Events during the past few days signal both change and no change in the 2012 Republican presidential nominating contest.
Among the candidates, another bubble has burst, another third-tier hopeful is suddenly in the limelight, two major non-candidates are becoming increasingly distant from entering the race, and the long-time frontrunner, recently supplanted by a new face, seems to be back in charge.
Important changes in the nominating procedure, however, have taken place. In particular, Colorado and Florida have apparently decided to move their primaries up, and into the time period set aside by Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the official earliest GOP voting events. This will cause the aforementioned “official” states to move their primaries/caucus to earlier dates, presumably now beginning in early January instead of early February. The “penalty” for the early states is that they must now split their delegates proportional to the popular vote. States which schedule their voting in April and later may choose to have “winner take-all. allocations of their delegates to the national convention in Tampa in September, 2012.
This new circumstance would seem to benefit former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney whose political strength seems to be in most of the potential “winner-take-all” primaries and caucuses. On the other hand, Texas Governor Rick Perry’s apparent greatest strength lies in those states (mostly Southern states) which will hold their primaries before the deadline.
For some time, two potentially major contestants for the nomination (former Governor Palin and Governor Christie) have been “teasing” the media and their supporters with intimations they might get into the race. To be fair to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, he has said “no” consistently and emphatically. But in U.S. presidential politics,“no” is often interpreted as “maybe,” no matter how emphatically it is uttered. In spite of pleas from supporters to get into the race, however, time is running out, and their candidacies would soon be problematic.
For the time being, Mr. Perry’s “bubble” seems to be losing air fast, although his poll numbers are still high. Close examination of his record and his public statements on some issues, plus a less-than-satisfactory series of debate performances have led to this circumstance, but it would be premature to write the Texas governor off. Businessman Herman Cain did well in a Tea Party Florida straw poll, and his poll numbers have risen since, An articulate man with lots of personality and charm, Mr. Cain is for now more a factor in the campaign.
Another candidate, once a first-tier contestant, but reduced to a lower tier by early gaffes, is making somewhat of a comeback by registering low double digits in some polls. That is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been widely applauded for his performance in all of the debates so far, and he has just introduced a new version of his 1993 Contract With America, the document that had so much to do with the GOP success in 1994, and which elevated him to speaker. The new version addresses most of the concerns of the Tea Party and others in the Republican base, including taxes, spending, defense, government intrusion, immigration and
foreign policy. It’s too soon to measure its impact, but if it resonates, it could make Mr. Gingrich the focus for party conservatives who are looking for an alternative to Mr. Romney, the frontrunner.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has redoubled her efforts to make up significant lost ground in opinion polls following her victory in the Iowa Straw Poll. She is concentrating her efforts with the evangelical segment of the party, a group which had seemed to go to Mr. Perry in recent weeks.
Although some commentators have contended that Mr. Romney is the favorite of the so-called Republican “establishment,” and that he may not be conservative enough, he has shown notable resilience in the campaign so far. For several weeks his frontrunner status was thrown in serious question after Mr Perry entered the race and went almost instantly to the top of the polls. But Mr. Romney’s self-confident and well-prepared debate performances, plus his large number of endorsements by GOP officials across the country and at all levels, has seemed to put him back on top. He does have a long way to go before winning the nomination, but the moving up of the early primary and caucus state votes has probably shortened that time-line and enhanced his chances.
Thus, the GOP campaign has gone through some notable changes, but its essential landscape remains the same. It should be remembered that after Ronald Reagan had secured his 1980 nomination, there were lots of doubts about him expressed by some GOP party activists, and the same phenomenon happened to Bill Clinton in 1992 by some of his party activists when it became clear he would be the Democratic nominee.
Names, faces. and issues change with each presidential election cycle, but it is uncanny how much the basic political psychology remains the same.
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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, BarryCasselman.com.
War Room Logistics Florida Primary
- Romney – 28.2% (25.0)
- Cain – 23.7% (4.9)
- Gingrich – 9.8% (8.7)
- Perry – 9.1% (24.7)
- Bachmann – 3.4% (5.2)
- Paul – 3.4% (7.5)
- Huntsman – 1.8% (2.4)
- Santorum – 0.5% (0.9)
- Undecided – 20.1% (20.6)
General Election Matchups:
- Obama – 47% (49)
- Romney – 42% (40)
- Obama – 53% (53)
- Perry – 36% (36)
Survey of 1,331 likely voters was conducted September 30. Numbers from the WRL poll conducted on September 20 are in parentheses.
Rasmussen Reports Virginia General Election
- Romney – 46%
- Obama – 45%
- Obama – 50%
- Perry – 40%
Survey of 500 likely voters was conducted September 28.
We have another piece to the early state primary puzzle now: South Carolina GOP Chairman Chad Connelly will announce later this morning that the SC primary will be held on Saturday January 21, 2012.
This was earlier than anybody expected — the 24th or the 28th were the dates I kept hearing — and so it probably forces IA, NH, and NV at least a week earlier. New Hampshire will likely go on Tuesday January 10, putting Iowa in the first week of the year just like in 2008 — the very thing the RNC was trying to avoid with their new rules.
And so our updated calendar:
January 2 (?) – Iowa
January 10 (?) – New Hampshire
January 14 (?) – Nevada
January 21 – South Carolina
January 31 – Florida
February 7 – Colorado & Minnesota (non-binding)
February 28 – Arizona & Michigan
From the Daily Caller:
Big potential donors to Christie have been told to prepare to go to Trenton this Thursday to stand on stage with him for the announcement if he decides to run. He has not decided yet.
We’re getting a lot of conflicting rumors on the hush-hush Trenton powwow that occurred this weekend. Some information out there makes it sound like a Christie run is a foregone conclusion; other information that we are getting now makes it sound like Christie is leaning toward not running after all.
For instance, three different sources have now told Politico that it is “likelier than not” that Christie will stay out of the 2012 race. The reasons? First, SEC pay-to-play rules are proving “more worrisome to some Christie supporters than they’d initially thought them to be.” Next, there’s the newly condensed primary calendar. There’s the fact that Christie would have to take on – and beat – Mitt Romney in his strongest state (by far) of New Hampshire. And finally, all of this is “made tougher without months of preparedness in terms of early-state operations, self-vetting and fundraising.”
The three sources say there’s still a chance Christie talks it over with his wife and decides to run – but for now, there’s a greater chance of him watching this one from the sidelines.
That would be interesting if it were just one story. But the Wall Street Journal also heard from some of Christie’s aides and operatives Sunday night who expressed similar misgivings about a potential run:
[T]he aides are more daunted by the challenges of launching a campaign than they were just days ago… “The afterglow of Nancy Reagan’s flattery has been replaced with the reality of building a state-by-state organization and the abdication of his day job to do this,” said one operative with ties to the Christie camp.
Which begs the question: what if these rumors aren’t as contradictory as they appear at first glance? What if the powwow was arranged for this weekend while Christie was leaning toward getting in, but once everyone was assembled and began looking at what a near-impossible task they were facing, Christie began to shy away from it?
On one side, you have the lawyers explaining how your fundraising is really going to take a hit because of the SEC pay-to-play rule. In order to be competitive, they would explain, you would have to rely heavily on Super PACs that you would not be allowed to coordinate with. On the other side, you have foreign policy experts trying to help develop some sort of coherent foreign policy in a matter of days — something most candidates develop over a period of months or even years. All the while, you have early state filing deadlines looming in a matter of a couple of weeks… and you realize, if you get in this thing, you have zero margin for error.
If the sources that are talking to Politico and the Wall Street Journal are accurate, Chris Christie may be staring those odds in the face and realizing this isn’t the time to pick the fight after all.
At any rate, we should know more by Wednesday, and probably sooner than that. And then, we can get on with this race that has been frozen in place by Christie-mania.
And you thought you were going to get through Sunday without your obligatory Chris Christie post:
A hastily put together campaign would upend what two of Mr. Christie’s advisers said was his original plan: to consider running for president in 2016. But with President Obama looking more vulnerable, and with dissatisfaction among some voters and influential party leaders with the current Republican field, Mr. Christie is said by those close to him to feel that his best opportunity to run might be now.
This tidbit makes me think that a Christie run is imminent. In order for “Christie 2016″ to become a reality, President Obama would have to win re-election next year, despite a 40 percent approval rating, and despite leading Mitt Romney in dark blue states like Connecticut by only a few percentage points. Even if Christie somehow manages to win re-election in New Jersey without moving leftward on scores of issues, a daunting feat, he will pretty much be done as far as presidential politics is concerned should Mitt Romney beat Obama next year, with a youngish, conservative veep like Marco Rubio the heir apparent for 2020 and beyond. It’s now or never for Christie. I’m predicting that it’s a go.
Mike Huckabee taped his show last Friday to air last night. One of the segments was an extensive interview of Mitt Romney. Three quarters of the interview have now been made available on-line. They are:
Why “Part 1″ is not available yet, I don’t know. If they ever make it available, I’ll provide the link.
This was a most interesting interview. Mitt and Mike were completely and totally civil with each other. And yet it went beyond that. There was a definite air of mutual respect and camaraderie not often seen in these political interviews. I came away with the same impression one gets when watching two old adversaries sitting down and discussing the current war. The two of them may have once been on opposing sides, but their shared experiences allowed them to instantly understand each other and know where the other guy was coming from. That is something that only occurs with people who have shared the same struggles in life.
I am reminded of the analogy that Ronald Reagan often used. In a football game each team fights long and hard to earn the win; but when it’s over, the two teams both shake each others hand and leave the field with respect for each other.
If there were any hard-feelings lingering between these two, they were not in evidence. Consider that hatchet completely and fully buried.
Friday night, the Nevada GOP executive board met and expressed their desire to break away from the other three early states (IA, NH, and SC) and hold their caucus in February – after the newly minted January 31 Florida primary. The reason for this surprising decision was to keep all of their delegates, since moving before February 1 would cut their total in half.
However, when the executive board met again last night, in a near-unanimous decision they voted to keep their caucus scheduled for “the Saturday after the New Hampshire primary”.
Ultimately, they decided having influence was worth losing half their delegates.
Interestingly, the reversal of their Friday night decision came after talking to RNC leaders about potential rewards for following the rules. In light of Florida brazenly breaking the rules by moving to January 31, they wanted to know what they would get if they kept their caucus in February. Special treatment in Tampa? VIP passes? Anything? The RNC wasn’t obliging, and so the state GOP essentially said, “Screw it. We’re going to January then.”
NH Secretary of State Bill Gardner has indicated that he is in no hurry to name the date of his state’s primary — much to the RNC’s chagrin, since their rules mandated that states inform them of the primary and caucus dates by October 1 (yesterday). But this entire process has more or less been states giving the finger to the RNC, so that’s no big surprise. Gardner has said he wants to wait and see when all the other states are going before he places New Hampshire on the calendar.
And it all more or less comes down to Gardner and his decision now. Once New Hampshire is set, Nevada will automatically be the Saturday after, Matt Strawn will schedule the Iowa caucuses for a date prior, and the SC GOP will schedule their primary for in between Nevada and Florida.
As a post script to all this nonsense, it should be noted that Georgia (which was rumored to want to break the rules and move into February as well) has scheduled their primary for March 6 – the official “Super Tuesday” date set by the RNC. Also, Wisconsin has officially cleared out of February as well, moving their primary back (as expected) to April 3 – the “Super Tuesday” for winner-take-all states. Finally, last week New Jersey also moved their February primary back to June (also as expected). So the only “early states” we’re dealing with now are (in order):
With Herman Cain seemingly supplanting Rick Perry as the candidate of the GOP’s conservative base, winning a recent straw poll in Florida and showing upward movement in scientific polls, the conventional wisdom that surrounds the base of the Republican Party is being thrown out the window. Indeed, the “Cain Mutiny” that we’re currently witnessing may end up being just another flavor of the month, but even if that turns out to be true, the fact that a candidate like Cain can come close to reaching the top spot among preferences of Republican voters is flummoxing talking heads and opinion makers on both the Left and the Right. The fluidity of the race for the GOP nomination, along with the direction that it is taking, suggest that the Republican base just ain’t what it used to be.
The “reax” from pundits on both sides of the aisle to the twists and turns of this year’s presidential race have ranged from cowardly to confused to just downright humiliating. That final description can be aptly applied to actress and busybody Janeane Garofolo, who recently suggested that Republicans are supporting a Black American presidential candidate due to their inherent racism. This is to be expected of the Left, which clings to the idea that were it not for Nixon’s Southern Strategy, the last four decades in American politics would have been a progressive’s paradise, and that the only thing preventing the entire nation from looking like Vermont is the bigotry of a few country bumpkins. To deny this as fantasy is to face the reality that the Left lost the war of ideas beginning in 1968, and that the last few decades have been about moving away from the experiment of social democracy that has left Western Europe on the brink of collapse.
But while the MSM seethes, the conservative punditocracy retreats. The once bold, confident commentators in the conservative print media have been seemingly out to lunch for the majority of this presidential race, only showing up on occasion to tout their favorite non-candidates as would-be saviors for the party. During the 2008 election cycle, conservative blogs such as NRO’s The Corner were always teeming with analyses after presidential debates. This year, it’s almost as if conservative pundits are editorializing-from-behind, waiting for the conventional wisdom to develop prior to taking any positions on the various candidates’ performances.
I believe that the confusion and otherwise cluelessness of the punditocracy this year has to do with the rise of the Tea Party, and the way the Tea Party has unsettled American politics. Prior to 2009, everyone in the Republican Party sort of knew where they stood. First, the GOP was a party that tended not to nominate newcomers, and that almost always nominated a candidate who had run for the party’s presidential nomination previously. Secondly, the party was comprised of a variety of factions, many of which overlapped, and most of which had to at least be on board for any presidential candidate to be successful. The various factions included small government types and good government types, evangelicals and libertarians, and NeoCons and PaleoCons, just to name a few, with a fair number of boutique groups with a primary focus on such things as border security thrown into the mix for good measure. In addition, the base seemed more Southern than Northern, more Caucasian than non-Caucasian, and more rural than urban.
Going into 2012, then, the conventional wisdom would dictate that a handful of candidates would have the inside track to the nomination. Mitt Romney immediately becomes a prospective nominee because he had previously run for the nomination and had lost. Rick Perry enters the race highly favored because he checks so many of the party’s cultural and ideological boxes as a Southern evangelical who had been outspoken about intrusive federal power. Mike Huckabee, before he decided against a run, was both a former presidential candidate and someone with whom the base could culturally identify. And so on. The analysis was pretty basic and the results should have been predictable.
But this year, nothing has been predictable. The Trump boomlet certainly wasn’t predictable. And neither was the Cain surge. Neither of these candidates had run for president before, neither give off stereotypical Republican cultural cues, and neither has fleshed out positions on things like foreign policy or social issues. Yet both emanated from the private sector and both based their campaigns on an aggressive sea change in the way the U.S. operates in the areas of economics, business, and size of government. Perhaps both, then, serve as evidence that the Tea Party really is a movement all about individual freedom and economic issues, without a singular position on, or even a focus on, most of the other issue areas that come up in national politics.
This is where the conservative print media and talk radio carny barkers, in my opinion, have been miscalculating. It seems to me that the majority of these folks are operating under the assumption that the Tea Party is simply an anti-establishment version of the conventional Republican base, and that what the base really wants is a version of George W. Bush who is a little angrier, and a little less comfy with Washington. That’s why Rick Perry was rolled out with such pomp by the folks in the right-wing media. Perry, as a big-hearted evangelical with a Texas twang and a penchant for federalism, fit the bill almost perfectly in terms of what the punditocracy thought Tea Partiers were looking for. But the minute Perry opened his mouth, his numbers began to sink. In the case of George W. Bush, incoherence during the debates was viewed as a badge of honor, a way for the Real America to stick it to all those Blue Staters with a candidate who would give off the cultural cues that drove the Northeast nuts. In Perry’s case, however, the Texan’s lack of eloquence almost immediately left GOP voters second-guessing the governor, fearing that a silver tongue will be needed to communicate the conservative message to the electorate next year and to beat Obama. Similarly, when George W. Bush went soft on issues like immigration, he was simply channeling the inclinations of his cuddly evangelical base. Perry’s squishiness on this issue, though, was met not with nods of approval by today’s GOP base, but by the scorn and derision that a candidate should expect when he tells his own voters that they lack a heart.
Given all of this, I argue that the conventional wisdom is pretty much meaningless as the race for the GOP presidential nomination moves forward, and that neither Mitt Romney’s heir apparent status nor Rick Perry’s position as the biggest, loudest evangelical in the field will decide this race. It’s possible that the candidates and the pundits have it all wrong about the current state of the Republican base, and that the actual voters that comprise the Republican Party will surprise everyone when they finally have the opportunity to make their voices heard at the ballot box.
Looks like Wednesday is decision day per a scoop from the Washinton Post:
…there are other signals that Christie is giving serious consideration to a run. One Iowa businessman, who sought unsuccessfully to draft Christie into the race earlier this year, said he was preparing this week to endorse another candidate, but Christie’s political advisers asked him not to.
“Something’s up now,” said the Iowan, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters. “I was ready to jump, but was told to hold off until next Wednesday.”
Be sure to read the entire report here.
Barely a month ago, Rick Perry was riding high. He led Mitt Romney in all the polls; one was by 19 whole points. People were stumbling over themselves to jump on his bandwagon. Money came pouring in.
Then suddenly it all turned sour. What happened?
Many, if not most people point to his horrendous debate performance a week ago. In it, he stumbled over words, had trouble finishing sentences, and gave some truly terrible answers. That was certainly part of it, but I don’t think that was the full reason for his fall in the polls. I think there was more to it than that.
This clip from the classic move, “The Wizard of Oz” will help illustrate my point:
Up to this point in the movie, Dorothy and her friends had viewed The Wizard as a great and powerful being. They stood in awe of him. When Toto pulled aside the curtain revealing the personage behind all the special effects, they came and investigated further and found just an ordinary man with no special powers at all except for a gift of speaking big. Their respect, reverence, and awe promptly collapsed.
Now here is the point I wish to make. What if when they had came and investigated, they had found not an ordinary man but a great and powerful wizard who was using his magic to impress them. Would their view of him have collapsed? It would have diminished, I suspect, but I doubt it would have collapsed. The man would have still been seen as a great wizard worthy of their respect.
And so it was with Rick Perry and his debate performance. Politicians and candidates flub debates all the time. They will take a drop in the polls because of it, but seldom is it fatal unless it’s at the last minute. Perry’s first two debates were not very successful. His poll numbers had dropped, but he was still comfortably ahead. But after that Floridian debate, they dropped like a rock.
Here is what I think happened.
Rick Perry appeared like a mystical genii from the Arabian Nights. He talked big. He moved big. He created a sense of awe and wonder in observers. A lot of people were looking for a white knight, and they thought they had found one.
In their excitement they failed to take note of a number of troubling aspects about the man. There was that air of sleaze that seemed to always surround him for one thing. Crony capitalism and pay-for-play appeared to dog him everywhere he went. Sweatheart deals were everywhere. And while the Perry machine hyped up his performance as Governor of Texas, a closer examination revealed a rather ordinary, nothing-to-really-write-home-about tenure in office. And then there were his purposefully misleading statements and outright lies about Mitt Romney. Those were viewed as mere exaggerations and completely acceptable campaign tactics by his faithful followers. Besides, the people in awe of Perry didn’t much care for Romney. They loved seeing Mitt being attacked no matter how falsely or unfairly. (People are like that, sometimes.) They failed to recognize that that sort of thing is still a form of dishonesty — hardly a desirable trait in a President. But Perry was the man of the hour. He could do no wrong, and the warning signs were ignored.
Then the debate happened. The curtain was pulled aside by his stumbling and bumbling. It invited all the world to come and take a closer look at the real Rick Perry — not the special effects version, but the real man behind all the hype. And when people did so, they found not a great man worthy of the hype, but a rather ordinary one made even smaller by his air of sleaze and dishonesty. If there had been a big man there, a truly noble man, a smart man, an honest man, his debate stumbles would have cost him to be sure, but he still would have had a good chance of recovering. But now?…
Can he recover? He might if he concentrated on becoming the man that his hype tried to make him out to be. But that is going to take time, and time is fast running out. Besides, his campaign is on record promising more of the same, only more of it. Even more bluster. Even more misleading anti-Romney attacks. Their strategy is to build up the curtain, not the man behind it.
I suspect Perry’s has had his chance this cycle and has muffed it. His only hope now is for Romney to make a truly horrible mistake.
Do any of you think Mitt’s going to do that?
