Who can unite Republicans in 2012?
Looking toward the crucial 2012 presidential race, three things are becoming increasingly clear:1. A Republican candidate who can unite the Tea Party and the Republican establishment can beat President Obama. Recent polling by CNN and Rasmussen shows that the vast majority of voters who have a strong feeling about President Obama's performance disapprove of it; that there's not a single major issue on which the majority of Americans think he's strong; and that the overwhelming majority of Americans say he's not a good leader, with 40 percent saying he's downright a "poor" leader. Moreover, Obama's signature legislation, whose fate will likely coincide with his own, is unpopular, even in polling that grossly oversamples Democrats, and most Americans want it repealed.
The Weekly Standard. All rights reserved. Despite Obama's clear vulnerability, however, a Republican candidate who's unable to unite the Tea Party and establishment wings is unlikely to generate enough enthusiasm and across-the-board support to win the general election. Moreover, a candidate without sufficient Tea Party support isn't likely to win the Republican nomination. Tea Party support will be essential to Republican success at both levels of the electoral process.
2. There is very little overlap between the potential candidates that the Tea Party favors and the potential candidates that the establishment favors. An ongoing Tea Party Straw Poll, conducted by the same folks who did the Tea Party's "Contract from America," demonstrates this quite strikingly. Mitch Daniels, a favorite inside the Beltway and among many establishment Republicans, ranks only 12th in popularity with the Tea Party. Mitt Romney, perhaps the leading establishment candidate, ranks a sobering 22nd.
Mike Huckabee, not really an establishment candidate but nevertheless a big name, ranks only 14th. Huckabee, however, has much stronger support than Daniels (who has repeatedly called for a social "truce") or Romney (who has something of a reputation as a waffler) among social conservatives, who overlap greatly with the Tea Party but are not synonymous with it. Among the best-known potential candidates, only Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich crack the Tea Party's top-10.
To be sure, the Tea Party Straw Poll is not "scientific" in the sense of trying to replicate the views of the entire population or the entire Tea Party. It's better thought of as a vastly improved CPAC poll. Still, this is the best gauge of Tea Party sentiment about prospective candidates of which I am aware.
Moreover, the straw poll (which operates like a seemlier version of the poll that's depicted in the opening scenes of the Oscar-nominated The Social Network) offers some unique advantages over other polls: It registers unfavorable as well as favorable opinions; it displays the pictures of potential candidates -- much as the candidates would themselves be visible on a debate stage -- rather than merely listing (or asking people to conjure up) names and thereby favoring folks with strong name-recognition; it registers some degree of voter intensity by letting people vote multiple times, while protecting against "ballot stuffing" by only having a voter's favorite candidate emerge periodically in its randomly generated sequences of pairings; and it has tallied a lot more responses than a typical poll: more than 1.6 million so far.
3. There are two striking exceptions to the general lack of overlap between the Tea Party favorites and the establishment favorites: Paul Ryan and Chris Christie. Ryan ranks 1st in the Tea Party poll, and Christie ranks 2nd. Since both men are also highly respected by the establishment, they have tremendous potential to unite the party and lead it to victory. Tim Pawlenty, relatively popular with the establishment in his own right, also possesses some crossover appeal, ranking 5th in the Tea Party Straw Poll. Mike Pence would also likely have done well in the Tea Party poll, had he not been omitted from it after he opted out of the race -- but he could always opt back in.
In addition to his popularity among potential voters, Ryan is also a highly respected -- perhaps the most highly respected -- member of Congress. Sure, some establishment-types would probably balk at his "not waiting his turn," but this nation-defining election doesn't call for union-style, seniority-based thinking. This is an election that the Republican Party must win -- for the sake of the country.
Others who are wedded to convention or recent history might balk at Ryan's coming out of the House of Representatives. But that's where the action is, where the battles over Obamacare, the budget, and the future direction of this country, have been taking place. Plus, no one really believes that the chairman of the House Budget Committee is less experienced, distinguished, or prepared, than a partial-term, back-bench senator -- yet Barack Obama showed the courage to run "out of turn." Ryan should as well -- because, in reality, it is his turn (just like it was Obama's).
Christie, likewise, has already proven his mettle as a leader. Though perhaps less experienced (in government) than Ryan, his unyielding, prosecutorial style would serve him well in a debate. In fact, is there anyone you'd rather see on the debate stage, looking eyeball-to-eyeball with President Obama, than either of these two? We've already witnessed two examples (here and here) of direct interaction between Ryan and Obama, and the prospect of interaction between Christie and Obama offers similar promise.
It's simple, really: If Republicans want to be enthusiastically united behind a candidate who can lead them to victory in 2012 -- and thereby save the country from Obamacare -- they'd better coax these two (? la George Washington in 1789 and 1792, who ultimately decided that duty called) into the presidential race.
Bio: Jeffrey H. Anderson is a blogger for the Weekly Standard.
Gingrich, suggest, shut down the country if we don't do what he wants?!! Monarchy? My child ask me are we there yet???
Boehner once again shut down the government. I will have my way or I'll drag this country down and out ! So Be IT ! My Child ask are we there yet?
Come take my hand, do not fear the thunder my child. I will tell you of what I heard it said in a dream that once was foretold. Prancing dancing Fox's and his Pied Piper melodies of propaganda. Evil knights and dragons that you will come to some day cast aside for their unnecessary necessities' . You will mature and toys will no longer be of significant value to your dreams in reality of your world. Koch's name will be a long forgotten nightmare of no substance. Come let us walk this land together and marvel at its realities.
Mussolini had a dream of Fascism and lo and behold our Right Wingers have made it a reality. Ironic that the first official bid for ownership comes from a family named KOCH..
Now this also allows, We The People to elect Unions to our politics !
Vive la r?volution! Corportism of Koch to unite!
There's just one element missing from these snapshots of America's ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the "death panel" warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You've heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans.
Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch's, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power.
All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled "Invisible Hands" in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League's crusade against the New Deal "socialism" of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our "socialist" president.
Only the fat cats change - not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government "handouts" to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant. Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont's portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers' father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society's top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of "a takeover" of America in which Communists would "infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us." That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.
Last week the Kochs were shoved unwillingly into the spotlight by the most comprehensive journalistic portrait of them yet, written by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Her article caused a stir among those in Manhattan's liberal elite who didn't know that David Koch, widely celebrated for his cultural philanthropy, is not merely another rich conservative Republican but the founder of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which, as Mayer writes with some understatement, "has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement's inception." To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it's startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation's political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama "cokehead in chief."
The other major sponsor of the Tea Party movement is Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, which, like Americans for Prosperity, is promoting events in Washington this weekend. Under its original name, Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks received $12 million of its own from Koch family foundations. Using tax records, Mayer found that Koch-controlled foundations gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions. That figure doesn't include $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying and $4.8 million in campaign contributions by its political action committee, putting it first among energy company peers like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Since tax law permits anonymous personal donations to nonprofit political groups, these figures may understate the case. The Kochs surely match the in-kind donations the Tea Party receives in free promotion 24/7 from Murdoch's Fox News, where both Beck and Palin are on the payroll.
The New Yorker article stirred up the right, too. Some of Mayer's blogging detractors unwittingly upheld the premise of her article (titled "Covert Operations") by conceding that they have been Koch grantees. None of them found any factual errors in her 10,000 words. Many of them tried to change the subject to George Soros, the billionaire backer of liberal causes. But Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money. And like many liberals - selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view - he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests and that, if anything, raise his taxes.
This is hardly true of the Kochs. When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools - in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn't changed. As Mayer details, Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial - a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries' vast fossil fuel business. While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a "known carcinogen" in humans (which it is).
Tea Partiers may share the Kochs' detestation of taxes, big government and Obama. But there's a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.
Yet inexorably the Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress, including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska's anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin prot?g?, Joe Miller. Their program opposes a federal deficit, but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the superrich; apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a "slush fund"; opposes the extension of unemployment benefits; and calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even egg industries (among others) have been outrageous.
The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests. And surely Murdoch is snickering at those protesting the "ground zero mosque." Last week on "Fox and Friends," the Bush administration flacks Dan Senor and Dana Perino attacked a supposedly terrorism-tainted Saudi prince whose foundation might contribute to the Islamic center. But as "The Daily Show" keeps pointing out, these Fox bloviators never acknowledge that the evil prince they're bashing, Walid bin Talal, is not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News's parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corporation) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox.
No less a Murdoch factotum than Neil Cavuto slobbered over bin Talal in a Fox Business Channel interview as recently as January, with nary a question about his supposed terrorist ties. Instead, bin Talal praised Obama's stance on terrorism and even endorsed the Democrats' goal of universal health insurance. Do any of the Fox-watching protestors at the "ground zero mosque" know that Fox's profits are flowing to a Obama-sympathizing Saudi billionaire in bed with Murdoch? As Jon Stewart summed it up, the protestors who want "to cut off funding to the 'terror mosque' " are aiding that funding by watching Fox and enhancing bin Talal's News Corp. holdings.
When wolves of Murdoch's ingenuity and the Kochs' stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt's triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to "squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail." When John Kennedy's patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their "crusades of suspicion."
And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 29, 2010, on page WK8 of the New York edition.
PUH-LEASSSSSS!!!!! LOL!
State is a world of difference away from Federal in terms of budgets because Governors aren't responsible for the welfare of the economy.
And look how watered down Paul Ryan's proposals always are.
Even if these two SEEM to hold the promise of unifying the right, who are fractured on the issue of budget-cutting ... the fracture doesn't lie with the people, it lies in the disconnect between theory and reality. Nobody can bridge that - people can PROMISE to bridge that, but then careful what you wish for because otherwise you'll just wind up like Barack ... acquiring the very power that you covet, and then winding up enraging the masses when you fail to deliver on your unrealistic promises. Which will inevitably give rise to a Democratic resurgence.
Republican ideology got discredited by Bush (deficits don't matter), and you haven't really come up with a working alternative - neither have Democrats, but still ...
The Tea Party runs the GOP right now. If they lose enough elections, they will go away.