if they’d never vote for him).

I think the Republicans really have themselves in a bind in that none of them can win a nomination or raise money without the support of the hardcore conservative base, but they can no longer win national elections unless they move to the middle. My guess is that they’ll try again with putting a moderate on the top of the ticket and a hard right fundy on the bottom. I suspect the evangelicals are going to push to get the fundy on top this time, though. If they get their way, they’ll get creamed, but maybe that will convince the GOP to finally cut bait with the Bible thumpers.

153

Quoth Sam Stone:

And they’re both correct, if you measure “success” by elections won. If we approximate politics as one-dimensional and assume that every voter will vote for the candidate closest to their position on that line (both of which are false, of course, but like I said, this is just an approximation), then either candidate can increase his vote share by moving towards the other side, until eventually they’re just a hair’s width apart.

Of course, if you measure “success” by policies implemented, then it becomes more complicated, since moving closer to the center to win the election means abandoning some of the policies that made you left or right to begin with. If the leftmost candidate is significantly right of center, then he’ll probably win the election, but that can’t be considered a liberal victory, since the result is someone right of center getting elected. Or vice-versa, of course.

154

I don’t see what Red/Blue has to do with winning the Pub nomination. I don’t think she has a chance of winning the presidency.

155

Who has any credibility as a conservative? I think the republicans lost it, when New Gingrich’s contract with America went down the tubes. Gingrich couldn’t deliver, and there really hasn’t been a conservative movement since.

156

Well, somebody in the Republican party is going to be doing this kind of math. Surely the elders will recall how factional fighting led to a weakened Goldwater getting nominated in 1964 and crushed for the worst Republican EC defeat since 1936.

If they don’t, they deserve to lose, and that’ll be the end of Palin’s aspirations anyway.

157

We are well past the point when party hacks picked the candidates. If they did, neither McCain nor Obama would have been the 2008 candidate. Raise some money, lie to the voters, and anyone can be the nominee.

158

Cantor would scare me a little if he weren’t Jewish. That’s going to keep him off the GOP ticket (the top of it, anyway) for the foreseeable future–not because he’s Jewish, per se, but because he’s not a Christian. It doesn’t matter how socially conservative he is; if he denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, the religious right will stay home in droves.

159

I’m not sure how much sway the religious right is going to have in the next election. All the trends are moving away from them. For example, the younger generation of Republicans is not nearly as fundamentalist as the old guard, and the young Republicans are rising in power.

But more importantly, I think Republicans revert to social conservatism when other Republican principles fade in importance. During the cold war, the Republicans didn’t push their conservative values as much because their primary objective was to oppose the Soviets. When Reagan was elected, social conservatism took a back seat to economic issues.

In other words, social conservatism rushes into the Republican party whenever a void is left by other issues fading in prominence. The 1990’s and 2000’s were marked by relative economic calm, and especially after welfare reform was passed there weren’t any burning economic issues to drive Republicans, so the the fundies filled the void. That continued on through most of Bush’s years. It’s hard to get traction on economic issues when it’s your own guy violating your principles in the White House.

When times are good, the Republicans tend to fracture into different camps - there are the fiscal conservative/libertarian Republicans, the populist religious right, the neo-conservatives, and the Burkean intellectual conservatives. There’s considerable overlap between these groups as well. Pat Robertson spans the religious right and the Burkean wing, The religious right dabbles in neo-conservatism. Bill Buckley was a Burkean / libertarian. And so on.

Right now, these camps are pulling together again, being driven back to the core Republican principles of smaller government and less regulation because of the activism of the Obama administration. If these issues becomes critical to Republicans, my belief is that they’ll put the social conservatism on the back burner and unite again like they did under Reagan.

160

If the religious right wasn’t still calling the shots, we wouldn’t see the head of the RNC grovelling at the feet of Rush Limbaugh. The moderates in the party can’t even have a conversation with the freepers anymore.