Lessons from the GOP Nomination contest

Now that it's over (and it is over), here's what are some lessons learned from the GOP nomination fight in 2012:

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.?)

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Something nice about Bush

I rarely feel anything but venom for our 43st President, so when I feel otherwise, I should probably point it out.

The speech he gave the day after Obama won the election was heartfelt, generous, and reflective of his true feelings about race in our society.

Many people have commented that Obama wouldn't be possible without Bush's epic fail. And that's true. But he also wouldn't have been possible without Bush's consistent anti-racism. It's not merely the fact that Bush appointed two African-Americans to head his State department. It's also the fact that Bush was the first Republican since Nixon to win without appealing to racism.

(The ghost of my Father says: what about dis-enfranchising black voters? I say, of course they do that, Dad, but they did that by targeting people they knew wouldn't vote for them, not by legitimizing racism in the public sphere.)

American politics is fundamentally tribal. People don't vote based on issues. They vote based on party*. How many people over the age of 30 ever change parties? Bush used his platform as the leader of the Republican party to legitimize black leadership in the eyes of the half of the country that looked to him for cues.

When the history books are written, 50 to 100 years from now, Colin and Condi are going to be viewed like we view the protoceratops in light of the triceratops**. Bush's heart, in this one little thing, was in the right place.

P.S. Of course, the Republican party is now the "Barack the Magic Negro" party. But that wasn't Bush's party.

*What about independents? Easy: They're liars. 90% of American voters vote for the same party that they voted for in the last election. Partisan ID is decided in the first three general elections that a person votes in. But that's another story.

**I, of course, prefer Styracosaurus.

GOP CIVIL WAR WATCH

Huckabee's new book should apparently be subtitled "Fuck Mitt Romney".

Huckabee's a smart guy. Not only is his brand of Conservativism the best hope the GOP has for becoming a national party again, but he's also smart enough to correctly identify the 2012 front runner.

This blog would like to on record as saying that it doesn't really matter who the GOP nominates in 2012, the results of that election will be entirely determined by how well the economy is doing, which will be determined by how effective Obama's policies are.

And the fact that it won't matter at all who they pick is what makes the GOP Civil War even more entertaining.

SRSLY

Advice to Election officials: Next time start counting the absentee ballots as they come in, asshats.

Apparently Georgia didn't count any of its early votes, you know, early.

And what the fuck is Oregon's problem, anyway?

The election was yesterday, I should know how many Senators we have now.

Voter Targetting?

I just got robo-called by the RNC... at the Obama Office.

A suggestion for Conservatives

I think the path back to power for the Republicans looks a little like this.

Barkley for Governor

Sir Charles is planning on running for Governor of Alabama in 2014.

Forty-five years ago, this was the Governor of Alabama.

What a country.

Early Voting

Since my broadcast area is generally restricted to the St. Louis Metro area, you all should know that you can vote early every day up until the election.

People in St. Clair County go to the Belleville Courthouse downtown. People in St. Louis should go to 300 N. Tucker street and vote at the board of elections.

After you've voted, you can come volunteer at the Obama office on Election Day. It'll be super fun.

Election Day Questions

TWELVE DAYS TO GO!

With the election coming up in less than two weeks, I have some questions that WILL BE ANSWERED.

Let's face it: Barack Obama is going to win the election (even the RNC thinks so), and he's going to win it easily. So what should you be looking for on election night, in order to keep things interesting?

Question #1:

Will Chris Shays survive?

The last liberal New England Republican, Chris Shays, of Connecticut's fourth district, barely survived the 2006 purge that took out the rest of the Republicans in New England. He faces an even stronger challenger this year.

But he's generally liked and respected in his district, and without the argument that the leadership of the House hangs in the balance, he may be able to survive.

Shays and Himes are currently tied.

This Should Make Their Brains Explode

Barry Goldwater, Mr. Conservative, arranged for his daughter to have an illegal abortion.

What happens when we win?

After the rout.

I agree with all of Chris's predictions to varying degrees. It really is pretty hard to predict what the Democratic Party will do, since their tactic over the past 2 years has been to hunker down and wait out the Bush Presidency, since he'll veto anything fun anyway.

In addition to the normal three axes in American politics (Economic, Foreign, Social), there's a fourth axis that could be described as Partisanship. For example, although Rahmbo is fairly conservative on most things, he's a hyper partisan and will always be first in line to try to fuck the Republicans. On the other hand, you've got a fair number of progressives like Kucinich who seem to enjoy telling Hoyer to get bent. So, once the Democrats have such a huge majority, and a President who will sign their bills, there'll be a wild and wacky period of inter-party alignment. My suspicion is that it'll end up being a fairly liberal working majority that ignores social issues and occasionally throws a piece of meat to corporate America. So: Yes on Universal Health Care, No on repealing DOMA.

Figuring out what the Republicans are going to do is easy. They'll probably fire Boehner, but even if they don't, they'll retreat to "Fuck you, that's why!" mode for the entirety of the Obama presidency. The House Republicans left standing after November will be the ones who are untouchable. If their districts are so conservative that they survive this election, then the only way they'll lose their seats is with a primary challenge from the right. And with such a large Democratic Majority (it's already larger than anything the Republicans managed from 1994-2006), they won't see any feasible way back into the majority. That means they have every incentive to screw with the Democrats, and none to work with them.

Which means the Democrats will be passing legislation by themselves, which is another reason they'll factionalize. Let's say we pick up 25 seats in the election. That'll make it 260 Dems to 175 GOP. That's an 85 seat advantage. But here's where they get bitchy. The GOP just decides that it's going to vote no on everything. Since all of their members are safe, and most of them are assholes, that bloc will hold.

So now you've got 260 Democratic Congressmen, of which 218 are needed to pass anything. Or, to put it the other way, only 43 Democratic congressmen need to be bought off by corporate lobbyists in order to stymie the progressive agenda. That's frighteningly possible, and the main reason why Kos has already made plans to wage a Jyhad against bad Democrats in 2010.

He's no Lincoln

Tasteful.

Landslide watch

I just heard through the grapevine, that my racist grandfather, who hasn't voted for a Democrat since Truman, is planning on voting for Obama.

There are other factors, but I think this illustrates the sheer stupidity of the Palin pick. The Edwards voters in Kentucky and West Virginia (long after he exited the race, and in a democratic primary election) should've pointed out that the bigot vote doesn't like African Americans or Women. By picking Palin, McCain really neutralized his natural demographic advantage with those voters.

Break their backs

Man, winning makes Kos a psychopath.

He's losing it

I'd be terrified if I wasn't so sure we're going to win.

It's Over

We're going to win this election. It won't even be close. Obama's field organization is so good that we'll probably win every state currently within the margin of error.

Today is the last day to register to vote in Missouri, and we've already registered more voters in this state than the margin between Bush and Kerry in 2004. And the polls have us beating McCain among voters who voted in 2004. We're going to win Missouri.

I would invite you all to start thinking along the same lines at Tim Noah.

Ladies against Women Unite!

Well, isn't this precious.

Just Don't Give a Fuck

The Republican party is rightly screwed. They're going to lose the Presidency, and lose enough Senate seats to cripple their ability to do anything.

But in the House, they've been hamstrung since 2006, and there is no hope for any change from that position any time soon. They have no leadership, and no plan for recovery. There is no way for a GOP Rep. to increase his/her power in the house beyond that of an ordinary member. These guys that remain, the majority of 'em, are from such hard right districts that they face almost no chance of losing re-election. Add to this:

1. They hate Bush, for being such a fuck-up.
2. They hate McCain, for being an apostate and an asshole.
3. They're too venal and corrupt to care about the rest of us.

So their default position on the bailout is: FUCK YOU THAT'S WHY! This will, of course, be their default position on anything and everything during the Obama administration.

Alzheimer's

John McCain is seeming more and more Reaganesque.

Can we start to talk about it now?

HELPING OUT PALIN #9

This is the ninth in a twenty part series. Click here for an explanation.

#9 How would you balance concerns over human rights and freedom in China with the United States' growing economic interdependence with that country?

Our economic interdependence with China encourages liberalization in their economy and the spread of political rights.

Any punitive action that we take against another country just tends to increase the support of the people for the rulers, regardless of who or what they are. Bombing Kosovo increased Milosevic's popularity in Serbia. U.S. sanctions against Cuba are the number one reason Castro managed to stay in power for fifty years.

The most oppressive regimes in the world (Burma and North Korea) are also regimes which completely isolate themselves from the broader world — Tyranny can only survive in a vacuum.

If we really want a country to be kinder to its own citizens we ought to encourage it to become more interdependent with the broader world community, and China is on the right path.