“An Angry, Extreme, Harsh Nut”: Why Rick Santorum Isn’t The 2016 GOP Frontrunner
In just about every presidential election since 1980, the Republican Party has nominated the runner-up from the previous contest. In 1980, 1976 almost-ran Ronald Reagan won the GOP nod; in 1988, Republicans went for 1980 second-placer George H.W. Bush; in 1996, it was Bob Dole, who came in second in 1988; 2008 brought us John McCain, the No. 2 in 2000; and the 2008 runner-up, Mitt Romney, was the nominee in 2012.
Who came in second place in the 2012 Republican primaries? Rick Santorum. The socially conservative former senator from Pennsylvania is giving every indication that he will run again in 2016, says Byron York at The Washington Examiner, “and yet now, no one — no one — is suggesting Santorum will be the frontrunner in 2016, should he choose to run.” Why not? And is everyone wrong to write him off?
This week, Santorum is visiting Iowa, York points out, “where Republicans are excited about Sen. Ted Cruz, where they’re curious about Gov. Scott Walker, where they want to hear from Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul and other new faces.” The media is curious about those new faces, too. But Santorum won 11 primaries and caucuses — including Iowa’s — for a reason, York says.
Each of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates had their moment in the lead, but “Santorum was the one who came closest to a position on the economy that might appeal to middle-income voters alienated by both parties,” York says:
At nearly every stop, Santorum talked about voters who haven’t been to college, who aren’t the boss, who are out of work or afraid of being out of work. And then, when millions of those very people stayed away from the polls in November…. Briefly put, Romney lost because he failed to appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline in recent decades. Of all the GOP’s possible candidates, Santorum has the most cogent analysis of that loss, and a plan to avoid repeating it in 2016. [Washington Examiner]
In many ways, York makes a compelling argument. “Based on resume, Santorum is a much more plausible presidential candidate and potential president than [Pat] Buchanan or [Steve] Forbes,” the also-rans of the 1996 campaign who were nothing more than a blip in 2000, says Pete Spiliakos at First Things. But Santorum is being lumped in with them instead of Dole and Romney and McCain. “He really isn’t getting the respect he deserves.”
There are some reasons for that, Spiliakos concedes. Santorum didn’t run a very tight campaign, he would often ramble in his primary-night speeches, and in the debates he would sometimes lose his temper and couldn’t “seem to avoid getting into self-destructive arguments.” But these are things that “could probably be mitigated with more money and staffing to take care of the nuts and bolts and help him prepare remarks,” Spiliakos says.
Of course, not everyone is on board with the Santorum-as-frontrunner argument. Santorum’s fund-raising problems in 2012 weren’t an accident, says Daniel Larison at The American Conservative. His strident social conservatism on birth control and abortion turned off even some Republicans, and even York’s boosting of Santorum’s focus-on-the-little-guy economic message misses just “how allergic many in the GOP are to anything that sounds like economic populism.”
Throw in Santorum’s foreign policy vulnerabilities — he’s “fanatically hawkish in a party that is moving gradually in the other direction,” toward Rand Paul — says Larison, and its pretty clear that “if you wanted to invent a politician who could alienate several different parts of the Republican coalition all at once, you would design someone like Santorum.”
In the end, says James Joyner at Outside the Beltway, “Santorum may be ‘open’ to running for president again but he’s not the front-runner. Indeed, he’s simply not going to be the nominee.” Yes, there was that brief moment, right after the Iowa caucuses, when “Santorum seemed like a plausible nominee,” but he pretty “quickly revealed himself to be an angry nut trying to tap into petty resentments.”
Santorum simply comes across as harsh and extreme, even to die-hard Republicans. While it’s true that the GOP has a tradition of nominating the guy whose “turn” it is, my strong guess is that, as when George W. Bush was nominated in 2000, none of the candidates from last time around will be relevant. Mitt Romney almost certainly won’t run again. Santorum hit his ceiling in 2012…. I don’t have any sense who the 2016 nominee will be this far out. The party is still sorting out its identity, which the 2014 midterms may or may not contribute to solving. But I’d bet good money that it won’t be Rick Santorum. [Outside the Beltway]
By: Peter Weber, The Week, August 8, 2013
“Hoping To Cash In”: The GOP Versus Hillary Clinton’s Celebrity
I’m not sure whether to file this under “pointless” or just “dumb,” but the Republican National Committee is threatening to boycott NBC and CNN if they go forward with, respectively, a mini-series and a documentary about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I guess you could file it under “oblivious”?
Here’s why: The last time I checked, Republicans were supposed to be fierce defenders of the free market. And to the extent that these companies are trying to catch the Hillary ’16 presidential wave, it’s more likely that they’re hoping to cash in on it rather than promote it.
Earlier today, the Republican National Committee issued a release saying that if NBC and CNN go ahead with their plans, Chairman Reince Priebus “will seek a binding vote of the RNC to prevent the committee from partnering with these networks in 2016 primary debates or sanctioning debates they sponsor.”
It goes without saying that media companies shouldn’t let political parties dictate their programming choices. But honestly, this is silly. Yes, Hillary Clinton is widely expected to run for president in three years. So are a lot of people, but she’s also the biggest celebrity in the potential presidential field, and by a long shot (sorry, Donald Trump, I’m only referring to serious potential candidates).
Does it make good business sense for these companies to try to capitalize on that celebrity? Yes. So much so that you’d think there would be a Hillary Clinton move in the works … which, it turns out, there is. NBC announcing a miniseries about Kirsten Gillibrand or Peter King would raise eyebrows. About Hillary Clinton? Come on.
Occam’s Razor (the maxim that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) applies here: The simpler explanation – that two media conglomerates think there’s a market for Hillary-related programming – is more plausible than the idea that they are engaged in a vast, collusive media conspiracy to promote the candidacy of someone who has universal name recognition and is already widely seen as the most likely person to become the next president.
Were I conspiratorially minded, I might suggest that the GOP really doesn’t want CNN and NBC to broadcast its presidential debates in 2016. There’s fairly wide agreement that the party did itself no favors with the traveling circus that was the 2012 primary debates. So limiting both the number and the reach of its 2016 tilts in one fell swoop? Well that would be a win-win. Could that be what this is all about? Alas, probably not.
So what are Republicans up to? Part of this is probably working the ref: They likely hope that whoever writes the scripts for these shows will bend over backward to make them – to borrow a phrase – fair and balanced, putting extra emphasis on her shortcomings in order to stay the braying on the right. (And if any conservatives want to argue that content is beside the point because any exposure is good exposure, please explain to me what exactly is the problem with Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan.) And probably the RNC is itself trying to capitalize on Hillary Clinton’s celebrity by issuing a press release about her.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, August 5, 2013
“The Thought Is Just Laughable”: Hillary Rodham Clinton Is No Mitt Romney
David Frum has generally become an interesting writer offering fresh perspectives–not least on the GOP to which he remains tenuously connected–but his CNN column on why Democrats should not “settle” for Hillary Clinton in 2016 via some “next-in-line” psychology is really flawed.
Democrats seem poised to choose their next presidential nominee the way Republicans often choose theirs: according to the principle of “next in line.”
Hillary Clinton came second in the nomination fight of 2008. If she were a Republican, that would make her a near-certainty to be nominated in 2016. Five of the past six Republican nominees had finished second in the previous round of primaries. (The sixth was George W. Bush, son of the most recent Republican president.)
Democrats, by contrast, prefer newcomers. Six of their eight nominees since 1972 had never sought national office before.
Obviously, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Democrats chose the next guy in line in 2000 — Vice President Al Gore — and they may well do so again. But speaking from across the aisle, it’s just this one observer’s opinion that Democrats would be poorly served by following the Republican example when President Obama’s term ends.
I’ve always thought the “next-in-line” explanation for Republican presidential politics was a considerable over-simplification, and actually wrong if it was used to suggest ideology matters less to conservatives than we’ve been led to believe. But even if you buy it entirely, comparing HRC to such next-in-line Republican pols as Poppy Bush in 1988, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012 just doesn’t pass the smell test.
The three Republicans just mentioned never had overwhelming grassroots support in their own party and eventually prevailed over weak fields after relentlessly repositioning themselves to the Right. Both McCain and Romney, in particular, survived what can only be described as demolition derbies, and had to spend precious general-election resources pandering to the party “base.”
HRC’s immensely popular among grass-roots Democrats, not just because she is the last candidate not named Barack Obama who ran an effective presidential nomination contest, but because of the personal capital she’s built up over the years, her performance as a very popular Secretary of State, and the widely shared belief among progressives that it’s far past time for a woman to serve as president. Plus she is crushing every named Republican in early general-election trial heats.
Frum argues that an HRC nomination will inhibit the rise of fresh talent in the Donkey Party, and inhibit helpful intra-party debates. I’m all for fresh talent and helpful intra-party debates, but I’d say what Democrats probably want and need most is a 2016 victory to consolidate the policy achievements of the Obama administration while perhaps convincing Republicans the vicious obstructionism they’ve been exhibiting since 2009 is a dead end. Any way you slice it, though, treating HRC as another Mitt Romney is just laughable.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 1, 2013
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