GOP Doomsday Scenario 2012!
I’ve been on the road this week, listening to a lot of conservative talk radio, and it got me thinking about doomsday scenarios. (Rush and Glenn will do that to you.)
2012 Doomsday
So here’s how 2012 could go deeply, terribly wrong for the GOP:
A HEALTHY ECONOMY
By most mainstream measures, the economy has been trending upward for the last two years. Unemployment just dropped again and if Mr. Obama catches a break, we could be down below 8% by election day.
There are signs the hopeful trend could be accelerating.
If this continues, the doom-and-gloom scenario offered by Republicans, including Mitt Romney, will sound, well, doom-and-gloomy. Most politics-watchers will tell you that American voters prefer optimism to sky-is-falling rhetoric.
But it could be very difficult for Mr. Romney to tweak or nuance his message, because the Republican base is wedded to the idea that this administration is an anti-capitalist juggernaut, eager to doom free enterprise.
They don’t want better ideas for running the country. They want an indictment of a rogue regime.
DITCHING ROMNEY
If the right-wingers who make up the GOP’s core think their candidate is waffling (again) on his red meat message, we could see real disaffection come November. Worst case scenario? A full scale-revolt.
Remember, the right loves to thrash Democrats. But they love to punish moderate Republicans even more.
If the Republican candidate is Mr. Romney, this eventuality is made more plausible by the fact that he is a Mormon. His faith is viewed with deep distrust, bordering on real animus, by many within the evangelical movement.
(A late January poll in Florida found that four out of ten likely Republican voters either think Mormons aren’t Christians or they “aren’t sure.”)
A collapse in confidence at the top of the ticket could bring a cascade of damage in congressional races around the country, not least because the GOP brand is already in bad shape.
A COLLAPSING BRAND
Consider this: A poll issued last week by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that Barack Obama has a net positive public image of +11 — meaning he’s liked more than he’s disliked by a significant margin.
The closest Republican on the list? That was Rick Santorum, who scored an anemic -1. Mitt Romney was at -5 and the Republican Party as a whole was -13, two points below the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
(The Tea Party movement, by the way, scored a net negative rating of -15.)
That means the GOP is already on very thin ice with key swing voting groups, including independents and Hispanics.
Their dissatisfaction could be sharpened disastrously by the fact that the party has entered 2012 with a gaggle of bizarre and potentially discrediting hangers-on.
These days, Sarah Palin seems downright stateswoman-like. The Hermain Cain-Donald Trump-Michelle Bachman weirdness of the Republican primary took things to a whole new level.
And it’s not just on the fringes. Just last week, Team Romney apparently thought it was a good idea to have their guy endorsed publicly by Mr. Trump.
A public embrace from a man who ranks near the Kardashians on America’s pop-culture scale isn’t exactly a surefire way to look reassuringly presidential.
And because conservative power is rapidly fragmenting into a constellation of media empires, Super-PACs, and powerful personalities (the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch, Trump etc.) it will be difficult to put that mess back in a box again.
A RESURGENT BARACK OBAMA
But in an everything-goes-wrong election, it won’t just be Republicans bungling. It will also mean that Mr. Obama will find his voice again as a politician.
And there are signs that this could be happening. After two years of professorial rhetoric, he is once again tossing off zingers like “Don’t muck it up.”
Meanwhile, conservative efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, strip unions of collective bargaining rights, and roll back gay rights could mobilize, energize, and unify Mr. Obama’s base.
LONG-TERM DAMAGE?
S0 let’s sum up.
In a worst-case scenario year, Republicans could emerge into the national spotlight with a weak presidential candidate that no one really likes very much.
Their standard-bearer could be surrounded at the Republican National Convention by a zany cast of supporting characters with a menu of gloomy, out-there ideas. (Gold standard, anyone? A new moonbase, maybe? How about mass deportation of undocumented workers?)
That b-list team could find itself facing a strong, energized incumbent president, who by contrast looks steady, competent, optimistic and grounded in the problems of average Americans.
If everything goes wrong for the GOP, the outcome will be four more years of Barack Obama, which could well mean that he gets one more pick to the Supreme Court.
But it could also mean a Republican majority in the House whittled down sharply, as well as continued Democratic majorities in the Senate.
Perhaps most importantly, we could see the long-term alienation of crucial voter blocks (Hispanics, independent women, young people) that will shape American politics for generations to come.
(Next weekend in doomsday scenarios: What if the Occupy movement occupies the Democratic convention?)
Tags: analysis, election12, politics
How the heck is Santorum almost even in the like/dislike figure? Are the theocrats really that big a percentage of the population? Frightening!
Or does he have a high ‘unknown’ category?
BTW-Occupy won’t occupy the DNC… there are too many Occupiers who mouth the right things but refuse to see how Democrats are just as complicit as Republicans in acting on behalf of the 1 Percent’s interests.
Well said, Brian.
I would add this recommendation to both parties. Stop thinking in terms of voting blocks.
America is diverse. No so called voting block is united. When you try to appeal to a so called voting block, you will bug a good number who technically belong to it.
A good example is Catholics. If you think you win the Catholic vote by siding with what the Bishops like or don’t like, you are making a big mistake.
I would dare say most Catholics who are sexually active, married or not, use some form a birth control other than the so called rhythm method and don’t give a hoot to what the bishops think.
But perhaps more importantly, when you go after a block, you are always catering to those who claim to be the leaders and the leaders of any block always have agendas that enhance their power – and the people know it except for those who would be willing to jump off a cliff if their leaders told them to jump.
The only problem is the “doomsday event” would be the president getting re-elected or for next week someone else being elected. Neither one is the end of the world.
paul – its hyperbole but you are right of course. Everybody’s worst case scenario isn’t so bad – its not like we end up in North Korea.
Paul’s right. Both parties are corporatist and hardly any Americans are going to consider non-corporatist, smaller party alternatives. The changes if Romney is elected will minimal, nibbling around the edges on fringe social issues but nothing fundamental.
But both the media and the two major parties need to convince you that it makes a gargantuan difference who wins, for different, but similarly self-interested reasons. The media so they can continue to shove this non-stop “analysis” down your throats rather than do real journalism. The parties so they can offer the illusion of choice to voters, lest they dare consider real multipartyism.
It has taken three years of hard, hard work for this administration to correct the (intentional) damages done to our economy by the Bush/Rove administration. Obama has worked against the negative flow of Congressional Republicans whose only motive was to diminish any success that a Democrat might have. Imagine where we might be if the Bushites hadn’t scuttled the economy with their wars. Imagine how well our health care system would be if it wasn’t designed by self-feeding Republicans
What would it be like to live in a nation which moved forward in each new administration, instead of left and right?
Who’s definition of forward?
Part of democracy is that we are NOT a team, but are a large group of individuals who have to balance what we all want and desire. Totalitarian states are one team moving forward together; a democracy does not move forward as one but gets to a consensus that balances different ideas.
Also the bush blaming is getting boring and old and it just does not work after this much time.
But as to Brains points I think this is a really really strange Republican year, I don’t know what is really going on? There will always be a more conservative party or movement and indeed that may no longer be the Republican party as we move forward the transition will be interesting. We may end up with a more hard core doctrine driven Democratic party aka Move on etc, against a broader Independent movement.
Why isn’t finding consensus part of being on a team? What we have now is a large group of representatives from one faction of our electorate doing nearly everything they can to keep from building consensus, even if the other side is willing to give them nearly everything they want.
We also have this insanity wrapped around the issue of Iran. The far right is really pushing for a war there. You can bet that there is a lot of secret discussion with Israel about it and part of that discussion is from war hawks who want Israel to initiate strikes. This will likely come to a head in the next several months and it will be a game changer. Let’s hope the American public wont be fooled again.
Finally, the Supreme Court seat is huge and everyone, including Republicans, should be very wary of allowing consolidation of power by activist judges. Right wing activist judges.
why are journalists so obsessed with horse race politics? I much prefer discussion of substantive issues than this never ending horse race nonsense.
Sratchy: I agree and to go one step farther why do they preach THEIR bias opinions on well educated readers!
Blaming Bush may be getting old, but unless you recently found an extra six TRILLION somewhere in your attic, the legacy of that era will be with us for a long time. I’m particularly annoyed with those who decry the terrible expense of those nasty “entitlements” …pensions, medicare, social security…all while planning the next invasion.
Brian is right on. The Republican Party chose a path to power that includes people whose beliefs are based on Jiminey Cricket politics , i,e, that if you believe in something strongly enough, come will be true, no matter how irrational it is. Saddams WMDS & 9-11 guilt long have both were disproved, the glory of the Gold Standard, 9-9-9, Obama the illegal alien, Trump the Great leader, Newt the Statesman/Moral Leader, etc.. Now these people are inside the tent, and it ain’t pretty. Reasonable policies, as might have been pushed by Bush I, or even Romeny in a saner party, have no chance. I wonder if the Republicans will ever recover.
I inadvertently submitted the above while trying to make corrections. Sorry for mess in 3rd and 4th lines, and whatever I’m missing now.
We have had bad governments before -e.g. Bush2. They do damage to the country and people suffer but eventually we get out of it. If the present GOP win big, and they really might, they will make us look back fondly on Bush2. But we will still be ok eventually.
The media is struggling right now. It looks like the races are shaping up so now you just have to wait till later in the year when people actually care. Not good for selling papers or ads online.
It is easy to blame Bush and probable deserved. What we really need as a party is for Gov Palin to come save the day. I don’t think there has been a more informed, intelligent and conservatively uncoruptable person. Mitt is a cloaked liberal.
And as an added plus, she can see Russia from her front porch!
No offense but she thought Afrcia was a country not a continent. I am a conservative also, take a harder look at Santorum. He is the champion of conservative family values. Look how his family handled the death of their infant child. Pro life, Pro family. Anti-gay, liberal, socialist agenda.
And Obama visited 57 states but with math like that no wonder he’s go the country running in such great shape LOL
Roady, I don’t know the ref? Where is that one from?
Never mind. I found the video. How did I miss that one in 2008? To think I voted for him. Not!
What we need is a good conservative republican president. They never misspeak.
But this is democracy at work. Maybe the Republican Party as we know it will dwindle to be relatively meaningless that is the will of the people. But that will not mean that people will flock to the Left, they won’t the demographic polls don’t support that happening either. The demise of the official republican party may simply signal the demise of organized parties as we have known them.
As far as obstructionism goes, that is possibly what those people were sent to congress to do. There is a large school of thought that says that any action of the government is likely going to turn out badly, thus the key thing I want my representative to do is to stop all government from doing anything. This is also democracy at work.
Why didn’t all those people who are against any action of government vote against the war in Iraq?
God spoke to President Bush about Iraq
Yes Cal, I will endorse Santorum. I am reading his wifes book. Touching. A true family. Perhaps he is the man that can get a constitutional amendment against abortion.
Knuckle; THAT is a good question, I know some did; particularly those on the more conservative side, and of course the Ron Paul contingent along with the Pat Buchanan contingent have been against both Gulf wars.
I don’t know why those who call themselves conservative continually get bamboozled into thinking that conservatism has anything to do with entanglements overseas and military occupations.
I know Ron Paul won’t win, but I really hope that he stays in and gets this message out, I think there is a possible common cause here about reducing government spending, increasing liberty, and following our constitution between the Left and the Right.
Santorum, A TRUE CONSERVATIVE!