GOP Race a Mess
Mitt Romney’s comfortable win in Michigan highlights the utter helplessness that many GOP voters must be feeling about the field of Republican candidates from which they are expected to choose.
There have been three major tests in this primary season for Republicans. And Romney is the third candidate to emerge victorious. After the Iowa Caucuses, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee surged into the lead in the national polls. His frontrunner status lasted until the New Hampshire primary when Senator John McCain picked up a must win. Within days, it was McCain’s turn to ride the tiger as he vaulted into the lead nationwide.
Now with the former Massachusetts governor’s victory in Michigan, is Mitt Romney the next victim/frontrunner?
Republican voters have so far made being the frontrunner the kiss of death. How long can this go on? There is a possibility – made a little more likely by Romney’s win in Michigan – that the primary in South Carolina could be won by yet another candidate.
Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, whose moribund campaign appears to have revived, is surging in South Carolina. The former Law and Order star is drawing overflow crowds and raising enough money to be competitive in a state he actually led in the polls a couple of months ago. While a victory for Thompson is not likely, given the wackiness in this primary season, nothing and no one can be dismissed as impossible.
And to complete the nightmare, the January 29th contest in Florida features a desperate Rudy Giuliani who is pouring everything he has into a state that he must win if he expects to remain a viable candidate. A Thompson win in South Carolina would help Giuliani in Florida as it would weaken his two main rivals in the state McCain and Romney. Thus, the unthinkable prospect of 5 different GOP candidates winning one of 5 early races would come true and all 5 would move on to Super Tuesday on February 5, laying claim to some legitimacy as a potential nominee.
But it is an eternity to Super Tuesday and between now and then, you will witness the spectacle of Republicans playing with the tag “frontrunner” as it were a hot potato.
The GOP isn’t necessarily demoralized as much as it is perplexed. Exit polls show Mitt Romney won a third more Republicans in this “open” primary state as John McCain while the Arizona senator won decisively among Democrats and independents. McCain was supported by barely a quarter of Republicans who voted. His highly visible advocacy for the ill-fated immigration bill as well as his thumbing his nose at the conservative establishment from time to time has earned him the enmity of many in the party.
And it appears that many in the GOP had second thoughts about supporting him. After McCain’s bounce out of New Hampshire, he enjoyed a temporary lead in Michigan last week according to several polls. But over the last weekend, Republican undecided voters surged to Romney by a significant 40%-29% margin. That could mean that McCain’s momentum out of New Hampshire has either stalled or perhaps even begun to ebb. We’ll have to wait for the vote in South Carolina where McCain currently enjoys a comfortable lead over Mike Huckabee in order to determine the answer to that question.
Huckabee can also pull off a win in South Carolina. Nearly 50% of voters in the Palmetto state are self-identified evangelicals – the same voters that gave him his win in Iowa. But by tomorrow night, Mr. Huckabee will have had some tall explaining to do.
Speaking on Monday night before a group of supporters, Huckabee made the kind of gaffe that destroys campaigns. He called for amending the Constitution of the United States to bring it in line with “God’s standards:”
“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”
Andy McCarthy of the National Review puts it succinctly:
Huckabee is made to order for the Left: his rhetoric embodies their heretofore lunatic indictment that we’re no better that what we’re fighting against. Let’s “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards”? Who needs to spin when the script speaks for itself? Where has Huck been for the last seven years? Does he not get that our enemies – the people who want to end our way of life – believe they are simply imposing God’s standards?
It doesn’t matter that Huckabee was apparently referring to amending the Constitution to ban abortion and gay marriage. The idea that the Constitution should be amended to reflect the religious beliefs of any group is so far beyond the pale that it may very well drive most secular Republicans and even some evangelicals away from his candidacy. This is the price Huckabee is paying for pandering to evangelicals and setting himself up as a “Christian leader.” Eventually, he was going to go too far in order to excite his base. Well, his base may be pleased but he very well could have lost most of the rest of the party then and there.
Each successive contest in the Republican primary gauntlet has shown that GOP voters are dissatisfied with their choices and have very little idea of who should lead them. They tried on the center-left populism of Mike Huckabee’s religious crusade of a candidacy and didn’t like the fit. They decisively rejected the maverick McCain in Michigan. Now they’re tasting Romney a la King and will decide whether to enjoy the repast or send it back to the chef for being overdone.
Meanwhile, the Democrats watch the Republicans deflating and are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of running against a GOP candidate that elicits little enthusiasm among the rank and file. And while the Democrats have their own problems with trying to resist the temptation to play identity politics with their African American and female candidates, they will have no difficulty energizing their own base whoever the nominee might be.
The aimlessness of Republicans as they continue to search for a leader is not a catastrophe – at the moment. But if the GOP can’t make up its mind prior to the end of the primaries, the small but not impossible chance that they would enter their convention in September without a nominee stares them in the face.
Perhaps that prospect alone will spur the party to unite behind one of the current candidates who would then win the nomination basically by default.
Would holding a convention rather than a coronation really be so big a blow to the Republicans?
Good thing too, lest we end up with another huge disappointment.
RINO’s are leading us into the abyss at a slower rate than the Democrats would like. That’s not acceptable. Let the ‘mess’ get messier if that’s what it takes.
I agree with the two previous postings. Maybe a REAL convention–which argues, discusses, compromises–would be good thing.
This apparent confusion is only bad for the press, who wants to be able to shape events into easy headlines.
So What? I am old enough to have witnessed Political Convention Coronations. It just makes it easier for the convention party goers to have more time to party.
Let the primary process have it’s effect. The candidate selected, good or bad, will at least will represent the majority of those who participated.
If they pick a loser, they pick a loser there is not much one can do about that.
The Republican Party is paying a price for the corruption they allowed when they had control.
Newt, Hastert, Boehner and their fellow travelers got the prize and tarnished it.
Good night Lord Acton wherever you are.
” Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
Picking the right candidate is most important. How the right candidate is picked is far less important. Let’s go to the mat if we must. RINOs, be gone with you.
Republicans aren’t confused at all. They like Romney. Huckabee and McCain won states because Independents and Democrats were allowed to vote. This really isn’t that hard to figure out. Go Mitt!
I am not a Romney fan (McCain’s my man), but I do think that he will be able to unite the party around him if he wins Florida and takes a good chunk of the Feb 5 states, esp. California (where the polls showed a 4-way dead heat before the MI primary). A FL win is well within the realm of possibility, with a post-MI bounce and a barrage of TV advertising.
And, if the Dems nominate Hillary, it would unite the GOP even more firmly around their candidate.
I once attended a Mitt Romney speech in 1997, at my business school. There’s no question the man’s a terrific strategist and a bold businessman. His bet on Michigan has been proven a shrewd one. I think he can pull it off in Florida again if he has the good sense to give SC a bye.
If he wins FL, then’s it’s between him and McCain on 2/5. Since the GOP faithful don’t like McCain and since a lot of those states don’t have open primaries (i.e., no independents, just party faithful), they will choose Mitt.
Not that I’ll be happy about that outcome, but that’s the way the cookie’s gonna crumble.
My man McCain has to win both SC and FL to have any hope of stopping the Mitt machine.
Ramdas
Let’s hope we get to the convention without a candidate and delgates are released to vote for another candidate. That’s when we need to be ready to draft Thomas Sowell!
I agree that a REAL convention, not a coronation would be a very healthy thing.
50 years ago caucuses and primaries were not media beauty pageants-they MEANT something. Debates were real debates not the MSM “it-is-all-about-the-monitor-and-his/her-political-views” BS that we have now.
The way the Democrats treated Michigan because they wanted to change their primary date told me that the DNC and the DLC could not give a rats ass what the rank and file want. The fix is in and they wanted their script to go according to their plan.
Coalescing around the early winner worked so well for the Democrats in 2004, didn’t it? Choosing quickly evidently is not the same as choosing wisely.
Is Wyoming still a state? Why doesn’t the MSM ever mention Romney’s win there? The fact that no one campaigned in that state might be more of a reflection that the candidates knew that Wyomingans were simply going to pick the most conservative, viable candidate and they chose Romney. So Romney has won two states and came in second in two states, both of which are blue. Seems to me that if the press were truly objective, they would now be calling him the “frontrunner.”
Honestly, I think having the primaries too far close between dates doesn’t help matters any.
Romney Won? I do not call this a win for two reasons, It was his home state and His Daddy was a Governor There! Damn, if you couldn’t win for those reasons, what would one do? Romney has no chance of doing anything after yesterday’s open voting! Period! The GOP is a mess and although I have not decided yet, I think Ron Paul may be the only real chance at winning. The Dems are divided between a Black Muslim, A Woman with Bill and a Southern Ambulance Chasing Lawyer.
The field is one of no true choices! But I will look at the issues NOT the mud!
Left-wing commenters may be describing the Republican situation as a “mess” solely because their favorites Mike Huckabee and John McCain are being marginalized. Neither man will win the nomination. This prize will go to someone possessing more conservative credentials.
What is wrong with holding government, like any other area of life, accountable to objective truth?
Look at it this way: when government, or any other area of life, has more room for objective truth – it does not have to engage in “over the shoulder” looking in fear of being dominated by other areas of life.
Take a look at what the Roman Catholics call subsidiarity, or what Abraham Kuypers calls “sphere sovereignty”. Then combine either with the faces of history that Max Dimont uses in “Jews, God & History”.
For what affirms reality is natural, and frankly what is natural is desirable.
Okay?
SRS, just a tiny bit of information. In Iowa the minister got the vote from a no contest.
In New Hampshire, McCain won by 3% but got most of the independent vote.
In Michigan, the independents didn’t turn out, and Romney got….. now listen up 68% of the Republican vote. So before last night who had the most delegates, and who had the most VOTES? OH1 and Steve B. Romney did actually campaign in Wyoming.
Bzzzzzzz! Times up…Mr. Romney, you may not like him but he’s the best one out there, so let’s get behind him and prevent Osama or Hillary from getting in.
John C: Which is less truthful? Hillary saying that she was named for Sir Edmund Hilary climbing Mount Everest, or Mitt saying that Mike Huckabee is soft on crime when meth dealers receive a softer sentence in Massachusetts than in Arkansas?
If someone has to lie in order to get ahead, and they achieve their goal, then I quote John Candy in “Cool Runnings”: if you are not enough without it, then you are not enough with it.
I also hold Thomas Sowell in high regard. Since he is not in the race here are my thoughts. We have five candidates still in the race, Huckabee, McCain, Romney, Thompson and Guiliani. Prognostication number one. Huckabee Thompson and Romney will fade away and the main battle will be between McCain and Guiliani. Ron Paul presents a non-issue that can, at most, be a spoiler at the margins.
Both McCain and Guiliani have significant problems with the Republican base, but they each have some appeal for independents. First McCain. He opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 which was not only wrong politically but a display of poor judgment on economic matters. Those tax cuts were absolutely crucial to overcoming the results of 9/11 and the collapse of the dot.com boom. In addition McCain’s trashing of the Pharmaceutical industry and advocating drugs to be re-imported from Canada betrays a lack of understanding of markets, research costs and returns, and drug safety. His pushing of so-called comprehensive immigration reform rather than first securing the border and later dealing with the twelve million of so illegal immigrants already in the country did not sit well with the base. McCain -Feingold campaign finance reform restricted free speech on the most important of all issues, political views. Many Republicans have not yet forgiven McCain for this trip across the partisan isle. McCain=s leadership of the Agang of fourteen@ did not sit will with Republicans but it must be acknowledged that it did result in the two best Supreme Court justices since Scalia was confirmed, namely John Roberts and Samuel Alioto.
McCain=s strength with Republicans is his steadfast support of the war in Iraq especially during the time when things were going badly and many Republicans were bailing out. McCain long advocated more troops in Iraq and a military surge and the results of the surge obviously are positive. He is pro life. As a naval aviator and long time prisoner of war in Vietnam he has earned respect and admiration. His absolutist position that waterboarding is torture, must be outlawed and must never be used under any circumstances, understandable as it is from his personal experiences as a prisoner of war, is not a good policy to bind the United States to considering the nature of our enemy.
Rudy Guiliani has a different set of problems with the Republican base. He is not pro life. His judicial appointments as a Republican Mayor of heavily Democrat New York City, while understandable, do not sit well with some Republicans. His suggestion of his friend and business partner Bernard Kerik to President Bush to head Homeland Security was abysmally bad judgment. For Christian conservatives his three marriages and his especially messy second divorce from Donna Hanover present significant problems. Guiliani=s strength is two-fold; leadership as Mayor of New York City and his strong position on confronting the threat we face from the global Islamic jihad both at home and abroad, as demonstrated by his recent essay in City Journal. As Mayor of New York he confronted and reduced crime and provided much needed leadership and stability when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were hit on 9/11.
Prognostication two, the mother of all prognostications. Either McCain or Guiliani can and will defeat either Clinton or Obama in the general elections. Republicans better understand the importance of voting and, swallowing hard, voting for either McCain or Guiliani despite their reservations. The stakes are way too high to allow the Democrats to control both the Congress and the Presidency at this time of war. This is not 1941.
Anyone who can get that upset about a bland personality like Mitt Romney is one step away from shooting up a shopping mall. Why are these off-balance reflex-cases so threatened by Romney? Do you think they are on the verge of transferring their BDS from B-Hitler to M-Devil?
If they have any other tactic than demonisation, I’d like to see it.
Unlike the Democrats, who want to occupy the White House at any cost (even Bill Clinton!), Republicans have some standards. Rush Limbaugh has questioned whether nominating certain of these candidates might not actually destroy the party (Clinton abolished welfare, balanced the budget and filled the Congress with Republican majorities, along with adopting many other Republican measures). We’re interested in our agenda, not our egos.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are facing exactly the same inability to decide.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/15/AR2008011502863.html?sub=AR
Fred Beloit: RINOs, be gone with you.
Ask the liberals how well that attitude works for them. They have turned me into a RINO in name only. (Yes, I do mean to say I’m a Republican in Name Only in name only.)
If you can’t deal with the likes of me, you can enjoy a Democratic president instead. The centrists decide the election, not the partisans. That’s just how it is.
Art: although I have not decided yet, I think Ron Paul may be the only real chance at winning.
Why do I suspect that the first half of that sentence is completely and utterly bogus?
MJT: unfortunately those Republicans who push ideological purity across a wide range of subjects are exhorting strenuously all through the internet. Those of us who are likely to vote for the Republican candidate but hold different views (e.g., myself regarding environmental issues and immigration) than say Rush Limbaugh somehow aren’t supposed to influence the nomination process nor party platform.
Somehow we are not pure enough for them.
The good thing about the Republican nomination process so far is that it shows that the Republican party does have some diversity among its constituencies – just like America.
Micheal J Totten:
The centrists decide the election, not the partisans.
What is a ‘centrist’? What is ‘the center’?
The battle is over where the ‘center’ is. If your ‘right’ boundary is George Bush (ballooning size and scope of federal government and spending) and Marx, where is the center going to be? If on the other hand , the spectrum ranges from Milton Friedman to Marx, the ‘center’ is going to be in a very different place.
Between populism and principle, it is principle that should be the foundation of a party’s platform. The Constitution and Founding Fathers should be far more central to the debate. It should not be a pandering contest to teacher’s union agendas, warming hysteria, or some other whipped-up special interest crisis du jour that probably will have completely faded away on its own in two years. It should be about true leadership – the likes of which we have not seen since Reagan.
We need a leader, not someone who plays to the media circus.
Reagan showed that leadership is good for the GOP, America, and the world.
Bush has shown that capitulation and compromise is well, less than great for the GOP, America, and the world.
Let the fight continue.
The glass is quite full, not quite empty. All the faux leader chatter only proves that those polled are changing a shallow opinion based on polls and media bias rather than doing their own homework.
I have attended organizing events for Mitt and they are drawing 3 times expected crowds of people who have done their homework and are excited to fund and work for him.
The informed are not the fickle. I have respect for all the candidates but my field is narrowed on both parties to a candidate with high level executive experience trained to make quick decisions with partial information and adept at delegation. You don’t gain that experience in a deliberative body!
I’m happily retired but I don’t want a candidate older than me regardless how much I like the would be First Lady.
I just hope Rudy comes on strong in Florida and gives us hope going in to Super Tuesday….
I like his “First Day” commericial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUT2pVxAOSo
—
NARRATOR: “On his first day in office, Rudy Giuliani will send Congress the largest tax cut in American history.”
He has been so quiet and dropping in polls because of his questionable strategy to sit out the first month of this election season — but he remains perhaps the most electable and most energizing candidate in a 1-on-1 against Hillary or Obama.
The question is whether or not the GOP factions will unite after the nominee is chosen. I’m not so sure.
Michael Totten tells me:
“Fred Beloit: ‘RINOs, be gone with you.’”
“Ask the liberals how well that attitude works for them. They have turned me into a RINO in name only. (Yes, I do mean to say I’m a Republican in Name Only in name only.)
Two degrees of separation? I’m afraid I’m not hip enough to derive any meaning from this statement. But THIS statement I think I may understand: “If you can’t deal with the likes of me, you can enjoy a Democratic president instead.” He means how he votes will determine who the next president is so I had better stay on his good side. No, he can’t be that arrogant. Perhaps he means people like him will only vote for liberal Republicans even though there are Democrat alternatives? No, that makes no sense.
Let’s try this shall we? (1) Do you, Michael, want activist judges appointed to Federal courts and the Supreme Court? (2) Do you want higher taxes that will stifle economic growth? (3) Do you want to continue the ponzi scheme of the nanny state? (4) Do you want the government to ignore the constitutional recognition of our natural right to defend ourselves with firearms? (5) Do you want to see Israel sold down the river for “peace in our time”?
If you have answered yes to all or most of these questions, why wouldn’t you just vote for a Democratic? Why vote for a Republican liberal-lite? Winning means nothing if the winner is merely a self-disguised loser.
By the way I respect your journalistic accomplishments very much.
To MJT.
I used to be a moderate like you, and I said basically that same stuff a few years ago.
But here is the rub. The democrats did not win the last election due to moderates. They lost because the base stayed home. Sorry but that is fact.
McCain is a deal breaker for me. I am sorry but that is how it is. I can get behind Romney, Guilianni, or Thompson, either of those I can do.
Now if you RINO’s insist on McCain, you are handing the election to Obama or Hillary. You know this. It will not matter how hard you cajole or whine about the base being xenophobes, or wingnuts. We will not vote for McCain.
So how does that work for ya? You can say we are the spoilers, but we have told you Rino’s repeatedly, and we showed you in 2006.
So now its not you that gets to be wooed, its the base. Either give us someone palatable or you get Democrats in control of the congress and Presidency. We are willing to compromise, we are giving you three other viable alternatives. But if you insist on McCain, do not blame us when he loses because the base rejected him and did not rally around him. You were warned, and in your RINO arrogance blew us off.
Peace.
On Intrade.com, the political futures market…
After Romney won in Michigan, his stock rose (to bring him up to third most likely to win), McCain dropped (but he still remains in first), but most interesting was Giuliani, who was the only other candidate to have his stock rise (he sits at second most likely to win). Perhaps the money folks think his much maligned Florida strategy could be the ticket, despite declining national poll numbers.
I guess Ric thinks only the first 3 states should decide who our nominee is! I’m so sick of the media telling us who the nominee is, who should get out ,when they should get out etc. EVERY state should get to vote for the person of their choice in the Primary season. Choosing the nominee at the convention is why we have the convention! I like the way things are going , it’s driving the media crazy & that’s just great to me!!!
Steve Boriss, this answer isn’t the one you are likely looking for, but it is honest: Wyoming isn’t being mentioned because Wyoming and the RNC are not on the same page.
The RNC sets the rules, and Wyoming got punished, as did Michigan and New Hampshire.
So, why not put the blame here: disfunctionalism between the states who were sanctioned, and the RNC.
Don’t forget the DNC sanctioned Michigan because Michigan broke the rules that the DNC set forth, and the problem is the same.
I mention this to avoid any misguided criticism that I prefer the Dems to the GOP. Both parties have to be held to the same standard of objective truth in order for both parties to benefit the nation – which is, to my knowledge, the central reason for the existence of political parties.
Thompson made a critical strategical error in suggesting the constitution be changed to meet God’s standards. Giuliani can’t demonstrate success with his own private life, so what makes the country believe he can lead a nation? McCain is off base with the party ,immigration and is over the hill. Mitt’s my choice.
With all the talk of there being no frontrunner, why is Ron Paul always ignored? He has beaten Thompson and Gulliani in recent primaries, both still considered as viable candidates.
Gotta love American journalism.
“McCain is a deal breaker for me. I am sorry but that is how it is. I can get behind Romney, Guilianni, or Thompson, either of those I can do”
Ditto. And I would put Huckabee in the same category as McCain but for somewhat different reasons – I will not vote for another “compassionate conservative”, ever.
For those political animals who may bet the farm calculating that I will do the normal “lesser of two evils” evaluation at some point and vote for a RINO (McCain) or compassionate conservative (Huckabee) just to keep the evil Libs out, I have one thing to say: You miscalculated badly this time. I’m through being played.
McCain is toxic to conservatism. And his nomination by Democrats and Independents would possibly destroy the GOP.