A tale of three leaders

Have y'all been looking at Rush Limbaugh's CPAC performance on Sunday? It was rather illuminating. Limbaugh is being touted by Democrats as the de facto Republican leader, and Republicans wary of his power seem disinclined to agree. What struck me about the new Republican Pope is how intellectually hollow his address was. Philosophical statements are thrown around and are not argued or defended, merely asserted, as though the act of saying something along the lines of "the war on poverty has made America worse off" were enough to make it so. There was the standard-issue slurring and mudslinging at the left--why many on the right can't just admit that liberals are decent people who want much of the same things as they want is beyond me. Reagan could actually do that--he could speak about the failures of the left at the time without malice, and it spoke well to his essential decency (his managerial ability, though, ensured a steady stream of corruption within his administration).

This is Limbaugh's party, though. At least, it is for now. It's not like there are tons of other plausible leaders of conservatism out there. Still, for a party that has suffered back-to-back humiliating losses his advice is almost singularly unhelpful. Clearly, the quote getting the most attention is his injunction that better policy ideas won't save the Republican Party. It's true that better ideas wouldn't help the GOP get back into power, necessarily, though the point of said ideas is to actually govern well so that you don't get kicked out within a few years of regaining power. Limbaugh's speech doesn't represent a revolution in Republican thought so much as the end of conservative thought--principles are asserted and not debated. Arguments go unmade. People who need to hear arguments are not true believers, and do not deserve to be in the movement. I live in California, where the state GOP has been in a similar suicide spiral for a few years now, so it has been interesting to see my state's politics come to represent the nation's as well. Yet another way that Cali has been ahead of the curve. We invented jogging, bans on public smoking, seatbelt laws, and dammit we deserve our due.

But it seems to me that what the Republican Party could use most of all is less invocations of Reagan and more Reagan--at least, more of a Reagan-like awareness of the political scene of his day. You see, Reagan was a far right-winger--even to the right of Barry Goldwater. He wasn't particularly compromising in his beliefs, and even though his 1980 campaign dropped his demands to trash Social Security and Medicare I doubt it was because he suddenly became a convert to those programs' benefits. Reagan was a Goldwater conservative but it seems to me that he realized that he couldn't govern like one. Even during the much more conservative 1980s it wasn't as though old folks decided they'd had enough of the government's checks, or poor people decided that they didn't like the government's intrusion into their personal freedom by offering them free healthcare. And middle class families didn't stop liking the free public education that the government offers them.

One suspected that Reagan understood all these things. Don't get me wrong, I think he screwed up the country big time by tweaking the tax code in a way that eventually exploded income inequality, which was further hurt by his disempowering of unions--ostensibly because they were communist fronts, though since communism died conservatives haven't bothered to articulate why they continue to hate one of the few institutions that improves income distribution across the spectrum. This is all not to mention the crappy debt he left us, as well as a legacy for blatant disregard of debt and deficits to a Republican Party that had earlier been keenly and rightly worried about such things. But Reagan never tried to gut Social Security--in fact, he tried to save it. And he never touched Medicare or Medicaid, or public education. Reagan fundamentally left America's infrastructure in place, he just added a few incremental tweaks to the machine to try to make it more conservative. I think those tweaks were really fucking bad but they nevertheless didn't change much in terms of what the government provided for the people.

What can one conclude from this? Only that Reagan is much smarter than the current crop of conservative "leadership", as he understood that the country, despite electing Republicans like himself, had never given him a mandate for Goldwaterism. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have argued--correctly, in my opinion--that Goldwaterism was never popular and that the GOP succeeded because it had a better pitch on issues like taxes, crime, foreign policy, welfare, etc. where Democrats had failed to deliver. I believe that Reagan understood this and proceeded to work incrementally in areas where he had been given a mandate, which is why the guy had any success at all. Compared to Margaret Thatcher he accomplished very little, but the American system of government is famously hostile to broad change.

This seems to be something that conservatives don't understand, but it is something that Barack Obama understands. Just as I don't believe that Reagan's election was tantamount to electing Barry Goldwater sixteen years later, I do not believe that Obama's election represents the election of, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi. America hasn't broadly endorsed American liberalism, but it has given Obama a mandate on the economy, healthcare, climate change, Iraq and foreign policy more generally. Because Obama, like Reagan, is an exquisite observer of political trends he has been moving incrementally to accomplish reforms in the specific areas in which he has won the argument. Unlike, say, Bill Clinton, who didn't really win a mandate at all and immediately got sidetracked by social issues that hadn't been a part of the campaign, Obama is sticking to what he was elected to do, and liberal wish list items like FOCA are off the table for the time being.

It seems to me that Obama and Limbaugh represent two extremes in more ways than one--Obama is a keen political observer who can sense why he won and what he has been empowered to change, while Limbaugh hasn't any clue what the public wants and, what's more, is hostile to the notion that people might want something other than "Reaganism" as he sees it. Of course, Obama was elected and Limbaugh wasn't, and Obama is an intellectually serious figure while Limbaugh isn't. One hears in his dismissal of "better policy ideas" a clarion call to an enhanced right-wing nihilism that will stubbornly refuse to change with the times. Indeed, Leader Limbaugh promises little else.

Update: The speech must have sucked if Hugh Hewitt liked it. John Cole observes that Romney is looking downright presidential compared to the rest of the GOP, and I cannot help but agree.

The Republicans' best hope

Of all the Republicans whose names have been bandied about as GOP presidential prospects, I think Charlie Crist--who will be stumping for the recovery package with Obama today--is the one who holds the most promise, for a few reasons. For one, he runs a hugely electorally important state where he is very popular. For another, he's a moderate conservative who really does live up to both terms. And, also, he's not as much a hostage of the movement as seemingly every other Republican officeholder these days, as one could see from his unwillingness to demagogue against ACORN and his insistence in honoring folks' voting rights. This isn't really evidence of ideological purity in any respect so much as it is a belief in a principle other than that anything that helps the Republican Party is good. That seems to be what Bill Buckley's movement has descended to, but Crist would likely make a popular, pragmatic president.

I suspect that these things will keep Crist from attracting movement support--I'm guessing it's Palin/DeMint 2012, and in 2016 we'll get another faux moderate, phony reformer in the Bush mold who will say all the expected things, and by then there will probably be a few scandals in the Obama Administration and among Congressional Democrats that the Republicans will be able to run against as superficial "reformers". I suspect that only if the GOP loses again in 2016 will they pick somebody like Crist, in much the same way that the UK Labour Party needed to lose a heartbreaker in 1992 before Tony Blair could take over.

In any event, who else has the GOP got? Bobby Jindal is problematic--he's smart and he has a reasonably good (though overrated) personality, but he's ultraconservative (perhaps too much so) and I think that religion, rather than race, will be the problem. Jindal would be the first Republican Catholic nominee for president. Even though there are some conservative Catholics I tend to think that this will be as much a problem for the religious right as was Mitt Romney's Mormonism. (Plus he has an exorcism story in his past that would keep him from being taken seriously by, well, anyone.) Jeb Bush is also Catholic, although his problem is his last name. Palin is a nonstarter--she's the right's McGovern. Huckabee might be promising if he'd stop sounding like a crazy religious nutter and move to the left on economics and foreign policy, and reorient the GOP as a Christian Democratic party. I don't know if he's willing to do this, but it would be an idea on where the GOP could go next, and probably a popular one. Huckabee, though, seems intent on coasting on his charm, and it isn't going to work. Romney himself is always a better candidate on paper than in real life, someone who somehow should be more compelling than they actually are. He's got a hell of a resume and the look and mind of a president, but there is an emptiness and a slickness there that puts off most people. And once you get past the top tier, you get people like Mark Sanford, John Ensign and John Thune, who don't seem to be able to persuade anyone outside the base over anything. It's actually quite likely that Ensign won't even win reelection in 2012 in a state won by President Obama by 17 points.

So, it's all up to Crist. Or David Petraeus, I suppose, if he ever wants to get into electoral politics.

Houston Would Be A Problem

I keep hearing the debate about whether or not Mitt Romney should give a speech about Mormonism like the speech given by John F. Kennedy in Houston in 1960 about his Catholicism. Evidently his advisors are against the notion, and I have to agree.

The reason why is simple: while there were many people who simply didn't like Catholics or Catholicism or just thought it was weird, the big worry about Kennedy in 1960 in respect to his Catholicism was that Kennedy would be, in effect, taking orders from the Pope. The speech he gave in Houston, in which he praised the concept of separation of church and state and promised that his Catholicism wouldn't dictate his policies, helped to defuse that powderkeg for many people. Many others still voted against him because they were just weirded out about a Catholic president, but Kennedy realized that he wasn't going to be able to convince those people to vote for him anyway.

Romney's situation is different. The people who don't want to vote for him aren't concerned about faction or divided loyalties so much as just weirded out by the Mittster's religion (or maybe him personally). Giving a speech about Mormonism will only draw attention to his religion, and it's difficult to believe that he can change the perception that Mormonism is a weird religion, in part because it is a weird religion. And I'm not just talking about some of its more extravagant claims, like good Mormons becoming gods of their own planets after death, or some of its more peculiar practices, like the special underwear. I don't mean to pick on Mormonism, as every religion has its mystical and surreal beliefs. Still, Mormonism also requires one to throw out virtually everything we know about history in the West to accommodate its story, and some people might not be quite so willing to do that.

In essence, Romney shouldn't make a speech about his religion, unless he wants to remind people how weird it is. Being as he's one of the less-crazy Republicans in the running right now, I do hope that he listens to his advisors.

Romney flip-flops on Iraq

This is almost like a f***ing Saturday Night Live sketch...

Romney 2008: Vote for him because he panders?

Andrew Sullivan makes an interesting pitch for Romney here, in which he sees the man's transparent willingness to pander to literally anyone as a plus, and that it will make him more able to pivot on Iraq and other things. In the interest of full disclosure, Sullivan loathes Romney and acknowledges that he is an obvious panderer and fraud. Still, this is a notion that should be discussed, and it has a sort of perverse merit to it.

I don't agree, though, with the notion that if Romney wins it will be in spite of Christian evangelicals, rather than because of them. He is hardly running a centrist campaign, and although he might be more inclined to compromising with Democrats than, say, Rudy Giuliani, Democrats are not going to be nearly as inclined to work with him, and thus we have a new incarnation of the Jimmy Carter presidency. This assumes Democrats stay in control of Congress. If not, of course Romney is going to pursue a conservative policy agenda--that's what the Republican base is going to want, and if he doesn't do their bidding, he immediately becomes a target to become the first sitting president defeated for renomination by his own party since...Chester Alan Arthur, I think. In that eventuality, I think Romney begins to look more like a Prime Minister than President, as his support among the conservative rank-and-file will always be tenuous, and conservatives on the Hill will sense an opportunity to reassert their power after years of being muzzled by Bush. Evangelicals aren't just going to forget about Romney's past--for example, they're not going to forget his promise to be more liberal on gay rights than Ted Kennedy in 1994.

Ultimately, the old truism is that the devil you know beats the devil you don't. I have no idea what a Romney administration might be like, but I hope I don't have to find out.

Rudy, McCain cut and run, Marines still never do

I make a conscious effort to quote the Best Congresswoman in America (aside from Babs "I'm going to make cookies that look like phalluses!" Cubin) as much as possible, and this is one of Jean Schmidt's best (worst) lines. As it turns out, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, two men who are trying to out-strong each other in order to get the GOP nomination for President, have elected to skip the all-important (really, not at all important) Iowa Straw Poll. Prior engagements, I'm sure. Hey, those checks from Giuliani to Planned Parenthood don't just write themselves! And goshdarnit, if John McCain wants to watch a weekend marathon of M*A*S*H reruns, then that's what John McCain is going to do, my friends! Now, why anyone would want the GOP nomination when a reanimated Saddam Hussein would probably have comparable approval ratings to Bush is beyond me.

I find this baffling, and in a rational world, it would be a huge story that would get both their asses out of this election right now. These men are campaigning for the presidency, our nation's second-highest office (behind vice-president, of course), because they believe that they will provide strong, resolute leadership that doesn't run from tough fights and tough decisions, like Iraq. Yet, they're willing to skip a minor GOP event because the odds are they aren't going to win. Let me tell you something: if these guys legitimately believed the Iowa Straw Poll to be a silly nonevent, I'd be fine with them skipping out on it. But this is obviously an attempt (and a feeble one on McCain's part) to avoid hitting some negative momentum. A McCain victory in the Straw Poll might have revived his poll numbers, and without Rudy sucking all the air out of the room, he would have been in a much better position to do well there. Oh, well. I guess Mitt Romney, who heretofore will be known as Ozzie Smith (thanks to the latter's acrobatic flip-flopping and Romney's baseball-term name) will win the Straw Poll, every primary and then be elected President of America. God (Moroni?) help us.