Conservatives debate whether character still counts

April 3, 2007

Bill Kristol made a comment on Fox News the other day that foreshadows what may eventually drive the GOP presidential primaries.

“I think [the personal lives of Republican presidential candidates are] not a big problem,” Kristol said. “Generally speaking, the American people discount private lives quite rigorously, actually, and they try to pick someone who will be a good president and they separate public and private to a pretty great degree.”

Newt Gingrich recently said the same thing. Personal issues? In a presidential campaign? How wildly inappropriate.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), a presidential hopeful, seems to have the inevitable response to all of this.

A Baptist minister, Mr. Huckabee expressed impatience with the political choices so far of some religious conservatives. In the March Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Mr. Giuliani led among Republicans with 38%; even among evangelical voters, the twice-divorced former New York City mayor, a supporter of abortion rights, received 37% to 2% for Mr. Huckabee.

“If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter,” he declared, “then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.”

Expect to hear quite a bit more of this over the next couple of months.

The American Prospect’s Sam Rosenfeld noted yesterday that we shouldn’t forget that the “Republicans haven’t really started attacking each other yet.”

We’re of course nowhere near the time of the cycle that, two elections ago, Team Bush went loco on John McCain in South Carolina, but well before that there are presumably going to be some elbows thrown and charges lobbed at one another. I state the obvious merely to underscore that the feasibility of the party’s front-runners consisting of a very recently pro-choice Mormon, a pro-choice, gay-friendly, pro-immigration, anti-gun two-time divorcee, and an elderly, sick, very recently near-Democrat has yet to be put to the test by an actual, aggressive, knock-down campaign of any sort.

So true, so true. It’s a point I tried to emphasize in a Washington Monthly piece last year.

Right now, at least 10 high-profile Republicans are eyeing the race. If a candidate with an adulterous past pulls ahead, the stragglers may be sorely tempted to play the infidelity card — if not openly, then through their surrogates. In 2000, George W. Bush’s allies went well beyond raising McCain’s affair — they spread bogus rumors in advance of the South Carolina primary that the senator had fathered an illegitimate black child. This strategy helped to deliver Bush a key primary victory and, arguably, the nomination.

There are going to be some second- and third-tier Republican candidates who are desperate to get ahead, and narrow the gap. They know, contrary to Kristol’s comments, that conservative voters — you know, the ones who vote in GOP primaries — care quite a bit about these issues.

It’s going to get ugly. Evangelical apologies for Clinton remain highly unlikely.

But it would make for great theatre watching these Republican wannabes attack each other over personal aspects that most non-Republican voters could care less about.

Pass that popcorn, with butter, please!

  • The charge Bush used in 2000 against McCain had less to do with sexual ethics as it did racism. And the typical Republican wasn’t all that interested in lynching Clinton for a BJ either, but they wanted his head removed for any and every reason the Rethugs could scrape up, because he was a Democrat.

    As long as the candidate isn’t blatant about their infidelity, I think the average Republican would vote for any properly-funded Republican who hasn’t been caught in bed with a farm animal.

    Of course at the same time, some of them will write columns about whether Bill and Hillary spend enough time in the sack together.

  • “…they try to pick someone who will be a good president and they separate public and private to a pretty great degree.”

    This must’ve started happening since, oh, 2004. ‘Cause last time ’round, folks picked the least capable administrator because they wanted to have a beer with him.

  • Is this the latest BS meme these dummies are pushing?

    If so, then let’s not hear anymore crap about any Presidential candidate’s personal life, Repub or Dem.

    If so, then Hillbilly Heroine Rush Limbaugh and Drudge Lite Sean Hannity should just shut up for six or nine months and let this latest surge meme work.

    Regardless, the GOP voters will buy it hook, line and sinker.

  • Character only counts when it’s a Democrat’s character being impugned. Come on, everyone knows that.

  • Right wing pundits like Kristol let the private lives genie out of the bottle during the Clinton years and despite their admonitions they won’t be able to get it back in. After all the years of trumpeting “family values” and moral superiority to build their religious right base they won’t be able to maintain the holy rollers’ votes by supporting adulterers and serial husbands who are completely contrary to the squeaky clean candidates the righties require.

  • OTOH, if Giuliani pulls ahead far enough, the other candidates will likely see the writing on the wall and go down on bended knee to Rudi in supplication. McCain’s craven sucking up to Bush after 2000 comes to mind and an example. I have no doubt that Rudi would just lap it up as his due. I think this is more likely than not, given that McCain’s campaign is imploding while Romney’s is going nowhere, and the rest like Huckabee, the two Thompsons, etc. are second-tier candidates at best who can bitch and moan all they like, but they aren’t going to get enough traction to beat Giuliani.

    The only man who could possibly hurt Giuliani’s chances is George W. Bush, but as long as Giuliani doesn’t cross him about Iraq (and there’s no reason for Rudi as the front-runner to have to do that), Bush will be happy to embrace him in the fading afterglow of 9/11. In case you haven’t guessed it already, I think Giuliani will be the GOP nominee in 2008, and he’ll be tougher to beat than some might think.

    If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, she won’t be able to effectively highlight Giuliani’s foibles thanks to Bill’s past, and I expect Rudi to prevail in the general election against her. John Edwards on the other hand could beat Rudi to death on it every time Elizabeth Edwards makes an appearance with him. Obama couldn’t do it since his strategy seems to be to take the high road, which isn’t bad but wouldn’t beat Giuliani either. And sorry, race still matters and while someone has to run and lose first to get it over with, the prospect of President Giuliani scares the crap out of me because unlike Bush, Giuliani really is a shark who could do a hell of a lot of damage to America before he’s through being dictator.

    If Edwards falters right out the gate in Iowa though, he’s pretty much through. That’s why he’s pinning his hopes on winning there, and possibly in New Hampshire as well, which would give him a chance to overcome Hillary Clinton’s huge advantage in money and connections. Obama is a phenom who won’t win though, even if he looks good in spring training now.

  • ***“Republicans haven’t really started attacking each other yet.”***

    Given that “the character” of these candidates are so fragile, they can’t afford to attack each other. They’d be (figuratively, if not literally) the aftermath of the bull rampaging through the china-shop—smashed into ittie-bittie pieces like so many Humpty-Dumpties, with no one to put them together again.

    And yes, all you evil, maniacal, beastly, loathe-some “Christian Evalgelical leaders”—you DO owe Bill Clinton a public apology….

  • I see an image. Yes, it’s getting clearer . It’s the Rockettes. No, it’s a chorus line of people with hairy legs and they’re all wearing blue dresses. The blue dresses are somewhat stained. The faces of the people on the chorus line are… wait … they’re not clear yet … yes! there’s Giuliani! McCain! …there are more… It’s a video, or is it a MoveOn ad… Or is it coming out of the Brownback camp…

  • .We should not forget the central role that Billy played in the Lewinsky scandal.

    Right-wing gossipmonger Matt Drudge posts an Internet report on Newsweek’s decision to withhold publication of an article on Clinton’s affair with an intern. Republican commentator William Kristol refers to Drudge’s report during the ABC program “This Morning with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.” Two days later the Washington Post publishes its first article on the subject, touching off the media frenzy.

    And let’s not forget this.

    § In the opening moments of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Kristol insisted, “We are now in the final days.” He intoned, “If the President lied to the American People…he’s finished.”

    § When the Starr report was issued, causing almost universal revulsion among Americans, Kristol wrote a cover editorial for his magazine that headlined the report Starr’s Home Run, portraying its author as Mark McGwire and calling for Clinton’s immediate impeachment.

    Of course, Kristol saw the Lewinsky scandal as a politically expedient way to get Clinton. But he soon realized that it was unlikely to work.

    I think Bill Clinton should be impeached.
    I think it is unlikely Bill Clinton will be impeached. The American people appear not to want him impeached. They’re wrong. But our democratically elected politicians will, not unreasonably, probably follow the wishes of their constituents.

    His recent statement is simply an application of this lesson learned in the Lewinsky scandal to the current Republican race-if only he learned lessons about Iraq so quickly. The question,of course, is, are Republican primary voters as forgiving as the population as a whole when it comes to sexual issues? Perhaps they are when a candidate displays a characteristic which they find even more desirable:authoritarianism. Glenn Greenwald discusses this today.

  • Was Huckabee struck dead on the spot for suggesting that even *theoretically* someone owed Clinton an apology?

    I disagree with the man most of the time, but he at least seems to have a consistent set of beliefs that he isn’t afraid of (yeah, I’m looking at you McCain!)

  • “If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter,” he declared, “then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.”

    Not only that, but they ought to stop harping on Hillary Clinton, too. Like, right now. But of course they won’t. IOKIYAR

  • Given the total weakness of any of the GOP postitions, what exactly can they campaign on – other than change?

    They can’t campaign on the current Administration’s Iraq position, because the overwhelming majority of Americans has rejected that. Taking a position for any kind of draw-down or withfrawal takes away their ability to attack Democrats for taking the same position.

    They can’t campaign on character and moral integrity, because that either has them campaigning against their own personal conduct, or attacking one of their own.

    It goes on and on like this – not a good sign for them

  • Kristol is not necessarily wrong, but for Republican pols private indescretions only matter/is a problme when the person is a Democrat. At which point they need make no apologies to Clinton.

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