Grim Old Party

September 4, 2007

It’s obviously incredibly early in the election season — assuming we’re even in an election season — and November 2008 is far enough away that the political pendulum can swing back and forth a couple of times between now and Election Day.

But I can’t help but notice an emerging theme. Take Bob Novak’s latest column, for example:

[T]he Republicans yearn for a leader. It cannot be George W. Bush, an unpopular lame duck. The party’s presidential candidates pretend Bush doesn’t exist, not mentioning his name during debates. But none has inspired the party faithful. Front-runner Rudy Giuliani is anathema to social conservatives, the core of Republican success for more than two decades. This situation explains the interest in Fred Thompson as a possible savior, although he has not fulfilled lofty expectations prior to his official announcement of candidacy.

And then there was GOP strategist Mike Murphy on Meet the Press a couple of days ago:

“[A]ll four of [the leading Republican presidential candidates] have a glass jaw, which is what makes this a very interesting primary. I think none of the big four kind of have a lock on this thing. McCain’s glass jaw was immigration, and he got that hit and it knocked him right back. A big, tough TV hit on Mitt Romney on kind of ideological gymnastics would hurt him. A hit on Rudy Giuliani on social liberalism would hurt him, and I think a little bit of a hit on Fred Thompson could hurt him, too. And we don’t really know what the Fred Thompson candidacy is yet, and I think the problem they’re going to have, just to give equal glass jaw time quickly to Fred, from a Republican point of view — and I like Fred, I think he’d be a pretty good president. But I also think Fred doesn’t fit the super-conservative mold perfectly either. Truth is, none of these guys do. It’s like they’re all trying to haunt the George Allen space that got vacated, and I’m not even sure that was a ticket to the nomination.”

Yes, a leading GOP consultant lamented the fact that the GOP’s top tier isn’t similar enough to George Allen.

And then there are the rank-and-file Republicans who are dejected by a lackluster presidential field.

Interviews with dozens of Republicans across the country this Labor Day weekend found that despite the already lengthy campaign, which started almost a year ago, many candidates have made either no impression or a negative one, and many voters are still chewing over their options.

“The Republicans need to get their spunk back,” said Leanne Stein, 41, who lives in Claridon, Ohio, and works at a retirement home. […]

By and large, those interviewed said they still supported Mr. Bush, but they were deeply ambivalent about the war in Iraq, leaving them ambivalent in turn about their party’s presidential candidates, most of whom have so far stuck close to Mr. Bush on the matter.

The NYT’s anecdotal evidence is bolstered by ample polling data, all of which shows Republicans unsatisfied with their (many) choices for the GOP presidential nominee.

And then there are the Dems.

Forget the “lesser-of-the-evils” talk typically heard from Democratic primary voters around this time of a presidential campaign. Interviews with dozens of Democrats here and across the country this Labor Day weekend found them enthusiastic about their presidential choices and, if slightly nervous about potential weaknesses in their candidates, confident of victory in 2008.

“I think Hillary is pretty strong,” said Lesley Cain, a dentist, as she sat out in the afternoon sun on Market Square in Portsmouth, N.H., waiting for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton to arrive for a Labor Day rally. “But I think Obama is good, too. It’s a flip at this point.”

Carol Brackett, 51, a retired dental technician from Portland, Me., said: “I love the field of Democrats. This is going to be hard.”

It’s not a bad landscape, is it? The Republicans have a huge field of unimpressive candidates; Dems have a smaller field of top-flight candidates; GOP voters are dejected; and Dems are thrilled to have so many strong choices.

Consider this your morale boost for the day.

Let me try this again in a somewhat different way:

In 2004 the only Democratic candidate who inspired sustained excitement was Dean, who also seriously turned off a large portion of the primary electorate. When Dean’s front-running campaign collapsed, the guy who was best resourced and seemed least objectionable–Kerry–got the nomination. But Kerry, to millions of Democrats, was never really “Kerry” so much as he was “Not Bush.” (And he didn’t even do that as well as he should have.)

Still, despite the fact that he didn’t run a smart campaign, Kerry was probably set to win before bin Laden popped up four days before the election. Being “Not Bush” was very nearly enough for him to win.

Fast-forward four years, and the Republicans are about to nominate–whichever of them it is–“Not Hillary Clinton.” Just as Democrats mobilized in 2004 to an extent that hadn’t been seen in decades on behalf of “Not Bush,” the Republicans–who aren’t as likely to screw up on tactical grounds as Bob Scum, Beth Cahill and the rest–will mobilize not for McGiuliomney, but against Hillary Clinton.

So their relative unenthusiasm for their candidates is sort of irrelevant, particularly given that this is a political movement–like most on the right–that runs far more on hate and fear than anything positive.

  • My morale would be boosted if it wasn’t for the Dem’s habit of seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. Hillary Clinton will be the candidate and she’ll lose to one of those lackluster Republicans.

  • Fred Thompson will be DOA. I’m sure Mittens and Rud!e both have Beware of Hollyweird Types commercials cued up and ready to deploy the minute he declares. Mittens can also attack his lack of family values as evidenced by a divorce. Thanks to the Talevan’s high standards, none of the front runners will make the grade unless one of those crazy muthas unveils a plan to blow up family planning clinics and herd all non-fair skinned, non-straight people into camps.

    “The Republicans need to get their spunk back,” said Leanne Stein, 41, who lives in Claridon, Ohio, and works at a retirement home. […]

    Larry Craig acquired it all during various rendezvous.
    Sorry, couldn’t resist.

  • Yes, if the Democrats don’t self-destruct during the primaries, the WH is theirs for the taking hands down! -Kevo

  • But will the victorious Democrats truly undo the damage Bush has done — the list is nearly endless — or will they keep the power-goodies? Will they continue the wars in Iraq and probably Iran by then?

    How different will they really be?

  • Nobody will be able to undo the damage Bush has done. You can’t undo that much damage, and we’ll probably still have the DLC shitheads around who gave us the people who allowed a lot of the damage to occur.

  • Front-runner Rudy Giuliani is anathema to social conservatives

    Now I’m envious of Rudy. My dream in life is to be anathema to social conservatives.

  • A corporate lackey (Hillary) versus yet another actor (Fred). With a rock star (Barack) and the ultimate in focus-group product (Mitt) as backups. Wow, what a country! What choices! What a chance for debating political principles! Whaddya think — fiscal conservatism? separation of church and state? educational opportunity and health for all? a strong defense? reversal of global warming? reclaiming broadcast media? Yeah, I know: toooo boring and soooo pre-9/11.

    I’d like to blame the banality of our choices on technology (the shallowness of TeeVee) or the new realities of the working world (corporate fascism), but I’m becoming increasingly convinced that it’s due instead to the success of FDR’s broad program to improve society. It worked so well, vis-a-vis communism or fascism, that no one gives a damn about society anymore. The poor we still have with us, of course, but we no longer know that: they’re either hidden (less TeeVee-worthy than murders and fires) or corralled (biggest prison population in the world). Getting rid of the draft was brilliant, and smoothing over economic difficulties by endless borrowing is a comfort as well.

    Who could ask for anything more?

  • Yes, a leading GOP consultant lamented the fact that the GOP’s top tier isn’t similar enough to George Allen.

    Actually, it sounds like he’s lamenting the fact that they’re all trying to sound like George Allen, which he smartly doesn’t think is a good election strategy.

  • I agree with the first two comments, dajafi and Dennis. I think that Hillary will energize the Grim Old Party like nothing else could. Let’s watch the polls as the campaign unfolds to see if they support this theory.

  • I realize I should probably let this go, but it sticks in my craw the way the Conventional Wisdom of the 2004 election has become set in stone, and the way it is mindlessly repeated ad nauseam.

    There were, repeated assertions to the contrary, a very large number of democratic and independent voters who were extremely enthusiastic about voting for Kerry in 2004. If you looked at the (unedited) c-span footage of his campaign rallies across the country in the late summer and fall of 2004 you would have seen massive turnouts and wild cheering. Kerry came within a hair of winning, and some people believe to this day that he actually did win, the antics of Karl Rove and James Carville and the inaction of such as Bill Richardson, Terry McAuliffe, and the democratic party infrastructure notwithstanding.

    Not to keep fighting the Battle of 2004, but come on. No revisionist historians, please. We’re stuck with what we are stuck with for a number of reasons, but we should at least try to look squarely at what happened so as to avoid its repetition.

    If anyone seriously thinks that what was done to Kerry can’t be done to any one of the current democratic hopefuls, please think again. We are sadder and older, but we don’t appear to be a lot wiser. Shoving all the blame on Kerry makes it seem that all we have to do to avoid losing in 2008 is not nominate Kerry, and I call bullshit on that one.

    And sticking my neck out a little further here, I liked Kerry a lot. I still like him. And I see him as one of the very few democrats who comes down consistently on the right side of every issue. He doesn’t deserve the trashing.

  • “Good” & “strong”? I’m uninspired with the vagaries and the “more competitive candidates.” But you knew that already.

  • I think the real doom for the GOP is that the only candidates that are mainstream enough to be considered contenders are too mainstream for ths Social Conservatives. And anyone the Social Conservatives would want would be too wacko for America. They’re totally screwed. And this is a dynamic that just won’t go away, as it’s what they’ve been banking their whole strategy on for the past two decades.

    The only reason they could pull this off last time was that they ran with someone with no record or reputation whatsoever who had the same name as a former president; and even then, they had to lie like crazy and barely pulled it off. Unless George P. Bush can stop being hispanic, they probably won’t be able to duplicate that success. They’re screwed.

  • The problem for the Republicans isn’t so much that their candidates suck, it’s that their party is shackled to a throughly discredited ideology of conservatism and what they are lacking is a candidate with enough charisma to make all the BS sound reasonable again.

    Face it, making the federal government a malignantly neglectful entity whose only job is to help out well-connected corporations, to attack other nations “because we can,” and to be used by one party to remake the government into its own personal fiefdom has been proved beyond any doubt to be thoroughly anti-American and unconstitutional.

    If Republican candidates were permitted to hold reasonable points of view, people might have a different impression of the lot of them.

  • Its Jeb Bush time baby!!!

    The “true” conservative from the SOUTHERN state will be cast as the only man capable of beating the she devil that is Hillary Clinton

    mark it down

  • For the Republican Presidential candidates, the Party is, at best, a liability. The 28% do not a basis for a majority make, not when fully 50% of the country are passionately opposed to the present, Republican administration.

    The best analogy would be a Republican running for governor in a state where the Republicans are minority — California, say, or Massachusetts. Republicans often become successful gubernatorial candidates, despite their Party’s weakness.

    It is no accident that two of the leading candidates are Republicans, who have held office in exactly those circumstances, that is, where Republican Party identification and organization are more a liablity than an asset.

  • So Mike Murphy thinks Fredrick of Hollywood would be “a pretty good president”……
    Sorry Mikey, but I’m going to have to pass. PRETTY GOOD just ain’t good enough anymore.
    What we need is a LEADER to pull us out of all of the muck and shit that the nimble minded GOP whiz kids piled on this country.
    We DON’T need a vain, lazy, second rate actor, pretending to be interested in world events just so he can go winging his trophy wife around on airforce one.

  • The real question is what will the U. S. be like as the Republican Party collapses totally. How will the Democratic Party function in a one party state. Will the Democrats try to keep some sort of Potemkin Republican party around to keep many of its core groups in line. Is there any possibility that a another party can take the place of the Republican Party.

    My guess is that the U. S. will become a one party state very quickly. Large urban areas like Chicago or DC probably are the models that the U.S. will follow where the only relevant election will be the Democratic Primary.

    • Comments are closed.