“An Implausible Longshot”: Rand Paul Isn’t Leading The Republican Pack
The Fix’s new rankings for Republican presidential candidates are out. Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake pick Senator Rand Paul as the most likely nominee.
I’ve excluded Paul (and Ted Cruz, ranked No. 8 by Cillizza and Blake) from my list of plausible nominees. Do I need to revisit the question? Sorry, still not buying it.
Here’s the case The Fix makes:
No one rolls their eyes anymore. Paul has a unique activist and fundraising base thanks to his dad’s two runs for president, and has shown considerable savvy in his outreach efforts to the establishment end of the party over the past few years … Paul is the candidate furthest along in the planning process for president and the one with the most current strength in early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
I don’t see much there. Of the four attributes listed, three — unique base, early planning, strength in early states — are exactly what was said about Ron Paul in 2012. Given that Ron Paul never had a realistic chance against a very weak field, I’m not convinced that we should think much of Rand Paul’s chances.
That leaves the question of whether the rest of the party is more interested in Rand Paul 2016 than it was in Ron Paul 2012. Not whether Paul has been “savvy” in selling himself, but whether anyone is buying.
I remain highly skeptical and will have to see some explicit support from important party actors outside of the Paul orbit (and outside of Kentucky, where he and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have developed a working relationship). We know that Paul will have some important opponents within the party, especially on national security. He’s going to need some serious supporters to overcome that. And given the large, strong group of contenders, I just can’t imagine why any (non-libertarian) group of party actors would take on that battle.
I understand the math: It’s a large field and Paul is more or less guaranteed to get 20 percent of the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire. All he needs then is to exceed his father’s performance by a few thousand votes and he could easily capture those early states against a splintered group of Republicans. That’s an illusion. There probably won’t be a dozen candidates in Iowa; Republicans have efficiently winnowed their field pre-Iowa for several cycles. But it doesn’t matter; even if Paul wins with 25 percent of the vote in Iowa, he’s not going to win the nomination unless he can eventually reach more than 50 percent. And as long as a substantial clot of party actors opposes his candidacy and most of the rest are indifferent at best, he’s not going to get the favorable publicity he needs to do that.
Yes, lots of candidates at this stage of the process haven’t demonstrated their ability to win over half of the primary vote. Mitt Romney hadn’t last time. But the opposition to Paul, and the policy differences between Paul and most of the party, are far deeper than was the case with Romney in 2012.
Show me evidence Paul is attracting support from mainstream conservatives, and I’ll start believing he’s a viable nominee. Until then, he’s an implausible longshot.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The National Memo, December 5, 2014
“An Unpredictable Slow-Motion Riot”: Republicans Who Want To Be President Just Can’t Behave
Despite the supposed lessons of 2012, and the palpable desire of the donor class, and “reforms” initiated from on high to make the nominating process shorter and less messy, it’s increasingly obvious the 2016 Republican presidential contest could be an unpredictable slow-motion riot. As Politico‘s Haberman and Sherman report today, GOP elites are watching the field form with a sense of horror, but don’t know what to do about it:
The message from Republican officials has been crystal clear for two years: The 2016 Republican primary cannot be another prolonged pummeling of the eventual nominee. Only one person ultimately benefited from that last time — Barack Obama — and Republicans know they can’t afford to send a hobbled nominee up against Hillary Clinton.
Yet interviews with more than a dozen party strategists, elected officials and potential candidates a month out from the unofficial start of the 2016 election lay bare a stark reality: Despite the national party’s best efforts, the likelihood of a bloody primary process remains as strong as ever.
The absence of any front-runner increases the incentives for others to at least give it a try. “Reforms” like the (probable) elimination of the Ames Straw Poll mean less opportunity for winnowing the field before the real contests begin, and the shorter track of the contests themselves makes the sort of serial disposal of unelectable rivals Mitt Romney conducted in 2012 will be harder. Meanwhile, even if the elites used to a disproportionate role in the process can reach agreement on a champion (Jebbie or Mitt), it’s unclear he’ll run, or that the rank-and-file will go along.
There’s a lot of pious talk in the Politico piece about the 2016 candidates agreeing not to attack each other, and to save their fire for the dreaded Hillary, but nobody is likely to forget from 2012 how easy it was for the candidates to remain relatively sunny while their Super-PACs ran ads attacking rivals as instruments of Satan.
If Republicans have as good a midterm election as they expect, the temptation to think of 2016 as the year the conservative-movement-dominated GOP finally consolidates power will be very strong. Which potential candidates will want to pass up the opportunity to get in on that, particularly if a failed run sets ’em up for the future? I don’t know, but I do know this could be the cycle when the cliches about the Republican Party being “disciplined” and “hierarchical” finally get retired once and for all.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Editor, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 7, 2014
“Why The GOP Won’t Change”: A Year After Their “Autopsy”, The Recommendations Haven’t Been And Won’t Be Followed
Exactly one year ago, a committee of Republican party bigwigs issued the report of its “Growth and Opportunity Project,” better known as the “autopsy.” The idea was to figure out what the party was doing wrong, and how on earth Barack Obama had managed to get re-elected when everybody knows what a big jerk he is. There were some recommendations on things like improving the party’s use of technology and its fundraising, but the headline-grabbing message was that the party had to shed its image as a bunch of grumpy old white guys and become more welcoming to young people and racial minorities.
It was always going to be a tricky thing to accomplish, both because the GOP is, in fact, made up in large part of grumpy old white guys, and because “outreach” can only go so far if you aren’t willing to change the things you stand for. Mike Huckabee, that clever fellow, used to say, “I’m a conservative, but I’m not angry about it.” Which is all well and good, but if, for instance, you say to young people that you don’t think their gay friends ought to be allowed to get married, saying it with a smile doesn’t really help.
And a year later, it’s not just that the Republican party hasn’t changed, it’s that they don’t have much reason to change. The coming election may or may not be the GOP “tsunami” that Reince Priebus predicts, but they’re certainly going to pick up seats, just because of which seats are up in the Senate, the standard pattern of the president’s party losing seats in the 6th year of his presidency, and the fact that that president isn’t particularly popular right now. So why would a member of Congress—especially one from a conservative district or state—feel any need to undergo some kind of wholesale reinvention? Particularly when the people who put him where he is, and the people who are going to keep him where he is, aren’t the kind of people he’s being asked to “reach out” to. If your job is to get re-elected this fall, everything’s looking just fine.
And even in the upcoming presidential election, the non-old-white-guy-outreach may not look all that important. As Jamelle Bouie notes, things like the economy and President Obama’s popularity at the end of his term are going to matter much, much more than whatever outreach has been accomplished. What that means is that at the moment, no one whose name is or will be on a ballot in the near future has any particular interest in rethinking the party’s identity. The members of Congress are thinking about their next election. Those running for president in 2016 will be thinking about 2016. It’s fine for some party strategist to look 20 years down the road at the country’s inevitable demographic changes and predict doom about the party’s future. But the people who will actually implement the changes they suggest (or not) have no interest in looking that far ahead. And so they aren’t going to change.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 18, 2014
“If Only They Knew”: Mitt Romney Buffeted By The Winds Of Extremism
Turns out the Romney camp isn’t all that different from other Republicans.
For a long time now, Mitt Romney and the people who work for him have seemed like the reasonable people in the Republican party. That isn’t to say that Romney’s policies or rhetoric were particularly reasonable, but we all accepted that when he started breathing fire, it was an act. Buffeted by the winds of extremism, he made a bargain with his party’s base: I’ll pretend to be as crazy as you, and you’ll learn to live with me as your nominee.
But now, Barack Obama has finally opened the can of whoop-ass on Romney that many of us had long been expecting, and as McKay Coppins reports, both Romney himself and his people don’t like it one bit. Their reaction indicates that maybe they were never that different from the Republican base after all.
“[Romney] has said Obama’s a nice fellow, he’s just in over his head,” the adviser said. “But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he’s really disappointed. He believes it’s time to vet the president. He really hasn’t been vetted; McCain didn’t do it.”
Indeed, facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney’s finances and business record, the Republican’s campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the next chapter of Boston’s pushback — which began last week when they began labeling Obama a “liar” — very little will be off-limits, from the president’s youthful drug habit, to his ties to disgraced Chicago politicians.
“I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate,” the adviser said. “The bottom line is there’ll be counterattacks.”
It might be just this one particular aide’s formulation, but the use of the word “vet” is the tell. One of the consuming fantasies on the right is that we never learned very much about Barack Obama, and if only the American people knew about Reverend Wright, or about Obama’s youthful drug use, or about his relationship with Bill Ayers, then they would as one recoil in horror and boot him from office. This is all summed up in the oft-repeated assertion, “He was never vetted.” The fact that all these things were, in fact, reported on extensively doesn’t penetrate with the people who believe this, because if the public actually knew then Obama could never have been elected in the first place, so that must mean they just don’t know. Could the voters have heard all this stuff and decided to elect Obama anyway? Impossible.
I’m quite surprised to hear this stuff coming from the Romney camp, since they were supposed to be the cold-eyed pragmatists of the GOP. But they seem to have no idea how to actually defeat an incumbent president. If they want to run the rest of their campaign on the fact that Obama knew Rod Blagojevich and did coke when he was a teenager, I’m sure the Obama campaign would reply, be our guest.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 18, 2012
Government Shutdown Over Pap Smears: GOP Culture War Is Alive And Well
Last night Ryan Grim reported that the GOP may force a government shutdown largely over funding for Planned Parenthood under Title X:
At a late-night White House meeting between the president and key congressional leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made clear that his conference would not approve funding for the government if any money were allowed to flow to Planned Parenthood through legislation known as Title X. “This comes down to women’s health issues related to Title X,” a person in the meeting told HuffPost.
The negotiations are dominated by men: All of the principal negotiators in both parties are male, as are most of the senior staff involved. (House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have largely been left out of key talks.)
House Republicans have been insisting the roadblock to cutting a new budget deal is not just the culture-war riders attached to the spending plan, but a source familiar with a top-level White House meeting earlier Thursday said most of the discussion in fact was about the riders.
The Hyde Amendment already prevents government funding for abortions, and abortions are a tiny part of the services Planned Parenthood provides.
The government is on the verge of being shut down because Republicans want to inset a provision into the budget that would prevent millions of women from getting contraception or cancer screening. This could be brinkmanship:Because the Republican base sees a shutdown as an end unto itself, the Republican leadership has a really strong political incentive to stretch this out as long as possible and cut a deal at the last minute. If this is the case, then culture war rhetoric serves as political cover for Republican leaders who want to cut a deal that might be hard to sell to the base.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been treated to a bevy of coverage insisting that Republicans have abandoned the culture war and are focusing on fiscal issues. Republicans like these stories because they make them look less extreme. But as Greg noted earlier today: “In its current form, at least, the budget debate is not meaningfully about fiscal matters. It’s over abortion, women’s health, and whether our environmental policies should be premised on climate science.”
What’s more, it’s not like pursuing the culture war and trying to defund the federal social safety net for women are mutually exclusive goals. In this case, they’re complimenting each other — when you’re trying to appease the Republican base, there isn’t a much better sweet spot intersection between the culture war and fiscal conservatism than women’s reproductive health.
By: Adam Serwer, The Washington Post, April 8, 2011
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