Hide your women, hide your children-if the speeches at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are any indication, the race for the Republican presidential nomination is already under way.
We don’t know who will end up actually running, let alone winning, but we can at least identify a couple of structural dynamics that might influence the outcome.
The first is that the GOP, as the party of the “outs” (the one not controlling the White House), will likely have a larger field than the party of the “ins” (the Democrats). And that the Republican lineup this time around will be a great deal more distinguished than the motley crew of cranks and has-beens that produced the easy-to-caricature “vulture capitalist” Mitt Romney.
As such, that prospective Republican field can also be broken down into some useful categories: The “wunderkinds” (Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio). The last time we saw Ryan he was staring in befuddlement at Joe Biden’s crazy-uncle act during the vice presidential debate. He’s also got himself into a bit of trouble lately by channeling Pat Moynihan’s claim from back in the 1960s that the impoverished plight of black America might have something to do with culture and illegitimacy. In other words, Ryan said something which we all know is true but which you aren’t supposed to say. The “racist” charge followed accordingly.
As for Rubio, he is stuck, by virtue of his ethnicity, with having to thread the difficult needle of immigration reform. Whether he can finesse that issue in a way that preserves his support among both Hispanics (who support something resembling amnesty) and Republican primary voters (who detest anything resembling amnesty) will likely determine his prospects.
The “Tea Party” purists (Tennessee Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz). While Paul has been stomping in good libertarian fashion on the NSA surveillance issue to youth applause, Cruz has become the Republican that the Republican “establishment” loathes most, which is not necessarily a bad thing. That he often comes off like a shameless self-promoter who looks like Count Chocula is.
The “get results” governors (Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, and New Jersey’s Chris Christie). Walker, despite suffering from Tim Pawlenty charisma-deficiency syndrome, has earned respect in conservative circles for staring down the public-union goons in Wisconsin. Jindal, in his turn, has earned praise for taking the lead among Republican governors in opposing the Obama administration’s increasingly pernicious education policies.
Out in Jersey, Christie has apparently survived “Bridgegate” and gotten into campaign fighting shape by shedding 100 pounds, thereby preventing us from testing the thesis that someone with the girth of William Howard Taft can’t get elected president in the television age.
The former (Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee) and soon-to-be-former (Rick Perry) governors. Two of these three appear to be hoping for amnesia among the electorate-in Perry’s case that they forget the stumbles that killed his campaign in its infancy in 2012, in Bush’s that they forget about the presidency of his older brother.
The hope in Huckabee’s case is that he can fill and substantially upgrade the populist social conservative niche occupied in 2012 by Rick Santorum. At the least it might be amusing to see him and Christie engage in a GOP version of “the biggest loser.” The female contingent-New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, each of whom represents a substantial improvement in terms of accomplishment and comportment over the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann in what the media is already trying to frame as the “year of the woman” (of course, the woman the media has conveniently crafted that narrative for isn’t a Republican conservative but a liberal Democrat named Hillary).
The “retread” option in Romney, who has been suspiciously visible in the past couple months, perhaps suspecting that voters are experiencing an electoral form of “buyer’s remorse” since November 2012.
Alas for Mittens, there is no evidence that growing disenchantment with Barack Obama has translated into belated enthusiasm for him. The last time either major party went back to the well and renominated a loser was 1956; perhaps the reason it was the last time was that Adlai Stevenson proceeded to lose to Dwight Eisenhower by an even bigger margin than in 1952. It thus seems unlikely that Romney will get a chance to be a Republican version of Stevenson or William Jennings Bryan.
Still, whoever turns out to be the GOP standard bearer, history suggests the odds will be at least somewhat in their favor. In many respects, 2016 is beginning to look like 2008 redux, with a vilified incumbent (Obama now, George W. Bush then) suffering through a failed second term and taking his party with him as he departs.
There is also (as in 2008) the difficult challenge of keeping the presidency in the same party’s hands for three consecutive elections-it has only happened once since 1948, when Ronald Reagan successfully passed the torch to his vice president George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988.
And to state the obvious, Obama is no Reagan.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 03/31/2014