On the selection of Republican presidential nominees
I noticed a discussion in today’s open thread about the process of choosing the GOP’s presidential nominees over the years. As I’ve often noticed before – not just on this blog, but generally in blogs on the right – there’s a suggestion on the part of some people that the GOP leadership is doing the choosing. It’s as though we were still in the days of the “smoke-filled rooms” of yesteryear, when the party bigwigs really did choose the nominee. But for many decades that’s no longer been true; the GOP primaries are even more populist than the Democrat ones, due to the latter being subject to superdelegates.
That doesn’t mean the Republican party leadership has no say. There are various ways to try to manipulate things, including (but not limited to) setting the primary schedule and making decisions about how the debates will be run. But the people get to vote in primaries. What I have observed is that there are usually so many candidates that the vote is very split in the early days, and if there are too many candidates from one wing of the party, it’s hard for a clear frontrunner to emerge and someone else can take the lead even though that person may not have anywhere near a plurality. Things narrow down over time, but often a candidate is nominated whom a large wing of the party dislikes.
The other thing people often ignore is that in many years the field just isn’t all that good. As commenter “Bauxite” writes:
But if you look at the GOP primaries from 2008 and 2012, I think they reinforce the conclusion that the party had historically weak candidate pools in those years. In 2008, McCain was still the hated insurgent and ended up as the “establishment” candidate simply because they didn’t have anyone better. If you remember, McCain’s primary campaign was going so poorly at one point that he was down to handful of staffers and flying to campaign events on commercial flights. Romney in 2012 had a whale of a time putting away Newt Gingrich (already a decade and a half after he resigned the Speakership in failure) and Santorum (who had been pounded in Pennsylvania in 2006).
So yes, after all of the GOP victories during the Obama years, we have a much stronger crop of presidential candidates than we did in 2008 and 2012. I would take DeSantis, Haley, Scott, and Bergum over anyone who ran in 2008 and 2012.
Yes, but it’s almost a done deal that in 2024 Trump will be the nominee. The reason is that he already has about half the GOP voters in his pocket. That’s really not all that many, considering that he’s a sort-of-incumbent. But ’tis enough, ’twill serve.
Commenters on that thread are right to say the the current field of Republican presidential hopefuls is of better quality than 2008 and 2012. There was an active field in 2016, and Trump swamped them.
The party which has its elites choosing the candidate is the Democrats. They rigged things against Bernie Sanders, who was leading in early primaries in 2016, and again in 2020. Dan Henninger, in the WSJ, has a column about the Democrats’ Faustian bargain of 2020, choosing Biden as a president they could elect and then control. Mephistopheles may be coming for them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democrats-deal-with-the-devil-clyburn-biden-harris-trump-election-age-a27453b8?mod=opinion_featst_pos2
He doesn’t have this voter in his pocket. Of course I may be part of a very small minority. I really think anyone else other than Trump will have broader appeal in the general.
With ya, physicsguy (5:23 pm). All three sentences.
But speaking just for me, /no way/ I can go with Biden (or any USA Democrat anywhere, now or in a foreseeable future).
Bauxite: “I would take DeSantis, Haley, Scott, and Bergum over anyone who ran in 2008 and 2012.”
Maybe yes, maybe no. Here’s what I see:
1. DeSantis is having trouble gaining traction, and because he’s not independently wealthy, he has to stay in a donor-friendly lane. That means pulling his punches on several issues, most notably immigration.
2. Haley? Nikki Haley doesn’t give as rat’s you-know-what about anyone not named “Nikki Haley.”
3. Tim Scott is another middle aged, never married senator from South Carolina. If it looks like he’s gaining momentum, out will come the DNC smear machine.
4. Doug Burgum says a lot of good things (we see a lot of his ads here in Idaho), but North Dakota is an agricultural state which means he’s almost sure to be a squish on immigration.
Actually, Romney coasted in 2012, running over a few speed bumps. McCain faced more competition in 2008.
==
Romney’s a capable man, quite accomplished. The problem is he’s a windsock who is motivated primarily by some combination of competitiveness and ambition. Paul and Santorum are less capable, but abnormally principled. Gingrich is intelligent and talented at argument, but does have a number of personal issues in addition to the deficit of executive experience that Paul and Santorum suffer. I’d rate the 2012 competitors higher than their counterparts in 2008 and 2000.
==
As for the 2016 field, you had a number of men who were accomplished outside of electoral politics, or had experience as executives in the public or private sector or represented a distinct perspective, or some combination thereof. Trump and Ted Cruz competed quite well. Messrs. Jindal, Paul, Santorum, Huckabee and Mrs. Fiorina did not (regrettably).
==
This year, we’ve got Trump, deSantis, Haley, Pence, Ramaswamy. Trump is uneven, but these others are not candidates for whom to apologize.
==
Note also the opposition. The quality candidates who were competitive in Democratic nomination donnybrooks between 1990 and 2019 were Wesley Clark, Bill Bradley (on a good day), Bob Kerrey, Jerry Brown, and Paul Tsongas (on a good day). If you add candidates who did not gain much traction, you could add James Webb. In 2020, you had a mess of people in which a discerning voter might take an interest, among them Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Yang, John Delaney, John Hickenlooper, and Steven Bullock. The Democratic electorate ignored all of them. You had five candidates who were somewhat competitive – all of whom were inferior to these others – and the Democratic electorate nominated the worst of the five.
==
We not only have kakistocracy, the electorate as a whole countenances that in the face of better options.
I predict that the Democratic nominee will not be selected by primaries at all this time. The DNC will pretend that incumbent Joe Biden is running, and that he’s such an obvious front runner that he’s under no obligation to participate in any debates with RFK Jr, even if RFK Jr. is polling at 25%. Only *after* Joe “wins the primaries” will he exit stage left. Then and only then will the real Dem candidate be revealed, having been protected from pesky debates and pesky primary voters.
I agree, Charlie.
My prediction is that Gavin Newsom gets the nod.
well romney spent newt 50/1 then was mostly basenghi in the general when it came to obama, he didn’t see that obama was a fundamental threat to the country,
the dems think you must pulverize the opposition, then burn the ashes,
My observations align with Kate’s. The GOP actually runs fairly clean primaries that do make a serious attempt to find the most popular GOP candidate. If any party rigs primaries it’s the Democrats. It started after Carter surprised the Dem establishment in 1976 (several rules changes were made in the Iowa caucus in 1980 to force consensus on an establishment candidate) and the manipulation kept snowballing through the expansion of superdelegate numbers and Super Tuesday’s compressed primary schedule. 2008 might have been fairly clean though it would have been hard to cut off Obama once he got rolling but by 2016 Hillary had ensured the fix was in for her coronation. 2020 was more of the same to block Bernie again (though he seems happy to run just to be bought off)
If Joe kicks it, Harris will poison the well.
“But ’tis enough, ’twill serve.” Indeed. ‘Tis enough and ’twill serve to put Biden back in the White House in January of 2025 (and for some indeterminate amount of time after that too.)
After some amount of losing, Republicans are going to end up moving hard to the center, like the “Third Way” DLC Democrats did in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. After 1988, the D team had been shut out of the White House for five out of the six previous terms. If Republicans don’t win in 2024, it will be 4 L’s out of the past 5 tries.
That’s part of what’s so depressing about Trump. The best deal that the right is ever going to get in the GOP is right now with DeSantis or a similar candidate. The non-MAGA portions of the party are more than willing to unite behind someone like DeSantis to get rid of Trump. Heck, even Haley would be better than Romney, McCain, or Bush by a large measure and probably has the best chance of winning the general.
After Trump drags the party to defeat, again, in 2024, I don’t see any scenario where Trumpers get anything better than what DeSantis is offering now. (And frankly, it’s difficult to see them getting anything better than what Haley is offering now.) After 2024, the GOP is either going to be split and ineffective as a national force or taken over by the Larry Hogan/Chris Sununu wing. After four losses out of five in presidential elections and four cycles in a row of underperformance in Congress, at a minimum, the Larry Hogan/Chris Sununu wing is going to have a powerful argument, just like Clinton and the DLC folks had in 1992.
(You might say that turned out well for the left, and it did – about twenty years later.)
I would add – to those who wish for the death of the GOP, be careful what you wish for. Historically, when one party dies, the other experiences a period of dominance for a decade or so until a successor party arises. Maybe we’d get “time served” on that timeframe, but I doubt it. Not with the structural advantages that Democrats are establishing now.
Romney was a numbers guy. Like Carter, Hoover, and maybe the Adamses, he wasn’t that good dealing with people, either individually or en masse. He was also a status quo guy, like the elder Bush — somebody who might be a dignified, somewhat competent administrator, but also somebody you couldn’t expect major changes or original thought from. Mitt seems to live in his own little bubble of self-regard and self-righteousness, and not much seems to get through that bubble. I don’t believe that he indended to lose. I think he expected to win, and thought that going easy on Obama would help him.
McCain had no chance of winning after the banks and brokerage firms started getting into trouble, but it was strange how he went out of his way to assure people that Obama was no threat to the country. That was anything but a winning strategy.
Abraxas – I might quibble about McCain. I think he still had a good chance after the banking crisis, but he blew it. Obama, at the time, was less than four years removed from being a backbench state legislator with a part time gig as an adjuct law professor. His lack of experience was an issue. McCain was seen as having gravitas as a war hero and an older Washington hand. I believe that McCain/Palin actually had some of their best polling around the time of the Lehman failure.
In my view, what sunk McCain was his erratic behavior after the Lehman collapse. Remember when he decided that he wouldn’t debate because he had to be in Washington for the bailout negotiations, and then he changed his mind at the last minute? (I think that McCain was still publicly waffling on the day of the debate itself.) He failed to provide any confidence that he had things under control. Obama, on the other hand, was able to keep his cool publicly (“no drama Obama”). If McCain had been able to project an image of mature stability, I think he would have won in 2008 despite the financial crisis and the state of the wars at the time.
I suppose there are better candidates now than in 2008 or 2012. Republicans had been playing defense during the later Bush years. They had to cover for Bush’s mistakes. There weren’t that many new ideas, and not much enthusiasm either.
But I don’t think there are better candidates now than in 2016. There were so many candidates that year. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio were all men with a future. Giuliani had a great record and wasn’t what he is now. Chris Christie wasn’t quite what he is now either. I heard a little about Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty, and Scott Walker (very little admittedly) and thought they might make good candidates or even presidents, but none of them went very far. None of the candidates dealt with the pressing issues as much as Trump, but I don’t think Scott or Haley or Burgum are appreciably better than the candidates 8 years go. Admittedly, though, DeSantis, Haley (and Burgum) do have administrative experience as governors, something senators like Paul, Cruz and Rubio didn’t, and they actually are running in a way that Daniels and Pawenty, for one reason or another, never got around to.
“In my view, what sunk McCain was his erratic behavior after the Lehman collapse.”
People say that McCain’s “suspending his campaign” doomed him, but I think it was just another indication of his lackluster, half-hearted, chaotic campaign. McCain pulled up to Obama in the polls in September and then fell back. That looks a lot like a temporary convention boost and not something that he could sustain. I look at McCain’s advisors who are now on MSNBC and in the Lincoln Project and think that there was no way he could have won after the economic collapse.
he didn’t want to win, hence the jones memo, the collapse of lehman bros, (which is still very curious to me) was a heavy head wind, there was one person who did understand the stakes
yes the progressive conservatives collapsed sometime around 93, making way for the reform party, for reason I can’t understand, they handed the baton back to them after Harper,
I think of Stephen Harper when people say DeSantis would win. Maybe he would, but we may be as far gone as Canada, and competence and being well-informed may be disadvantages in politics. Why else would we have Biden, Harris, and Fetterman?
Competence and dullness don’t get you far in politics. You need some kind of hook, something to make you stand out from the crowd. For Haley, it’s gender. For Scott, it’s race. For Trump, it’s showbiz and just being Trump. You can see the hooks of Harris, Warren, and Buttigieg as well. Going back further, race for Obama, religion or his family name for Bush, region for Clinton and Carter.
DeSantis has competence, but it’s combined with his own personal favor. It helped him stand out from the crowd — then it started hurting his candidacy. Even failure or shadiness can make a candidate stand out. Biden made a folksy mediocrity his unique calling card. Christie and Giuiliani stand out for their foibles (and regional pecularities).
Candidates also have to please the donors and the interest and advocacy groups. A governor or mayor who could bring us normalcy, peace and prosperity wouldn’t please them. They like what Biden is giving us. But who is to say that the competent also-rans are really that competent? Maybe they fit into their current niches but just haven’t had a chance to rise to the level of incompetence.