“Like most members of America’s cultural elite, I worship Pan, the Goat God.” – Duke Phillips
Here at Tethered Swimming we’re examining the Republican presidential candidates and how they might fare in a general election that appears to be stacked against any Republican nominee. Today we’re looking at Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Last Sunday was Mike Huckabee and the little fish, Wednesday was Fred Thompson and John McCain.
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have had, up to this point, the best financed campaigns of all the Republican hopefuls and have been at or near the top of most polls. This is pretty remarkable when you consider the fact that of this crop of candidates they have the two weakest records on abortion, which until gay marriage came along was the touchstone issue for social conservatives. That one aspect of this primary tells you pretty much everything you need to know about just how grim next year’s election is looking for the true conservatives.
Their biggest fear, of course, is that Giuliani takes the nomination and the rest of the country essentially sees it as conservatives waving the white flag in the culture wars. If he does become the nominee, he’ll first need to talk them out of running another candidate. If he can’t do that, the race is over before it begins. Assuming he can work that miracle, through some combination of becoming best friends with Pat Robertson and stoking fears of a Democratic White House, how does Giuliani run in the general election?
He runs pretty much the same way he ran for mayor, by using the words “law”, “order” and “9/11″ to remind everyone that he is the toughest son of a bitch in the land. All of his problems, the cancer, the marriages, etcetera, just make him that much tougher. He has to convince enough white people that he is the only one who can protect them from brown people of various complexions and origins. It would make for an immensely entertaining campaign because he can’t say that directly, but it’s his only hope so he’d have to get the message through somehow.
The social conservatives will never embrace him no matter how many, ahem, strict constructionalist judges he promises to appoint. I doubt even ringing and repeated endorsements from Bush the Younger, properly couched and coded so they don’t turn off too many mainstream people, can overcome the fact that Giuliani is pro-choice. He can’t reassemble Bush’s coalition, so he’ll have to run more or less exclusively on terrorism and machismo. Whether or not it works depends on whether or not Giuliani can scare ordinary Americans more than Bush the Younger already has. If he can frighten the populace into believing that a Blue White House means that we all die, and he will use only a minimum of subtlety to do so, he could win. I don’t think it’s likely to work, but it’s certainly not impossible.
Romney, on the other hand, would have to run in the opposite direction and make minimum use of terrorism and fear. He won in Massachusetts, and the 2008 electorate is going to resemble Massachusetts a lot more than Texas, by being the non-threatening, reasonable Republican, the calm and confident manager who did something about health care. Romney could reconstruct Bush’s coalition with a shift away from terrorism (but not too much) and toward people who don’t like the current president but aren’t exactly comfortable voting for a Democrat either.
In the general election, Romney has almost no character flaws. The fact that he’s a Mormon probably isn’t very relevant, especially after he’s settled in as the nominee and the country really gets to know him. He’s been explaining Mormonism to people who don’t know anything about it all his life and by now he’s very good at it, once he has the entire nation’s attention neutralizing it as an issue, while vital, won’t be all that difficult.
Romney’s biggest problem is George W. Bush. He’ll need to convince the country that his Republican Party is not the Republican party of Bush the Younger. He really is a compassionate conservative and since his appeal does not rest nearly as heavily on the tough guy image as many of the other Republicans, once he’s the nominee he can soften his stances on Iraq. Without coming out and actually saying so, Romney could let it be known that he abhors the war and wants to end it. End it victoriously, yes, but end it nevertheless. That kind of a peace with honor message, and the distance from George W. Bush that it implies is Romney’s road to 1600.
Will any of it work? I have no idea, and anyone who claims that they do is probably selling something, but I don’t think it will. The basic electoral math of America has been disadvantageous to Republicans for a long time. They’ve overcome that by taking advantage of Democratic disasters in foreign policy. Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam adventure almost certainly cost the Democrats the 1968 election. Jimmy Carter’s presidency died in the sands of Iran and gave the Republicans the White House for twelve years. And, let’s not forget, that when Bush the Younger was running in 2000 he loudly and repeatedly made the point that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had trashed the military by getting involved in peacekeeping operations.
George W. Bush was the perfect candidate for the Republican Party as it is presently structured. He had credibility with business conservatives because of his lineage and education; he had credibility with social conservatives because of his ostentatious religiosity; he appealed to the broader public by campaigning as a leader, not a set of issues. And then he had the political gift of 11 September 2001 fall into his lap. Despite all that, he had to run two nearly flawless campaigns against two terribly inept ones to muster some of the thinnest victories in our history.
But times have changed and incompetence knows no party affiliation. Iraq, the foreign policy fiasco of our time (and the public overwhelmingly sees it as just that, a fiasco), is owned lock and stock by the Republican Party. Combine that with the popularity advantage the Democrats have on most domestic issues and you have a perfect nightmare for Republican candidates.
The last couple of weeks here at Tethered Swimming have seen essentially meaningless terms like “moderates” and “appeal” used far too much. Partly that’s due to the speculative nature of these campaign strategy posts, and partly it’s due to the fact that I’m trying to evaluate an election almost a year before the real campaign begins. But the real reason terms like those are unavoidable is the fact that using words with fuzzy meanings is about the only way I can concoct a Republican victory scenario that is even remotely plausible.
