Only a few days have passed since John McCain’s defeat, but the GOP’s star are already positioning themselves for a 2012 run - or at the very least jostling to feel the power vacuum of the post-Bush era. If the next three years are as entertaining as this last week, we are in for quite a treat!
In many ways, what happens over the next few weeks will be as important as anything that might take place subsequently. Like any party that has suffered an electoral rout, the GOP is now in turmoil, but it will soon settle in a new routine that will be difficult to shake off. The emerging leaders, strategic and ideological course the GOP now chooses itself will have a big impact on their political identity over the next four years.
Republicans who acquired a national stature over the course of this year (Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee) must move quickly to build on their current strength. Those who have national ambitions but were largely left out of this cycle’s proceedings (Charlie Crist, Mark Sanford, John Thune, Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich) have to build the networks that will be useful down the line before bigger names suck all the oxygen out of the room. And younger figures like Bobby Jindal or Eric Cantor must find ways to continue looking fresh and justify why so many conservatives see them as rising stars.
That many of these politicians are currently convening in Miami for the Republican Governors Association meeting makes the GOP’s leadership fight even more of a spectacle, as Palin, Crist, Jindal, Sanford and Pawlenty will struggle for attention in the hopes of getting credit for helping the GOP out of the wilderness.
Complicating the picture, of course, is that these quarrel of persons will be complemented by an ideological one: Should the party veer to the center or should it move further to the Right? Are Bush’s unpopularity and McCain’s defeat due to their conservative apostasy or do they signal that the GOP can no longer rely on its traditional playbook? Has the GOP been excessively Southernized?
In short: Who or what should be blamed for the party’s crushing defeat? Which politicians, what policy proposals, what demographic, what ideological trait?
These questions are never easy for a party to answer, and the blame game can easily be transformed into a hysterical firing squad in which seemingly every one has a different diagnostic, a different culprit and a different prescription. The moment is particularly urgent for Sarah Palin. While she remains popular in the conservative base (70% of Republican voters thought she was qualified according to last week’s exit polls), McCain’s advisers have chosen to dump a lot of the ticket’s failure on the Alaska Governor (McCain continues to publicly state that she did no harm) and a viciously brutal battle is currently being waged over her image.
Palin has to engage her critics as soon as possible in order to remain a player in Republican politics down the line, and she is clearly aware of this imperative as she has already engaged in an intensive media blitz -even delivering surprisingly honest admissions that she is thinking about a 2012 presidential run. One strategy she could employ to capture the good graces of the party establishment is to fundraise and stump on behalf of other candidates during the midterms, getting a number of Republican congressmen indebted to her. Barack Obama successfully employed such a strategy in 2006.
Before we even get to 2012, however, the GOP’s first high-profile leadership battle will take place in the coming weeks for the position of a RNC Chairman. There are numerous contenders representing all of the party’s sensibilities, and a number of story lines will be fascinating to follow. First, what success Newt Gingrich receives will tell us a lot about whether the Republican establishment is looking for a providential savior and how much they are counting on a repeat of the 1992-1994 sequence.
Second, there will be a fight between those like Saul Anuzis who say that the GOP has become too much of a Southern party and those like Katon Dawson (the chairman of South Carolina’s Republican Party) who want to protect the South’s grip on Republican politics.
The presidential election might be over, but there is still plenty to enjoy.
I think it may be too late for Palin’s image with the general public. Much like Dan Quayle or John Edwards (haircut) once certain things are lodged into peoples minds they can be very hard to shake off. Palin is still popular with the base but so is Hickabee and Jindal who are also social conservatives.
The GOP has in the past two decades been an uneasy marriage of social and economic conservatives which worked when they had victories. A center left or centrist Democratic party will be able to get economic conservatives who are repelled by the extreme nature of social conservatives and the issues they push. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as it will be crucial to the long term survival of a Republican party and their next nominee.
Also the GOP will go to the right - Labour in 1979 and the Conservatives in 1997 in the UK went to thier base following their defeats (first to Thatcher and then to Blair) and in the subsequent election lost in a landlside. Parties have to test the hypothesis that they lost because they were not extreme enough at least once then they see sense. So Obama, unles she screws up, should win in 2012 fairly easily and then 2016 will be the next contested election.
They will go farther right because that will be their natural inclination. None of these mentioned people will be able to fill the void. People have lost trust in this brand of Repubicans.
I agree with Mike that the GOP will go rightwards and nomination someone like that for 2012. They will then learn their lesson and moderate (somewhat) by 2016. An incumbent President usually gets re-elected and the economy should be in recovery by 2012 so I expect Obama would win anyway so if I were Palin (or Jindal etc) I would sit out 2012.
You put your finger on what I think is a fair description of the GOP’s current status within the country: it has become the Party of rural America. Thanks to Rove’s strategy of playing to the base at any cost, the GOP has lost its standing among urban and suburban voters. When questioned in exit polls, these voters sided with Obama. But the ones who were not questioned, like those in the NYTimes articles from Vernon, AL and from states like Oklahoma and Arkansas, turned out in huge numbers to support McCain. They could not bring themselves to vote for a black man, and whether the GOP likes it or not, they are now the new face of the Republican Party.
So when Jonah Goldberg claims that Bush’s “liberal” presidency and not the conservative movement is responsible for the GOP’s demise, he has his head in the sand. The GOP lost and will contiue to lose because it has become the party of rural, white America, living in homoegenous towns among like-minded voters. The GOP will never recover its standing in the polls by speaking only to a sub-group of voters. It will have to address the ones who left the Party, who cast a vote for Obama, and who have no desire to be a part of the far-right, Sarah Palinesque party that speaks only to be heard but, in the end, has absolutely nothing to say.
While I agree with Guy that the GOP probably won’t moderate itself until 2016, I don’t know if it would be a good idea for “rising stars” like Jindal to sit out 2012. Running for President is always a gamble and can pay off for politicians who take the risk. In ‘92 a lot of prominent democrats like Mario Cuomo and Dick Gephardt sat out the presidential election because Bush’s huge approval rating after the gulf war made him look unbeatable. This let Clinton beat back a field of lesser knowns and go to the White House.
Chris - I know that timing is everything. Remember Jindal will be 41 in 2012 so he has plenty of time to wait out and let Palin, Romney or Huckabee get the nomination and lose. Jindal can then also build up an extensive amount of executive experience which makes him powerful in 2016 when voters tire of the Democratic party.
I still think that the younger members of the GOP like Jindal, Pawlenty, or Cantor who want to president some day should take a serious look at 2012. Waiting runs the risk of being overshadowed by newer stars, and even running for the nomination and losing would give them increased national profiles to launch future campaigns. 2012 is long way off though and there’s plenty fo time for things to change.
I don`t know who would be a newer star than Jindal - they would have to be in their early 30’s. An incumbent President is hard to beat and Obama will have a great campaign staff - they will continue registering voters during these 4 years. Lets see how the mid-terms go, if the Dems do well and Obama is doing OK then I expect Jindal etc to wait it out a cycle.
Yeah, there certainly is going to be a lot to blog about in the coming nine weeks.
I work for Saul Anuzis, but I like to jump into the chatter when I can. You can find out more about Saul on here: http://www.anuzisforchair.com.