Romney, Michigan, and the GOP’s Little Problem

(2 pm, per budhy – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The conventional wisdom is that the GOP base is looking for a Reagan clone, and is having trouble deciding on a candidate because none of the candidates on offer does a sufficiently good “Dutch.”  The conventional wisdom is that the GOP base wants such a Reagan clone to bring together the fiscal, religious, and foreign policy conservatives under a single cult-of-personality tent.

The fact that the GOP base has quite visibly refused to fall for any Reagan impression has thrown GOP watchers into a tailspin of conflicting interpretations as to what the typical conservative voter wants, this year.  But few of these watchers have drawn the obvious, if counter-intuitive, conclusion: that the GOP base is not looking for a new Reagan.  

This thought is probably too Earth-shattering to contemplate for the GOP elite.  Lacking an old model, they would have to invent a new one.  And they are nowhere near equipped to do so.

Romney’s win in Michigan provides a window into this puzzle.  I’d like to muse on it for a while.

The GOP candidates continue to assume that their party wants Reagan.  That this might not be what their party wants has not even occured to most of them.  Curiously, this possibility did occur to Romney, or at least to some of his backers . . . and that, I want to suggest, is part of why he won Michigan.

Observe . . .

In the most pathetic plea for votes I have personally ever seen, a Romney fan admitted on the day of the Michigan primary that business acumen was all Romney had.  Dean Barnett wrote in the New York Times that Romney, despite all the horrendous bull his campaign had been putting out, was a nice guy.  He begged Michigan to notice Romney’s business acumen, and to notice that Romney is not really a complete asshole.

If you’re like most politically attuned Americans, you probably don’t agree with my description of Mr. Romney. You may consider him to be the personification of political ambition. You possibly believe he will say anything to get elected president. You might even consider him one of the least honorable politicians in the country.

— snip —

Early in the presidential race, Mr. Romney perceived a tactical advantage in becoming the campaign’s social conservative. Religious conservatives and other Republicans with socially conservative views found the two early front-runners, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, unacceptable. As someone who shares the beliefs of social conservatives, Mr. Romney saw an opportunity that he could exploit. He made social issues the heart of his candidacy.

This tack rang false with the public because it was false. The problem wasn’t so much the perception of widespread “flip-flopping” on issues like abortion. The public allows its politicians a measure of flexibility. But the public correctly sensed something disingenuous about Mr. Romney’s campaign.

— snip —

I know few voters will believe this, but Mitt Romney wants to be president out of a sense of duty. He feels our government needs someone with his managerial skills.

And that sort of thing worked, apparently.  Michigan Republicans, desperate for someone who could actually help with the economy, came out and voted for him.

The economy and the troubles of the auto industry dominated the contest here from start to finish, with Mr. Romney seizing on Mr. McCain’s suggestions that the jobs lost “are not coming back.” Mr. Romney also capitalized on his business background and his father’s leadership in the auto industry to persuade voters that he was best equipped to deal with those problems.

Despite months of self-abasement and Reagan-fakery in which Romney tried to reproduce the indivisible oneness of the GOP Holy Trinity (Social, Fiscal, and Foreign Policy conservatism), Romney finally won a primary in Michigan because of the one positive trait anyone can convince themselves Romney actually has: some sort of business acumen.  

I’m suggesting that Michigan voted for Romney not because of the fact he was trying to ape Reagan but actually despite it.  If correct, the enormity of this ought not to be glossed over by those of us merely pleased by the GOP disarry.

Other campaigns continue to try the same Reagan trick.  Speaking of McCain’s second-place finish in Michigan, a McCain adviser said:

I think McCain is the one guy in this race who can recreate the Reagan coalition and draw in independents,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain who was media adviser to Mr. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Adam Nagourney both sees part of this point and misses it in tomorrow’s New York Times.  Writing about Romney’s problematic Michigan win in an article titled No G.O.P. Anchor in Sight, Nagourney says:

Even in victory, Mr. Romney stood as evidence of the trouble the party finds itself in. He won, but only after a major effort in a state he once expected to win in a walk. That was before he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, two other states where he had campaigned all out.

This is right, but the general lesson Nagourney draws, I think, is wrong.  I’ll get to that below.

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Here I want to make a suggestion.  This strikes me as so obvious that I think it only gets missed because the resulting conclusions are too counter-intuitive to register.  If the GOP wanted a Reagan clone they would vote for Fred Thompson.  Of course they would.  

This might be incorrect; it might be that the conventional wisdom, that Thompson isn’t doing well because he’s “lazy” and “old-looking” is correct.  But I think those are rationalizations.  Reagan, after all, was lazy and old-looking, too.  If Thompson were winning his laziness would be described as, “being above the fray” and, very precisely, “becoming Presidential”.  Thompson’s complete electoral pratfall, I am suggesting, is further evidence that the GOP base simply doesn’t want what Thompson so conspicuously offers.

But even if I’m wrong about Thompson’s failure, the other evidence is still pretty strong.

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Nagourney writes:

 

Mr. Romney’s uneven performance has highlighted the strains in that coalition, and a central question about his candidacy is whether he will be able to rally its fractured components to his side. It was no coincidence that he invoked Reagan more than once in his victory speech on Tuesday, though it was perhaps equally telling that he also invoked the first President Bush, who like Mr. Romney struggled to convince Republicans that he was Reagan’s rightful heir.

This, I think, is where Nagourney misses the point.  But that’s no particular criticism of Nagourney; I think most folks are missing this point.  The various factions in the GOP are each clammoring to be heard.  They each want their own President, and they no longer trust politicians who have been coached to talk their language but obviously originate from one of the other factions.  

If anything is going to runite the GOP, and it might not be reuniteable as currently arrayed, then it’s going to have to be something other than a new Reagan.  What is that?  I have no idea.  Luckily for me, it’s not my problem.

If this is right, if the GOP is not in search of a new Reagan but a new reason for being entirely, then they are in for a long, hard, slog.  Their leadership lacks the imagination to even see the problem, so far.  And that spells good news for our side.