1. The Party Decides. The Party Decides. Seriously, The Party Decides. Despite what appeared to be a chaotic race, with no less than 7 different national front-runners, despite the sturm and drang about the "Tea Party", despite the lack of enthusiasm for Romney, the Republican Party coalesced around a compromise candidate with decent campaigning skills who positioned himself so as to not offend any major party interest group.
You couldn't have created a better test for the "Party Decides" framework: Romney's weaknesses, longstanding fractures within the Republican Party, and miserable economic conditions were a perfect storm to upset the system. And yet, as we see party actors from all spectrums of the Republican party turn to destroy Newt after his improbable South Carolina win, the theory seems as safe as ever.
2. The Invisible Primary is the Most Important Primary. By the time people actually started voting the number of possible nominees had dropped to two: Romney and Perry. Romney successfully cajoled, bribed, threatened, or just flat out beat most of his potential competitors before a single delegate was selected. I'm reasonably certain he forced out Barbour and Thune, and I know he beat Pawlenty by drying up his donor base. Huckabee had his own reasons, and I won't even speculate that Palin has a coherent thought process, but they both ran and lost in the invisible primary as well. Others, like Jindal or Christie, might've thought about running and been told not to early on.
3. SuperPACs. SuperPACs have played an outsized role in this nomination contest, and it's not clear why. So far they haven't really done anything that 527s couldn't do in the past. (527s couldn't say "Vote for X" but they could say "X is an evil jerk".) The invisible monsters that don't report donors and savaged Democrats in 2010 haven't been playing in the Republican contest. But it seems like some sort of psychological barrier has been broken.
While it hasn't really ever been illegal for a rogue billionaire to decide to single-handedly prop up a candidate, what has happened between Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson has been remarkable. One of the ways in which the parties retain control of the nomination process is the way political donations are structured. Since people can only give a couple thousand dollars to a candidate, it requires candidates to appeal to a fairly wide swathe of middle class partisans in order to have enough money to seriously compete for the nomination.
Newt was never going to be the nominee. But we may have returned to the era where Joe Kennedy can buy his son a Presidential Nomination. (Hear that, John Huntsman, Sr.?)
You couldn't have created a better test for the "Party Decides" framework: Romney's weaknesses, longstanding fractures within the Republican Party, and miserable economic conditions were a perfect storm to upset the system. And yet, as we see party actors from all spectrums of the Republican party turn to destroy Newt after his improbable South Carolina win, the theory seems as safe as ever.
2. The Invisible Primary is the Most Important Primary. By the time people actually started voting the number of possible nominees had dropped to two: Romney and Perry. Romney successfully cajoled, bribed, threatened, or just flat out beat most of his potential competitors before a single delegate was selected. I'm reasonably certain he forced out Barbour and Thune, and I know he beat Pawlenty by drying up his donor base. Huckabee had his own reasons, and I won't even speculate that Palin has a coherent thought process, but they both ran and lost in the invisible primary as well. Others, like Jindal or Christie, might've thought about running and been told not to early on.
3. SuperPACs. SuperPACs have played an outsized role in this nomination contest, and it's not clear why. So far they haven't really done anything that 527s couldn't do in the past. (527s couldn't say "Vote for X" but they could say "X is an evil jerk".) The invisible monsters that don't report donors and savaged Democrats in 2010 haven't been playing in the Republican contest. But it seems like some sort of psychological barrier has been broken.
While it hasn't really ever been illegal for a rogue billionaire to decide to single-handedly prop up a candidate, what has happened between Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson has been remarkable. One of the ways in which the parties retain control of the nomination process is the way political donations are structured. Since people can only give a couple thousand dollars to a candidate, it requires candidates to appeal to a fairly wide swathe of middle class partisans in order to have enough money to seriously compete for the nomination.
Newt was never going to be the nominee. But we may have returned to the era where Joe Kennedy can buy his son a Presidential Nomination. (Hear that, John Huntsman, Sr.?)
4. You Can't Jump In Late. It's a perennial fantasy. Wes Clark, Fred Thompson, and now Rich Perry stand as monumental failures. Your best polling will be on the day you announce. If you're going to run, then run.
The most obvious point of this, as it applies to Perry, is that if you start running earlier, you get to have your big mistakes earlier. If Perry had managed to screw up a few debates before anyone was paying attention, he could have a year to recover and find his game. (Rumor has it that he didn't jump in the race because he was having back surgery, and then his painkillers from recovery were the cause of some of his odd behavior.)
The most obvious point of this, as it applies to Perry, is that if you start running earlier, you get to have your big mistakes earlier. If Perry had managed to screw up a few debates before anyone was paying attention, he could have a year to recover and find his game. (Rumor has it that he didn't jump in the race because he was having back surgery, and then his painkillers from recovery were the cause of some of his odd behavior.)
But it goes beyond that: people who jump in late have a harder time raising money, the best staff is taken, some key party elements have already committed, etc. If you're going to run, then run.
5. Don't Get Drafted. Jon Huntsman's campaign to be the Republican for people who don't like Republicans was pretty awful. But that wasn't his fault! He was in China when the campaign started, and could not legally speak to the people trying to get him to run about campaign strategy. By the time he started running, they'd created the McCain 2000 retread. Despite the fact that McCain lost, and that the GOP has gotten more conservative, Huntsman was more-or-less forced to play they hand they dealt him.
5a. Don't hire John Weaver.
5. Don't Get Drafted. Jon Huntsman's campaign to be the Republican for people who don't like Republicans was pretty awful. But that wasn't his fault! He was in China when the campaign started, and could not legally speak to the people trying to get him to run about campaign strategy. By the time he started running, they'd created the McCain 2000 retread. Despite the fact that McCain lost, and that the GOP has gotten more conservative, Huntsman was more-or-less forced to play they hand they dealt him.
5a. Don't hire John Weaver.
6. GOP Voters are Hyper-Informed. I do not mean that they are correct, especially about basic facts about reality. But rather, GOP partisans watch partisan TV, listen to partisan radio, and read partisan newspapers and blogs. The people who vote in the GOP nomination process really follow the race. That is what produced the surges last year, and that's why state-level results have been tracking so well to national results. Things like the ground game and local group participation matter much less when the potential electorate is filled with highly informed voters.
7. The Candidates Don't Get to Pick the Issues. I don't just mean Romney's well-publicized flip-flop on abortion. Anyone not named Rudy Giuliani could tell you that the GOP isn't going to nominate a pro-choice candidate any time soon. What was more interesting was the backlash against Gingrich for his rejection of the Ryan budget, or Perry's cratering in the polls for favoring a more moderate stance against illegal immigration.
As a corollary to #6, the rise of highly polarized national parties with highly informed partisan voters means that candidates have much less leeway to choose their positions than they used to.
7. The Candidates Don't Get to Pick the Issues. I don't just mean Romney's well-publicized flip-flop on abortion. Anyone not named Rudy Giuliani could tell you that the GOP isn't going to nominate a pro-choice candidate any time soon. What was more interesting was the backlash against Gingrich for his rejection of the Ryan budget, or Perry's cratering in the polls for favoring a more moderate stance against illegal immigration.
As a corollary to #6, the rise of highly polarized national parties with highly informed partisan voters means that candidates have much less leeway to choose their positions than they used to.
8. Ron Paul is The Future. In the alternative future where only people who are under the age of 30 can vote, Ron Paul has won every contest to date. The GOP has been losing younger voters consistently since 2004 (this is a new phenomenon, despite the stereotypes, there historically hasn't been that big of a partisan difference between age cohorts in voting over the past 40 years). And of the young voters who are open to being Republicans, they favor an unconventional candidate with issue positions far outside of the GOP mainstream.
I've been saying for years that if the GOP wants to keep being able to win national elections, they'll need to convince Hispanic people to start voting like White people. Bush (and Perry) seemed to understand this, even if the rest of the party has rejected it this time around. But now it seems that unless the GOP does something about its issue positions — purge the neo-cons, or roll back the drug war — it will become a rump party for a generation.
I've been saying for years that if the GOP wants to keep being able to win national elections, they'll need to convince Hispanic people to start voting like White people. Bush (and Perry) seemed to understand this, even if the rest of the party has rejected it this time around. But now it seems that unless the GOP does something about its issue positions — purge the neo-cons, or roll back the drug war — it will become a rump party for a generation.
