Romney Takes Lead in VP Race

I’m not sure Mike Huckabee could have received worse news than Mitt Romney’s endorsement of John McCain. Not because Huckabee had a chance to get the Republican nomination (that miracle ain’t coming) but because Romney suddenly looks like the man at the top of McCain’s VP list.

Those of us McCain supporters on the more moderate side of things have known all along that the senator’s troubles with the Republican base would almost certainly result in a less-than-centrist VP choice. A lot of us have been thinking McCain would ultimately have to make nice with the social conservative wing and pick a guy like Huckabee. But with the anti-McCain vitriol coming from the conservative punditocracy (who are more big business/law-and-order oriented than they are religious), Romney now seems like the more likely compromise – an outcome made all the more likely by his willingness to play by party tradition and try to end the nomination process in orderly fashion.

McCain could still end up going another direction. They don’t call him a maverick for nothing. But if I were making odds, I’d place Romney at about even for the VP nod. For Romney, it puts him in perfect position to easily secure the nomination next go around. For McCain, it will quicken the healing process and give all those pundits who’ve painted themselves into a corner a sneaky way out. We’ll know soon enough if this is where everything’s headed.

Huckabee Could be Force in Party's Future

Mike Huckabee is convinced he can still win. He won’t. Mathematics preclude a Huckabee miracle. But his candidacy and its success could very well be a forecast of things to come. I can certainly see the future Republican party looking a lot more Huckabee and a lot less Romney.

Romney represents nothing more than a sack into which the party has thrown all the disparate parts of a moribund ideology. Huckabee, on the other hand, is a much more cohesive beast. He represents the hopes (and fears) of the lower middleclass, rural and working class voters upon which the Republicans have built much of their recent electoral success. These are people who voted Democratic for decades before that party became exceedingly secular, increasingly dovish and overly committed to identity politics. Republicans offered a better option, but not the perfect one.

Huckabee is more perfect. He’s a conservative populist, a man whose religion is as much tied to lifting people up as it is to opposing social change. He may welcome the endorsements of James Dobson and other conservative sycophants, but Huckabee is not like other Republican Christians, willing to sell his religion to the big business wing of the party. He speaks out against corporate greed in a way that rouses his supporters even as it risks offending party elders.

From his audacious tax plan to his immigration stance to his foreign policy (what little there is), his ideology is centered on giving the average family a better shot at succeeding. He sounds like a Democrat, except instead of promising more government programs he’s promising that government programs will stop getting in their way. It’s a revised Reaganism with a twang and a “Praise the Lord!”

Huckabee connects with people’s exasperation at being screwed over by big powers, be they governmental or corporate. He appeals to those who see their way of life (their religious values, their jobs, their apple pie Americanism) being submerged by larger forces they themselves are powerless to stop. Huckabee promises to be the levy against those forces. Where Barack Obama is offering a change-forward message, Huckabee has a change-back message. Change back to simpler times when jobs were secure, Mexicans were in Mexico, terrorists weren’t a threat and Christianity was the accepted moral guide for the nation.

We would be foolish to discount the allure of Huckabee’s message. Much of what he believes is already well-woven into the fabric of the Republican party. But instead of just offering a grab-bag of positions, Huckabee has a hard populist core around which other ideas naturally cling. Those that don’t stick, like overly favoring big business, are not forced into belonging. They are jettisoned, leaving a more pure ideology. It’s one that could provide the energy for a reconstitution of the Republican party.

A lot of us could never sign on to such a protectionist ideology. But many others eagerly would and that’s why, even though he’ll fail to get the nomination this year, Mike Huckabee could be a real force in the party’s future.

Romney Takes One for the Team

Mitt Romney is done. He's suspended his campaign for the good of the party so Republicans can focus on stopping the Democrats.

I saw his speech. One of the best speeches I've seen from a Republican in a long while. He could be an asset to John McCain if the senator can suffer the former governor campaigning for him down the road.

I haven't been a Romney supporter but it takes a man of character to consider the greater picture and not just his own ego. Obviously the hard numbers were against him, but a lot of people wanted him to continue the fight. He isn't and that's good news for the Republicans.

I suspect, if McCain wins Virginia and Maryland next Tuesday, Huckabee will step aside too. The Republicans will have several months to cool off passions and rally behind McCain before the convention.

The Future of Both Parties Rides on This Election

Anyone else excited about watching the election returns tonight? This has been the best primary season in a generation, offering some very interesting candidates and two parties in complete flux. The Republicans thought they knew who they were but after the very curious presidency of George W. Bush, their coalition has shattered. The Democrats, meanwhile, have been in the weeds since Bill Clinton left office. Their recent takeover of Congress was as much due to Republican forfeiture as Democratic strength, so they too are struggling to define themselves.

On both sides we have candidates who are desperately trying to cling onto the old coalitions, hoping they can scotch tape their parties together just long enough for another spin in the Oval Office. Both sides also have transcendent candidates who are explicitly (McCain) or implicitly (Obama) rejecting their party’s status quo. In appropriate fashion, the conservative is trying to pull his party back to the traditional values of pre movement conservativism – it’s the restoration of the Eisenhower/Nixon wing. The liberal is trying to catapult his party forward into a new era, attempting to give modern liberalism the champion it’s never had.

How this election turns out will dramatically affect each party. Here’s how I see how these four potential presidencies would impact their respective parties.

If Hillary Clinton wins, the Democrats will stay on their current course, not a movement of ideas but a force of institutional might. The diverse special interests which make up the Democratic party will each continue to get their piece of the federal pie and voters will continue to see Democrats as a party that talks big but acts small, more concerned with appeasement than action.

If Barack Obama wins, the Democrats will evolve into a movement party with the tenants of contemporary liberalism eagerly pursued much in the way Reagan pursued his vision of conservativism. This is actually the worst-case-scenario for movement conservatives as Obama will not just win votes but will change minds. It’s not that he’s a centrist, it’s that he could pull the entire center of American politics leftward. That is the potential power of his personality.

If Mitt Romney wins, the Republicans would stagger on as is, gasping out the last breaths of movement conservativism. Unfortunately for Republicans, a Romney presidency would give the party a false sense of security much like the Democrats had under Bill Clinton. They will not reinvigorate, will not reclaim Congress and they will not be in the majority again for quite awhile. Romney may say all the right things, but he is not a child of the conservative movement. He’s just one of its last followers. His presidency would delay the necessary reckoning.

If John McCain wins, the Republican party is done as we know it. The old guard will have a small resurgence but traditional conservativism was never a majority belief system and the Republicans will not want to become the permanent and loyal opposition once again. Instead, I see them reaching either towards a revived small government libertarianism (the Ron Paul direction) or a big government social conservativism (the Mike Huckabee direction). President McCain would be like Senator McCain, a maverick unattached to a movement, leaving his party to figure out for itself which direction it wants to go next.

Interestingly, I think if the Republicans lose this election (no matter who is the nominee), they will have their much-needed reckoning and come out stronger for it, perhaps even shedding the baggage that has ruined movement conservativism as exemplified by Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. If the Democrats lose, it really matters who the nominee is. If it’s Clinton, her loss would just guarantee Obama as the nominee in 2012. If Obama loses, the Democrats are screwed. They have no one even close to Obama in likability or ability to articulate the liberal agenda.

Today is big. Super big. The futures of two parties are riding on the outcomes.

A Little Political Truth

“Of all the strategic errors that all of the campaigns have made this cycle, Romney's effort to appeal to all the individual factions of the GOP may have been the biggest.”

That’s from a great article from Dean Barnett of The Weekly Standard. The truth is fun. Read these other quotes:

On Republicans…

[T]he link between all the current Republican party-approved issues is tenuous if indeed it exists at all. If you favor a muscular approach in the war against Radical Islam, do you necessarily contradict your support for the war if you favor gay marriage? The same question holds for lower taxes and environmentalism. While many of these issues have become part of the tribal warfare that separates the two parties, it's impossible to identify a coherent philosophy that demands a voter adopt all the Republican orthodoxies.

On John McCain…

Right now, it looks like we have a party composed of members who pick and choose from a menu of Republican positions that have no logical reason for co-existing with one another. How else do we explain John McCain's success?

And on the Democrats…

The Democratic party has long been a multi-member marriage of convenience. The only thing that truly unites its disparate members is their disdain for the Republican party. The preceding, by the way, is one of the reasons Barack Obama has a chance to be such a transformative figure--he's the first Democratic politician in well over a generation to offer a sweeping (though vague) vision that offers anything more than a bunch of little schemes to rip off a piece of the federal government's carcass to give to each member of the coalition.

We don’t have parties anymore. We have two political buffets and we get to choose at which we’d rather eat.

"George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party"

So says Peggy Noonan. Over his tenure, Bush has fractured the party’s coalitions and set them against one another. The result is the contentiousness now seen in the nomination process.

McCain a Less Risky Choice than Romney

Mitt Romney is gaining in the Republican polls and that’s simply not something I understand. Yes, I know John McCain is not well-loved in his party but it takes some serious mental contortions to believe Romney is a better choice.

Let’s leave aside the fact that McCain is vastly more qualified and has shown a level of courage and leadership far surpassing whatever sits inside the well-tailored suit of Romney. Let’s also leave aside electability, which also greatly favors McCain. Let’s just look at what makes both these candidates unacceptable for Republicans.

McCain: Has repeatedly and often proudly committed the sin of ideological independence. While I find this to be a sign of strong character and mental acuity, I understand why pure-blooded Republicans see it as tantamount to apostasy.

Romney: Has committed the sin of flip floppery. The man held one set of beliefs when governor of Massachusetts and now holds a whole different set. He hasn’t merely had one or two opinions evolve over time, he’s had a whole grab bag full of opinions change overnight.

So, this is the choice facing Republicans. They can choose a man who, while holding some heretical beliefs, is known as a decisive leader who will keep conservativism alive if not pristine. We know where McCain stands and we know he won’t shift and slide with every new wind.

OR, Republicans can choose a man whose true beliefs are an absolute mystery. Sure, he currently says all the right conservative things but will he make dramatic course changes the moment a poll shows public opinion is against him? Haven’t Republicans been telling us for the last seven years that what makes Bush so great is that you always know where he stands and that you know he won’t falter? Now Republicans want a guy who could very well fall over at the first mild breeze.

Obviously, the choices before Republicans are not perfect. But it’s not like free-spending, amnesty-pushing, McCain-Feingold signing, federal-power expanding George Bush has exactly been a good steward of conservativism. If a return to Reaganism is impossible (and it is), then shouldn’t Republicans pick the candidate likely to do the least damage to their beliefs?

McCain is essentially just a few inches to Bush’s left. Romney? Who knows. And who really wants to take the risk?

Fred Thompson, We Hardly Knew Ye

No, seriously, who was that guy? He came and went without leaving a print, an elusive beast that cryptozoologists will whisper about for years to come. A grumbling, phlegmatic Bigfoot.

Last summer Republicans complained that there was no true conservative in the race. Thompson came to their rescue – an arthritic old dog more inclined to lay where sunbeams once shined than move across the room. If he was the best hope for a Reagan revival, there’s not much hope at all.

In the same way Democrats held on to FDR and JFK for far too many years, Republicans keep holding up Reagan as the perfect model for America past and future. Thompson himself has huffed that there will be no more Reagans. How true that is. Reagan was of a time and a nation that are gone. There’s nothing wrong with admiring the man for what he did but resurrecting 25 year-old policies is not the way forward. New eras need new leadership.

Thompson is nothing new. I suppose he may still end up as a VP candidate but that would just be furthering the same ideological mistake that pulled him into the campaign in the first place.

Anyone Know...

...if Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani plan to show up for this election? I keep hearing they're viable but shouldn't they at least be getting support out of the single digits even in states where they haven't campaigned much? In Michigan they both got under 5% of the vote.

Giuliani is, of course, betting on his "late state" strategy, which is kind of like not buying any property in Monopoly until you land on Boardwalk and Park Place. Sounds like an OK plan until you realize everyone else already has hotels before you have a house. Romney, McCain and Huckabee have hotels. It may be game over for Rudy.

And Thompson? He's apparently focused on South Carolina -- maybe he's campaigning between naps and snacks. The man has all the dynamism of breakfast toast. I'd be shocked if he even places top three in SC.

What an odd election year.

Cries of Hypocrisy

I’ve noticed an interesting new line of attack against Democrats. Populist hypocrisy – the idea that it is disingenuous for politicians like Al Gore, John Edwards and Nancy Pelosi to ask for sacrifices from the rest of us while respectively running up huge electric bills, building massive mansions and requesting private jets. It doesn’t matter that all three cases are not nearly as cut-and-dry as the headlines make them seem. What matters is the perception of hypocrisy.

This is an interesting line of attack. After all, two of the Democrats greatest and most effective champions of the poor, Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy, were filthy rich. Were they hypocrites because they feasted while worrying about those going hungry?

Here’s where rightwing critics miss the point: Democrats hardly ever ask us to personally sacrifice. What they ask us to do is support government-based solutions. Yes, personal initiative is welcome (particularly in Gore’s cures for climate crisis) but, ultimately, all they’re asking is that we elect leaders who will marshal the power of government to address liberal concerns. Eventually we’ll have to pay higher taxes (particularly if we’re wealthy) but that’s a down-the-road matter.

The Republicans are the ones that generally demand personal initiative – whether it’s staying chaste before marriage or pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps without government assistance. A Republican politician who, for unfathomable reasons, was on welfare while cutting funds to that program would be a hypocrite. But a Democrat who lives in a mansion while increasing welfare spending is not.

The Democrats err not in failing to abandon privilege but in failing to look outside government power for solutions. John Edwards supports more government programs for the poor. But what if he instead supported living humbly and giving excess wealth to charity? Does not earnest sacrifice trump a willingness to pay higher taxes?

Morally, yes. But practically? Could we really be economically successful if we gave up the very-American desire to accumulate and then spend wealth? It’s vastly more realistic to just tax the hell out of ourselves than it is to expect each individual to willingly surrender wealth, however noble the cause. Unfortunately, most Democrats don’t even try to develop solutions based on individual initiative. They go right for the Big Government Spending Program.

But that’s another topic. In the case of Republicans labeling Democrats hypocrites, the tactic will fail simply because Republican politicians are just as ungodly rich and privileged as Democratic ones. As far as I’m concerned, what policies our leaders support matters much more than how they choose to live.