For Republicans, a dangerously long silly season
The Republican Party has a real opportunity next year to transform Barack Obama — a politician whose triumphant election was history-making — into Jimmy Carter Revisited.
The sour economy and Mr. Obama’s own surprisingly lackluster political chops have created a big opening. But toppling a sitting president is tough.
It took a Ronald Reagan to shove aside Carter. And it took a Bill Clinton to edge out the first George Bush.
The problem this year for conservatives is that, far from anointing that caliber of challenger, the GOP appears stuck in silly season.
Week-by-week, the party flirts with embracing candidates who are, by every credible measure, unelectable. Michele Bachman, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are, collectively, backbenchers.
The goofiness continued yesterday with Herman Cain’s straw poll win in Florida.
Each of these candidates represent a tiny, ideological slice of the Republican or Tea Party movements. Some have interesting ideas, and play an important role in the national debate.
But they lack the organization, the money, the experience, and the broadly appealing platforms that translate into serious presidential aspirations.
All political parties have fringes, and fringe candidates, but I can’t think of a prior election where so many candidates with resumes this thin were taken so seriously by so many for so long.
The silly season may have reached a peak last week, when former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson cracked a joke during a Fox News debate, arguing that “My next door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel ready jobs than this president.”
A great wise-crack, worth of a couple of repeats in the highlight reel. But Charles Krauthammer, the hugely influential conservative columnist quickly inflated the moment into another full-blown flirtation:
“That was the best line of the night,” said Krauthammer, “and had he said it early on, he might now be a top tier candidate.”
A top-tier candidate? Please. I bet most of you reading this column wouldn’t recognize Gary Johnson if he bumped into you on the street.
The biggest lingering question for the GOP is whether Rick Perry, the current governor of Texas, can prove that he’s more than a member of this supporting cast — more than another flirtation.
During last week’s debate, he failed to convince most pundits across the political spectrum. Politico ran with the headline “Texas toast. Perry worries GOP.”
And his answer to a question about nuclear missiles going AWOL in Pakistan was particularly damaging, prompting the on-line news magazine to conclude that “Perry gave a foreign policy answer that offered no indication he’s thought about how to respond to threats against America…”
Combined with some of his past statements — about Social Security, secession, the Federal Reserve — it’s unclear whether Perry can graduate from provocative to presidential.
(For what it’s worth, Perry finished more than 20 points behind Cain in yesterday’s Florida straw poll.)
Mitt Romney, who is slowly emerging as the establishment candidate for the GOP, hopes that missteps like this will set him apart and make it clear that he’s the grown-up in the room.
But there is evidence, at least in the political press, that the silly season will continue, forcing Romney to continue scrambling. After all, he came in third in Florida’s poll.
And then there’s his from Chris Cilliza, the Washington Post’s astute political reporter:
“Expect the clamor for other candidates to enter the race, which had died down somewhat since Perry got in, to pick up in intensity again.
To the extent there exists an “anyone but Romney” sentiment in the party — and we believe that there is that feeling in some corners of the GOP — Perry certainly didn’t look like a guy who could carry the fight to the former Massachusetts governor last night.”
Which means more flirtations, more first-date excitement with candidates who don’t have the political infrastructure behind them to be serious contenders.
There are a lot of reasons for this muddle. The conservative movement has a lot of powerful media personalities — Beck, Rush, Hannity, on and on — and they’re all tugging right-of-center voters in wildly different directions.
But I will note, as a kind of professional mea culpa, that a lot of the first-blush goofiness of this political season has been generated and sustained by journalists.
In searching for clever stories, and breathless headlines, reporters have inflated a lot of third-tier candidates into serious contenders, with very little basis in fact.
(Early polling — the basis for many of these stories — is notoriously inaccurate in presidential races, as are the results of straw polls and other popularity contests.)
Good journalists know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that most of the Republican contenders now gobbling up attention, TV time, and campaign donations, just don’t have the kind of heft to go the distance.
All of this is great news for Barack Obama.
It’s thirteen months and change to Election Day. Every week that passes without the emergence of a serious GOP challenger leaves him a little stronger.
Tags: politics
“The Republican Party has a real opportunity next year to transform Barack Obama — a politician whose triumphant election was history-making — into Jimmy Carter Revisited.”
He is doing this pretty well all by himself.
News junkies are the only ones that most of this is registering with right now. What matters comes after the conventions.
If things continue to slide with the economy and the markets as everyone predicts I think that the president is in serious trouble no matter who he is up against.
Fred Thompson Kenobi, you’re the GOP’s only hope…
This silly season, I think, can be defined as the conservative base wishing for the perfect candidate. Each new entrant, from Cain to Bachman to Perry back to Cain, shows that the base gets discouraged when they actually start to see these people try to articulate a reason why they should be elected.
Liberals were a lot more pragmatic in 2008, falling in line behind Obama when ‘their’ candidate, John Edwards, imploded. Sure, a lot of them put their ideals in him, but there are many who understood that he was not the second coming of FDR.
Conservatives need to grow up and elect someone that doesn’t simply reflect their Id.
So I guess what Brian is saying and I tend to agree, “journalist” have created their very own version of “Reality TV” and call it political reporting.
It’s early yet but in the end I think that the elephants will back the ticket with the best chance to beat O’bama. Right now I think that would be a Romney / Rubio ticket. The presence of Rubio will go a long way towards getting the right to back Romney while at the same time cut into O’Bama’s latino vote.
All the Republican Presidential candidates, except Romney, are kooks. Flat-out kooks with their own radical interpretations of the Constitution, even to the point of wanting to repeal amendments and take us back to the 19th century – you know, the good old days before civil rights, women voting, Social Security, unions, environmental laws, etc. All the progressive improvements during the 20th century would be suspect for repeal or state nullification. The Right tries to paint Obama as a foreign-born Muslim socialist. But it is these Republican candidates who are the un-American extremists.
The Republican Party has been taken over by fringe fanatics and we are seeing the type of candidates that emerge. The Conservative savior Ronald Reagan wouldn’t stand a chance of being nominated by today’s Republican Party. Reagan would look like Howard Dean to them. The Republican Party is so far to the right Reagan would probably re-enroll as a Democrat again.
My first thought was the press are idiots to provide so much coverage to these mad-cap cast of characters. And how does a half-baked organization like the Tea Party get to co-sponsor a prime-time Republican debate with CNN? OTOH, it may be the best thing for the country to see the true colors of these wacky candidates and the bizarre reactions of their know-nothing minions.
I think you’re too dismissive of the candidates. Just because candidates like Hermain Cain and Newt Gingrich (who has a much longer resume then Barack Obama did, by the way) aren’t leading in the polls, doesn’t mean they are “fringe candidates.”
Personally, I’m not impressed by any of them, but that doesn’t mean candidates should be dismissed by the media as irrelevant.
What we have now is simply not working. It is proving that these “kooks” may be onto something. The democrats had a super majority for two years and passed most of the presidents agenda without issue. Stimulus, auto bailouts, financial reform, health care reform, etc. etc. The problem is that it has gotten us where we are now. When you run as an incumbent you are stuck running on your record. That will be tough.
They are not all kooks. Herman Cain is a solid intelligent guy, and also you have Gingrich the ex speaker of the House and Rick Santorim a respected ex-Senator; you may really disagree with them but that does not give you the right to call them kooks anymore than it gives the teaparty types the right to question Obama’s patriotism or his citizenship.
I think Perry might be a kook, I liked that he stands up for his immigration views and does not back down. I think he says what he really believes unlike Bush, but I just don’t see him being a national candidate.
Its too bad its all about money really the only reason Perry and Romney are considered the front runners is there fund raising abilities.
every credible measure, unelectable. Michele Bachman, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are, collectively, backbenchers.
Of course, this is just your opinion.
Here’s a measure that’s credible. What was Obama before he was president? Community organizer. Harvard something or other that no one seems to want to talk about. He was knighted to the Senate, where he spent his tenure voting “present” and running for president.
Whoa. There’s presidential material for you.
Anyone one the list of your losers has one credible measurement.
They are all better than Obama, and that’s spotting him three years in the Oval office!
Sorry, Cain is a certified kook. He says:
Muslims have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.
To serve in his administration he would require Muslims take a special loyalty oath — a standard he explicitly said would not apply to people of other faiths.
He would put Oil and Coal CEOs in charge of EPA regulations.
Unions are trying to bring down the United States of America. They are trying to destroy the state of Wisconsin.
The current minimum wage is unnecessary.
Homosexuality is both a sin and a choice.
He won’t sign any bill longer than three pages.
Obama was raised in Kenya.
And Santorum is kookier than Cain, besides being radically anti-gay and a
climate change denier.
Drop the talking points, move on is just as boring as Fox.
You must distinguish between disagreeing with someone and name calling, this is no worse than the tea party people I do agree they are no better.
But these guys are not kooks and it is to the Lefts great disadvantage to believe that. The reason that they are “fringe” is that they can’t raise the money that Perry, Romney or Obama can, not because of who they are.
Michele Bachman, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Rick Perry hold views well outside the majority of mainstream America. That is why they are fringe candidates and are unelectable. It is to the Left’s advantage that the Republican Party has moved so far Right and has to endure a long nominating process that is illuminating just how radical some of these candidates are and how far out the Party has gone. Obama needs to court Reagan Republicans by pointing out how much closer his policies are to Reagan than any of the Republican nominees.
Verplank- Edwards wasn’t my candidate; I liked Kucinich — not electable but a person with serious ideas.
JDM, while Obama’s record may have been thin and he wasn’t my first or even second or third choice, he was (and still is) a serious person with serious, main-stream ideas. You may prefer one or all of the current Republican choices but they are a pretty kooky bunch as a whole. I’ve got nothing against kooks, they are usually much more fun to hang out with — but I don’t want them to be President. I love Ron Paul; I agree 100% with about half of his ideas and I agree 0% with the other half. Interesting guy; but I don’t want him as President.
The real problem Obama has had is that he thinks Republicans actually want to work together with Democrats to make the country better.
Why has NPR and all the major media devoted SO much time and effort to cover these fringe candidates SO long before the election and yet there has been NO coverage on air by NPR of the Occupy Wall Street Protests which will be entering their 10th day?
Thousands of people have taken part in this PEACEFUL protest in the heart of the financial district of Manhattan, scores of people have been arrested, many have been maced — this is, or could turn out to be, our Arab Spring but NPR will not cover it. Why?
There is no more “mainstream” America. And even if there were, it certainly isn’t where Obama lives.
Whoever can form a coalition of factions will prevail.
You can get 60% of the people to agree on one thing, but they are not monolithic on all issues.
It is a different group on each issue.
Mainstream America is a term that is at least 2 decades out-of-date.
JDM, you just want to dismiss the idea of mainstream America now that you know that 80% of them agree that we need to raise taxes on corporations and the rich. Granted, mainstream America has been badly fragmented by the disingenuous “news” presented by Fox, but when they aren’t being completely hoodwinked, there is still a deep pool of common sense there. You can’t fool all the people all the time.
I have to agree with Walker. But it isn’t just FoxNews, corporations and others with immense wealth have created propaganda machines that work to convince people of all kinds of ridiculous and dangerous ideas. Just a few examples, old and newer: smoking doesn’t cause cancer, PCB’s are harmless, anti-biotics and hormones in food wont hurt you, global warming doesn’t exist and it isn’t related to human activity…
Have you seen the ads about fracking? How much money is being spent by Exxon/Mobil on that?
We need a law in this country that clearly states “Corporations are not people.”
Then they wouldn’t be allowed to lie to us and call it “free-speech.”
I saw a good bumper sticker: I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.
I would love to see any one of the so-called 80% who want to see taxes raised to voluntarily pay 1 dime in extra taxes.
Ain’t going to happen.
Pure fiction.
I could see 80% wanting to “raise taxes on someone else”.
That’s a no-brainer.
Meaningless, but a no-brainer.
For example, if one was asked, “do you want to raise Walker’s taxes to help balance the deficit?” One might be inclined to answer “yes”.
I presume you could confiscate 100% of Walker’s income and still not pay off the deficit.
So, 80% say, “tax the gazillioaires, 100%”.
Well, the “gazillionaires” income (those making more than $10,000,000) equals $270B.
You might just as well tax Walker, because all the gazillionaires together don’t make enough income to pay off the deficit, even you took 100% of their income.
myown, You sure do spend a lot of time analyzing the “kooks”.
Look, kookey or not these candidates have a lot of support because the left is just as extreme in many cases.
Look at the latest “shut down threat fiasco”. Senate democrats are willing to hold hostage storm victims in an effort to save a government program that is proven to be a waste of money.
The republicans get chastised for the simple reason that they think the government should try and live within its means. Sure it would be great to have this program funded but we finally have some politicians that are not willing to keep putting off the inevitable and live in the real world.
Not the taxes thing again… The only reason that the president added that to his “jobs” bill is to keep people in a fighting mood for the elections. That was very poor leadership.
“yet there has been NO coverage on air by NPR of the Occupy Wall Street Protests which will be entering their 10th day?”
I read about them in the NYT. I think they are kind of a joke. It sounds like many of the protesters were drunk and there was this:
“Organizers said the rally was meant to be diverse, and not all of the participants were on the left. Followers of the fringe political candidate Lyndon LaRouche formed a choir near Bowling Green and sang “The Star Spangled Banner” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Nearby, anarchists carried sleeping bags and tents.”
I guess it was just a few hundred people anyway. Not exactly the “arab spring” just yet?
Good job Paul! Stick up for your betters. I’m sure they’ll throw you a bone.
Ok yes I would like to see a better slate of Republican candidates, although I do like Santorum he does not stand much of a chance, he is just too socially conservative, but he is not a kook and his views are not way way off from the mainstream, but they are not in the majority no doubt about that.
Now I have to kind of agree with Brian’s main point ;there is this fascination in the US right now with unqualified people. Michelle Bachman is okay, but she does not have the experience to be President, the same of course holds for Palin, and neither does our current President and it shows.
I think we need to start looking at grounded people with real qualifications and real experience. A 1/2 term in congress does not cut it for anyone. There are some good grounded Republicans but they don’t want to run. Maybe our whole process has turned good people away from being involved in national politics?
This was a dangerously long silly post and comment thread.
I will never get these seven minutes of my life back.
JDM, with the bait, sets the hook on me:
“I would love to see any one of the so-called 80% who want to see taxes raised to voluntarily pay 1 dime in extra taxes.
Ain’t going to happen.
Pure fiction.”
If by pure fiction, you mean completely true, here:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/rich-silicon-valley-man-begs-obama-to-raise-his-taxes.php?ref=fpblg
Oh, yeah. Obama picks on some random guy out of the crowd, that he had no idea who it was, and the guy says to the president,
“please raise my taxes”.
Oh, yeah. That’s not fiction. That’s total reality. That wasn’t staged.
Good call, oa.
JDM, you can raise my taxes any day, no problem. Not that I qualify under any of the Tax The Rich proposals offered so far, but if they did, I’m still all for it. And Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, who have a whole lot more to lose from tax increases, are for it too.
You may not be one of them, but there ARE folks out here who recognize that taxes are the cost of living in a civilized society, and pay them willingly. There are plenty of places on the earth with much lower taxes than the U.S., even after thirty years of Starve The Beast– Afghanistan, Sudan, Uganda, Algeria, Angola, Senegal, Ethiopia, Bangladesh. (Complete lists here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP)
If we keep on in the direction we’ve been headed, we just might end up in the same league as these bastions of tax-freedom!
I’m going to pay my school taxes this week. A big bill, but worth it. I think it’s important to have an educated populace. If my taxes need to be raised to keep the USA from racing to the bottom, I’m all for it. (This email was not staged by Obama).
town, village, county, school district, state, federal. We are taxed too much. You folks saying you wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes are liars.
Rocky, I’m sorry, but you are the liar. You don’t know me from Adam.
JDM, if I said the earth was flat, would you finally believe that it is round?
Walker: “but there ARE folks out here who recognize that taxes are the cost of living in a civilized society”
And there are some who pay so much in taxes to live in a civilized that we recognize when we are throwing good money down a rat hole.
Rocky – you don’t have to like paying taxes to understand that they are necessary in many cases.
JDM: “…there are some who pay so much in taxes to live in a civilized that we recognize when we are throwing good money down a rat hole.”
Well, you can always move to Haiti: taxes there average only 9.4%. Of course you’ll have to hire your own security force, but hey, with all that tax money left over, you should be all set.
Yes taxes are necesary but not in some cases. Case in point Lake Placid. My share in school taxes should not go toward laptops and flatscreens for faculty.