Running Right
Obviously, to some extent a bad result for John McCain was just baked into the cake of the underlying political fundamentals. His loss was predictable. But still, a black candidate. And a “maverick” Republican who was, when this race began, the most broadly popular elected official in the United States. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
But McCain barely even tried to take advantage of the fact that, when the race began, he wasn’t closely identified with the rotten GOP brand. Of course when he decided he wanted to be president, the first thing to do was to start running to the right in order to win the primary. That’s what you do. And that’s what he did. And it worked — barely — he won, albeit in a way that relied on a lot of independent and crossover votes. Then having won the primary, you want to tack a bit to the center. That’s how the game is played. And it’s especially how the game is played when your party’s image is terrible.
But McCain didn’t do it.
On the climate/energy/environment issues where he really had staked out an unusual position for a Republican, he moved right during the primaries and then moved even further right during the general election, embracing drilling and coal as the centerpiece of his agenda. He shed his image as a moderate on cultural issues with the Palin pick. And he didn’t make up for those rightward thrusts with anything else. Instead of trying to undue the damage to his brand that was caused by shifting right during the primaries, he compounded it by continuing to move right, closing the campaign by dogmatically insisting that run-amok inequality is the essence of America (or something). Now does that mean that being too conservative on energy or abortion was “the” reason he lost the election? Of course not. But he clearly needed to separate himself from the GOP brand. Since he was, in fact, a Republican doing it in a convincing way would have required some wrenching, risky moves. And he just didn’t do it — he just kept drifting further into the warm embrace of the conservative cocoon.
40 Responses to “Running Right”
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November 5th, 2008 at 9:19 am
The most qualified and most able person in this country to be president right now is sitting in a ski chalet somewhere in Utah. His name is Mitt Romney.
The fundamental rot of the national republican party made Gov. Romney contort himself to the point of ruining his reputation and image in the eyes of the country. It made him look foolish by talking about disliking abortion, and homosexuals, and atheists or whatever.
If the GOP was a healthy party, Romney would have been the nominee. Not the Romney of the 2008 primaries – but the Romney who was smart enough to finish his MBA/JD at the same time, the guy who turned Blockbuster into a national business chain, the guy who made himself extremely wealthy because he is that smart and talented, the guy who governed a blue state and governed it well fiscally and in terms of ethics, the guy who has a proven track record of working with people and turning big enterprises around.
He is the most talented government leader that this country has right now, with Obama a fairly distant second. And he was made a laughing stock because the national GOP is so poisoned. Sad.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
great post.
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/whymccainhaslost/
November 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
This is a very good point. The explanation that jumps out at me is that the dependence of the Republican Party on its evangelical base is so great, so much so that the nominee cannot move to the center without losing turnout.
McCain had a difficult choice — move to the center and lose the evangelicals, or move right, keep the base and take his chances that Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright would turn off swing voters.
Even before the economic crisis that was probably a losing strategy, but afterwards all the Ayers talk was perceived correctly as trivial and stupid.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:23 am
AJC:
November 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I think McCain’s insistence on staying safely to the right would’ve made more sense had he already worked to maintain some sort of consistent message in the first place. But that wasn’t the case. He is a maverick! His campaign message was different every week. Surely McCain didn’t have some aversion to flip-flopping.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Absolutely right. McCain ran a terrible campaign. He didn’t realize that, even though his supporters were not enthusiastic, he still could have won with a majority of unenthusiastic voters. It wouldn’t have been easy, but it was his only chance. If he had run more to the middle, emphasizing experience, common-sense, etc, then he might have done it. The fact that he was edging Obama after a lackluster convention and acceptance speech is evidence of this. Fortunately for us, he made the disastrous pick of Sarah Palin, and then acted like a chicken with its head cut off during the financial crisis.
I don’t agree with your point about drilling, though. That issue definitely helped McCain.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Well let’s just remember, folks: McCain’s is quite conservative. It wasn’t a tactic, it’s what he believes. Yes, he’s picked one or two issues — campaign finance reform, notably — where he has bucked the GOP line. But he’s a very conservative politician.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I will never understand why McCain decided to lurch to the right in the general; it was suicidally stupid. I can only surmise that he has no real principles and no political common sense either, and simply did whatever Steve Schmidt told him to do. Which is pretty pathetic. This is a guy who might have made Bush look honest and competent by comparison if by some malign fate he had pulled it out.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Agreed. McCain ran a terrible campaign that became an SNL sketch by the end. Joe the Plumber was the dumbest ploy i have ever seen, and probably will ever see. But yea, today is a day to feel good. And I do. WOOHOOO!!
November 5th, 2008 at 9:46 am
obama is one smart, effective campaigner.
never in my life has a democrat made fewer mistakes.
that said, he has also been *really* lucky in his opponents.
his senate opponent in 2004, jack ryan, self-destructed in a sex scandal.
and john mccain, in my opinion, self-destructed as well. there was something almost willfully wanton in his destruction of his prior principles, in his trashing of the press that had always been his base, in his selection of palin, in his bizarre embrace of joe the plumber.
mccain has been on a kind of 18-month bender, a long frantic lurch from hysteria to hysteria. it’s partly that he started running with a bad crowd–the deep republican base–and they corrupted his instincts. when they cheered for joe the plumber, he thought that meant he was on the right track.
i think he was never cut out for high office. and i think he realized it himself.
mccain, at some deep level, always wanted to be liked and accepted. it was key to his relationship with the press, and once they stopped giving him unconditional love, he turned mean and they turned angry.
obama has this weird streak–weird for a politician–of not really caring that much if you like him or not. he’s completely different from clinton in that way, too. he doesn’t suck the crowd’s approval like a vampire sucks blood: clinton needed that approval fix. obama doesn’t even seem to care. and that is one of his greatest strengths.
while mccain was lurching around, trying to get a smaller and smaller group of people to like him, obama was just running his game.
awesome. and lucky. maybe awesome makes its own luck.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:56 am
So true. He’s almost alarmingly normal for such a successful politician. I still don’t quite “get” him in that way- I’m so used to thinking you have to have a significant number of bats in your belfry to want the Presidency badly enough to even get a major party nomination, let alone win.
It’s the thing that makes me most hopeful about what he might accomplish.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:58 am
This is a very good point. The explanation that jumps out at me is that the dependence of the Republican Party on its evangelical base is so great, so much so that the nominee cannot move to the center without losing turnout.
Bingo, Gregg Abbott.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I’ve been astonished at the way McCain camapigned. It should have been staringly obvious that his path to victory lay in claiming the center and damning George Bush and all his works. He could have kept the Religious Right on board with a firm pledge on abortion, and the quite correct perception that he would be even more hawkish than Bush in the War on Islam (er, Terror).
It’s not that McCain couldn’t/didn’t throw the Evangelicals under the bus– rather, why didn’t he throw Grover Norquist under the bus? He could have run as a populist “Sam’s Club” Republican, and perhaps been able to paint Obama as a true out-to-lunch liberal. Instead he ceded the whole middle class to the Democrats, to win the quite minisule Joe the Plumber vote.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:08 am
The most qualified and most able person in this country to be president right now is sitting in a ski chalet somewhere in Utah. His name is Mitt Romney…He is the most talented government leader that this country has right now, with Obama a fairly distant second.
Talk about the warm embrace of the conservative cocoon…
November 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I agree with those who think McCain was f’ed either way. If he really ran to the center in the general, meaning really went after Bush in a way consistent with the feelings of the American people, the Republican “base” wouldn’t vote for Obama, but they also wouldn’t come out for McCain in sufficient numbers. Plus, McCain’s own recent record through the primaries would paint him as a flip-flopper. In short, in a contest to see who was the most popular anti-Bush, the Democratic candidate was always going to have a big edge.
And ex ante it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to believe McCain could “swiftboat” Obama enough to slip his way to a small turnout-driven victory. But of course it didn’t work, largely due to Obama’s basic likeability and even temperament, plus a lack of decent material to use against Obama.
So, again, McCain was f’ed either way. Of course he also did some very silly things in the execution of his chosen strategy, but I really don’t see there being a strategy that was going to work in any event.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:00 am
No Republican –including McCain — could have run a campaign in any way other than the one McCain conducted. Because the Republican Party has tied itself totally to the South. NOT just to the evangelists –but to the whole Southern wagon.
Look at the map –it’s the same map as in 2000 and 2004. The Republicans focus on keeping the support of their Southern base –and then expand outward as much as possible.
They are a Regional party –but it’s a large region. One which has been expanding in population much faster than other parts of the country except for California.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Don Williams,
But if you take out Hispanics and college-educated whites, I think the population figures would tell a different story. And that helps explain why Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico flipped (and maybe Arizona would have too if not for the favorite son effect), as well as Florida, Virginia, and (it looks like) North Carolina. And in a few more years, Georgia and Texas may be on the chopping block too.
In short, banking on population growth just among non-college-educated whites in the GOP’s footprint is very, very much a losing strategy in the long run, as in fact this election just proved. And as of right now it is a little hard for me to see how the GOP converts itself into a party that appeals to the entire cross-section of people contributing to population growth in the South and Southwest, but I guess we shall see.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:16 am
IOW, the Republican base’s red meat is the American people’s poison; you can’t appeal to both at once. It’s getting harder and harder to hide that as the base becomes more outspoken and passionate (and people like Jon Stewart and Glenn Greenwald make it more difficult than ever to split your message according to your audience). Pit bulls, with or without lipstick, lack broad-based appeal.
Furthermore, liberals generally understand general-election pragmatism; we may piss and moan (hey, it’s our constitutional right), but we’ll generally still vote for the centrist guy if he’s running against a right-wing extremist. The conservative base has an institutional rejection of dissent that means *any* step away from base positions, no matter how small or pragmatically intended, risks anathematization and the decision to abandon the heretic and try again next time with even more ideological purity. (The religious terminology might seem like an overstrained analogy if the political right weren’t also explicitly and aggressively religious.)
The selection of Palin (and the move to the far right in general) didn’t just alienate moderates, Blue Dogs, and Reagan Democrats McCain needed to win; it also played a major role in creating the next generation’s overdiscussed demographic, the Obama Republicans.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Re: it’s a large region. One which has been expanding in population much faster than other parts of the country except for California.
Well, yes– but this very expansion makes the South less Southern and less realiably Republican. Hence Obama’s victory in Virginia and North Carolina (I do not consider Florida a true southern state). In fact, the GOP did best in those parts of the south (e.g., Alabama) which have not grown that much. In the states where there has been major in-migration from other parts of the country they are in trouble. Ditto, out west: Colorado and Nevada went blue, and Arizona might have but for the “favorite-son” effect.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:33 am
#16-17: As Virginia grew, it also grew bluer. Population growth means more population density, i.e. urbanization, which creates or expands blue strongholds like NoVa, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Charlottesville. That plus the younger generation’s disdain for the culture war is the death knell for the Republican Party as we know it. The same demographic processes are already occurring in Texas, and when Texas flips, Republicans are finished as a national party. (To say nothing of what will happen if Obama and a Democratic Congress actually pass immigration reform that provides a reasonable path to citizenship for millions of Latinos who are currently taxed without representation.)
Sooner or later the professional operatives in the Republican Party will figure this out and either organize a counter-coup or jump ship. A party that can appeal to fence-sitters and Blue Dogs can win elections. A party that intensely believes in Palin can’t.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Re Chris’s comment “That plus the younger generation’s disdain for the culture war is the death knell for the Republican Party as we know it.”
————–
As we know it.
On the other hand, the Democrats have a huge train bearing down on them — Social Security and Medicare for retiring baby boomers. Democrats are strongly chained to making good on the promises of FDR’s programs — and AARP slaps with a heavy hand.
On the other hand, Democrats allowed Bush and the Republicans to steal $Trillions out of those Trust Funds for the Tax Cut and the Iraq War.
So Social Security and Medicare are going to demand increasingly heavy taxes on the young –which will cause resentment that the Republicans will exploit in order to renew their power.
Within ten years we may see an age-based split in US politics. With the Republicans posing as champions of the Young Families who are being screwed to pander to Irresponsible Old People Who had decades to build up capital but who were too lazy and irresponsible to do so.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Don Williams,
Yeah, but those “heavy taxes” on the “young” (by which I assume you mean anyone prior to retirement) to pay for entitlements could be disproportionately placed on just the wealthiest “young” people (e.g., by partially extending the payroll tax to higher incomes, which would actually be more a tax on the middle-aged than the truly young). Moreover, if the Republicans mistimed or miscalculated this strategy, they could cease to exist before they had time to make it work (by losing too many boomer-seniors before they gained enough “young” rich people to compensate).
In short, it isn’t necessarily a losing strategy to tax the daylights out of the wealthier members of Generation X to keep both the boomers and their children happy. Which, as a member of Generation X, I saw coming long ago, and I am really kinda pissed off at my age cohort that they didn’t vote overwhelmingly for Kerry and at least limit the damage.
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