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MEMO TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: How to Win On Foreign Policy in 2012

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Obama as Commander in Chief

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MEMO TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: How to Win On Foreign Policy in 2012

To: President Barack Obama
From: Jim Arkedis, Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s National Security Project
RE: How to Win on Foreign Policy in 2012

Mr. President:

I hope and trust that you had better things to do than watch the GOP’s last two debates on foreign policy. I took care of that for you, and reread the transcripts just because I am a masochist.

It’s clear the Republican field is offering nothing new on foreign policy this election cycle, and that creates a real political opening. This memo serves as a guideline for how you can use the issue to your advantage on the campaign trail in 2012. In a nutshell, the public must see you as a stronger leader: Your numbers are hurting there right now, and you should trumpet your national security record to help them rebound. The trick is that if voters view you as a strong leader generally speaking, it will create a spill-over effect, bolstering their confidence in your leadership on domestic issues (read: the economy).

No matter who ends up as the Republican nominee for president, they’re not going to beat you on foreign policy substance. Most of the GOP candidates offer vague criticism that you’ve handled Iran badly, but can do no better than propose “crippling sanctions” as a solution, which are somehow better than the comprehensive ones you’ve enacted.

On areas where they actually differ with you, there still isn’t that much daylight: Michelle Bachmann tried to ding you for sending thirty, rather than forty, thousand troops to Afghanistan, and Rick Perry thinks that any withdrawal timeline from that country is a bad idea (even though Mitt Romney, in the second debate, basically agrees with your timeline for withdrawal). But you know that those are hardly winning arguments with the American public, 53 percent of whom would prefer to wash our collective hands of the whole mess. The GOP field (minus perennial laggard Rick Santorum) might get closer to broad (but confused) public sentiment to slash foreign aid, but on policy alone, this is probably their only opportunity to score political points.

The main conservative line of attack is stale, but potentially effective: They’re going to out-muscle you. I was absolutely shocked that no one critiqued you on “leading from behind” in the debate, but that phrase is sure to appear–on repeat–in ads before next November. But heck, you’ve even got Jon Huntsman — the guy you appointed to be our emissary to China — saying you “can’t lead”! It could erode the public’s confidence in your leadership abilities.

For now, the GOP seemed mostly content to insinuate this alleged weakness: Mitt Romney claimed that your re-election guarantees Iran will get a nuclear bomb; both he and Newt refuse to negotiate with terrorists (you do, in case you weren’t sure); and Herman Cain doesn’t think waterboarding is torture, which is why he’d use it. Most bizarre was Bachmann’s assertion in the first debate that America has lost the War On Terrorism under your watch. I wonder how Usama Bin Laden feels about that.

You’re no slouch when it comes to politicking, and you know that this election will be won and lost on each candidate’s ability to make a case for economic growth. It’s understandable that you might want to minimize foreign policy on the stump this year.

That’s a mistake, because your ability to make an economic case should be buoyed by your solid record on foreign and security policy. This might not be intuitive, so hear me out:

You killed Bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, helped oust Mohamar Qaddafi, have ended the Iraq war, and protected the country from a massive domestic attack. Voters have noticed: a November Gallup poll has your general foreign policy approval rating up five percent over disapproval, an astounding 63 percent support you on terrorism, and the numbers are good on handling Iraq and even Afghanistan.

More importantly, if you sell your foreign policy achievements in the right way, it will paint you as a strong leader. That’s critical: Americans want their president to project an image of strength, and you’re hurting there right now. Between May (when Usama Bin Laden was killed) and August, the percentage of Americans who viewed you as a strong leader slipped from 55 to 44 percent. Here’s the kicker: If you’re seen as a credible, effective Commander-in-Chief, voters are more likely to believe that your leadership can pull them out of the economic slump.

I realize that you’re not the type of guy who wants to pound the podium and out-flex your opponent. That’s okay. However, you still have to keep in mind that foreign policy is an emotional issue for voters, and that you have to connect with their gut subconscious before you can lead them elsewhere. Below, I offer four ways you can use foreign policy to increase your leadership credentials in 2012.

1. Explain your vision and your values. Having a good track record isn’t worth a damn if you don’t connect with voters. They’ve got to feel you on these issues. Even assuming the GOP nominee is the shape-shifting Mitt Romney, he’ll sell a consistent, militaristic vision of American exceptionalism that might resonate with America’s gut.

Don’t cede that ground, just tell your own version. You might not make a major foreign policy campaign address, but your stump speech absolutely must include your vision of America’s leading place in the world in the 21st century. It doesn’t have to be “rah-rah”. It does have to be convey some emotion using two frames: “strong and smart.”

Explain that you know that the threats facing America have changed since the end of the Cold War, and we must rise to meet the challenge. That requires strong American leadership, complemented by strong alliances and backed the world’s strongest military.

But it also requires a laser-focus on the long term: American strength in the 21st century means being smart, too. Safety at home is enhanced by spreading American values abroad, and that requires more robust diplomacy to expand economic and political opportunity for all. That’s a great way to connect on the economy, too: Economic strength is what drives American power, and that means we need to out-innovate, out-produce, and out-think our challenges.

2. Tell a us a story (often). Specifically, tell us the story of how you decided to send SEAL Team Six to kill Bin Laden. Voters remember stories, not policies. So give them the best you got, because it will reinforce your image as a substantive Commander-in-Chief. You could recount the version you gave CBS’ 60 Minutes in May. It doesn’t have to be overly dramatic: just calmly recount the facts and remember that details are good. The story sells itself, and shows America that you made a bold, gutsy, strong decision. Most importantly, the country, not your administration, was successful.

3. Use military veterans as surrogates: Your campaign should have the most robust veterans surrogate network in the history of American politics. In an age when Congressional approval languishes in the single digits (and yours are in the 40s), guess who the public believes? The military. A September 2011 poll reinforces a standing trend: 92 percent of Americans are confident in the military and hence, its veterans.

Remember the Swiftboat Veterans who sunk John Kerry’s campaign? They tipped the balance because they were credible messengers. This year, you’ve got to get out ahead of the game. A few days ago, I received a campaign-sponsored email from Rob Diamond, who runs “Veterans and Military Families for Obama” (full disclosure: Rob is a friend). You need to give him every resource he asks for because he needs to pack cable news, campaign rallies, and small-town newspapers in military-heavy swing-states like Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Colorado with veterans supporting you as the Commander-in-Chief they were proud to serve.

4. Attack Republicans as reckless. You have to make the public’s decision on national security a binary choice. If you’re to be a strong leader and a tough, competent Commander-in-Chief, you need to define (presumptively) Mitt Romney is reckless and out-of-touch. A poll from back in 2008 found this to be an effective attack against Republicans on foreign policy, and I sense that it would continue to work in 2012.

Why? Well, Romney’s rhetoric isn’t that different from George W. Bush’s. In an October speech at the Citadel, Romney promised to reverse proposed defense cuts, resurrect the neocon missile-defense shield, and build six more navy ships per year, even though America’s wars are coming to a close and the country faces a massive debt issue. Does that sound smart, efficient and strong in the 21st century, or does it echo the reckless George Bush, a playground bully who fights but doesn’t think and remains stuck in the Cold War?

Mr. President, it’s going to be a tough election. But used correctly, you can turn a solid record on matters of foreign policy and national security into a real asset this year, and just maybe tip the balance in a few key states. And how’s this for a bonus? The GOP isn’t expecting that you’d dare try.

If you’ve read this far, you might follow me on Twitter @JimArkedis

Photo credit here.

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Defense & Deficits: How to Trim the Pentagon’s Budget-Carefully

Friday, October 14th, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Getting America’s exploding deficits and debt under control isn’t just an economic and political imperative, it’s also vital for U.S. national security. America’s military strength and leading role in international affairs rest on the foundation of a dynamic, growing economy. To the extent that runaway public debt undermines prospects for growth and compromises America’s economic sovereignty, it also endangers American security.

Let’s be clear at the outset: defense spending is not driving the fiscal crisis. True, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the debt, but that’s because President Bush, in a break with wartime precedent, declined to raise taxes to pay for them. The good news is that as the overseas deployments wind down, future military spending is set to naturally shrink.

The structural causes of America’s escalating national debt are the unsustainable cost growth of federal entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—and historically low tax revenues (which reflect both subpar economic growth and the Bush tax cuts). But it has become apparent that as America’s political leaders shirk tackling tax and entitlement reform, the burden of debt reduction threatens to fall disproportionately on domestic discretionary spending, including defense.

The first shoe has already dropped. On August 2, President Obama and Congressional Republicans struck a deal that would cut spending by $2.1 trillion over ten years in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Among other cuts, the compromise takes an initial bite of $350 billion from defense spending. The deal also created a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction or “supercommittee” to come up with an additional $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in federal savings by the end of the year.

If the committee fails, it will trigger a “sequester” that automatically cuts domestic and defense spending across the board. That could mean an additional $500 billion—if not more—cut from the military.

All told, defense spending could be reduced from $850 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade. Cuts of this magnitude are simply too large. They would jeopardize America’s ability to successfully conclude the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, conduct global counterterrorism operations, and hedge against the rise of new threats—both state and non-state actors—to U.S. security and international order. Absent corresponding reductions in America’s global commitments, such large cuts portend exactly what Walter Lippman warned against—foreign policy “insolvency,” in the sense that America’s commitments far exceed its means.

Nor would deep cuts in national defense solve the country’s fiscal problems. America’s national debt now exceeds $14 trillion and is growing rapidly. Since 2004, it has zoomed from 40 percent to about 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and is on course to exceed 100 percent in the coming decade. There is wide agreement among fiscal experts that policymakers need to cut at least $4 trillion over ten years just to stabilize the debt at 60 percent of GDP. So even if the new “supercommittee” succeeds in cutting $2.1 trillion, there’s still a long way to go.

Yet the Pentagon should not escape scrutiny, either. The fiscal task before the country is monumental, and President Obama has rightly called for “shared sacrifice” in crafting a bipartisan solution. This means everything—entitlements, tax revenues, domestic spending and defense—must be on the table.

The military must contribute its fair share to deficit reduction, but it must not be made to pay for America’s leaders’ inability to grapple with the country’s fundamental fiscal challenges. Beyond marginal adjustments, the basic level of defense spending should be set by America’s strategic needs, not by a game of fiscal chicken.

Moreover, how defense spending is cut matters almost as much as the cut’s size. Across-the-board caps or freezes—as proposed by some leading bipartisan groups—are convenient for political budget cutters, but they are a bad way to wring savings out of national defense. The fact is that not all Pentagon programs are created equally: To en- sure that reductions in the military’s budget don’t disrupt current missions or impair the U.S. mili- tary’s ability to sustain qualitative technological superiority over the long term, policy makers need to make strategic trade-offs among competing security priorities.

That’s because while keeping Americans safe is the federal government’s first responsibility, America’s military power also underpins its diplomacy and anchors strategic alliances in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The military cements America’s position of world leadership, which rests on the United States’ will and capacity to defend liberal democratic values and strengthen global institutions for collective problem solving. I see no evidence that the American people are clamoring for a retreat from these responsibilities.

For all these reasons, heedless cuts in military spending have no place in a progressive strategy for restoring fiscal discipline. In this Policy Brief, I offer pragmatic answers to these questions:
The post-Cold War benchmark of three percent of GDP constitutes a floor beneath which defense spending should not be allowed to sink. This decade, a range of 3.0–3.5 of GDP is more realistic. This suggests that the military’s budget should be cut by no more than $600–650 billion—or about 10 percent—by 2021.

How much should the Pentagon contribute to defense spending reductions?
And how do policymakers realize these savings?

I answer those questions by examining defense spending in an historic and current budget context, break down Pentagon spending by category, distinguish between one-off war spending and on-going military missions, and contrast spending proposals from the political left, right and center. I conclude with a series of strategic guidelines for how much and where to trim the defense budget.

Based on this analysis, I believe military spending can safely be reduced over the next decade towards the “post-Cold War benchmark” achieved in the late 1990s: After a series of exhaustive strategic re- views, military spending slowly declined through- out the decade and eventually settled at around three percent of GDP by 1998. During peacetime and absent a major nation-state military competi- tor, this range was deemed sufficient to handle two regional conflicts while maintaining the U.S. military’s high-tech edge and global reach.

Of course, this formula cannot be applied mechanistically because the United States is not at peace and faces a different slate of threats than in the 1990s. Therefore, budgeteers must build in some leeway above three percent of GDP to accommo- date the following realities: America must con- clude the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; maintain a vigorous, global counterterrorism campaign; assure its qualitative military superiority over po- tential rivals, such as China; continue to invest robustly in advanced technology; and be prepared for unanticipated contingencies.

That’s why the post-Cold War benchmark of three percent of GDP constitutes a floor beneath which defense spending should not be allowed to sink. This decade, a range of 3.0–3.5 of GDP is more realistic. This suggests that the military’s budget should be cut by no more than $600–650 billion— or about 10 percent—by 2021.

In achieving these savings, policymakers should be guided by five rules:
1. Don’t let fiscal politics trump U.S. strategy.
2. Cut over time.
3. Focus on personnel costs.
4. Avoid radical surgery to military procurement and research & development.
5. Set a floor beneath defense cuts.

Read the entire memo.

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Wingnut Watch: Texan troubles in the Sunshine State

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

In February, the “invisible primary” for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination was kicked off in Washington by the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference. On Friday, a second CPAC event will be held in Orlando in deliberate proximity to tomorrow’s Fox/Google candidates’ debate and Saturday’s Florida GOP presidential straw poll (CPAC will not feature its own straw poll). As in Washington in February, the event will revolve around a cattle call of speeches by presidential candidates and conservative celebrities. The smell of red meat will hang heavy in the air, and speakers can and will be expected to forswear all ideological heresy and smite both Democrat Socialists and RINOs.

But it’s instructive to note how the presidential contest has changed in those seven months between CPAC-DC and CPAC-FL. In February, the intrepid conservative-watcher Dave Weigel of Slate ranked in order of general impressiveness the CPAC appearances of no less than twelve candidates, quasi-candidates, and possible candidates: (1) Ron Paul (who won, for the second straight year, the annual straw poll); (2) Gary Johnson; (3) Mitch Daniels; (4) Haley Barbour; (5) John Bolton; (6) Donald Trump; (7) Mitt Romney; (8) Newt Gingrich; (9) Herman Cain; (10) Tim Pawlenty; (11) Rick Santorum; (12) John Thune. You will note that five of these worthies wound up never running president. A sixth, T-Paw, has dropped out. A seventh, Gingrich, is no longer being taken seriously as a candidate, while an eighth (Cain) and ninth (Santorum) are barely clinging to relevance, and a tenth (Johnson) can’t get an invitation to a debate. Meanwhile, Weigel did not even mention Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, both of whom actually did speak at CPAC, or Jon Huntsman, who at this point was still Barack Obama’s ambassador to China. Interesting, eh?

With four or five months (depending on decisions pending in the states on the date of the starting gun in Iowa) still to go before actual voters begin to participate in the nomination process, how much more is likely to change? A lot could depend on what happens in Florida late this week, particularly to insta-front-runner Rick Perry.

The Texan’s somewhat shaky performance in the CNN-Tea Party Express debate on September 12 (also in Florida) may embolden his rivals to go after him again tomorrow night in Orlando. His areas of vulnerability could again include immigration policy (Cuban-Americans–the Hispanic voting group most active in Florida Republican politics–are not terribly sympathetic to undocumented workers from Mexico). It’s unlikely Michele Bachmann will again bring up Perry’s unsuccessful efforts to immunize Texas schoolgirls against the HPV virus, since her handling of the issue backfired on her in the intervening days. But if she wants to pursue the “crony capitalism” rap on Perry in a way that undermines his Tea Party support, there’s rich ground available in his futile and unpopular campaign to build a giant system of privately operated toll roads—the Trans-Texas Corridor—that might have enriched some of Perry’s friends and supporters at the expense of local landowners, and that reminded some hard-core conservatives of shadowy rumors about a “NAFTA Superhighway” designed to encourage illegal immigration and threaten U.S. sovereignty. The whole issue looks tailor-made for Bachmann.

Perry’s apparently dovish feelings about overseas troop deployments could be another target, given the very hawkish tendencies of Florida Republicans (and especially Cuban-Americans, who went heavily for John McCain, then campaigning mainly on the Iraq “surge,” in the 2008 Republican primary).

But without question, Romney, Bachmann, and perhaps others will keep up the pressure on Perry about Social Security in a state where about one-third of Republican primary participants are over the age of 65. The most recent polling in Florida, by Insider Advantage, showed Romney with a healthy lead over Perry among likely primary voters 65 and older, despite Perry’s overall nine-point lead. Since Social Security is also central to Team Romney’s “electability” argument against Perry, alarming Florida seniors generally about the Texan’s expressed disdain for the New Deal program as an unconstitutional “failure” will be a priority. Republicans have reason to be anxious about the Sunshine State: the last Republican to win the White House without winning Florida was Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

Regardless of exactly how he does in the debate, or in his CPAC-FL speech, Perry has long planned to cap the week with a smashing victory in the Saturday state party straw poll (which goes by the rather self-important name of “P5” to indicate that it is the fifth such event in Florida). But Romney and Bachmann have undermined the significance of the event by declining to appear in the pre-straw-poll cattle call, or actively compete in the straw poll. The pre-ordained nature of the Perry victory, and thus its relative lack of newsworthiness, is reinforced by this straw poll’s unusual nature: voting participants were selected months ago by county GOP organizations. So Ron Paul won’t be able to win this one by any last-minute packing of the room with his youthful supporters.

P5 might, on the other hand, draw attention to Perry’s support among Florida GOP power-brokers, including several key legislative leaders, and reportedly (though he remain officially neutral), the controversial right-wing Gov. Rick Scott. But the even bigger dogs in Florida Republican politics are another matter. Sen. Marco Rubio, who is the presumptive favorite for the second spot on the ticket no matter who wins the first spot, has little reason to endorse anybody. And his political patron, former Gov. Jeb Bush, is assumed to share his clan’s general antipathy towards Perry. If Romney can build doubts about Perry’s electability and specifically his appeal to seniors, and also secure open or covert backing from Jeb Bush, this difficult week in Florida could be just the beginning of the front-running Texan’s troubles in the Sunshine State.

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Wingnut Watch: The Rise of Fearless Republicans

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

President ObamaThere are still some observers in Washington who believe congressional Republicans will be forced by President Obama’s jobs speech and proposal to cooperate with Democrats on some sort of emergency economic legislation. But that’s not the perception, and certainly is not the inclination, of the citizens of Wingnut World, who greeted the president’s speech with a combo platter of ideological hostility and mocking indifference.

Almost universally, conservative opinion-leaders insist on calling the proposal a “stimulus” rather than a “jobs” bill. Given their equally universal claim that the 2009 economic stimulus legislation did not create any real jobs (viz. Rick Perry’s claim during the Florida candidates’ debate), this indicates its dead-on-arrival nature among conservative leaders and probably the House. Once the White House made it clear it proposed to “pay” for the jobs proposal with measures that include a limitation on itemized tax deductions by high earners, conservative condemnation solidified even more.

The bigger picture, of course, is that conservatives have long settled on a message and policy agenda that insists nothing other than business tax cuts, federal spending cuts, and aggressive deregulation can possibly be considered as helpful to the current and future U.S. economy. Public investments? That’s just a code word for more spending or worse yet, pork. Temporary relief for the unemployed or the under-employed? That’s just more stimulus, reflecting the failed ideas of John Maynard Keynes. During the long GOP presidential debate on September 12, no concept beyond disabling government was mentioned by any of the candidates with respect to reviving the economy.

But aside from hostility to the specifics of Obama’s proposal, another note is steadily creeping into conservative messaging on the economic and other debates in Washington: contempt for the president’s political influence. Here’s National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson on the jobs proposal:

In truth, Obama is out of arrows. His quiver is bare, because he came into office as a rhetorical president without much experience or any ideas other than growing even bigger a tired big government. And now the public realizes that both the speeches and the big spending do not work. The result is that we collectively know what the president cannot any longer say — and it proves far greater than what he can say. He is well past the point of Jerry Ford’s WIN buttons or Jimmy Carter’s fist-pounding malaise speech.

This sense that Republicans have nothing to fear any longer from Obama (in the same piece quoted above, Hanson compared Obama today to George W. Bush towards the end of his second term) is increasingly pervasive, and will almost certainly be intensified by hype over the Republican victory in the special election to fill Anthony Wiener’s House seat in New York. If New York Jews are abandoning Obama, many conservatives are undoubtedly saying to themselves, how can he possibly win in 2012?

If, as has been convincingly argued, Obama’s jobs speech represented a definitive effort to force Republicans into a choice between cooperation and a damaging display of indifference to the country’s economic suffering, conservatives show every indication that they will happily risk the latter. This in turn could have an effect on the tone of the GOP presidential contest, where a very confident party with fewer fears about electability could indulge itself in a base-pleasing competition tilting very far right.

The CNN-Tea Party Express debate in Florida certainly showed signs of that dynamic. A lot of headlines about this and the previous candidates’ debate focused on criticisms of Rick Perry’s harsh rhetoric on Social Security, suggesting that there was in fact a limit to how far right the primary electorate would choose to let a potential nominee go. But the fact that uber-conservative Michele Bachmann has joyfully joined in the bashing of Perry for disrespecting the very existence of Social Security shows that this may be less a matter of sensitivity to mainstream public opinion and more a matter of recognizing the strong popularity of federal retirement programs among conservative base voters—who are on average relatively old. Meanwhile, Perry’s right flank was meaningfully exposed during the debate in exchanges on immigration and his aborted effort to inoculate Texas schoolgirls against the HPV virus. He’s in some danger of looking like he feels more compassion towards illegal aliens and sexually active teenagers than towards the conservative seniors who belief they have earned every nickel of their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The skirmishing between Perry and other candidates in the debate may have helped obscure the virtual unanimity of the candidates in support of policy positions that would have been considered wingnutty as recently as the last presidential cycle. (The shouts from the audience of “Yes!” when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if a hypothetical person with no health insurance who is suffering from a fatal disease should be allowed to die was representative of the gulf between the conservative GOP base and the rest of the country). One interesting exception was foreign policy, where first Jon Huntsman and then Rick Perry called for an end to the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan without explicit contradiction from other candidates. It will be interesting to see if Perry’s rivals, especially Mitt Romney, choose to go after Perry from the right on this subject in a direct appeal to what used to be called one leg in the three-legged- stool of American conservatism: “national security conservatives.”

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Wingnut Watch: The Power of Wingnut World

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Republicans and IdeologyIf you really want to understand the psychology and the power of Wingnut World, the Palmetto Freedom Forum event in South Carolina on Labor Day was a real eye-opener.

Set up by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Iowa Rep. Steve King, and social ultraconservative Robert George of Princeton University, the event was designed to remove the “soundbite” and horse-race mentality of conventional candidate debates, and present 2012 GOP presidentials with the opportunity and the challenge of making major statements of “first principles” before a murder board of ideological inquisitors.

The event was spoiled a bit by Rick Perry’s last-minute cancellation to go home to look over the shoulders of professional emergency managers and first responders dealing with the recent rash of Texas wildfires. Even if you give Perry full credit for doing the right thing, it’s clear he benefitted by avoiding a probable grilling from inquisitor Steve King over immigration policy (King asked other candidates not only about illegal immigration but about appropriate levels of legal immigration). And actually, it’s doubtful Perry would have done that well under questioning from Robert George about the constitutional issues involved in abortion policy, since the Texan has flip-flopped on the subject quite recently.

The other candidates (for a full video, go here) performed pretty much as demanded. They all bellied up to the bar of “constitutional conservatism,” the belief that right-wing policy prescriptions are the only way to remain faithful to the fundamental design of the Republic. Everyone vibrated at the idea of “American exceptionalism,” the notion that this country is not only exempt from any concept of universal norms of behavior and cooperation, but is divinely appointed to keep alive laissez-faire capitalism and conservative Christianity as models for the rest of the world.

Even though Perry was absent, Steve King dutifully quizzed the candidates not only on how they would deal with illegal immigrants, but whether they agreed with him that it was time to cut back on legal immigration as well (Herman Cain was the only—perhaps naïve—protester against that proposition).

The sheer zaniness of the event was probably best evidenced by Robert George’s extended interaction with several candidates over their willingness to engage in a constitutional confrontation with the U.S. Supreme Court in the event that Congress passed legislation seeking to outlaw or significantly restrict abortion. Bachmann and Gingrich eagerly agreed with George’s suggestion that a Republican president should fight to deny federal courts jurisdiction over abortion policy; Mitt Romney allowed as how he would not go quite that far.

But George also backed Michele Bachmann into a corner by getting her to admit she had no specific basis for her repeated argument that a state-imposed personal health care purchasing mandate—i.e., what Mitt Romney had helped create in Massachusetts—violated the U.S. Constitution.

For observers of the hyper-conservative mutation of the GOP over the last few years, the most startling development in Columbia was probably Mitt Romney’s agreement with his inquisitors that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be privatized and the Community Reinvestment Act repealed. This series of steps reflects the wingnut belief that federal efforts to increase homeownership by poor and minority families caused the housing and financial meltdowns of 2008. He didn’t start babbling about ACORN or William Ayers or the president’s birth certificate, or engage in a Santelli-style rant about “losers” and “parasites” stealing from virtuous rich people. But the fact that a sober character like Romney is buying into Tea Party conspiracy theories is not a good sign.

The presidential candidates will get together again Wednesday night in a more conventional setting and format: the Ronald Reagan presidential library in California. It appears Perry will show up this time, having pretty firmly established himself as the front-runner in the race (the latest token is a poll showing him leading among Republicans in Nevada, a state thought to be totally in the bag for Mitt Romney). The venue may discourage sharp elbows given the certainty that someone will invoke Reagan’s so-called “Eleventh Commandment” against personal attacks between Republicans. But Ron Paul has already taken the initiative to go negative on Perry with a broadcast TV ad, timed to coincide with (and perhaps air during) the debate, comparing Paul’s 1980 endorsement of Reagan with the Texan’s endorsement of Al Gore in 1988 (when he was still a Democrat and Gore was considered a moderate and defense hawk). It will be interesting to see if Michele Bachmann or one of the lesser candidates picks up the opportunity that Steve King missed in South Carolina to grill Perry on his immigration stance. The one certainty tonight is that everyone will kneel at the altar of St. Ronald, and it’s doubtful anyone will recall that he signed two tax increases as president, sought to negotiate nuclear disarmament with the Soviets, and cut a deal with Tip O’Neill to avoid cuts in Social Security—that RINO!

Photo credit: outtacontext

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Wingnut Watch: Romney’s Perry Problem

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

In the traditionally sluggish Dog Days of late August (interrupted, of course, on the East Coast by the occasional earthquake or hurricane), wingnuts, like other Americans, have been a bit distracted from politics. But those answering the phone calls of ever-vigilant pollsters are building a wave of buzz for new presidential candidate Rick Perry for which there is little recent precedent. Perhaps it is just a reflection of long-simmering unhappiness with the candidate field, but in survey after survey, national and local, Perry is quickly moving ahead of not only the Star of Ames Michele Bachmann, but also long-time front-runner Mitt Romney. Five national polls taken since August 15 show Perry up over Romney by margins ranging from six to thirteen points.  Two polls of Iowa Republicans taken during the same period show Perry edging out Bachmann, even though the Texan skipped the Iowa GOP Straw Poll and has appeared in the state exactly once. Two new polls in South Carolina show Perry trouncing the field; one has Perry up 23 points over Romney and 29 points over Bachmann. Even in Mitt Romney’s stronghold of New Hampshire, Perry is rapidly moving into serious contention. Where available, poll internals typically show Perry racing past Bachmann among Tea Party conservatives, and holding his own against Romney with more conventional conservatives and moderates alike.

It’s unclear at this point whether the various controversies already surrounding Perry—from his published views on the New Deal and the Great Society to questions about his intelligence—are being brushed off by Republican voters or simply haven’t sunk in.  But the reining question in the conservative chattering classes is whether his rivals—and particularly Mitt Romney—should be panicking or beginning to go negative on him, or at least reconsidering their strategies.

The thinking in RomneyLand, it is being reported, is that Perry’s surge in the polls is likely to abate somewhat on its own, and that MSM scrutiny of the Texan will also take a toll. Perry is also gaffe-prone, and doesn’t have a reputation as a particularly good debater (there will be three televised candidate debates in September alone). The main trouble for Team Romney, however, is strategic timing. One nightmare scenario is that Perry will trounce the field in Iowa, giving him enough of a bounce to run a strong second in New Hampshire and then build up an invincible head of steam going into South Carolina and then other southern states. Uncertainty over the primary calendar is a big issue as well. If a Romney-friendly state like Michigan manages to move up to the early stages of the contest as it did in 2008, he can perhaps stick to his original game-plan. But if, say, Georgia and Florida wind up holding primaries the week after South Carolina, then the risk of a Perry sweep would go up considerably. In theory, the Perry-Bachmann competition over the hard-core conservative vote in Iowa could create an opening for Romney in that state; a Romney victory upset there followed by a win in New Hampshire could leave him in a very good position. But this “quick kill” approach is obviously the strategy that blew up on Romney—and for that matter, Hillary Clinton—in 2008.

Romney has a number of more immediate trials to overcome during the Labor Day weekend. He’s the featured speaker at a Tea Party Express event in New Hampshire, a development that has spurred a formal protest by the rival tea party group FreedomWorks, which has long harbored an animus towards Romney.

The same weekend all the major candidates will face an early and potentially difficult test: a command-performance inquisition in South Carolina by a conservative group that has joined forces with ideological commissar Jim DeMint to quiz the hopefuls on various matters of conservative orthodoxy. Most of the media attention on the event has focused on Romney’s initial refusal to participate on specious-sounding scheduling grounds, followed by his sudden decision yesterday that he would, after all, come to Columbia to pay homage to DeMint. But there is another subplot to the story that could become important: one of DeMint’s co-inquisitors will be Iowa Rep. Steve King, who has yet to make a presidential endorsement despite his close relationship with Michele Bachmann. King rivals Tom Tancredo as a right-wing firebrand on the immigration issue, where Rick Perry’s record is significantly out of line with prevailing conservative views.  It wouldn’t be that surprising to see King hold the Texan’s feet to the fire on this issue and then sadly decide he has to back someone else back home in Iowa.

Speaking of Labor Day weekend, and of Iowa, there’s all sorts of confusion surrounding the long-anticipated appearance of Sarah Palin at a big Tea Party gathering just outside of Des Moines on Saturday.  This event was where a lot of Palin-watchers originally thought she might either launch or definitively foreswear a presidential campaign. Team Palin has thrown cold water on that assumption (saying the deadline for an announcement of her plans is the end of September, not Labor Day), and now, her appearance is “on hold” due to conflicts with local Tea Party planners. One report is that Palin and her staff are fed up with the vacillation of event organizers over a speaking role—offered, withdrawn, and then reoffered—for former Delaware Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, who is fresh from one of the more disastrous book launch tours in recent memory. In any event, Palin will do at least one public event in Iowa this weekend, followed quickly by another in New Hampshire. But the ranks of those expecting her to run for president in 2012 are thinning rapidly.

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Wingnut Watch: Perry’s Tightrope

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Rick PerryWith the end of the brief, Weekly Standard-driven boomlet for a Paul Ryan presidential candidacy, it’s increasingly certain that the 2012 GOP presidential field is set. Yes, there are still some observers who believe (with hope or fear) that Sarah Palin is going to announce a 2012 bid in Iowa at a big Tea Party rally over the Labor Day weekend. But Team Palin’s abrasive push back against a Karl Rove prediction that this would happen is a pretty clear indicator that it won’t, unless St. Joan of the Tundra really enjoys misdirection.

So there are by most accounts three viable candidates—Perry, Romney and Bachmann—with Ron Paul formidable enough to wreak some occasional havoc, and perhaps someone else—most likely Rick Santorum, possibly Herman Cain—having enough juice in Iowa to affect other candidates’ performances at the margins.  Perry is the “it” candidate of the moment, and fans of Bachmann are praying that her candidacy can survive his current surge in the national and early-state polls.

Meanwhile, Perry himself is negotiating a pretty interesting tightrope that shows both the power and perils of wingnuttery. On the one hand, it’s important that he provide a credible challenge to Bachmann for the support of serious Tea Party and Christian Right activists; perhaps his camp even thinks they can drive her from the race before voting begins by pushing down her poll numbers and drying up her money sources. This would explain the savagely carnivorous nature of his early speeches, and certain other maneuvers like his decision to sign onto the Susan B. Anthony List’s highly prescriptive anti-abortion pledge, which Mitt Romney declined to do. That pledge, it should be noted, would prohibit Perry from appointing his 2008 presidential favorite, Rudy Giuliani, to any cabinet post with an influence on abortion policy.

But at the same time, Perry is having some problems generated by wingnut-pleasing passages in his 2010 book, Fed Up, most notably an expression of interest in repealing the Sixteenth Amendment (which made possible the establishment of a federal income tax), and exceedingly hostile remarks about the constitutionality and morality of Social Security. Indeed, he’s already back-peddling pretty fast on Social Security, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

His communications director, Ray Sullivan, said [last] Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest the program was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.

Perry is also drawing unfriendly mainstream media attention for more conventional (among today’s conservatives, at least) sentiments denying man-made global climate change and treating evolution as a mere egghead theory. But one Perry controversy also shows how thoroughly previously unconventional views have become common among GOP elites. His attack on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernancke made some Republican opinion-leaders nervous on grounds that a potential POTUS should not be assaulting the independence of the Fed. Hardly anyone questioned the underlying policy stance Perry embraced, suggesting a Ron-Paul-style deflationary monetary policy in the midst of a deep recession.

As Perry’s audition as a possible chief executive continues, the broader question is whether the specific views of Republicans matter a whole lot to anyone outside the hothouse atmosphere of conservative activists.  A new Gallup survey testing the incumbent against Romney, Perry, Paul and Bachmann among registered voters showed remarkably little variation. Romney, predictably, did best, edging Obama 48-46. But Gallup also showed Perry tied with Obama at 47-47, with Paul only trailing by two points (47-45) and Bachmann only trailing by four (48-44).

Those who wonder why the Obama re-election team is reportedly planning a scorched-earth campaign criticizing the eventual Republican nominee should stare at those numbers a while.  A “comparative” campaign is not simply essential in order to prevent the election from becoming a referendum on life in the Obama Era at a time when “wrong-track” sentiments are extraordinarily high. Perry, Paul and Bachmann, at least, offer a treasure trove of oppo research opportunities that any Democratic candidate would be foolish not to exploit.

But it’s equally interesting to wonder if findings like Gallup’s will convince conservative activists there is no electoral risk attached to their own choice of a candidate. If so—if, in other words, “electability” is not really a factor in so polarized an electorate–you can expect them to indulge themselves ideologically without much in the way of inhibition.

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Wingnut Watch: The GOP’s ‘Movement Conservative’ Conquest Achieved

Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Last week was a pretty good week for hard-core conservative ideologues in terms of their domination of the Republican Party. In the Fox News/Washington Examiner presidential candidates’ debate on Thursday night, every single would-be president on the stage—even Jon Huntsman—rejected a hypothetical deficit reduction deal involving a 10-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. At the same event, an extended exchange in which Tim Pawlenty went after Michele Bachmann for being a windy bomb-thrower who had never actually been able to accomplish anything in public life went pretty well for the windy bomb-thrower. Meanwhile, the discussion of cultural issues featured differences of opinion that ranged from hard-core opposition to same-sex marriage (with the exception of the pariah Huntsman) and abortion to hard-core opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

At the Iowa GOP Straw Poll on Saturday, over half the votes were cast for two candidates generally considered to be minor fringe characters in the House Republican Caucus until quite recently, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul.  Tim Pawlenty, who began his national political career calling for a Republican Party that would be amenable to the views and practical needs of Sam’s Club shoppers, ended his audition for Electable Conservative Alternative to Mitt Romney with an ignominious third-place finish. Given his world-class organization in Iowa, T-Paw’s poor showing in this test of organizing strength indicated his failure to make the sale to serious conservatives, and he dropped out of the race the very next morning. Other than Bachmann and Paul, the candidate with the most to boast about on Saturday was Rick Santorum, who managed to get past Herman Cain to finish fourth and keep alive a campaign focused almost entirely on representing the most extreme right-wing cultural views (Santorum’s big moment in the Thursday debate was probably his passionate defense of a ban on abortions where the woman in question had been raped).

Bachmann’s narrow win over Paul in the Straw Poll was significant in Wingnut World for three reasons. First, it confirmed Paul’s continued marginalization in the GOP because of his highly unorthodox views on foreign policy and defense (in the debate, Paul spent an extraordinary amount of time defending Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and went all Chomsky in attacking the CIA’s meddling in Iran in the 1950s, not a major concern of conservative Republicans then or now). Second, it lifted Bachmann into the top tier of candidates moving towards the actual delegate-selection contests next year.  And third, it confirmed the relevance of wingnut-friendly Iowa in the nominating process; a Paul win would have called that relevance into question.

Meanwhile, down in South Carolina, the long-awaited announcement of Rick Perry’s presidential candidacy further tilted the field to the right. His speech, delivered at the annual gathering of devotees of the fervent take-no-prisoners conservative website RedState.com, was a masterpiece of the rawest ideological red meat. Perhaps the most significant moment was when Perry slipped into a tirade about high taxes a nasty comment about the injustice of low-to-moderate-income Americans owing no federal income taxes while “we” are expected to pay more. The desire to raise taxes on the poor is one of the more ironic preoccupations of Tea Party activists, reflecting the reverse class warfare sentiments made so plain in the foundational “rant” by Rick Santelli that launched their movement back in 2009.

Bachmann and Perry, both major figures in the iconography of both the Tea Party Movement and the Christian Right, now represent two-thirds of the viable Republican presidential field for 2012.   Realization of that fact has some of the more Establishment-minded Republicans a bit panicked. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat looked at the field on Sunday and didn’t like what he saw:

No one doubts Romney’s intelligence or competence, but he has managed to run for president for almost five years without taking a single courageous or even remotely interesting position. The thinking person’s case for Romney, murmured by many of his backers, amounts to this: Vote for Mitt, you know he doesn’t believe a word he says.

But his phoniness would remain a weakness even if he won the presidency. He’s a born compromiser pretending to be a hard-liner, and the hard-liners know it—which means he would enter the Oval Office with conservative knives already sharpened and ready for his back.

Rick Perry has many of the qualities that Romney seems to lack: backbone, core convictions, a killer instinct and a primal understanding of the right-wing electorate. He also has the better story….

What Perry doesn’t have, though, is the kind of moderate facade that Americans look for in their presidents. He’s the conservative id made flesh, with none of the postpartisan/uniter-not-a-divider spirit that successful national politicians usually cultivate.

And Douthat didn’t even address Bachmann’s even more strident stance. He concluded his column with that most thread-bare of Republicans cries for help: a plea to Chris Christie to repudiate months of disavowals of candidacy by jumping into the race. Other elite malcontents are promoting a candidacy by the very epitome of conservative fiscal orthodoxy, Paul Ryan, a more reliable figure than Romney who is also more seemly than Perry.

Aside from these desperate measures to add to the field the big debate in the chattering classes right now about the Republican nominating contest is whether it’s effectively a Romney-Perry contest or if Bachmann can remain viable by winning Iowa. Either way, the pressure will remain on Romney to perpetually prove his conservative bona fides, and the most GOP “moderates” can hope for, as Douthat observes, is that he’s lying through his teeth.

Any doubt that the “movement conservative” conquest of the GOP has now been consummated should pretty much be consigned to the trash bin. The main question now is whether conservatives prefer their presidential candidate to be cool and shifty, or raw and shrill.

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Wingnut Watch: Wisconsin Recall Relief and Iowa Showdown

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

There is joy and relief in Wingnut World today thanks to the narrow failure of Wisconsin Democrats to win enough recall elections to take over the state’s Senate chamber (needing three new seats out of the six being contested, Democrats won two and lost the crucial third by just over 2,000 votes). Though this was a very unusual election in which vast quantities of last-minute conservative money (a total of $8 million was spent in the pivotal district, a bit more than the average state legislative race) probably made the difference, you can expect many jabberers from the Right to call this the final, definitive victory of the people over “labor bosses” determined to keep Scott Walker from giving job-creators the encouragement they need to invest in the state. Next week’s recall elections for two Democratic senators, which are not expected to go well for Republicans, probably won’t get as much national attention. Democrats will then have a tough decision to make about whether to seek a recall of Walker next year. But overall, the main importance of the Wisconsin struggle is that it will likely become a sort of laboratory for what the contending parties—and their ideological allies—will do nationally in 2012.

Aside from Wisconsin, and the continued preparatory skirmishing over the budget timeline set out in the August 1 debt limit, there are two main preoccupations among conservative activists and talkers.  One is the war of interpretation over economic developments, including the threat of a double-dip recession, the Standard & Poor’s downgrading of its rating for federal bonds, and the extreme instability of U.S. and global stock markets. So far few, if any, conservatives are bending their general line on the ontological necessity of sharp and immediate federal spending cuts and radical deficit reduction measures in the face of poor economic growth indicators. For example, conservatives have shown no signs of interest in the president’s call for extension of the payroll tax cuts agreed to last December. Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann gets points for audacious consistency in arguing that the bond downgrading, explained by S&P as in no small part attributable to pessimism about future debt limit agreements because of Republican fanaticism on taxes, was actually caused by the debt limit agreement itself.

The second preoccupation in Wingnut World, as in the broader world of political junkies, is with the developments in the Republican presidential race that will unfold over the next few days. In Iowa, a presidential candidate debate on Thursday will immediately be followed by Saturday’s State Republican Party straw poll in Ames. The debate, sponsored by Fox News and the conservative Washington Examiner, will include not only the candidates competing in the Straw Poll, but also Mitt Romney, who is not, and could therefore be the target of zingers from rivals desperately trying to create some turnout-generating buzz in Ames.

In terms of what is likely to happen at the Straw Poll, there is a general consensus that Tim Pawlenty has the best organization but little enthusiasm; Michele Bachmann has the most enthusiasm but a questionable organization; Rick Santorum could well surprise people by doing better than Herman Cain; and Ron Paul, with the right combination of committed supporters and superior organization, could win the whole thing if turnout is not very high. Both Pawlenty and Bachmann really need a win in Ames. But it’s Pawlenty who needs it the most, having focused on Iowa for many months and positioned himself to become the “electable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney” down the road. His limited financial means and terrible poll standings across the country—and the impending entry of another “electable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Rick Perry—could mean curtains if he doesn’t pull off the Straw Poll victory.

Speaking of Perry, he’s apparently going to announce or at least semi-announce his candidacy in South Carolina in the friendly confines of the annual get-together of Erick Erickson’s Red State community.  The fact that his speech in Charleston occurs the very same day as the Straw Poll has caused some angst among Iowa Republicans, who view it as an effort to horn in on their media attention. So it’s not surprising Perry is planning to scurry up to Iowa (to Bachmann’s original home town of Waterloo) on Sunday. From Perry’s point of view, a Paul win in Ames, damaging Bachmann and perhaps finishing off T-Paw, and making the entire exercise (which he skipped) otherwise irrelevant, would be ideal. But even before announcing, Perry has managed to vault himself into the top tier of candidates, essentially succeeding in taking over T-Paw’s spot as the putative “unity candidate” between the electability-challenged Bachmann and the ideologically-challenged Romney. That’s quite a feat for a guy who keeps flip-flopping on hot-button social issues; has gotten dangerously cozy with religious extremists; has a habit of startling his fellow-conservatives with stunts like his 2008 championship of Rudy Guiliani; and has never been terribly popular in his own state.

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Wingnut Watch: Jim DeMint’s Filibuster, T-Paw and Bachmann’s Catfight.

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Like most politically active Americans, the residents of Wingnut World are heavily focused on the debt limit negotiations.  Unlike many politically active Americans, hard-core conservatives by and large are just fine with a failure to reach any agreement.  In some cases, it’s because they don’t buy the idea that failure to raise the debt limit will cause a default on federal government obligations.  The “Full Faith and Credit Act”, introduced some time back by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Club for Growth) and backed by most Tea Party groups, is designed to bolster that case by directing the Treasury to pay creditors, the armed services, and Social Security recipients first if the debt limit is reached (this approach, of dubious legality, would virtually guarantee a major shutdown of unprotected federal programs).

Then there are those conservatives who don’t necessarily dispute that a debt limit increase is necessary to avoid a default, or that a default would produce economic havoc, but nonetheless argue that cutting federal spending, taxes and debt is more important (economically and morally) in the long run. Thus, they are adamantly opposed to any deal that doesn’t meet the politically impossible “Cut, Cap and Balance” template.  This is the official position of the 183 conservative organizations, including those that have signed onto the “Cut, Cap and Balance” Pledge, along with nine presidential candidates (ten if you count likely candidate Rick Perry), 12 senators and 39 House Members.  There is no deal anywhere in the works that these folks can support without subjecting themselves to charges of hypocrisy and betrayal.  And the senators among them—including wingnut Big Dog Jim DeMint—have regularly threatened a filibuster against any deal they don’t like, which would produce highly dangerous delays even if it is not backed by sufficient votes to thwart the majority.

Outside this circle of solemn oaths to wreck the national economy if it’s necessary to pursue their ideological agenda, conservatives vary in what they might consider acceptable, with some focused on the precise extent of the concessions that might be wrung from the administration and congressional Democrats, and some standing with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in making political point-scoring against the administration the top priority. Virtually no conservatives have conceded the possibility of a deal including revenue measures that aren’t pared with tax rate cuts. And on top of everything else, profound institutional rivalries between House and Senate Republicans that have already become a problem in coordinating GOP strategy will make expeditious final action difficult. It’s going to be a very long week.

Meanwhile, on the presidential campaign trail, the rivalry between those Minnesota twins, Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, has been heating up. T-Paw has recently taken several shots at Bachmann’s record in Congress—and lack of executive experience—along with making what looked to be a thinly veiled reference to her medical condition as a possible problem (he later flatly stated he had never seen Bachmann suffer from any incapacity in fulfilling her duties). Bachmann fired back harshly with a denunciation of Pawlenty’s earlier positions on health reform, climate change, and TARP, suggesting he had a lot in common with Barack Obama.

The knife-fight reflects the fact that Pawlenty is fighting for his political life in Iowa, and can ill afford to lose badly to Bachmann at the August 13 Iowa GOP Straw Poll. But both Minnesotans are increasingly laboring under the tall shadow of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is reportedly 99% sure to announce a candidacy next month. Already in the double-digits in national and some state polls (a statute that poor T-Paw has yet to reach after months of campaigning), Perry probably benefitted from the decision of the Iowa GOP to keep him off the Straw Poll ballot, which means he doesn’t have to rush his announcement and won’t suffer from a poor showing in Ames.  But Perry also courted controversy on the Right the other day by expressing indifference to New York’s recent legalization of same-sex marriage on states’ rights grounds:

“Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That’s New York, and that’s their business, and that’s fine with me,” he said to applause from several hundred GOP donors in Aspen, Colo. “That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business.”

This comment immediately attracted criticism from Christian Right leaders, including Gary Bauer and Iowa kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, who don’t think their “marriage is between a man and a woman” stance is a matter of state preference any more than individual preference. Perry’s stance, and the casual attitude he conveyed in talking about it, could give Bachmann fresh traction in her struggle to compete with the Texan for Christian Right support.

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Wingnut Watch: Cut, Cap, Balance, Perry.

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

It’s a High Noon moment in Wingnut World, as conservatives do everything possible to sabotage a deal to increase the debt limit even as their congressional leaders negotiate behind the scenes to make a deal possible. Yesterday’s near-party-line vote in the House passing the “Cut, Cap, Balance Act” represented a particularly vivid demonstration of conservative inflexibility and its grip on the GOP. CCB would write directly into the U.S. Constitution the Right’s current contention that fiscal problems are always and invariably the result of excessive spending, and that a fixed, ideal ratio between spending and GDP can be deduced and legislated forever.

But extreme as the CCB exercise appeared in terms of all precedent, from the perspective of many conservative activists it was a bit of a wimpy compromise. CCB suggests, after all, there is a circumstance—an insanely remote circumstance, to be sure—under which a debt limit increase would be appropriate. That’s offensive to those who earlier staked out a “just say no” position Indeed, two of the nine votes cast by House Republicans against the CCB bill were from presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul. Bachmann had just, earlier this week, become the ninth candidate (everyone in the race other than heresiarch Jon Huntsman) to sign the Cut-Cap-Balance Pledge, after adding a proviso that she wouldn’t support a debt limit increase until such time as the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is repealed.

With CCB going nowhere in the Senate, Wingnuts now have at least a few days to fulminate against, and then to oppose, any actual debt limit deal. Their public rationales for obstructionism vary: Many conservatives are default denialists, who claim there are actually no significant economic consequences to a failed debt limit increase because the feds will figure out some way to pay creditors until something can be worked out. Others are what might be called bullies-and-bluffers, who are convinced (like some of their brethren on the Left) that the president and congressional Democrats will always and invariably surrender in any negotiations on any subject, making the maximum hard line the appropriate GOP starting point. And still others profess to believe that excessive federal spending—and/or the continued existence of entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—is the real threat to the economy and indeed to human liberty, making some short-term global economic collapse a small price to pay for a return to the lost Eden of the Coolidge Administration.

If, of course, a deal is struck and somehow can be maneuvered through Congress with just enough Republican votes to obtain a majority, we’ll see a whole new cycle of recriminations against this fresh “betrayal” by “RINOs”, complete with threats of primary challenges and maybe even third parties. That any such deal will almost certainly involve unprecedented Democratic concessions on spending, bipartisan “cover” for unpopular changes in entitlements, and abandonment of longstanding Democratic demands for higher taxes on the wealthy, won’t cut much ice on the Right.

As the countdown to default continues in Washington, two very different countdowns are underway on the presidential campaign trail: the countdown to the first real contest of the cycle, the August 13 Iowa GOP Straw Poll, and the countdown to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s decision on whether to join the race.

Michele Bachmann continues to be the favorite to win the Straw Poll; she’s using her hard-line position on the debt limit to maximum advantage in Iowa, making it the subject of her first statewide TV ad (entitled “Courage”). But she’s now undergoing the first real rough patch of intense media scrutiny and personal questions, some undoubtedly inspired by her opponents. At present, the chattering classes are buzzing over anonymous claims that she is frequently incapacitated by migraine headaches and/or treatment for that condition.

Meanwhile, speculation mounts that Perry will soon jump in (though it’s no more definitive than earlier claims that Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels were minutes away from candidacy). The implications of a Perry run depend on how you see his appeal. Some observers appear to think that the combination of his fundraising prowess, his Tea Party connections, and the “story” of Texas’ economic success, is simply unbeatable. The Hill’s Christian Heinze, for example, who is following the race full-time, appears to think Perry would almost immediately create a one-on-one battle for the nomination with Mitt Romney as Tea Partiers abandoned Bachmann and Cain for the pretty-boy Texan. But as Heinze himself notes, some New Hampshire Tea Folk, however, are raising questions about Perry’s chronic resistance to anti-immigration laws and rhetoric (a smart stance in Texas, but not necessarily elsewhere) and his staunch support for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. And Texans do not quite seem to share the national conservative belief they are living in an economic paradise engineered by Perry’s determination to give corporate executives absolutely everything they want.

If Perry does run—before or after his August 6 prayer-a-thon event in Houston that is certain to raise some questions about his relationship with the theocratic wing of conservative evangelicalism—he will face an immediate strategic decision about whether to plunge into the Iowa Caucus campaign full-bore (it’s already a bit late for a Straw Poll bid by Perry, though the Iowa GOP could put him on the ballot for the event), or instead lay a trap in South Carolina for whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire (say, Bachmann and Romney). A complicating factor for a Dixiefied strategy by Perry is that wingnut kingmaker Sen. Jim DeMint has successfully convinced most Palmetto State pols and donors to hold off on any candidate endorsements or financial commitments until after Labor Day, apparently to increase his own leverage over the field. Leave it to virulently anti-union South Carolina Republicans to make Labor Day a signpost for keeping rightward ideological pressure on their party and its presidential field.

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Wingnut Watch: The Perry Proposition

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

The “invisible primary” of Republican presidential candidates positioning themselves to become the Wingnut alternative to Mitt Romney is now getting close to its first major landmarks: the “closing of the field” when Republicans stop fantasizing about late entries who will shake up the race, and the August 13 Iowa State GOP straw poll, which will likely end the campaigns of poorly financed also-rans who can’t show significant grassroots support in Iowa or other early states.

Although bored pundits will probably continue to offer implausible scenarios for late candidacies by Chris Christie or Jeb Bush right on through the autumn, the only real mystery left is whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry will enter the race. He will reportedly decide for or against by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, several campaigns are holding on by a thread, and will probably be liquidated (or reduced to a platform from which the candidates can make free debate appearances to sell their books or keep their names in the public eye) after the straw poll.  The most obvious casualty of earlier events is Newt Gingrich, who never had much of a chance at the nomination even before a series of missteps chased off most of his staff.  Rick Santorum’s all-abortion all-the-time candidacy hasn’t gone anywhere.  Herman Cain is the candidate most likely to be “winnowed” in Ames.  His earlier surge in support in the early states has subsided to a considerable extent.  More importantly, his languorous campaign pace, reminiscent of 2008 candidate Fred Thompson, has frustrated his staff and supporters; in just the last couple of weeks, he’s lost his top staffers in both New Hampshire and Iowa.  In the latter state, that couldn’t come at a worse time, when he needs the organizational heft to convert the cheers he generates with his stock speech into tangible support in the straw poll.  His second quarter fundraising numbers, showing he raised just under $2.5 million, didn’t impress anybody.

The candidate most desperately in need of a strong showing in Ames is Tim Pawlenty, who continues to struggle in the polls and whose reported $4.2 million second-quarter haul was even less impressive than Cain’s, given T-Paw’s heavy expenses in Iowa.  Anything other than a first or strong second-place finish in the straw poll could kill off Pawlenty entirely, eliminate the prospects of a “consensus” candidate who appeals equally to all of the GOP’s conservative factions, and set up a potentially protracted and divisive nomination contest between Romney and either Michele Bachmann or (if he runs) Rick Perry.

While a Perry candidacy excites a lot of observers, it remains a debatable proposition.  Yes, on paper he looks formidable.  He’s a candidate equally rooted in the Tea Party Movement and the Christian Right. He’s got a great economic “story” to tell, dubious as his claims really are to have generated Texas’ impressive (if generally low-wage) record of recent job growth.  He’s considered good-looking by those who like the rugged Marlboro Man stereotype of masculinity.  He’s a good stump speaker who enjoys campaigning far more than governing, and has no moral compunctions about serving up big platters of the rawest red meat.  And he’s a proven fundraiser who has the important Republican Governors Association rolodex in his pocket.

On the other hand, a PPP poll just last week showed Perry losing a hypothetical general election contest to Barack Obama in his home state of Texas, performing worse than Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty or Herman Cain (and far worse than Mitt Romney).  This sign that Perry has clay of feet in his cowboy boots could be a real problem, particularly if his message depicts him as the economic savior of the Lone Star State, whose residents would normally be expected to toss rose petals in his path to the White House.

Perry also has a timing problem.  If he is to compete in the Iowa straw poll, he can’t delay his candidacy much longer.  But announcing a campaign this month would significantly undermine the legitimacy of his much-ballyhooed August 6 prayer rally in Houston, dubbed “The Response,” which is reportedly intended to usher in a convergence of Christian Right support for a Perry candidacy.  Getting in after Ames could be risky, since it could enable Michele Bachmann to become the celebrity national candidate of precisely the Tea Party/social conservative coalition that Perry would offer to lead.

Meanwhile, Bachmann is riding pretty high at the moment, though her own second-quarter fundraising numbers have yet to be revealed.  She has a reputation as a champion fundraiser (she holds the all-time record for cup-rattling in a House race, having pulled in an astonishing $13 million for her 2010 re-election contest).  Whatever she’s raised, it is unlikely to match Mitt Romney’s reported haul of just under $20 million.  But it will almost certainly be more than her fellow Minnesotan T-Paw, who is presently struggling to get some right-wing leverage from association with their state’s current government shutdown.

All in all, the dynamics of the contest continue to pull the field even further to the Right, as Bachmann, Pawlenty and potentially Perry battle to become the anti-Romney in an atmosphere of partisan meta-conflict in Washington over the debt limit.  The two dynamics, moreover, may be reinforcing each other: six candidates, including Romney and T-Paw, have now signed the maximalist “cut, cap and balance pledge” rejecting any debt limit increase that is not accompanied by deep cuts in domestic spending (without revenue measures), a cap on federal spending linked to a low percentage of GDP, and a balanced budget constitutional amendment that includes a super-majority requirement for tax increases.  Bachmann is actually trying to outflank cut-cap-balance candidates on the right by demanding repeal of “ObamaCare” as a precondition for a debt limit increase.  As we approach white-knuckle time in the shaping of the 2012 field, the GOP is spending little time worrying about how poorly it may be positioning itself to face Barack Obama.

Photo Credit: Iowa Politics

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