The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack does a pretty good job addressing some of the arguments against a Ryan candidacy and it’s worth reading his whole post.  I’ll let his points speak for themselves.  Instead, I’d like to address a few more recent objections from the NYT’s Ross Douthat and The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison.  First to Douthat.  He attempts to distinguish between Christie (who he thinks would make a plausible entrant) and Ryan (who wouldn’t) drawing 3 contrasts.

I’ll only take a look at the first today.

1) Christie is a governor; Ryan is a congressman. Douthat’s makes essentially two argument under this heading, one of which is interesting and on point, the other less so.  I’ll take on the latter first.  Douthat writes:

No member of the House has won a presidential election in 131 years.

This sounds quite persuasive on its face.  House members routinely mount Presidential campaigns (Tancredo, Paul, and Hunter last time, Paul and Bachmann this time) so it seems this statistic bears some looking into.  Perhaps the electorate has an active bias against House candidacies?   Let’s take a closer look.  What would we need in order to verify such a bias?  Well, we’d need to be able to control for variables which are only incidental to most House candidacies.  In other words, we’d want to know if voters were rejecting Representatives for being Representatives, or if other factors came into play.

I decided to look at one particular factor which seemed relevant- fundraising.  I’m no statistician and I would love to see someone like Nate Silver run regression analysis on this (he, no doubt, has a full database) but I can present the data.  In 2008, 10 Republican candidates sought the nomination.  Three were House members, 7 were not.  How did they fare in fundraising?  Well, in the first quarter of ’07, the three House members raised an average of 811k, with Tom Tancredo raising the most (1.25 million) and Duncan Hunter the least (538k).  The 7 non-House members averaged 8.13 milion, with Mitt Romney raising the most (21.08 million) and Jim Gilmore raising the least (203k).  Tommy Thompson also came in under Hunter with 392k, but Mike Huckabee just edged him (544k).  So the House members were outraised 10 to 1.

Nor did subsequent quarters significantly close the gap.  In the second quarter, the non-House average went up: to 8.53 million.  This is because the lowest performer, Jim Gilmore, dropped out of the race.  But the House average went up to: to 1.55 million, as Ron Paul’s numbers took off.  So now we’re nearly to 5 to 1.  In the 3rd quarter it’s 7.91 million vs. 2.17 million (Paul contributing 85% of the total, as Tancredo and Hunter had collapsed).

The point is, our House candidates were vastly outspent.  Nor is there, on first blush, an obvious distinction between poor House fundraisers and poor non-House fundraisers. Former Governor of Virginia, Jim Gilmore was the poorest fundraiser and also the first candidate to exit the race, bowing out on July 14th 2007 . Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, another financial laggard, followed suit on August 12th.  US Senator Sam Brownback was the next victim, leaving on October 18th.

It’s difficult to use these drop-out dates as a proxy for success, since House members are probably more likely to run “vanity” campaigns, and stay in after they’ve clearly ceased to be viable.  But at the very least, these numbers and dates are suggestive.  Something else that’s suggestive: the ’07 Ames straw poll.  Here were the results:

1.  Mitt Romney 31.6%
2. Mike Huckabee 18.1%
3. Sam Brownback 15.3%
4.  Tom Tancredo 13.7%
5.  Ron Paul 9.1%
6.  Tommy Thompson 7.3%

Duncan Hunter was on the ballot but didn’t seriously compete at Ames.  Looking at the rest of the list, it seems to track pretty well with our fundraising numbers.  Sam Brownback was a slightly better fundraiser than Tancredo (4.2 million versus 3.5 through 3 quarters) and did slightly better in the straw poll.  Tommy Thompson, though a Governor, was a far worse fundraiser than either man, and did much worse in the straw poll.

The two aberrations are Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee- Paul raised a lot- 8.3 million- and did comparatively poorly.  Huckabee raised comparatively little- 2.3 million- and significantly overperformed.  But there are good reasons to suspect these discrepancies reflected more fit (Huckabee was an evangelical in evangelical Iowa, Paul was an anti-war activist in a time of Republican hawkishness) than some kind of statement about experience (witness Paul’s much improved performance, in the less hawkish GOP during this year’s straw poll).

Again, it’d be nice to comb through more data, run regression analyses and all the rest, and hopefully somebody with the know-how will eventually do so, but at a glance, it seems that House members perform poorly in primaries, at least in part, because they’re poor fundraisers.

The big question is, WHY are House members poor fundraisers, and is Ryan as susceptible to this phenomenon as an ordinary congressman?  I’d argue that House members are poor fundraisers in large part because House members have A.)  A limited fundraising base, usually confined to members of their district and B.) A low national profile, which limits their ability to receive small donations.  Now, in the House, outside of Pelosi and Boehner, only Paul and Bachmann (both of whom are doing quite well, considering) have a higher national profile than Ryan.  The media and Democrats are bound to take a Ryan candidacy seriously, if only to demonize him, and he’d have 70% name recognition two weeks after he’d declared.  That takes care of grassroots support.  It is also indisputably true that Ryan, more than any other congressman who’s contemplated a run since at least Jack Kemp, is loved by the GOP moneymen.  If he has half of Bachmann’s appeal to small donors and half of Romney’s appeal to large donors, he’ll be able to run a credible campaign at least through the first few caucuses and primaries.

Next Douthat makes his interesting point.  He writes:

Ryan’s district is purple rather than reliably red (President Obama carried it in 2008), but his campaigning chops have never been tested in a statewide campaign.

This is worth talking about.  Bachmann’s district is much redder than Ryan’s (Obama won 45% in the former and 51% in the latter) but she’s actually had 3 competitive races while Ryan’s had, at best, 1 (his first race in ’98, when he carried the district by 14%).  Ryan’s very good at townhalls, at interviews, but how is he at a rally?  How will he handle attacks?  I’d address this with two points.  First, I’ll quote (and then rebut) a point Daniel Larison makes about Ryan’s seemingly impressive electoral success.  He writes:

Wisconsin’s First District has a PVI of R+2, and it gave Bush more than 50% of the vote both times. It would be fair to call it a presidential swing district, but in terms of House voting it has been solidly Republican since 1994. Like all safe House incumbents, Ryan racks up gaudy double-digit re-election victories.

This is somewhere between misleading and untrue.  As I’ve written before, Paul Ryan has not merely “racked up” the typically “gaudy” re-election victories of “safe incumbents”.  For one thing, Ryan is not a safe incumbent.  Ryan’s predecesor in WI-1 was indeed a Republican.  A Republican who won his ’96 race by 1 point and his ’94 race by less than one point (this is “solidly Republican” to Larison?).  That same Republican was apparently ideologically reasonable enough to come within 2 points of beating Russ Feingold in ’98, the same year that Ryan was winning his district by 14%.  If WI-1 is “safe” it’s not because of any intrinsic feature of the district but, rather, because Paul Ryan made it safe.

Nor is it fair to lump Ryan’s “gaudy” re-election numbers in with the rest of the House’s.  His are particularly gaudy.  He has consistently run well ahead of Republicans in comparable districts and well, well, ahead of Republicans with comparable ideologies.  Looking simply at his re-election percentages, you could be forgiven for assuming Ryan was somewhere in Castle territory ideologically.  Only two explanations suggest themselves: either Ryan is a particularly formidable campaigner (albeit on a small scale) or Ryan has drawn particularly weak challengers.  Either one is a feather in his cap and a decent argument for his candidacy.  If he’s a good campaigner, then he can presumably scale up (though no doubt he’ll make some rookie mistakes).  If he hasn’t drawn serious challengers it’s because, despite  his very conservative record in his very purple district, he didn’t look vulnerable.  This is a different sort of advantage- the ability to seem less threatening than you are- and it has real value in a race where the opposition’s case will rest mainly on demonization.  Jonathan Chait, who seems to despise Ryan, has repeatedly noted this phenomenon.

Finally, we won’t know how Ryan will hold up on the campaign trail until he actually campaigns for something other than a House seat.  Scott Walker’s in the Governor’s mansion and Ryan won’t get a shot until, at the earliest, 2018 (when he’ll have been in the House for 20 years).  Ron Johnson’s Senate seat won’t be open to a Republican challenger until, at least, 2022, and Ryan has already declined to run for Herb Kohl’s senate seat.  Those who use this argument are effectively arguing that Ryan shouldn’t run for President until he’s run for President.  Because that’s really his only option for the forseeable future.  If Ryan’s a bad campaigner no doubt that, not his budget plan, will get the blame for his failure.  If he’s a good campaigner, he’ll either win the nomination or perform credibly and advance the cause.  Either result is a win for Republicans.

From the Daily Caller:

Team Pawlenty is waiting on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to make a decision about entering the field as a presidential candidate, The Daily Caller learned Friday.

Key staffers who formerly made up the Pawlenty campaign have been in discussions with Christie all week and the talks are still ongoing, sources told TheDC. They are reportedly very anxious to have Christie officially place his hat in the ring. At one point, there was discussion of Christie flying to Texas at the beginning of the week; he ultimately nixed that plan.

The sources also said that in the midst of back-and-forth discussions this week, Pawlenty staffers resisted an overture from Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is also rumored to be considering a bid, because they want Christie to run.

Lots of big news in here, if true.  Not only is Christie in talks with staff about jumping in, but also Paul Ryan.  Rove’s prediction looks more and more like it may come true.

AIF/McLaughlin & Associates (R) Florida 2012 Presidential Survey

REPUBLICAN NOMINATION

• Mitt Romney 27%
• Rick Perry 16%
• Michele Bachmann 10%
• Ron Paul 5%
• Newt Gingrich 5%
• Herman Cain 5%
• Jon Huntsman 3%
• Tim Pawlenty 1%
• Rick Santorum 0%
• Other 6%
• Undecided 22%

GENERAL ELECTION

• Mitt Romney 45%
• Barack Obama 44%

• Barack Obama 44%
• Rick Perry 39%

Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate who is endorsed by the Tea Party? If it would make no difference, just say so.

• More likely 26%
• Less likely 43%
• No difference 26%

Do you agree or disagree with the issues and priorities of the Tea Party movement?

• Strongly agree 16%
• Somewhat agree 25%
• Somewhat disagree 9%
• Strongly disagree 37%

Survey of 600 likely voters, including a subsample of 223 likely Republican primary voters, was conducted August 8-9, 2011. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points among all likely voters; +/- 6.6 percentage points among likely GOP primary voters.

–Data compilation and analysis courtesy of The Argo Journal.

The fact that there is no love lost between Governor Rick Perry and the Bushes and especially between Perry and Bush uber-operative Karl Rove is now being widely reported in the political press.  Whether or not you are a fan of Rove and or the Bushes (I am not) or of Governor Perry (I am a neutral), it is important, I think, for everyone to know what’s going on and where this personal and political rivalry might be headed.  One who has a lot of insight on Rove and his close associates is former George W. Bush White House speechwriter Matt Latimer who wrote an interesting book (Speech-Less:  Tales of a White House Survivor) about his years as a Capitol Hill staffer and his years in the George W. Bush administration.  Latimer is out with a web column today discussing his perspective on Rove’s and the Bushes rivalry  with Perry which, it should be emphasized, predates any presidential aspiration of Perry’s.  Here are some highlights of Latimer’s column:

Just because Karl Rove is behind a plot doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t work.  That we’re still talking about the former Bush aide at all is a testament to his singular tenacity.

How has he done it? The man helped elect the Pelosi Congress—it was Rove who in 2006 was in charge of holding on to GOP majorities in the House and Senate. He helped elect Barack Obama—insisting that John McCain was the only “electable” Republican in 2008 and bad-mouthing most of the others running. His indispensable support of his boss’ overspending and government bailouts even helped create the Tea Party, which has bedeviled Rove and other GOP establishment figures ever since.

And yet billionaire donors to the Republican Party seem oblivious to the record, handing Rove big, fat checks to fund his activities further. Perhaps this is because he is charming and witty, has a statistic for every occasion, never stops calling people until he gets what he wants, says all the right things about battling “them liberals,” and wallpapers himself across The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages and Fox News Channel, where his words are rarely challenged.  To his everlasting credit, Rove has truly lived up to his Bush-conferred nickname, “Turdblossom.” He can make any mess he’s involved in still smell sweet.

His brazen and transparent attacks on a leader of his own party, Texas Gov.  Rick Perry, may be the greatest test yet of Rove’s remarkable resilience. Some, in fact, are starting to question if we have at last reached “the moment.” Years from now, will we look back at the 2012 primary season as the time when Rove put on his Fonzie jacket, flashed a thumbs-up sign, and then—finally—jumped the shark? ………….

The origins of the Rove grudge against Perry really matter only to a handful of people. Suffice it to say it stems from some decade-old feud over power and money. And Rove has lassoed the entire Bush family in on it. The former presidents Bush have made it a great point not to comment on the actions of their successors—Clinton and Obama, respectively. They think there is a nobility to staying out of the fray and not making things more difficult for the next commander in chief. Yet the Bushes have shown no compunction about doing just that to a fellow Republican and fellow Texan (though Perry is the only one of them actually born in the state).

While in the White House, Bush 2 and his aides regularly scoffed at Perry for reasons that were never fully clear, making fun of his syntax and intellectual prowess without any sense of irony. In 2010 the Bush family, along with Rove and Karen Hughes, undertook an unprecedented effort to kick him out of the governor’s chair, handing a crowbar to Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom they judged more “electable.” Perry walloped her in the GOP primary, then went on to win a historic third term in the general election by a double-digit margin.  So much for electability.

Whatever the rationale, this is truly a bizarre thing for the Bushies to do.  Openly attacking a legitimate Republican contender used to be considered bad form, especially in the noblesse oblige world of Greenwich and Kennebunkport from which the Bushes actually hail. And it may finally sever the already tenuous link between the Bush era and the conservative base of the GOP.

The Bushes are usually more cautious than this, which means they must feel they have no other choice. A Perry victory would end whatever chokehold the Bushes still have on the GOP establishment. It would cut off many donors to Rove, Inc. Worse yet, Karl Rove and his compatriots simply cannot fathom the idea of having to sit on Fox News for four years defending the policies of the man who dared to cross them.

Perry’s response to all this has been clever and obvious: total silence. He has nothing to gain by stoking an intraparty war. And he need not worry about a bunch of operatives who took the last presidency they managed to a 13 percent approval rating. The former governor may also remember what happened to the Fonz after he jumped that shark. Though the show lingered on for a few more years, it was never quite the same.

Read the entire Latimer column here.

Again, there are various legitimate perspectives on Rove and the net results of the Bush presidency and everyone should come to their own conclusions regarding such; and, the same applies to Governor Perry, his record, and his presidential candidacy.  But, one result of the publicity surrounding this rivalry will be to reduce the possibility of personal attacks on Perry from opaque sources, for if that should occur, many people will think they know the identity of the party behind it.

Politico has a story featuring a quote from Perry adviser Dave Carney, which likely provides a glimpse of what Team Perry’s line of attack will be on Romney’s private sector experience:

Asked about the Romney talking point that he knows “the real economy,” Perry said, “I’m thinking Texas is the real economy.”

Perry’s chief strategist, David Carney, went further, suggesting in an interview that the Perry campaign would try to cast Romney as a heartless hedge fund executive.

“I don’t think the country is looking for somebody to be a buyout specialist,” Carney said.

Read the rest here.

Rick Perry is a good candidate but fair warning – this is the beginning of the vetting process. If you’re a Perry fan you need to set your expectations and steel yourself .

Having gone through this with Mitt in 2008 I can tell you that it can be a distressing experience. I remember at CPAC 2007 getting a heated discussion with prominent pundits about Romney and his record – I was ill-prepared to respond.  It was discouraging but we sauntered on.

Today, as a political consultant, I have come to understand the value of the vetting process – something that has served Romney well.

Vetting is about “clubs,” “skeletons” and “time”.

“Clubs” are mistakes candidates make on their own accord – a bad policy statement or a simple moment of misspeaking. Thus you give you enemies a “club” to beat you with.

Sometimes you have full control over the clubs you dish out and you dole them out on purpose. For example, Romney has indicated that he believes in global warming. A majority of people on the right (myself included) think that global warming is hogwash but there are prominent conservatives who believe it is true. Romney went on to state that our politicians and scientists have mistreated the issue and that their solutions are bogus.

This is something that every candidate will have to deal with. The candidate is basically standing there and has a choice. I can give this club to my opponents or to my base. Romney chose the latter.  Good decision?  We will see.

Other times you make a serious faux pas like Romney’s father in 1969 or even Perry the other day about the Fed chairman. I don’t think Perry’s comments are a deal breaker but it fashioned an early club and he will take some lumps for it.

“Skeletons” are serious misjudgements you’ve made in your life or associations that can lead to something headline worthy. Prostitutes, DUIs, Rezko, Jennifer Flowers, etc… You can’t always choose your friends and you certainly can’t predict the 6 degrees of separation game that the press will play.

“Time” is the other factor. The biggest issue that Romney faced in 2008 was abortion. A video is released of pro-choice Romney from 1996.  Within hours he dealt with it and in a proactive way. 4 years later the issue is essentially water under the bridge.

Notice, the one issue that is shadowing Mitt this time around is Healthcare – an issue that wasn’t fully vetted (and vented) in ’08.

Bottom line: Perry has yet to be vetted on the national stage. His candidacy helps Romney in 3 ways:

1) Romney biggest threat was having to defend the top of the totem poll for the next 8 months. Now – he’s the challenger. Perry has likely hit his high mark (or close to it). Perry is not king of the mountain and has to act that way or fail. Look back to 2008:

• Spring 2007 – Rudy the frontrunner.  Falls shortly thereafter when his liberal stances are made public
• Summer 2007 – Thompson takes the lead.  Falls after his lackluster campaigning skills are made evident.
• Fall 2008 – Romney takes the lead.  Perhaps too soon.  He falls when fresh-faced Huckabee enters the race
• Winter 2008 – Huckabee wins the Iowa Caucus. Romney bows out. McCain comes in with more prowess and organization and takes the lead.

2) Expectations are incredibly high for Rick Perry.  The #littleknownfactsaboutRickPerry meme is well underway and he has yet to be vetted in any serious forum.  When you hit your high water mark at the beginning of your campaign you have nowhere to go but down.

3) Time is not on Perry’s side.  Romney has had 4+ years to weather the criticisms.  Romney still has plenty of rough edges to deal with but there are no surprises.  We know his strengths and we know his weaknesses.  For all the praise that Perry deserves (and he deserves plenty) he has to go through the gauntlet like all candidates.

Perry has taken away the one challenge that Romney had yet to overcome – positioning.  My prediction: Perry will do well the rest of the year but by early Fall the errors, gaffes, and foibles (which all politicians have) will come to light.  He may yet weather it well but in the end Romney is well positioned to swoop in and finish the race.

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Please visit Justin’s blog, “I Hart Politics” and follow him on Twitter.

We Ask America (R) Iowa 2012 Republican Caucus Survey

• Rick Perry 29%
• Michele Bachmann 17%
• Mitt Romney 15% (13%)
• Ron Paul 8% (5%)
• Sarah Palin 7% (14%)
• Herman Cain 5%
• Newt Gingrich 5% (14%)
• Rick Santorum 4%
• Jon Huntsman 1%
• None of these 9%

(more…)

This week’s update features our first dropout (Pawlenty), and the appearance of a new face (Ryan). As with last week, the race is still in a state of flux at the moment, and Rick Perry’s numbers are all over the map. He peaked above 40 and has been on a roller coaster ride of ups and downs all last week, as investors are still attempting to discern just how powerful his candidacy will be. At the moment, however, here is the latest state of the race (as always, change is from the last update one week ago):

Only candidates who have announced an official candidacy or who have greater than a 3% chance at the nomination are included.

Probolsky Research (R) California 2012 GOP Primary Poll

• Mitt Romney 22.2%
• Rick Perry 15.0%
• Sarah Palin 10.2%
• Michele Bachmann 8.5%
• Herman Cain 4.8%
• Newt Gingrich 4.8%
• Ron Paul 4.8%
• Jon Huntsman 1.0%
• Rick Santorum 0.7%
• Fred Karger 0.0%
• Gary Johnson 0.0%
• Someone else 2.0%
• Refused 4.8%
• Unsure 21.2%

Survey of 293 likely GOP primary voters was conducted August 10-15, 2011. The margin of error is +/- 5.7 percentage points.

–Data compilation and analysis courtesy of The Argo Journal.

PPP (D) Wisconsin 2012 GOP Primary Survey

• Michele Bachmann 20% (11%)
• Rick Perry 20%
• Mitt Romney 13% (17%) {12%} [17%] (12%)
• Sarah Palin 11% (16%) {15%} [21%] (18%)
• Herman Cain 7% (10%)
• Ron Paul 6% (10%) {5%} [4%]
• Newt Gingrich 6% (10%) {15%} [13%] (14%)
• Tim Pawlenty 3% (12%) {10%} [10%] (8%)
• Jon Huntsman 1% (2%)
• Someone else/Undecided 12% (14%) {17%} [12%] (28%)

(more…)

Just to get it out of the way, I intended no pun with my title.

Today, James Pethokoukis wrote a nice article comparing the unemployment rate in Texas to the national average, while adjusting for context:

The Texas labor force participation rate was 65.6 percent in June, higher than the national average. That means there were more folks active seeking work, a reflection of the more positive job environment.

…So let’s do an apples-apples comparison. What if the national labor force participation rate was as high as that in Texas? Well, the national U-3 unemployment rate [which doesn't count discouraged workers] would have been 11.3 percent in June, sharply higher than the 8.2 percent rate in Texas. And what if the Texas labor force participation rate had been as low as the national rate? Under that scenario, the Texas unemployment rate would have been 6.1 percent, also dramatically better. So either way you cut, the unemployment rate is much better in Texas than the national average.

This surely bolsters Perry’s argument on jobs. Of course, this does not consider the wages or benefits associated with these jobs. Still, it shows that the Governor has a legitimate case that Texas features both better conditions for growth and a more vibrant overall economy.

While Perry’s cultural cues will in all likelihood cost him primary support among low-information voters who base their decisions largely on initial impressions and superficial contrasts between the candidates, he could still, in a dose of irony, gain some votes from them, for a different reason.

It’s only a matter of time until Perry begins comparing his jobs record to Mitt Romney’s. Just think about it: Perry will state that 40% of the jobs created in America came in Texas and then conveniently follow it up by noting that Massachusetts fell to 47th in the nation in job growth under Romney’s watch.

Mitt and his supporters will then try to refute the argument by invoking statistical logic and screaming that the numbers lack context, but to a good number of voters – the aforementioned low-information variety – it will not matter much; the claim itself will have more of an impact.

A few weeks ago, I suggested that the seemingly imminent Perry presidential run would send the GOP establishment, and the Bushes in particular, scrambling for a new presidential candidate, given that Perry had the real possibility of rising to the top of the field very rapidly. Here’s what I predicted at the time:

Should Perry enter the race and skyrocket to the top of the field, the GOP establishmentarians who see the Texan as a personal or political threat will have two options. They can either throw everything behind Romney, helping Mitt to prevent the Perry insurgency, or they can get behind the candidate that they’ve really wanted all along, Jeb Bush. A Romney push is probably more likely than a Jeb late entry, though it is not outside of the realm of possibility that Romney will simply collapse once a fully operational Perry campaign unites all of the disparate groups waiting for another Reagan to ride in on a white horse and save the day.

It turns out I had the general scenario right, but I was a bit off when it came to the new establishment candidate to replace Mitt Romney:

Another prominent conservative reformer, Jeb Bush, also thinks Ryan should run.
“Paul Ryan would be a formidable candidate. I admire his substance and energy. Win or lose, he would force the race to be about sustained, job-creating economic growth and the real policies that can achieve it.”

Ryan has been receiving encouragement from his colleagues in the House for months. California congressman Devin Nunes, who has worked extensively with Ryan on entitlement reform and spending issues, has been pushing Ryan for months. So has John Boehner, according to two sources familiar with their conversations. Boehner has praised Ryan as a “natural candidate” to fellow House Republicans.

Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a leading conservative in the House and head of the Republican Study Committee, is also bullish on a possible Ryan bid. “He’d certainly be an asset to the race. When Paul talks about Cut, Cap, and Balance as a key to solving America’s debt problem, people get it.”

Ryan is in Colorado vacationing with his family this week. Three sources close to Ryan tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD that his wife, Jana, is “on board” with a presidential bid. “That is a very big deal,” says one Ryan confidant. “Not that she’s enthusiastic, but she understands and she’s with him on it.”

It appears that Rep. Paul Ryan is poised to become the candidate who will be drafted to save the nation from a battle of the cultural cues between Perry and Obama. A Perry/Obama race would be the stuff that dreams are made of for America’s aging, divided Boomer population, stuck perpetually in the 1960s, with each side still demanding validation that it was on the correct side of the cultural revolution. What better race for this narcisstic generation than one between two caricatures of what it means to be either a “red” or “blue” American. Yet for everyone else, and particularly for Millennials, such a race would be a vacuous and vapid affair that would revolve around the identity politics of 60-year-olds instead of the economic and geopolitical challenges that are actually facing our nation as a whole.

A Ryan nomination, though, means that Republicans will have a real shot at moving the ball forward with a candidate who is about ideas and not identity. Ryan v. Obama would pit Generation X against the tail end of the Baby Boom. It wouldn’t be a race in which Americans vote for someone “like them” in order to feel good about themselves, extending the cult of self-esteem to the highest office in the land, but would instead be one in which Americans are asked to vote for the superior set of ideas and policies. A novel concept in today’s era of bread and circuses to be sure.

NH Journal/Magellan Strategies (R) New Hampshire 2012 GOP Primary

If the 2012 Republican presidential primary election was being held today, for whom would you vote if the candidates were Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry or some other candidate?

• Mitt Romney 36% {42%} [39%] (40%)
• Rick Perry 18%
• Ron Paul 14% {10%} [7%] (6%)
• Michele Bachmann 10% {10%}
• Herman Cain 3% {4%}
• Jon Huntsman 3% {3%}
• Newt Gingrich 2% {3%} [8%] (16%)
• Rick Santorum 1% {2%} [3%] (2%)
• Some other candidate 3%
• Undecided 10% {8%} [8%] (6%)

(more…)

Texas Governor Rick Perry is allegedly now a serious threat to the nomination of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for president. In fact, if you believe the polls (which are routinely and notoriously inaccurate at this stage of a presidential campaign), he is actually ahead of Romney and everyone else. (It may be remembered that Ross Perot lead both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in polls in 1992…..) But if the public statements of just-announced candidate Perry are any indication of his prospects, he just might be a fast national fade.

As a southern governor, Mr. Perry was originally thought of as a threat to Mr. Romney, especially in the South, but a closer look reveals his candidacy actually HELPS Mr. Romney at this point because both Mr. Perry and Michele Bachmann compete for the same kind of conservative voter. If you split the conservative base of the GOP, Mr. Romney easily comes out ahead.

George W. Bush was a true Texan and the state’s governor, but has little resemblance to his successor in Austin. Mr. Perry may be a charming “redneck” and votegetter in Texas, but I would speculate at this point that his national poll numbers are greatly exaggerated, and that they may go down soon enough.

Republican voters are unsettled at this point, primarily because their presidential frontrunner, Mr. Romney has not really begun to campaign, and there is some uncertainly about his ostensible political vulnerabilities, e.g. his Mormonism and his support for mandates healthcare in Massachusetts when he was governor of that state. My sense of the Romney campaign so far, however, is that it is strategically right on the mark, avoiding the Iowa Straw Poll, eschewing criticism of his GOP rivals, sidestepping controversy, and concentrating on fundraising, organizing in all states, and a withering and relentless critique of President Obama. Mr. Romney does not have the Republican nomination locked up, but he seems to be getting stronger as time goes by, and now with Tim Pawlenty’s withdrawal, is the only major Republican candidate with broad appeal for the critical November segment of the 2012 election. (Unless one considers Newt Gingrich’s stubborn remaining in the campaign has the potential for a comeback.)

If Mr. Perry and his political entourage think his redneck schtick will have appeal outside the South, especially with Mrs. Bachmann so prominently in the race, I think he and they will be disappointed soon enough.

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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.

Perry will join House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as co-chairs of the the public-interest law and policy group’s 40th anniversary gala in Washington, D.C. in November. Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann will also serve as an honorary host of the event, along with 78 other members of Congress. AUL was formed in 1971–a year before the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in every state.

As governor of Texas, Perry has signed several bills into law related to abortion, earning him praise from conservatives and scorn from pro-abortion rights groups.

In May, Perry signed a Texas bill into law requiring that all women seeking abortions receive a sonogram before the procedure. The law mandates that doctors offer to show the images to the woman, describe the size of the fetus’ limbs and organs, and allow her to hear and feel the heartbeat. Women who live within 100 miles of an abortion provider must then wait 24 hours after the sonogram to undergo the procedure. The law exempted women seeking abortions for rape or incest…Largely due to Perry’s efforts since he moved into the governor’s mansion in 2000, AUL rated Texas in the top five states in its latest annual state-by-state report card.

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-Matt Newman is a conservative blogger from Maryland who blogs at Old Line Elephant / Pundit League and Tweets far too often.

From Jonathan Alter:

My sources say NJ Gov. Chris Christie is conducting focus groups in preparation for a possible run for president in 2012.

I guess Rove wasn’t kidding about Christie and Ryan.

CHS & Associates 2012 Oklahoma Republican Primary Poll

• Rick Perry 22%
• Mitt Romney 17%
• Michele Bachmann 8%
• Herman Cain 6%
• Newt Gingrich 5%
• Ron Paul 3%
• John Huntsman 2%
• Undecided (vol.) 33%

As you may be aware, in the past, some states have run candidates known as favorite sons for President. If either (Rotate) JC Watts or Tom Coburn ran for President as an Oklahoma favorite son, would you vote for (Rotate) one of these two candidates or one of those running nationwide?

• Would vote for Watts or Coburn 58%
• Would vote for national candidate 23%
• Undecided (vol.) 18%

The survey, conducted August 9-11, 2011 was the Republican portion of a 500-sample survey of voters statewide. Subscribers to Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates’ publication The Sooner Survey will get the results of the full survey. The Republican sub-sample has a margin of error is +/- 6.7%.

Hat-tip: Muskogee Politico

Does every competent politician need to run for President? Is being President the only political office in the United States that matters? It’s a question that, as the constant flailing about for the next great savior of the Republican part y continues, is worth asking. It seems as though, the minute any Republican politician shows a pulse and a modicum of competence, a clammer begins for him/her to run for President in 2012, 2016 or 2020. Undeniably, the presidency is the “brass ring” of politics, the highest prize one can attain, a position of incredible power and awesome responsibility. So it’s not particularly difficult to understand why ambitious politicians would jockey for it.

But, ought we to encourage the presidential obsession? There’s a very specific skill-set the job requires. The President is both head of state and commander in chief, a position designed, constitutionally, to be dominant in times of crisis, and subordinate to the legislature most of the rest of the time. Indeed, it’s no accident that the period between the presidencies of Jackson and Lincoln saw a host of virtual non-entities occupy the White House, while the politics of the day was dominated by men like Webster, Clay and Calhoun, congressmen and senators all. Of course, this isn’t 1840 (and as a blind person typing this out on a desktop computer, thank God for that!), and the country and government have changed and grown in ways which make the presidency of much greater permanent importance. Yet the fact remains that it is congress–not the President–which proposes budgets, declares wars and, in the case of the senate, ratifies treaties. In addition, the vast majority of decisions which shape the lives of everyday Americans are made by state legislators and governors, including, as 2011 has clearly demonstrated, the ability to reshape congressional districts. Legislators, at the state or federal level, have very specific skill-sets. To be a good legislator is to, first, have the ability to craft good legislation, and second, shepherd it through the mass of colleagues eager to change it to their benefits. There’s a balancing act between the interests of one’s constituents and the nation as a whole, designed into our legislative system, that a congressmen or senator has to negotiate carefully. Contrast this with the President. He or she has no specific constituency, and no real colleagues. Decisions are not made by committee, but by one individual. And while congress often has a long decision time, Presidents must make snap decisions with insufficient information.

So, clearly, the skill-set for a legislator is different than that a President must have. A highly talented legislator may make the jump to the executive successfully, but then again, he or she may not. And, more importantly, it’s worth asking whether we should really want them to do so. Take, for example, Paul Ryan. By almost any standard, Ryan is an accomplished and effective legislator, who has honed the skills he needs to thrive in congress. Wouldn’t a Ryan run be a disservice not only to him, personally, as building the kind of organization he would need this late will be difficult, but more importantly, to congress? We need smart, savvy and accomplished legislators, particularly if our eventual nominee loses to Obama. Can we really afford to lose Ryan in congress, where he is at or near the top of his game? And, let’s say Ryan never leaves congress, but spends the rest of his political career changing the way the United States budgets. Remember, all monetary bills come from the house. Can we say that Ryan was somehow a failure because he was never President, even if, for example, he becomes speaker one day?

It’s easy to focus on Presidents. As head of state, what they do is visible, and the presidency carries with it the biggest megaphone in the world. But the idea that any politician worth his or her salt ought to run for President is stupid. We need some brilliant, energetic, talented people in the house, the senate, and the fifty governorships, at least as much as we need such a person in the White House. And if some of them never end up making it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so be it.

PPP (D) Vermont 2012 Presidential Survey

• Barack Obama 54%
• Mitt Romney 34%

• Barack Obama 58%
• Michele Bachmann 30%

• Barack Obama 57%
• Rick Perry 28%

• Barack Obama 58%
• Herman Cain 26%

• Barack Obama 62%
• Sarah Palin 28%

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Herman Cain 13% / 30% {-17%}
• Mitt Romney 31% / 49% {-18%}
• Rick Perry 14% / 34% {-20%}
• Michele Bachmann 23% / 55% {-32%}
• Sarah Palin 25% / 66% {-41%}

Do you approve or disapprove of President Barack Obama’s job performance?

• Approve 53%
• Disapprove 40%

Survey of 1,233 Vermont voters was conducted July 28-31, 2011. The margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points. Party ID breakdown: 37% Democrat; 24% Republican; 40% Independent/Other. Political ideology: 30% Moderate; 25% Somewhat liberal; 20% Somewhat conservative; 15% Very liberal; 9% Very conservative.

–Data compilation and analysis courtesy of The Argo Journal.

The stereotype of Rick Perry pushed by his detractors before he launched his campaign last Saturday was essentially that he was an unintelligent country hick with a brash cowboy persona.

And so far, Perry seems hellbent on proving those stereotypes correct.

Perry is certainly striving for the harshest rhetoric award, beginning by suggesting to Iowans Monday night that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would get roughed up if he was in Texas:

“Oh, the – I – The Federal Reserve. Um, I – I’ll take a pass on the Federal Reserve right at the moment, to be real honest with you. Um, I know there’s a lot of talk and what have you, uh, about ‘em. If – if this guy prints more money, uh, between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.

Stay classy, Rick.

He then added this soon-to-be infamous parting shot:

Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in history is almost treacherous – er, treasonous in my opinion.”

Treason? Surely that was simply an off-the-cuff rhetorical flair, and Perry didn’t really mean to suggest the chairman of the Federal Reserve was bordering on a capital offense, right? Wrong:

Twelve hours removed from a controversy about his suggestion that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was engaging in “treasonous” behavior Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign didn’t try to walk back the remark. In fact, they doubled down on it.

“I am passionate about the issue but I stand by what I said,” Perry told reporters in Iowa today.

So In Perryland, threatening to rough up a Federal Reserve Chairman, then charging him with treason — and saying you meant it — is above board. Riiiight. Oh, and the video is even more painful to watch:

It’s not too often you will see Barack Obama and former Bush administration officials on the same side of a hot issue, but Rick Perry has managed to unite them with these ridiculous comments:

The White House:
President Obama and we take the independence of the Federal Reserve very seriously and certainly think threatening the Fed chairman is probably not a good idea.”

Former Bush officials:
Karl Rove- “You don’t accuse the chairman of the federal reserve of being a traitor to his country and being guilty of treason and suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas — that’s not, again, a presidential statement … Governor Perry is going to have to fight the impression that he’s a cowboy from Texas. This simply added to it.”

Pete Wehner: “People shouldn’t throw around the words “almost treasonous” loosely; and certainly a person running for president shouldn’t do such a thing… In the long catalogue of crimes an individual can commit, there are not many that are worse than treason … [W]hat the Texas governor said about the Federal Reserve chairman is the kind of blustering, unthinking comment that Perry’s critics expect of him. Why he would play to stereotype is hard to fathom.”

Tony Fratto: “Gov. Perry’s comments about Chmn. Bernanke are inappropriate and unpresidential.”

Well, if he is brash, at least Perry hasn’t said anything to reinforce the idea that he’s an unintelligent fellow who barely made it through state college. Oh, wait:

Rick Perry, on his first day of extended Iowa campaigning, foreshadowed his coming assault Monday against Mitt Romney and swiped back at the former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist’s suggestion that others in the GOP race don’t understand the economy…

“It’s being able to work with your legislature to get the right tax and regulatory and legal system in place — and we done that in Texas,” Perry said of how he created jobs in his decade-long tenure as governor. (emphasis mine)

“We done that in Texas?” Honestly?

Perry also managed to put his… erm, Presidential… demeanor on stage when discussing a so-called “tractor rule” in Iowa. According to Perry, the federal government was being “idiotic” in making farmers driving tractors on public roads get commercial licenses for them.

Only problem is, the federal government isn’t doing that. Shoot first, call people idiots, and ask questions later, I guess.

The Des Moines Register asked the federal Department of Transportation and discovered that Perry was incorrect. When they approached Perry and asked him about the DOT response, Perry responded with graciousness and kindness for bringing it to his attention.

Just kidding. What he really said was this:

Asked by the Register on Monday evening about what DOT officials had said, Perry asked, “Was this Snopes.com?” referring to the myth-busting website. “Is that where we look this one up?”

Ha! Seriously, who needs facts when you have a caustic sense of humor like that?

Well, surely with a few incidents like these under his belt now, nobody is really taking this guy seriously, right? I mean, the Huntsman campaign got a ton of flack for putting an “H” in their candidate’s first name. Surely these sorts of blunders made by Perry will turn off primary voters.

What’s that? 29% of Republican primary voters want Rick Perry to be our nominee, making him the new frontrunner in the race by double digits?

Rick Perry has had three days to campaign so far, and on all three days he has somehow managed to reinforce all the negative stereotypes people had about him. These daily incidents are undoubtedly reminding swing voters of a caricature of everything they hated about George W. Bush.

Up until now, Rick Perry has benefited from being a blank slate onto which dissatisfied conservatives could project their hopes and aspirations. Now that Perry is actually campaigning, we’ll see if Republican primary voters still flock to him.

Ed Morrissey warns that if we nominate a Congressman, we risk losing a powerful argument against President Obama:

The fumbles of Obama will allow Republicans to argue that his failed presidency results in part from his inability to handle executive power, but we can’t make that argument at the same time that we’re offering a candidate who has never held executive office in any context at all.

The argument from executive experience is so invaluable. Look at how well it worked last time! Beyond that, consider this fact. If Obama’s early fumbles were caused by a lack of executive experience, guess what? He has now plenty of executive experience. If voters bought into this level of argument (and I don’t think they do), it’d be easy to think, “Now that Obama has executive experience, everything will be okay. We had to put up with his fumbles, why shouldn’t we get the benefits now that he’s got the experience. ”

President Obama will also have the most relevant executive experience in the race next year. Other than the Vice-Presidency, there is no job that can fully prepare you for the awesome responsibilities that come with being President.  If I were only going to vote according to executive experience, I’d vote for Obama next year, because no one else can beat him on that  point.

In a way, this argument is kind of like fighting the last war, where we failed to convince voters that a former back-bench State Senator with national experience limited to running for President, we want to refight that battle. That ship has sailed.

What’s wrong with Obama is not a lack of executive experience. Obama could have spent 4 terms as Governor of Illinois and if elected President, he’d be governing exactly the same. It is a problem of temperment, it is a problem of ideology.

There’s something to the concern about executive experience from a practical standpoint. However, if Republicans think they’re going to persuade Americans to abandon Obama on the basis of executive experience, they’ll be surprised if that’s all we bring.

Sunday morning religion wasn’t limited to churches this past week. NBC’s David Gregory spent the last third of his interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann asking about her personal views on such issues as God’s guidance, her interpretation of biblical passages on husband-wife relations, and her personal views on homosexuality.

Bachmann isn’t the only candidate with religious views that have come under media fire. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has been under constant media fire. Jacob Weisberg of Slate has suggested Romney’s Mormonism should disqualify him as have some fringe evangelicals. Governor Rick Perry’s religious faith has been similarly under scrutiny.

Some have argued that if there is to be any overt religious involvement in politics, then all religious points are fair game, even if dealing with obscure credal issues or statements made in religious non-political events. Not only does this lead to focusing on issues that have nothing to do with governing, but it also encourages prejudice against people of faith running for public office. While Americans still believe in God, there is widespread ignorance around the particulars of religion. This ignorance makes it possible to turn a benign belief into something to fear or ridicule.

Religion has been part of American politics since the founding era. Yet, it hasn’t been the source of political contention that it is today. In fact, it helped unite Americans during the Revolutionary War. This wasn’t because Americans all agreed on religion. While America was not as diverse religiously as it is today, there were nearly a dozen religious backgrounds among the Founding Fathers, including groups such as Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, and Episcopalians: groups that had been at odds in the old world.

If the political discussion of God focused on inter-religious snark about the Catholic view of the Eucharist, the Calvinist belief in predestination, or the Quakers quiet sitting services, the result would have been such interreligious loathing that there would be no hope of accomplishing a revolution. Instead, the religious political dialogue of the Founding Fathers focused on three key points about God that helped unite Americans and give them the strength to fight the world’s most successful revolution.

Perhaps, we should take a page from their book.  Rather that looking into the minutiae of a candidate’s personal beliefs, we’d be well-advised to focus any discussion of religion on the candidate’s views on these same points.

1) God is the source of our rights

When the Declaration of Independence states that it is self-evident that we “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it declares God, rather than the state or the king is the source of rights.

The issue of rights being “God-given” is something that you will hear from conservatives quite a bit. It defines nearly every major debate, whether you’re talking about abortion, religious freedom, the second Amendment, economic policy, and personal liberty, the idea that drives many on the right is that the state cannot legitimately step over these boundaries.

Liberals prefer to view rights as more elastic. In a 2000 debate, Professor Alan Dershowitz rejected the idea of natural law, stating, “Rights are not self-evident. They’re not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.”  This view is consistent with the left’s belief in a living constitution that ends in the creation of new rights and the curtailment of old ones to fit the courts view of how society is changing.

This is a crucial issue that every candidate needs to address and their actions need to back up their words.

2) God Governs in Human Affairs

Benjamin Franklin, a deist, in pleading for prayers to be offered before meetings of the Constitutional Convention declared this at the Constitutional Convention in calling for prayer. The founders often spoke of Divine providence which in Washington’s words, “wisely orders the affairs of men.”  The Founders believed that God was at work in the world.

This is why they believed in prayer. It was not an exercise in showing religiosity to curry political, but they did so out of a genuine sense that God was active and willing to guide those who asked for his help. At the Constitutional Convention, they had studied the failures of every well-intentioned effort to set up free governments, leading Franklin to quote scripture in declaring, that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.”

These ideas gave the founders a sense of humility. It made them understand the limitation of their own wisdom to make rules for the lives of others, and is at the core of why self-government is so important in our system of government.

3) God is Just

The founders didn’t believe that God was neutral in human affairs. They believed that he stood on the side of justice. Even the irreligious Thomas Paine wrote, “I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.  “

However God’s justice was a two-edged sword and many founders realized that there would be consequences if America acted unjustly. On slavery, Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Lincoln later acknowledged the Civil War as part of God’s justice in his second inaugural, quoting scripture to declare, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

A belief in a just God should cause leaders to be just themselves in the way they treat others and to ensure justice is done, knowing that they will called to give an account.

Beyond these simple but profound truths, their remains a whole universe of religious issues that while very important in a theological sense, have no relevance to the public sphere. While it may matter a great deal what a church believes regarding worship styles or if they believe in dietary restrictions, these questions have little relevance to public policy.

And citizens shouldn’t expect answers. It is irrelevant whether a candidate believes you are living in sin, or doesn’t believe that you will enter Heaven, as long as they don’t believe in using government to force you to go to Heaven. It is only the mind of an insecure person that looks to politicians to answer on these sort of issues. For example, what Mitt Romney thinks will happen to me in the afterlife is completely irrelevant as he has no vote on it.

Let’s debate other issues of religious import within the appropriate forums, but when it comes to our nation’s political life, let’s stick to basics that made our nation free.

With today’s Rasmussen poll showing Texas Gov. Rick Perry beginning to run away with the race for the White House, and with most other polls showing Perry tied with Romney (and sometimes Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin) among GOP voters in various states, things are starting to look dire for Republicans who believe that it will take more than gusto to beat Barack Obama. As our own Chris Lars often says in his excellent posts, in order to unseat an incumbent president, the challenger must win at least some of the voters who cast ballots for that incumbent in the previous election. Whatever one’s opinion of Gov. Mitt Romney happens to be, the reality is that Romney is just the sort of culturally-neutral, post-ideological candidate who could win the sorts of swing voters who voted for Obama in 2008 but who no longer approve of the president’s job performance.

Gov. Perry, on the other hand, will be a harder sell to the broader electorate. He’s as far removed culturally from Main Street suburban America as John Kerry was from rural America. Just as the light red exurbs rejected Kerry on the grounds that this guy just isn’t “like me,” so will light blue suburban voters react to the pistol-toting Texas governor in a similar manner. Additionally, Perry seems intent on running not just a campaign filled with deep red cultural cues, but also one based on a big picture ideology that leaves out details that swing voters will want to hear. Perry has a record of job growth in Texas, but his campaign seems to be based not on policies or ideas but on the primal scream that the conservative base demands to hear. Perry is quickly supplanting Michele Bachmann as the candidate of the base, and is occupying the space once reserved for Sarah Palin.

As such, we are now faced with a field where Mitt Romney is the candidate of Republicans who want a candidate who comes to the table with ideas and policy proposals, and who displays a wide array of geographic and demographic appeal. But what if Romney is bested by the Texas juggernaut? I said several weeks ago that if Perry delivered a total knock out to Mitt Romney early enough in the game, such an event would likely convince one of the candidates who had previously bowed out to reconsider. But who will this white knight be? Ryan? Christie? Have at it in the comments.

Stephen Hayes’ article provoked a great deal of reaction, some encouraging, some not.  I thought I’d take a look at some of the arguments made against a Ryan run.  First, to James Antle’s post:

First, the field is already full and he has no obvious path to the nomination. Would he automatically leap to frontrunner status in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina?

As others have pointed out, through early December of ’07, there were 5 plausible Republican nominees: John McCain, Rudy Guiliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee.  At one point, all 5 candidates were in the teens or better (Rudy was above 20 in every poll until January).  The Democratic race devolved pretty quickly into a 3-person (and then 2-person) contest, but the Republican field- widely regarded as more flawed- was quite fluid for most of ’07.  Looking at Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney, it’s hard for me to see that any of them are obviously stronger candidates than the ’08 front-runners, and none are nearly so strong as Hillary and Obama, who were practically mirror images of each other ideologically and fit squarely into the center of their party.  At this point in ’07, Clinton was in the low 40s, Obama in the low 20s, and John Edwards in the teens.  Again, comparatively, this race looks much more like the ’08 Republican contest, with its weak and problematic front-runners, than like the Democratic contest with its few strong horses.  There’s still room for almost anyone with a national profile (Rudy, Ryan, Christie, Palin). Antle continues:

Fairly or not, a failed Ryan campaign would, like the NY-26 race, be used to discredit entitlement reform and could well make a Republican president less likely to touch the third rail.

This seems strange and wrong to me.  In a primary, it’s relatively hard to imagine any of the big 3 using Ryan’s entitlement reform position against him.  Bachmann and Perry have both staked out positions, ostensibly, to Ryan’s right on entitlement reform, and Romney- with already tenuous conservative support- would be hard-pressed to attack anyone from the left.  Nor are the third-tier candidates (assuming they didn’t immediately drop out upon Ryan’s entry) likely to make up much ground on the issue.  Santorum is a staunch supporter of the Ryan plan, and has actually suggested we begin something similar for current retirees.  Huntsman entered the race in the wake of Newt’s bungling opposition to the Ryan plan, and was the first candidate to go on record in favor of it.  And Newt himself, after his ignominous walkbacks, is likely to avoid the issue entirely.  If Ryan loses the primary, it’ll be difficult to blame his position on entitlement reform.  Antle then makes a strange argument that Ryan is actually too liberal to win the nomination:

Second, Ryan’s credibility as a fiscal conservative will be tarnished. He voted for TARP. He not only voted for but was instrumental in passing Medicare Part D. He uses Medicare Part D as an example of how to bring health care costs down (I don’t actually disagree with him on this point, even though I opposed Medicare Part D, but the finer distinctions will be lost in the political debate). He has been an advocate for spending agreements that have been criticized by Tea Party activists and supported a debt deal the entire GOP field save Jon Huntsman opposed. He is running against Republicans — Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann , Ron Paul — who will not hesitate to point all of this out.

This is a fair point but an odd one.  It essentially relies on the assumption that conservatives are generally ignorant of these Ryan positions.  This may be true of the 30-40% of Americans who only heard of Ryan in the wake of the budget debate but I don’t think it’s true of the broader activist class.  I’ve seen Ryan discuss these heresies with Sean Hannity and other conservative stalwarts- they’re rehashed continually on sites like Hotair.  And yet month after month, Ryan comes second to only Palin in favorability at Hotair’s survey.  The broader Republican electorate, less doctrinaire and less engaged, is likely to be at least as forgiving.  Finally, Antle writes:

All these problems could get worse if he somehow wins the nomination. Obama will point out that Ryan had a hand in all the major unfunded spending of the Bush administration, blurring the distinction between Ryan’s fiscal responsibility and the president’s own budget-busting. He will demagogue Medicare ceaselessly.

It seems to me that there are two ways to think of “radicalism”.  On one hand, maybe voters are deep policy thinkers who have actual concrete preferences and, when a candidate deviates significantly from those preferences, they’re considered radical.  In this view, Ryan’s in trouble because voters want Medicare more or less left alone, and Ryan’s the foremost advocate of changing it.  But there’s another way of looking at radicalism.  Maybe voters aren’t deep policy thinkers and they figure out what is radical by looking at what everyone else is saying.  In this view, Ryan struggled because everyone had spent 30 years pretty much tip-toeing around Medicare and, compared to that baseline, Ryan seemed outside of the mainstream.

If the first vision is right, a Ryan run is obviously a bad idea.  If the second is more accurate, a Ryan run has arguably become more, not less, plausible over the last few months.  Imagine that, in early May, Ryan had heeded the call and entered the race.  Probably Bachmann and Cain never go anywhere and Perry’s never drafted.  In that sort of race, maybe Donald Trump actually jumps in and hits Ryan from the left.  Maybe Romney, with some room on his right, throws a few light jabs.  Ryan is on the clear right pole of the primary.  It’s relatively easy to imagine demagogery from the left succeeding.

Now imagine that he gets in next week.  After Bachmann has voted against even Cut, Cap, and Balance and has effectively endorsed cutting 40% of the federal government tomorrow.  After Perry- who has proposed optional social security and a state-run Medicare program- has jumped to the front of the pack.  In this sort of race, Ryan is clearly NOT a radical candidate: in fact, compared to Bachmann and Perry he looks downright measured, even-tempered, and pragmatic.

And I would argue that this second view- where voters decide what is radical and what is not, relative to what other politicians are saying and doing- is clearly closer to reality.  Look at Mitt Romney.  In ’08, his voting coalition was heavily comprised of conservative voters.  In New Hampshire, he won 38% of conservatives, 27% of moderates, and 15% of liberals (McCain won 30%, 44%, and 45% respectively).   He could easily win NH this time, while doing worse with conservative voters.  Despite the fact that he has made no substantive moves to the left.  Because relative to the rest of the Republican field, he looks like a moderate.

Look at the debt ceiling deal.  John Boehner came in asking for 1 dollar in cuts for 1 dollar in debt ceiling increase, and no tax increases.  Obama came in asking for a clean debt-ceiling bill.  Obama eventually moved, calling for a grand bargain which included, initially, a 3 to 1 cut to tax increase ratio.  This then went to 5 to 1.  Eventually, he caved entirely, giving Boehner everything he initially asked for.  And yet, the end deal came off looking “moderate”.  Why?  Because vocal tea-partiers had called for NO increase to the debt ceiling.  Relative to that, Boehner’s deal was moderate.

Look at Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey, Republicans who were extremely conservative substantively.  But compared to Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, they seemed like thoughtful pragmatists.

The economy is awful.  Our debt has been downgraded.  Democrats are going to have a difficult time convincing voters every Republican is crazy and reckless and irresponsible.  Voters encountering Ryan and his ideas for the first time are likely going to compare him to the tea-partiers they’ve been exposed to over the last year.  And they won’t see a “terrorist” or a “wild-eyed” firebrand.  They’ll see a thoughtful, amiable, young man with ideas every other Republican seems to more or less embrace.  The tea-party will have made Ryan, and Ryan’s ideas, viable nationally.  They’ll be an obvious and useful foil.

Politico has provided an informational write-up of the well-publicized campaign event that featured Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann this past Sunday:

Rick Perry came to Michele Bachmann’s hometown Sunday evening and schooled the newly minted Iowa front-runner in her native state’s demanding retail political culture.

…the contrast that may lift Perry and undermine Bachmann in their high stakes battle for Iowa had less to do with what they said than how they said it — and what they did before and after speaking.

Perry arrived early, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The Texas governor let a media throng grow and dissolve before working his way across the room to sit at table after table, shake hand after hand, pose for photographs and listen politely to a windy Abraham Lincoln impersonator, paying respect to a state that expects candidates, no matter their fame, to be accessible.

But Bachmann campaigned like a celebrity. And the event highlighted the brittle, presidential-style cocoon that has become her campaign’s signature: a routine of late entries, unexplained absences, quick exits, sharp-elbowed handlers with matching lapel pins, and pre-selected questioners.

She camped out in her bus, parked on the street in front of a nearby Ramada Hotel, until it was time to take the stage. Even after a local official’s introduction, Bachmann was nowhere to be found. It was not until a second staffer assured her that the lighting had been changed and a second introduction piped over the loudspeakers that she entered the former dance hall here. By the time she made her big entrance to bright lights and blaring music, the crowd seemed puzzled.

…In fact, Bachmann never went table to table to greet the roughly 300 local Republicans who came to see her, and seemed to go out of her way to avoid being drawn into the crowd. She also didn’t acknowledge Perry, who sat smiling and occasionally applauding through her speech.

Perry, in contrast, didn’t have to explain to anyone that he knows how to campaign in Iowa.

Making his debut in the first-in-the-nation state, the Texan parried questions from reporters in between chatting with attendees about topics ranging from Iowa farms to just how much Austin has grown in recent years.

Activists came away impressed with his stump speech — which, unlike that of Bachmann, was followed by a question-and-answer session with the crowd — and his warmth.

Bachmann has another thing coming if she thinks she can just rely on speeches and scripted Q&A sessions to win Iowa. If she doesn’t shape up and address these weaknesses, she risks letting Perry race past her and win over the hearts and minds of Hawkeye State voters.

Iowans expect the opportunity to engage in give-and-take’s with prospective candidates. I saw this firsthand at the Pawlenty events I attended. When he finished speaking, the audiences immediately launched into questions, peppering him on the complicated issues of the day and demanding specifics in his answers. Michele needs to understand this if she hopes to maintain her current standing in the field.

PPP (D) Ohio 2012 Presidential Survey

• Barack Obama 45% {46%} [46%] (44%)
• Mitt Romney 43% {42%} [40%] (42%)

• Barack Obama 45%
• Rick Perry 41%

• Barack Obama 48%
• Michele Bachmann 41%

• Barack Obama 47%
• Herman Cain 39%

• Barack Obama 51% {50%} [52%] (49%)
• Sarah Palin 38% {40%} [36%] (42%)

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Gallup 2012 Republican Favorability Survey

Name Recognition

• Sarah Palin 97% {95%} (96%) [96%] {95%}
• Rudy Giuliani 91% {90%} (89%) [87%] {86%}
• Newt Gingrich 86% {85%} (84%) [85%] {85%}
• Mitt Romney 86% {86%} (84%) [85%] {86%}
• Michele Bachmann 81% {78%} (76%) [78%] {77%}
• Ron Paul 78% {78%} (77%) [78%] {77%}
• Rick Perry 59% {54%} (54%) [56%] {55%}
• Tim Pawlenty 57% {56%} (54%) [55%] {54%}
• Rick Santorum 51% {51%} (50%) [50%] {49%}
• Herman Cain 45% {45%} (46%) [47%] {44%}
• Jon Huntsman 38% {39%} (40%) [40%] {41%}

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Siena College New York 2012 Presidential Survey

REPUBLICAN NOMINATION

• Rudy Giuliani 24%
• Mitt Romney 18%
• George Pataki 11%
• Michele Bachmann 9%
• Ron Paul 8%
• Sarah Palin 7%
• Rick Perry 6%
• Newt Gingrich 3%
• Jon Huntsman 2%
• Herman Cain 1%
• Tim Pawlenty 1%
• Rick Santorum 1%
• Don’t know/No opinion 9%

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Rasmussen 2012 Republican Nomination Survey

• Rick Perry 29% [18%]
• Mitt Romney 18% [22%] (33%) {17%} [24%] (20%)
• Michele Bachmann 13% [16%] (19%)
• Ron Paul 9% [10%] (7%) {8%} [4%] (5%)
• Herman Cain 6% [9%] (10%)
• Newt Gingrich 5% [6%] (9%) {9%} [11%] (13%)
• Rick Santorum 1%
• Jon Huntsman 1% [2%] (2%)
• Thaddeus McCotter 0%
• Undecided 16% [9%]

Would every one of the Republican candidates make a better President than Barack Obama?

• Yes 70%
• No 20%

National survey of 1,000 likely GOP primary voters was conducted August 15, 2011. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.  Results from the poll conducted July 28, 2011 are in square brackets. Results from the poll conducted June 14, 2011 are in parentheses. Results from the poll conducted April 26, 2011 are in curly brackets.  Results from the poll conducted January 18, 2011 are in square brackets.  Results from the poll conducted November 1, 2010 are in parentheses.

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