Ames, Iowa — This has been quite a week or ten days for Republicans. As this is written, down in South Carolina, Rick Perry has just announced he’s running for president, while here in Ames, most of the votes have been cast, but none has yet been counted, in the Iowa Republican straw poll.
Yesterday Sarah Palin walked slowly through crowds at the Iowa State Fair and addressed voters there on the set of Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel program.
Pundits will parse the Iowa results and the Perry polling to determine which candidate is up and which down or out. The Iowa straw poll may prove to be the last stop for some Republican candidates, as it was in 1999 and 2007.
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More important than the fate of individual candidates has been the rush of events going the Republicans’ way.
Barack Obama’s job rating has slid to record lows in the Gallup poll, and his job approval fell under 50 percent even in New York. His August 8 speech had a deer-in-the-headlights quality even as he turned mechanically from one teleprompter to another.
Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the government’s credit rating for the first time in history. The stock market went through a week of horrifying gyrations. Then on Friday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down as unconstitutional Obamacare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance.
The president’s policies are in shambles. Things are not working out the way he and his advisers expected. His journalist cheering section has been voicing doubts and dismay.
But it’s not entirely clear where Republicans want to go, either, or whether they have candidates with the potential to take them there.
Yes, they have some quick answers. Repeal Obamacare? By all means. Approve a tax increase in return for genuine large spending cuts? All eight candidates at the Washington Examiner–Fox News debate August 11 dutifully raised their hands to say no.
Beyond that, not so much clear direction.
Some candidates did mention intelligent policy initiatives in the debate. Mitt Romney called for more high-skill immigration, a policy backed by a bipartisan Brookings panel. Michele Bachmann calls for buying health insurance with tax-free money, a homey way to advocate elimination of the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance.
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R., Mich.), whose candidacy has attracted little attention, called for tough stress tests and recapitalizing the big banks by debt-for-equity swaps. These are all solid ideas, and they even have the potential for bipartisan support.
Unfortunately, some candidates put great emphasis on constitutional amendments, to require a balanced budget and to ban same-sex marriage, that will never pass. Nor is it clear these are presidential issues. Article V of the Constitution says the document can be amended by supermajorities in Congress and among the state legislatures. The president has no more say than any other voter.
So it’s possible that the Republican nominee, if he or she avoids stumbles and conditions remain as they are, can win just by running against the failed policies of the Obama Democrats. But that’s not necessarily enough to govern successfully.
Republicans can argue successfully that Democratic promises of absolute security cannot be kept. Federal entitlements are, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, running out of other people’s money.
The problem for Republicans is that it’s impossible to foresee exactly how free-market policies will improve people’s lives. Back when Ronald Reagan was running during a similar Democratic breakdown in 1980, no one foresaw the wonders of the Internet.
The best attempt to suggest the possibilities I’ve heard here in Iowa came from McCotter, speaking at the Des Moines Register’s soapbox on the fair’s midway. “The answer,” he said, “is not to put your dreams in centralized bureaucratic Washington. The future is self-government, empowerment of the individual, a citizen-driven and more horizontal government.” We need policies that enable us to choose our own future, just as we choose our own iPod playlists and design our own Facebook pages.
That could have special appeal to young people, who voted 66 to 32 percent for Barack Obama in 2008. The hope and change he promised has turned sour, and Democrats’ welfare-state policies have proved to be more a straitjacket than they have a safety net.
Republicans are winning the argument over the Obama policies. But they aren’t yet making the strongest case for their own.
"Unfortunately, some candidates put great emphasis on constitutional amendments, to require a balanced budget and to ban same-sex marriage, that will never pass"
A little more than fifteen years ago a balanced budget amendment passed the house and got 65 votes in the senate, is it really that hard to believe one could pass in the next 8 years or so.
You didn't include the next sentence in your quote. "Nor is it clear these are presidential issues. Article V of the Constitution says the document can be amended by supermajorities in Congress and among the state legislatures. The president has no more say than any other voter."
It is very hard to amend the constitution with good reason. The concept may appeal to voters but none of the proposals in the past 30 years have gotten any traction and the process doesn't involve the president as Michael Barone points out in his column. While I'd support a well crafted Balanced Budget Amendment, it is not the near term solution to the problem. Cutting spending and entitlement reform need to happen in the next two years. A BBA will take 5 or 6 years to get through the 3/4 of the states required to be enacted. Reduced spending and entitlement reform should happen sooner than 2 years but until the Won is unseated or the Republicans take the Senate with more than a simple majority it won't happen. Obama continues to vote "present".
I don't know, I thought Barone's comments about support for Constitutional Amendments was odd. Presidents propose legislation all the time. It seems odd to think legislation requiring super majorities is outside a President's purview.
If Republicans want to improve their standing with young people, they need to stay on message about fiscal conservatism (and a better future for those same young people), and avoid social conservative issues. You can't speak about dictating "your own future" on one hand, and then trying to dictate people's lives on the other hand (which is what social conservatism aims to do). The religious young people are already going to vote Republican, so there's nothing to gain.
Fiscal governing is THE issue. Stay away from social and foreign policy - the contentious points for Republicans with both young and independent voters.
I disagree. Any "true" conservative will beat Obama, period. Personally, I think a stop sign would beat him right now...or a hat rack...or ______ you fill in the blank.
To Melody: "Any "true" conservative will beat Obama, period." Unfortunately, this is not the case. He is conducting a fiercely aggressive campaign on YouTube/Twitter/Internet, including sites with rappers’ music and other such ‘exclusive’ art. He is targeting the young and/or the brain-dead, and there are plenty of them out there. If the opposition wishes to succeed, they will have to make extensive use of the available technology. One problem with Republican campaigns is that they use old-fashioned methods. After all, ‘The Arab Spring’ and the UK riots were started via various modes of electronic communications.
Nope - they aren't voting and those who will he is losing as they realize Obamanomics means no jobs. He will not see a 30% spread with this demographic in 2012. There are many reasons how Obama could win, but they tend to center more on a GOP stumble than anything he will do himself. I hope Soros loses his billion trying to get him over the hump.
@Melody: you stand to be disappointed. In any recent Presidential election, you have to win over the swing voters (including independents) from the incumbent (or incumbent Presidential party). In 2004, Dubya deserved credit for making security a major winning point (despite the overall negative perception about him at the time). That perception worked against the Republicans in 2008.
In 2012, swing voters care about fiscal issues ONLY, not social conservative issues (which are actually a turn-off to that group). Any Republican candidate that starts to talk about gay marriage or abortion will NOT get those votes. That only plays to the already converted.
You don't know what your talking about. I'm an Independent voter and the social issues are important to me and many other people I know. I won't vote for a Rino who backs gay marriage and supports abortion. It does matter, and stop telling people it doesn't!
If moral issues aren't stressed more we are on the fast track to the riots in London, please get perspective.
A president can propose the idea, but he has no part of the process for constitutional amendments. It is between the congress and the states.
I pay no real attention to where any presidential candidate stands on a constitutional amendment because it is so hard to pass one that I doubt another will be passed in my lifetime.
The Constitution, then, spells out four paths for an amendment:
Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state conventions (never used)
Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state legislatures (never used)
Proposal by Congress, ratification by state conventions (used once)
Proposal by Congress, ratification by state legislatures (used all other times)
The balanced budget amendment would be a complete disaster. What it would do is empower federal judges to order tax increases in order to balance the budget. No thanks!
If the President sinks any lower in the polls he will radically transform from elite to delete.
That is change the GOP could believe in. A recent article quoted the 1924 Democratic party candidate John Davis saying essentially "any fool party that scares away a man because he has a dollar in his pocket ends up being the Party of the unsuccessful.
@Steven Gerrard
The only approval numbers lower than Mr Obama's are the numbers for Congress. People are very disillusioned with government right now. I think the candidate that speaks to that issue, even more so than the economy, will be the next president. From what I saw in Ames, I would give Mr Obama about a 50/50 shot.
I say this because I agree with your analysis of the swing vote. The intransigence of the Republican candidates positions on social issues and the economy will only hurt them with the middle. The 10/1 question in particular will bite them where it hurts. Americans, for the most part, think government should compromise and there was little of that in Ames.
QUOTE: The future is self-government, empowerment of the individual, a citizen-driven and more horizontal government. We need policies that enable us to choose our own future, just as we choose our own iPod playlists and design our own Facebook pages. END QUOTE
Now, please tell me how all this empowerment of the individual, citizen-driven government, and policies that enable us to choose our own future, are going to happen when the citizens are faced with a deluge of immigrants to compete against them for jobs. In case the various inheritors who run for office didn't know, most of us work for a living, and not on daddy's inherited ranch or the family's business. This is particularly true of the more knowledge-enabled workers, who have seen their market value erode as foreigners with degrees have flooded in, used family connections to bring in more, and even colonized some job functions.
And in case you didn't know, the iPod and Facebook types are not necessarily the ones upon whom the economy and the social order rely. Last time I checked, which was a few minutes ago, most folks with earbuds and an iPod were unemployed skateboarders.
As long as Romney, or anyone else, is for open borders for knowledge workers, he can not count on my vote. And, I've been a (legal) knowledge worker in another country! It's just that in that place and that era, there was not a deluge of folks like me, and I didn't spend my time networking with other foreigners such as myself.
"But it’s not entirely clear where Republicans want to go, either, or whether they have candidates with the potential to take them there."
Note that this statement highlights not "momentum", but "inertia".
Until we identify a compelling vision from one of these hucksters we must remain skeptical. The sight of all 8 participants at last week's debate throwing their arms in the air when asked if they would reject a 10-1 agreement on budget/debt negotiations ($10 of cuts against each $1 of new revenue)pretty much showed that we have an ideologically fused bunch of R contenders. Nothing to choose from. No substance = no "real" momentum.
Why didn't Barone mention any of Cain's specifc ideas? Also, where is the evidence that social conservatives want to tell people how to run their lives? Just because a social conservative doesn't support gay marriage doesn't mean he/she wants to tell you how to run your life. Ditto with abortion. Opposition to abortion doesn't mean the social conservatives want to force you to stop having unprotected, promiscuous sex out of wedlock. The problem with the fiscally conservative social liberal is they think that a belief in something necessitates the dictating of a moral code, which it doesn't. They also fail to connect the dots between fiscal conservatism and social conservatism. The two are intertwinned. Social conservatives are almost always fiscally conservative, but social liberals tend to be fiscal liberals.
Swing voters tend to be to be right of Democrats on the economy and left of Republicans on social issues. It is imperative that the next election be about the economy and not about gay rights or abortiom. If it is, the Republicans will lose too many swing voters and we will have four more years of Obama.
That's odd. The swing voters whom I know tend to be to the left of Republicans on the economy, and to the right of Democrats on social issues.
Just shows that there's more than one kind of swing voter. This is not a surprise. If all were the same, then the mix would be identified, and candidates would reliably market themselves there.
The problem is that there are extremes. "Gay marriage" is one such extreme, imposed by courts and by some bought-off politicians, but never by referendum. If only the gay activists would drop that issue and admit that they are unequal and do not have a right to marriage, then the swing voters could focus on other issues that are more economically important.
Abortion is another extreme. A potential compromise European-style, allowing it in the first portion of pregnancy but not thereafter except if the mother is in mortal danger, will never be proposed by any viable candidate of either party. The extremists at both ends would disapprove.
Likewise, as long as both major parties insist on offering open-borders candidates (including Romney and Perry, who phrase it differently), that neutralizes the issue. Saying you want to "enforce the border" with "wide gates" is much the same as open borders. And if the Texas DREAM-act equivalent isn't amnesty, I don't know what is.
A lot of swing voters are workers in insecure jobs and unstable communities. Imposing radical social change ("gay marriage," immigration) works against their interests.
Sparky, if the last 200 years have taught anything is that congress will never have the will power to keep a balanced budget on it's own. Even if God willing, we manage to force one on this congress or the next, as soon as the people start paying attention to their own lives and not riding herd on congress every minute of the day, congress will start deficit spending again. After all, buying votes is what keeps them in office.
The only permanent solution is to take away the power to deficit spend in the first place. For the same reason why you don't give loaded guns to children. They can't handle the responsibility.
