Calling Paul Rahe
Better than anyone else of whom I’m aware, Paul Rahe called it. Way back when, when the liberal advance appeared all but unstoppable, Paul said, in effect, relax. Somehow, Paul knew. The American people would get het up. Soon enough, they’d have had enough. They would rise up to put the liberals down. And on election day, that’s just about what happened. As Paul put it more than once, “The election of Barack Obama was a gift to the friends of liberty.”
But that was then. What does Paul Rahe foresee now?
Obama’s poll numbers are rising. He’s preparing to deliver a State of the Union Address in which he will move, according to all the White House leaks, from the left to the center, associating himself, at last, with the principal concern of the American people: jobs.
Yes, I know. The GOP has more members in both the House and the Senate than it had just a month ago. Perhaps more to the point, it has more rigorously conservative and impressively articulate members—Republicans who mean business and can actually argue—than the GOP has had in Congress in…well, come to think of it, in my entire lifetime. But whereas there is only one Barack Obama, and the press loves him, there are hundreds of Congressional Republicans, and the press will focus only on those it believes it can demonize. (The press tried making Boehner look evil. No dice. Now the press is trying it on with Darrell Issa. We shall see.) The GOP’s biggest problem? Whereas members of the tea party, stout conservatives, and, I daresay, nearly everyone here at Ricochet wants Republicans in Congress to attack the Obama program, repealing and replacing just about every last item the president signed into law during these past two years, one poll after another indicates that the American people as a whole want the GOP to with the president.
I repeat: What does Paul Rahe foresee now?
Good people of Ricochet, on this day before the State of the Union Address, what do you foresee?
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Dec '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
I foresee a long, hard battle. This is not simply Republicans vs. Democrats and 'can't we all just get along' politics. The American people are indeed, 'het up.' Even if Obama moves to the center, Obamacare will continue to be a boat anchor for him, or rather the "tea" for the Tea Party movement.
As Brent Morehouse points out in the introduction to his book, Tea Party: The Awakening, the anti-establishment "patriots" pushed the Whigs in a libertarian/natural law direction that eventually led to the modern Republican party. Obamacare, like the 'intolerable acts' has finally pushed Americans too far and they will push back. But it will take time.
I am hopeful it won't be that long. Already you can see that the public is not easily fooled. No one bought the 'Loughner is a right-wing nut' story. Few believe Obamacare can be tweaked into working shape, and many understand its true implications. It's hard to convince people the Tea Party is racist and uneducated when they and their neighbors are carrying the signs.
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
I foresee a battle royal. Barack Obama is a political magician, a shape-shifter. He can defend abortion as a private family matter, and he can do so with a straight face. He will now present himself as Mr. Balance the Budget. But there is one problem. He bears an albatross. Let us call it Obamacare. The country likes it less and less with every passing month. If tomorrow night he turns his back on Obamacare, I predict that he will go on to be re-elected. If he does not turn his back on Obamacare, his jump in the polls will be temporary, and things may get grim.
If Obama embraces Obamacare, the only thing that can save him is the Republican Party. You cannot beat someone with no one. Obama is someone, and right now the Republicans have no one. If in the course of the next sixteen months, they fail to find someone, they will lose in the presidential race in 2012. If they latch onto no one, as is their wont, they will also lose. There is no one quite like Mitt Romney, but he is not the only no one they have on offer. Alas.
Dec '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
... and I wouldn't be so sure that "jobs" is the principal concern of the American people. I think people truly fear the direction of the country and that they will accept some level of economic sacrifice in exchange for "getting the car out of the 'no principals' ditch" the current administration has driven into.
May '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Not sure I understand that. Are you saying Mitt is a weak offer? (Dole, McCain redux?)
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Keith Preston
Not sure I understand that. Are you saying Mitt is a weak offer? (Dole, McCain redux?) · Jan 24 at 2:08pm
Like the other two, he is a living corpse -- and it is his turn.
Nov '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Professor Rahe, Do I Understand correctly that you think that Mitt Romney is the best of the Republican choices? Your opinion will carry a great deal of weight with me.
I have been nervous of him because of his health care plan in Massachusetts and (because I went to college in Massachusetts) I always have been skeptical of anything coming from there.
Jul '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Essentially, the republicans have to engage in the doing.
I've often said, Barak Obama wants to BE president, but he does not want to DO preisident.
It is time for republicans to realize that they have to DO conservative. Add to that, someone in the field of hopefuls needs to realize that the need not only to sound conservative, they have to Want to DO conservative.
Without a desire to accomplish something as president, the republicans are going to resort to the Who's Turn Is It Now mentality. That is a plan for disaster.
Romney's refusal to cast off Romneycare, and to give up on the Safe Calculated asnwers to tough questions tells me he, too, has a greater desire for Being president than for Doing president.
Note on Romney: I will never forget Romney in 1994. When the contract with America was announced he led Kennedy in the polls. His first instinct was to distance himself from the Contract when he answered the first question with, "That is in the House, I'm running for the Senate." The farther he distanced himself from the Contract, the lower he sank in the polls.
Nov '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Sorry, Professor Rahe. Mr. Preston anticipated my question. I understand your position now.
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
M1919A4: Professor Rahe, Do I Understand correctly that you think that Mitt Romney is the best of the Republican choices? Your opinion will carry a great deal of weight with me.
I have been nervous of him because of his health care plan in Massachusetts and (because I went to college in Massachusetts) I always have been skeptical of anything coming from there. · Jan 24 at 2:13pm
I think Romney the worst choice. He is what I call a business progressive -- no less eager for a "rational administration" of our lives than the government progressives. Thus, Romneycare. My hope is that the dinosaurs -- Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani -- are quickly eliminated and that the way is opened up for others, such as Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and the like, to show us what they've got.
Jul '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Paul A. Rahe
Keith Preston
Not sure I understand that. Are you saying Mitt is a weak offer? (Dole, McCain redux?) · Jan 24 at 2:08pm
Like the other two, he is a living corpse -- and it is his turn. · Jan 24 at 2:11pm
But unlike his fellow corpses, his RomneyCare albatross will kill him in Republican primaries. RomneyCare was the disastrous model for ObamaCare, and is a Sam Peckinpah slow-mo nightmare for Massachusetts.
What we need is not someone with a grand new idiotic scheme, but someone devoted to rolling up sleeves and undoing the last thousand federal idiotic schemes. And explaining to the American people in the process how each one pains them far more than they help anyone.
May '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Dr. Rahe, are these reasonable rules?
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Yes, indeed. I admire Sarah Palin and Mike Pence a great deal. But I think that she has made some decisions that are not in keeping with a single-minded effort to defeat Barack Obama, and I think that Congressman Pence should run for Governor in Indiana and, then later perhaps, something higher.
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
What form would turning his back on Obamacare take tomorrow evening, do you suppose, Paul? Surely you wouldn't expect him to say, "I was wrong. The health care reform must be repealed." Would it do the political trick for Obama if he merely gave ObamaCare tepid support, demonstrating that his principal interest now lay in, say, job creation? Or would you argue instead that if he wants to be re-elected he really must more or less formally recant? Repudiating and abjuring his own program?
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Peter Robinson
What form would turning his back on Obamacare take tomorrow evening, do you suppose, Paul? Surely you wouldn't expect him to say, "I was wrong. The health care reform must be repealed." Would it do the political trick for Obama if he merely gave ObamaCare tepid support, demonstrating that his principal interest now lay in, say, job creation? Or would you argue instead that if he wants to be re-elected he really must more or less formally recant? Repudiating and abjuring his own program? · Jan 24 at 3:
The Republican Party can guarantee his re-election by offering us an echo, not a choice, or by nominating someone who is otherwise unacceptable. If Obamacare is not off the table -- if it is neither repealed nor declared unconstitutional -- and if the Republicans nominate someone principled, canny, and formidable, he will quite likely lose.
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Were I Obama, I would indicate in my speech tomorrow night that Obamacare requires a bit of tinkering around the edges, and later I would accept its repeal and replacement. That is, if I were Obama and what I really wanted was a second term . . . I do not myself think that this is the highest priority for our current President. So to have the road open to his re-election, he has to get lucky. The Supreme Court has to do the dirty work -- which, I suspect, it will do (and should do). If that happens, Obama would be well-advised to drop the hot potato and play ball with the Republicans.
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
I love them.
Jun '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
I can think of a number of reasons/scenarios that would make Obama unelectable. My short list reads as follows:
1. The economy recovers. Increased demand for gas forces prices at the pump over four dollars per gallon.
2. Obama fumbles the ball on Iran. A general war erupts in the Middle East.
3. States and municipalities begin to default on their debts. Republican candidates use the situation to warn that four more years of Obama will see the same thing happen on the federal level.
4. Loose monetary policy ignites inflation.
5. Sixty-three seats in the House were lost last November. No amount of rhetoric is going to change the minds of red state Americans. Virginia and North Carolina revert to the Republican column. Obama is forced to fight for his political life in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
5. Scandal: It always seems to pop up in the second term. As likely to happen to a Reagan as it is to a Clinton . . . even an Obama.
6. History: Only one incumbent Democratic president has been elected to a second term in the last sixty years.
May '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Paul A. Rahe
...My hope is that the dinosaurs -- Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani -- are quickly eliminated and that the way is opened up for others, such as Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and the like, to show us what they've got.
Christie insists he's not running in 2012. I don't disagree about the dinosaurs, but my concern about the young guys on your list is there doesn't seem to be that fire in their bellies like you see in Christie and Pence. Am I wrong?
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
I love them. · Jan 24 at 4:06pm
I like these a lot. For the benefit of those on iPads or slow devices, I'll reproduce them here. EJHill's rules for 2012:
Dec '10
Re: Calling Paul Rahe
Obama bears another albatross. Every American is raised on the story of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, or some variant thereof. Obama's version is "I will have a laser-like focus on Jobs," "Jobs will be my top priority," and "This year, we won't rest until we create Jobs."
The more he repeats that he is doing everything he knows how to create jobs, the more the American people will believe him -- and as unemployment stays close to 10 percent, they'll understand that he's not describing his diligence in creating jobs but his ignorance of how to create them.