The GOP establishment vs. the Rogues
The Republican Party has two, mutually exclusive, strategies for picking up seats (and governorships) in 2010. One the one hand, they have the Palin/teabagger strategy, which is being pushed by the media wing of the party — people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the winger netroots and Fox news. That strategy involves blowing up government itself, and even the Republican Party, in order to whip the jihadi base into an anti-Obama frenzy. You see it in the signs depicting healthcare as the Holocaust, the president as Adolf Hitler, and Michelle Bachman as sane. Glenn Beck is apparently preparing to formalize his “plan” for his faithful robots soon and very soon (and he’s got this weird movie out, which was premiered to a stunned silence before the “Twilight” movie I took my kids and their friends to yesterday, but that’s another post…)
On the other side, are the pragmatists: people who actually run Republican bureaucracies, and who see the model for victory in the newly elected New Jersey and Virginia governors. In short: run moderate, and avoid the jihadis at all costs. From Politico:
The shorthand: run on economic policy, downplay divisive cultural issues, present an upbeat tone, target independent voters and focus on Democratic-controlled Washington—all without attacking President Barack Obama personally.
Such a strategy has made Virginia’s Bob McDonnell a certified star among the GOP establishment, but that dog just won’t hunt with the jihadi base, which wants Obama’s head on a platter, along with all-out war against his administration. The base of the GOP blames the safe route for the nomination of John McCain, and believes that had the McCain-Palin ticket been flipped, they would have won the election. (No, seriously, they believe that.) With Beck, Limbaugh, Fox and the RedState jihadis driving the public debate over the future of the GOP, the pragmatists’ strategy is having a hard time gaining ground, even after the Virginia and New Jersey wins, which the qaida can’t seem to distinguish from the embarrassing result in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where THEIR strategy crashed and burned. The conundrum — a base that wants to blow everything up, and an establishment that thinks the answer is to put the dynamite away, is the explanation, Chris Matthews, of why the Republican Governor’s Association’s chief poohbah, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, refused to say on “Hardball” this week that Ms. Palin is qualified to be president. The RGA strategy is diverging from the scattershot RNC strategy of chasing the base. (When those strategies collide, you get GOP hijackings like this one, from the Captain Queeg of the GOP, Michelle Bachman.)
(Another challenge for the teabagger wing is that their fundamentalist, Paulite, libertarian policy prescriptions are not at all popular with voters, as was demonstrated in New York 23, where the teabagger candidate Doug Hoffman rane on a promise to essentially de-fund the district, and in Washington and Maine, where anti-spending measures went down in flames the same election night Christie and McDonnell won.)
Which side will win out in 2010, and 2012, is still up in the air. In Florida, the jihadi strategy is exemplified by Marco Rubio, who has taken the teabagger base and run with it. The pragmatic strategy is personified by Charlie Crist, although he has been giving serious nods to the nutters, just to stay viable. If Crist wins the Florida primary, it will be a victory for the RGA/Barbour wing. If Rubio wins (and that’s still a longshot, in my opinion,) it will release the jihadis to blow up the Republican Party.
Photo from the Washington Independent.
And it doesn’t stop there. The jihadis are targeting big fish in 2010, including John McCain, who many in the qaida blame for the de-Reaganization of the GOP (since they really can’t bear to blame George W. Bush, and their heads would explode if they really examined Reagan’s record) and Olympia Snowe of Maine, who they’d like to see replaced by an un-electable wingnut. On a national level, Newt Gingrich thinks he can harness the pragmatic strategy as a way to launch himself into the presidency in 2012, but in reality, he really can’t. Rudy Giuliani keeps doing his damndest to cross-dress as one of the teabaggers (actually … never mind …) but in the end, they won’t accept him either, with his multiple marriages, pro choiced apostasy and former gay roommates. And poor Mitt Romney is so Brooks Brothers and Wall Street, he’d look downright silly trying. Tim Pawlenty is giving it a go, as well, but come on. Isn’t he just way too dull?
Of course it is possible that these two strategies can work in tandem (they can’t work together) to help elect more Republicans in 2010. After all, anything is possible. But what seems more likely is that strategy 1 can and will only work at the district level, where pre-2010 Census, Congressional districts are becoming more polarized, and more ideologically “pure.” At the statewide level, only strategy 2 can realistically work (which is why both Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell ran away from Sarah Palin, in McDonnell’s case, ran away from his own stated beliefs on women, for instance, and avoided talking about the president, abortion, or gay marriage.) And even the second strategy only worked in New Jersey and Virginia because the fundamentals of the electorates changed dramatically in an off-off year election. Reporters who keep touting those two races as the shape of things to come should remind themselves of the big caveats: when the entire electorate is older and whiter, it benefits Republicans no matter what else is in play. The Independents who swung to the right in the recent elections were already to the right of the general Independent population, because they, too, were older and whiter than the general public. In 2010, the electorate will still be slightly older and whiter, because that’s how off-year races go (older voters are more reliable and consistent than younger, newer voters) but less so than in 2009. If the Democrats can find a way to activate young and minority voters, they still have the ability to hold onto statewide seats.
Ironically, Democrats have sort of the opposite problem going into 2010. In Arkansas, for instance, Blanche Lincoln would benefit from an older, whiter electorate, but she is being seriously harmed by an erosion among younger and more liberal Democrats, who may yet abandon her, and other conservative Democrats, next year (as might unions — key to any Democrat’s chances — if she votes no on healthcare reform.) That’s why Bill Clinton is so mad at Keith Olbermann. Democrats are having a hard time energizing their base, while Republicans are having a tough time getting their establishment in charge of the steering wheel, as their base runs away with daddy’s car and floors it.
Interesting times.
UPDATE: The NYTimes has more on Beck’s big plans for 2010.
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