The Last Man Standing
I learned something the other day. I learned it while reading a post on Ricochet and the attendant comments, and I was appalled. Apparently, back in 2010, when I was not adequately paying attention, the Republican National Committee quietly changed the delegate-selection rules in imitation of Barack Obama’s Democrats. In the past, at least in the primaries, the arrangement was winner-take-all. Now, if I have this right, the delegates will be allocated in proportion to the percentage of votes received in the primaries and caucuses. What this means is that the distribution will be fragmented and that the final decision will be delayed (perhaps until the national convention) – which gives Barack Obama, who has the Democratic nomination sewed up, a tremendous advantage. He is already raising money; he will not have to spend it on the caucuses and primaries of his party; and he can go after the Republicans late next Spring and in the early summer with everything that he has got, softening them up for the kill while they pummel one another.
That is one problem. There is another, and it may be worse. The Republican Party has a history of nominating the fellow whose turn it is, and the reforms instituted in 2010 are apt to reinforce this propensity. They reward the candidate who finds it easiest to raise money and who is the best organized. Generally, that means the fellow who lost last time. He has the name recognition, and he has in place something of the organization he put together last time. To this, we can add another difficulty – campaign finance reform.
The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” But, thanks to Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives, it has been a long time since we have been governed under the Constitution. We are governed, instead, by the Supreme Court – which, pretending to a wisdom putatively not possessed by the benighted Framers of the Bill of Rights, has decided to let Congress abridge freedom of speech and of the press and to limit our ability to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances insofar as our exercise of these rights might influence the outcome of elections. Their excuse is that they fear that the process by which such money is raised and spent in support of or against candidates may corrupt those who win office with its help, and many are now prepared to argue that it is unacceptable that those who earn more than others may by dint of this have a more powerful voice in public affairs. The only individual who can spend more than the limits established by Congress is the candidate himself (who is presumably not likely to corrupt himself). The consequence of this cockamamie system is that the filthy rich have an overwhelming advantage.
Enter Mitt Romney. Last time, he was the initial front-runner – until Mike Huckabee beat him in Iowa and exploited the tensions between evangelical Christians and Mormons in such a way as to damage his candidacy. Governor Romney knows how to run a national campaign, he has the remnants of his old organization, and he can easily raise money. Moreover, he has an advantage not unlike the one possessed by Michael Dukakis in 1988. By dint of being a member of a tight-knit religious denomination, he commands the loyalty of a considerable number of Americans in every corner of the country, which gives him a further organizational advantage. Of course, this means that he also suffers from the bigotry directed against the Mormon church. But the advantages he possesses outweigh the disadvantages that he faces – especially because he has his own money. In a year in which, thanks to the new delegate-selection rules, money and organization will matter more than ever, Governor Romney has what it takes to get the Republican nomination: the desire to win, and staying power. He can be crushed in Iowa and even New Hampshire and still see the race through. Like John McCain in 2008, if no one else emerges who fires up the electorate, he will be the last man standing.
Of the others currently in the race, only Tim Pawlenty stands a chance. Newt Gingrich is living proof that one can be exceedingly bright and be clueless at the same time; and, in case everyone has forgotten his last term of service in public office, he made a fool out of himself last week. Herman Cain is bright. His instincts are good. And he knows a thing or two about running a business. But he has never served in public office, and he has already demonstrated considerable ignorance in foreign affairs – the only sphere in which the President has virtually full responsibility and a great deal of discretion. He – and for that matter Gingrich – might be well suited to serving in a cabinet post, but he is not presidential timber, not yet anyway. Ron Paul’s presence in the race may serve a real purpose. We need to think about the damage done this country by the Federal Reserve Board, and Paul can be relied on to bring the subject up. But he is not a serious candidate. In a great many respects, he is nothing but a crank. No one in his right mind would put him in charge of anything. The remaining candidates are not even worth mentioning.
Pawlenty has many virtues. He has flirted with some bad ideas (Gingrich is inclined to wallow in them), but he has had second thoughts about Cap and Trade. He has ample executive experience, and he was, I am told, a good Governor in Minnesota. To date, however, he has not demonstrated fire, zest, and command. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I was in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, speaking to the Minnesota Association of Scholars, I asked everyone I met what they thought of Pawlenty. All praised his record as Governor; all indicated that they would be happy to vote for him again; and none of them was confident that he was presidential timber. Does he have the moxie to overcome the advantages possessed by Romney? I hope so, but they expressed doubts, and so, at least for the time being, I harbor them as well. I hope that Pawlenty has the personal resources to defeat Mitt Romney, because, frankly, I shudder at the prospect that Mitt Romney will gain the Republican nomination.
As I argued in my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, there is built into liberal democracy a natural tendency to drift in the direction of the administrative state with its concentration of power in the executive branch of the central government and its entitlement programs. This propensity can only be successfully resisted if we understand its origins and if we take cognizance of the manner in which the American regime, as envisaged by the Founding generation, was designed to stand in its way. This propensity has been systematically and quite effectively exploited by the Progressives and their heirs now for something like a century. What they understand that we need to understand is that a reversal of the trend is well nigh impossible – well nigh, let me add, but not quite. Well nigh because those in possession of entitlements will scream bloody murder if they are threatened. And not quite because, thanks in part to our unwitting benefactor Barack Obama, we no longer have the resources to support the entitlements state. We can certainly raise taxes, as President Obama and the Democrats intend to do, but that does not mean that in the long run we will take in more revenue – and it is massively increased revenue that the entitlement state needs. The Progressives are banking on the unwillingness of a considerable part of the electorate to give up the subsidies on which they live, and on this they have always to date successfully banked. Right now, however, the fiscal crisis of the welfare state offers us an opening, and I am confident that Mitt Romney will miss it. He is the sort of man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Since 1928, when Calvin Coolidge relinquished the Presidency, the office has been held by a number of Republicans – Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Only one of these has displayed an understanding of the problem we face, and he was, for understandable reasons, too preoccupied with wining the Cold War, to confront that problem with all of his energy. Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush père, and Bush fils were all what I call managerial progressives. Their claim over against the liberals was that they could manage the administrative state more efficiently and effectively than their counterparts. Rarely if ever did any of them mention the Founders. Rarely if ever did they appeal to the first principles of our form of government as they are expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Rarely if ever did they appeal to the Constitution in opposition to the jurisprudential drift of the Supreme Court. Limited government was not part of their vocabulary. They were without clue.
The reasons are simple enough. Not one of these men was properly educated in the principles of American government. They had their virtues. They were practical men, can-do sorts with a pretty good understanding of how to get from here to there. In terms of moral understanding, as it is applied to political matters, however, they were bankrupt or pretty nearly so. The ordinary senior at Hillsdale College these days has a better grasp of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the conditions of freedom than did any of these men.
The same is true of nearly all Republicans. They come into Congress, the Senate, and state government from the Chambers of Commerce. Few of them have any sort of political education. Most are businessmen. If they have something more than an undergraduate education, it is reflected by their possessing a law degree or an MBA – which is to say, they have been trained to be managerial progressives. Our law schools and our business schools owe their origins to the Progressives. They were created for the purpose of encouraging what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “rational administration.”
The reason why I oppose Mitt Romney is simple, He was born to destroy everything that we have accomplished since the Tea-Party Movement emerged in the Spring of 2009. Romney is the very model of a managerial progressive. He has one great virtue. He knows how to run things; he knows how to organize things. He would make a good Secretary of Commerce. He has no understanding of the principles that underpin our government. And, in fact, like most businessmen, he is a man almost devoid of political principles. Give him a problem, and he will make a highly intelligent attempt to solve it. Ask him to identify which problems should be left to ordinary people and what are the proper limits to government’s reach, and he would not understand the question. He is what you might call a social engineer; and, in his estimation, we are little more than the cogs and wheels that need to be engineered.
Not surprisingly, Romney is a political chameleon. When he ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, he rejected the legacy of Ronald Reagan and embraced abortion. When he ran for the Republican presidential nomination, he altered his profile in both regards. It seems never to have crossed his mind when, as Governor, he confronted a Democratic legislature in Massachusetts intent on introducing socialized medicine that the individual mandate is tyrannical. Flexibility is what substitute for virtue in his case.
Romney’s political instincts are disastrous. He will betray the friends of liberty and limited government at the first opportunity. If he is nominated, the people who joined the Tea Party and turned out in 2010 to give the Republicans an historic victory are likely to stay home. If, by some miracle, the progenitor of Romneycare actually defeats the progenitor of Obamacare, he will quickly embrace the entitlement state and present himself as the man who can make it hum, as he did in Massachusetts. He is not better than Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush père, and Bush fils. He is cut from the same cloth, and in practice he is apt to be far, far worse. The consequence will be the death in American life or at least the decay of the impulse embodied within the Tea-Party Movement.
If, in my last post, I was unsparing in my criticism of Governor Mitch Daniels, if I took him to task for leading us on for months and then leaving us in the lurch, it was because I fear that he has left us to the mercy of a managerial progressive. If Tim Pawlenty is not up to the task of stopping Romney and of articulating the political principles that inspired the Tea Party, then we will have to find someone else – and very soon – or watch all the work that has been done since April, 2009 come to naught.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
This is why Ricochet is my first stop every day. Paul, your posts are always wonderful to read and thought provoking. Thank you! I, too, fear Mitt Romney.
Edited on May 23, 2011 at 1:56pmJun '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
This essay depresses me. I can only conclude that the republic as we have known it is done. It was a nice run, but republics through history have been short-lived affairs. America today is ruled by an oligarchy. I suppose the end was inevitable once civic virtue became corrupted by the welfare state. So it's on to the bread and circus phase of our national culture. The horror, the horror . . .
Dec '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Why is the assignation of delegates proportionally until the late Spring better for Romney than the opposite? Doesn't stretching out the process give a non-Romney candidate the ability to chip away at Romney's facade?
And, Prof. Rahe, there actually is a candidate that mentions the Founders, appeals to the first principles of our form of government as they are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, appeals to the Constitution in opposition to the jurisprudential drift of the Supreme Court, and has limited government as a part of his vocabulary. A shame you think he is a crank because of his foreign policy views, which do happen to also be consistent with the Constitution.
You are free-- of course!-- to not like this candidate. But your eagerness to dismiss him and his supporters immediately out of hand seems to imply there are issues more important to you than those listed in the paragraph above.
May '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
I take your point about switching from winner take all. On the other hand, that gives later primary voting states at least some voice in the process. In Illinois, for example, it's usually all over by the time of our primary (although it was moved up a couple months in 2008 to benefit The Anointed One).
Re: The Last Man Standing
KarlUB:
And, Prof. Rahe, there actually is a candidate that mentions the Founders, appeals to the first principles of our form of government as they are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, appeals to the Constitution in opposition to the jurisprudential drift of the Supreme Court, and has limited government as a part of his vocabulary. A shame you think he is a crank because of his foreign policy views, which do happen to also be consistent with the Constitution.
You are free-- of course!-- to not like this candidate. But your eagerness to dismiss him and his supporters immediately out of hand seems to imply there are issues more important to you than those listed in the paragraph above. · May 23 at 5:08am
National defense is the sine qua non for there to be a free state of any sort in North America.
Re: The Last Man Standing
Stretching out the process means that the fellow with his own money can outlast everyone else. Romney is not going to sweep early on. He has too much baggage. But the other candidates may knock one another out -- as happened in 2008. That year the last man standing was the man who lost to W in 2000: John McCain, the man who brought us McCain-Feingold. I voted for him . . . reluctantly. I will vote for Romney if I have no viable alternative other than President Obama. But I will do so, as I did in 2008, with a sinking heart.
Re: The Last Man Standing
One comment -- lest my opposition to Mitt Romney be taken as hostility to Mormons. I deplore the anti-Mormon bigotry played on by Mike Huckabee in 2008. Our Mormon brethren are among the finest citizens in the country and deserve more respect than they get.
Nor do I think that there is anything dishonorable in Mormons favoring Governor Romney. I can understand why African-American hearts swell with pride when they contemplate the Presidency of Barack Obama. I remember the response of many Catholic Republicans to the election of John Kennedy, and I understand why Greek-Americans flocked to the banner of Michael Dukakis.
I do not mean to say, however, that I judge the tribal loyalties that give rise to support of this sort a sign of good sense. I do mean to say that such loyalties are understandable and not dishonorable.
Apr '11
Re: The Last Man Standing
I don't understand the doom and gloom. Yes, Daniels would have been a good candidate. But the primary campaign hasn't even begun! If all of our hopes were founded on a short, bald guy whose record on taxes wasn't that great anyway, then ... I'm at a loss. There are a lot of people still in the race, some of them good, some of them bad, and I'm sure others will come along before the dust settles. It's way too early to lose hope. Frankly, I don't understand why people are so down on Pawlenty. He strikes me as a very strong option, probably at the top of my list at the moment. And I like the changes that the Republican party made to its primary rules. I've always felt like I had to watch the primaries from the sidelines, never really able to participate because I don't live in one of the early states. Now maybe there will still be a race by the time I hit the voting booth.
Mar '11
Re: The Last Man Standing
The hyperbole of Rahe's post is not indicative of serious thinking. "He is the sort of man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity...He was born to destroy everything that we have accomplished since the Tea-Party Movement emerged in the Spring of 2009...He has no understanding of the principles that underpin our government...he rejected the legacy of Ronald Reagan and embraced abortion... " Just examples of a multitude of silly statements.
Re: The Last Man Standing
Father B., the doom and gloom arises simply from the fact that the Republican Party ordinarily nominates a managerial progressive. In ordinary times, this is bad. In current circumstances, it would be disastrous. This time, it looks likely.
I explained in detail above why stretching out the campaign to the bitter end is apt to be disastrous. Which is more important -- that your vote counts . . . or that the party finds a standard-bearer of real merit in time to mount a devastating campaign against Barack Obama? Think about it.
The people I know who are down on Pawlenty know him and like him but doubt that he is up to the challenge. They are Minnesotans. I very much hope that you are right and that they are wrong.
Re: The Last Man Standing
Silly? The last statement -- about Reagan and abortion -- is simply a fact. The first three are judgments. As such, they are open to challenge. But to challenge them you would have to explain in detail how one can defend Romneycare in terms consistent with the principles underpinning our form of government that the Tea-Party Movement has espoused. If you think that you can do so, do it on Ricochet.
As for missing opportunities, I have in mind the wooden, robotic, inappropriate speeches that Romney gave at Hillsdale College and at the National Review dinner prior to the 2008 primaries and his failure to disavow Romneycare as a failed experiment. He has no sense of occasion.
Re: The Last Man Standing
Readers of this post might find interesting Michael Barone's assessment of the current crop of candidates. I find it sobering.
Apr '11
Re: The Last Man Standing
Paul, I understand your concerns and I share some of them. But I think Obama's 2008 campaign demonstrates two things: One, the organized establishment candidate doesn't always get the nod, and two, a long, drawn-out primary isn't necessarily a bad thing. As I recall, conventional wisdom said that Hillary Clinton would win the nomination: she had the name recognition, she initially had more money and support, she had the "first-female-president" storyline going for her, etc. And conservative pundits were delighted that the Democrats were tearing each other apart long after we had a nominee. Obviously it didn't work out for Hillary and, in the long run, it didn't really matter that the Democratic primary lasted so much longer.
Granted, Republicans have a history of giving the nomination to the next guy in line. Maybe I'm comparing apples and oranges. But I don't think so. It's a new year, it's a new political climate. The rule change might just give an underdog candidate time to gather steam.
As for Daniels dropping out and what it means for Pawlenty, here's a more positive take from a conservative Minnesotan.
Oct '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Perhaps you would care to mention which comments, in particular, you disagree with. Romney is, in fact, all of the above. He is, indeed, a political cameleon.
Sep '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Your post seems to me to be more of a criticism of the Republican Party than of Romney. He is after all a quintessential establishment republican. If Pawlenty is as principled as you hope, the Bush money people will not back him, if they can’t have Jeb, they desire nothing more than a predictable establishment guy that has a chance of winning. If Pawlenty is not that principled he might get the backing, but there would be no essential differences between the two. Unless a non-establishment candidate gets the nomination the fundamental political question will be can the GOP co-opt the tea party movement? I think a run by a 3rd party candidate would be more beneficial for the country than a Romney victory in 2012.
Dec '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Paul A. Rahe
Romney is not going to sweep early on. He has too much baggage.
So, in your best-case scenario for winner-take-all the process will not end quickly. With some-- and please note, not all-- proportional representation...the process will not end quickly.
But at least with the latter some conservatives in additional states will be able to weigh in. Believe me, I am not one who fetishizes voter turnout. But I do find it largely unacceptable that the *majority* of Republicans from roughly the early seventies to the present previously never even got a *chance* to meaningfully express their preference for who will represent their party in the Presidential election.
I know we're not running a pure democracy here, but come on.
Dec '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
It occurs to me-- well, actually, it has occurred to me many times-- that the problem is not so much proportionality as it is the timing of it all.
I have always found the regional primary proposal compelling. It violates Constitutional state prerogatives, which means we have to amend the Constitution to properly do it. And since it runs counter to the interests of every lobbying group in the universe such a movement will never get funded. Finally, Ed Rendell likes it. Which is reason to be suspicious. But even a blind pig finds a truffle every once in a while.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-02-25-4099049579_x.htm
Nov '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Paules nails it completely.
People who say this is unfounded negativity do not sufficiently realize/appreciate that the character of nations changes over time. Often for the worse. With republics, this is happens when citizens lose their self-restraint in terms of disciplines/habits/tastes . . . and end up as subjects.
And so we're faced with the paradoxical, symbiotic relationship between a massive underclass (welfare dependents and unskilled peons from Mexico) on the one hand, and an effete, sneering "educated" liberal class on the other. Liberalism is a permutation of the medieval ecclesiastical hierarchy. The squared circle of elitism and egalitarianism.
The social contract is no more.
Edited on May 23, 2011 at 10:49pmJun '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Paul, thanks for the very well thought out post. I agree with you on so many points above.
However, when I think of the position we are in right now with Obama, I just want anyone to move us upwards and not further downwards. All of the Republican candidates are a step up -- even Ron Paul. The reason is simple: Obama is essentially anti-American in all of the points you bring up about what America is founded upon.
McCain-Feingold is so against the founding principles of this country. What a foolish man McCain is. I really hate the fact that so many people in elected office are rich before they are elected. (The next question is: of the ones who are not rich before, how is it that they all get rich while in office? Very worrisome.)
Romney will probably be nominated and Obama will get reelected. We need to make plans accordingly. It's even possible that the house will lose seats and the Senate won't flip (although it probably will) because of Obama's coattails.
Since I don't think Obama will be unseated anyway we probably would be better off working on other things.
Oct '10
Re: The Last Man Standing
Paul... you are so correct in this post. "The Progressives are banking on the unwillingness of a considerable part of the electorate to give up the subsidies on which they live, and on this they have always to date successfully banked."
The end point of Marx isn't the Communist state, it is utter collapse and chaos, leading, in his insane mind, to a chance to build the Utopian state. We are now reaching critical mass, and our only real hope is that the character of the American people, as it once was found in the Founders, will exert itself and prevail over the Progressive Utopians. Washington, not Adams.
To practice those exertions, we will require a true leader, schooled in the character of the Founders. One who understands the basis of human accomplishment, Freedom. Lots of government experience is a liability at this present moment, not an asset.
Cain; Palin; Bachmann; all show that leadership fire in the belly, and defy the Progressive Managerial role type. I know you dismiss them as minor, lesser qualified candidates. But you also identify the problem with the GOP. The "Managerial Progressive".
We need more the General than the politician.
Edited on May 23, 2011 at 3:53pm