Man, does David Brooks ever tell the painful truth about Mitt Romney and the GOP. Excerpts:
And what Romney failed to anticipate is this: In turning himself into an old-fashioned, orthodox Republican, he has made himself unelectable in the fall. When you look inside his numbers, you see tremendous weaknesses.For example, Romney is astoundingly unpopular among young voters. Last month, the Harris Poll asked Republicans under 30 whom they supported. Romney came in fifth, behind Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Ron Paul. Romney had 7 percent support, a virtual tie with Tancredo. He does only a bit better among those aged 30 to 42.
I'm 40, and I find Romney astonishingly unappealing. The thing is, I can't really say what I don't like about him. I suspect I would have liked him a lot more eight years ago, but today am so fed up with the GOP status quo that the Mittbot seems to me to be the least acceptable of the major candidates (except, I think, for Giuliani). But what does generational sensibility have to do with it? Could it be that finding out that Mitt Romney is going to be the party's nominee is like learning that you've just won a new car -- but it's a Crown Victoria?
But his biggest problem is a failure of imagination. Market research is a snapshot of the past. With his data-set mentality, Romney has chosen to model himself on a version of Republicanism that is receding into memory. As Walter Mondale was the last gasp of the fading New Deal coalition, Romney has turned himself into the last gasp of the Reagan coalition.
That's it, perfectly said. Do the Club for Growth partisans really want to be in the same party with the Huckabeeans, and vice versa? That old magic just ain't workin' anymore. The only candidates with any real juice in this race are the outsiders: Huck, McCain and Paul. It's possible, and maybe even likely, that none of these three men will be able to outlast Romney's money and organizational advantage. But that doesn't make Romney a better candidate.
That coalition had its day, but it is shrinking now. The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. ...If any Republican candidate is going to win this year, he will have to offer a new brand of Republicanism. But Romney has tied himself to the old brand. ...The leaders of the Republican coalition know Romney will lose. But some would rather remain in control of a party that loses than lose control of a party that wins. Others haven’t yet suffered the agony of defeat, and so are not yet emotionally ready for the trauma of transformation. Others still simply don’t know which way to turn.
But turn they will one year from now -- either turned by a new kind of Republican who will fundamentally reshape the party, or, as is more likely, turned by a cataclysmic loss. But facing where? The lack of imagination among this year's crop of Republicans offers little clue as to where the party will go. Whatever his flaws -- and they can be glaring -- I still believe Mike Huckabee is the GOP's future. Rich Lowry, who's been following him around Iowa, captured something essential in this long NR piece. Excerpt:
This, the first half of Huckabee’s presentation, is extremely impressive. It makes you wish that his prodigious talent could be marshaled for the forces of good. If only his gut instincts for bread-and-butter middle-class concerns were matched with better policy instincts and a more serious approach to policy.
2008 may not be Huckabee's year, and truth to tell, Huckabee might not want it to be his year, if he's smart. Four years of getting real serious, and going around the country building an organization for the next run, could make 2012 his time.
Jim Webb Democrats. Mike Huckabee Republicans. I could live with those crowds as the vital, imaginative center of the emerging American politics.
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Rod is right: Romney is literally the perfect Republican that the party would traditionally vote for. The reason that he's not an automatic shoe-in for the Republicans is that the Republican party has fallen to pieces.
No, Romney is not the perfect Republican. He has won 1 election in his career -- running as a moderate/liberal in Massachusetts. And that was only 6 years ago. Now he is taking campaign positions that, on paper, might be "perfect" for the GOP. But his fundamental weakness is that few voters take seriously his claim to be a sincere, principled conservative. He is almost transparently fake, a la John Edwards on the Democratic side.
The structural problem of the Republican coalition is real, but of course it is being grossly exaggerated in an electoral environment in which the GOP happens to be in a down mode. The party is nowhere close to "falling to pieces," and no amount of wishful thinking on the Left will make it so.
The Republicans face the same problem they have faced since 1992: Without the Soviet Union, the anticommunist hawkish foreign policy/defense positions which once glued together social conservatives and libertarians is gone. Multiculturalist rhetoric and left wing social policies (such as affirmative action) will draw those groups back together whenever Democrats are in the ascendancy -- which is why by far the best thing that could happen to the GOP's prospects for 2010 and 2012 would be a Hillary Clinton presidency with a Democratic Congress.
But without the need to stand resolutely against communism, conservatism lacks any positive vision that will keep its disparate elements united. Waging a "War on Terror" does not fill the void, and the misguided efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East actually divide the conservative coalition and drive its various components apart.
**Just as they are also tired of the old guard selling "Get Rich while you die trying."**
Donny:
Amazing that you would actually encourage young people to become Democrats :-P
Now he is taking campaign positions that, on paper, might be "perfect" for the GOP. But his fundamental weakness is that few voters take seriously his claim to be a sincere, principled conservative.
This is, of course, totally different from the other elections, where voters were fooled by Bush and Bush and Reagan pretending to be sincere, principled conservatives. I'm not actually seeing that as a shortcoming of Romney per se, I'm seeing it as a new non-shortcoming of Republican voters.
The party is nowhere close to "falling to pieces," and no amount of wishful thinking on the Left will make it so.
Waging a "War on Terror" does not fill the void, and the misguided efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East actually divide the conservative coalition and drive its various components apart.
Have you considered why, as it is completely obvious to 75% of the people of the US that the wars in the middle east are not actually helping anything (Even most of the ones who think we should 'finish' Iraq admit it was a mistake, although possibly not visible in advance, and we certainly shouldn't invade anyone else.), why the Republican frontrunners still support said wars?
It's because your party is broken. Totally broken. It is operating on emotion and slogans instead of actual ideas. (Yes, the Dems rely on emotion also, but it's positive emotions instead of hate and fear, and that's just to be elected, not to actually govern.)
It is broken because it was made up of such random elements for so long that half the people running had to be a phony in some respect, and you haven't gotten a 'principled conservative' in a long time. As I've mentioned before, neither the Christian Right or the nutjobs or libertarians are 'conservative' at all, and, tada, the party is almost an empty shell.
And starting around 1994 or so, the only purpose of the GOP became power. Raw, naked power became an end unto itself. You just had to say the right words in front of the right audiences, and the other right words in front of the other audiences, all carefully constructed as to not conflict with each other, and you were in the club and Rich!
And then, in one of those things that's going to read a lot better in the history books than if you're living it, one of those things like the assassination of JFK being the thing that pushed the Civil Rights Act over the edge, you elected Bush. And completely exposed to the general population how broken the party was.
The Democrats, of course, are also broken, although in a totally different way. That party, however, can be fixed by slowly replacing them, whereas the GOP does not have that much time.
I have yet to understand what was the problem with Mondale. A monogamous, monotheist, clean-government candidate about whom nobody could find anything real to say other than "Oh, him." (Or my father's saying he was a "twerp." I loved my father dearly, and most of the time he was a lot brighter than I'll ever be, but that was not one of his finer or more coherent moments.) Let's face it, Mondale was just in the wrong place (ie on the Democratic ticket) at the wrong time (ie when Ronald "Morning in America" Reagan was on the Republican ticket. I never understood that slogan either, but then, I'm not a morning person. Who wants to vote for somebody who makes you feel sleep-deprived?)
"And starting around 1994 or so, the only purpose of the GOP became power. Raw, naked power became an end unto itself. You just had to say the right words in front of the right audiences, and the other right words in front of the other audiences, all carefully constructed as to not conflict with each other, and you were in the club and Rich!"
Actually it started around 1980, when it started to be obvious that having supported the Vietnam War, and evaded actually serving in it [like Quayle and the rest of the GOP leadership born since 1945], was better than having opposed it and served in it, like Gore and Kerry.
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