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Why Have the Governors Stopped Campaigning?
Walker has now joined Perry in dropping out of the race for the GOP nomination. And yet, not a single vote has been cast. Not even a notoriously bad-at-predicting-the-final-outcome early primary vote, nor a single caucus. We’ve had a couple of debates that everyone agrees are meaningless to any final result, and there has been a constant drum beat of polls that could mean anything, and about which no one has any tested theory to predict the nomination in many months’ time. But nothing has actually been decided, or is decidable at this point.
Can someone please explain the mechanism by which these serious and intelligent men — surrounded by the best political consultants money can buy and, more importantly, by other sober and intelligent people — have, in the absence of any plausible evidence as to the likely outcome, decided to stand down?
Image Credits: “Gov. Perry CPAC February 2015” by Gage Skidmore . Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons and “Scott Walker AZ Chamber of Commerce 2015” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons.
Published in Politics
I hope the donors are just waiting this out.
Political donations are not charity. Donors have to weigh two issues; who do I like and can they win. Can they win is really hard to figure out this cycle. Trump, Carson and Fiorina are taking up a lot of space in the polls. Bush has lots of money locked up and steady (but not good poll numbers). If a donor gives money to Walker, Perry, Jindal can they over come the outsider phenomenon, Bush’s money and separate themselves from the others that are in the same place? If you can not answer at least a solid maybe to this why give money?
If Walker and Perry don’t think they can win, then quitting early helps the Party. Money is not wasted and their supporters can move on to other candidates. Some one will get a boost in polling and fund raising with these two gone.
Carson has the small donor lead on the (R) side, so he’s positioned as the grassroots guy. Bush has virtually no small donor support. The SuperPAC money has been pretty disciplined, and the RNC game plan has been to divide the opposition to Bush so that the 20-25% that is the best he’s ever polled would still be the largest plurality.
Trump threw a monkey wrench in that machine, so that plan needed to be modified. No more need for Perry and Walker, so the big money tap shuts off. Fiorina is popular, goes after Trump, and the camera likes her so she stays. Maybe the Bush campaign will look to get Fiorina as #2 on the ticket, but the Democrat voters that are crossing over to support Trump are unlikely to go for that plan. For now the overall plan of “better to lose with Bush than derail the GOPe agenda” seems intact. Walker’s pulling out to consolidate the anti-Trump forces is in line with that.
If nothing else, I guess they weren’t ready to humble themselves enough to run the shoestring campaign that won McCain the nomination in 2008. As you note, there are plenty of opportunities to rebound.
They / we cast votes by funding the candidates. How well was Walker funded? It does cost money to run presidential campaigns, and senatorial campaigns, and campaigns for the House.
Perhaps everyone suddenly noticed that we haven’t actually had any votes yet, and perhaps they decided to pause. You know, to see which of the 10 tires that are rolling toward us will actually make it to the first vote.
Trump and Bush. The one who could stop Trump is Bush. If Bush dropped out, Trump’s support would drop. In reaction to a coronation of a Bush heir, Trump has emerged as a counter to that. It’s the same among the Democrats. No one wants another Clinton either.
Since the powers that be can’t figure this out, the other have to drop. It is the only way forward, to combine forces against Bush and Trump. Neither one can be allowed to win or the party will split forever. Bush needs to go.
Like they can’t hit Major League fastballs.
Kasich, Christie, Jindal, and Huck still think they can. Jeb! is still waiting for his DH to bat for him. Gilmore and Pataki must think it’s an old timers’ game.
One other thing: they simply couldn’t deal with Trump. While I don’t much like Trump, he’s only a foretaste of the feeding frenzy the GOP candidate will have to deal with when pitted against the Media/Democrat industrial complex.
My impression, on no specialized information is that both Perry and Walker were running the anti-Thompson (Fred) campaign. Rather than holding back and waiting for discontent to sweep through the party -and then sweep in to save the day, heroically (Perry’s plan last time, didn’t work, didn’t work for Fred Thompson either), they tried to mimic the Romney plan. Come in, day 1, with with money and organization, having spent years developing relations with the base to support a certain amount of flexibility to thread that donor/base divide.
Neither pulled it off. We constantly say the only reason Romney pulled it off was because his was a weak field.
Why did they flame out? Lack of money seems the obvious one. Building that organization took a lot of money, and in the end, they didn’t have enough to build a Romney-esque organization, so donors lost interest, and refused to put the over the top.
Me? I say bring back conventions and let the democrats have this stupid primary system.
This list is instructive. These guys are all former Governors. Walker’s claim to fame is advancing conservative reforms in a Blue/Purple State. Christie and even Pataki moved policy in their Blue states to the right. They all have a similar argument that they can make on their past. To get ahead Walker needed a clear message going forward that was unique or different from the other Governors.
Immigration is not an issue. Immigration is not an issue. Immigration is not an issue. It is not much of an issue at Ricochet anyway. The Republican Party has painted itself into a corner and there is little possibility of escape.
And how’s that working for you? The two most conservative not-Jebs are gone and Jeb’s still there. And without Walker, Jeb is my favorite candidate, because running businesses that go bankrupt or that fire their CEO or first-term senators just aren’t going to have what it takes to cajole Congress into passing legislation or stand up to the sociopaths who run our enemies.
Like Mitch Daniels, they were told to step aside.
I am not sure that I understand this comment. Immigration is the issue that propelled Trump. Comprehensive immigration Reform is likely part of the reason Rubio is not doing better. Immigration is one of the big issues people reference in opposition to Bush.
In what way is immigration not an issue?
Agree. Immigration is not an issue. Immigration is the issue.
That has been the primary lesson for me from this process. It isn’t merely the left that cares more about emoting than actual effective action.
I’m leaning this way as well.
It’s also not only the left who don’t understand what effective action means.
Obviously, as two very effective men couldn’t get enough support from Republican primary voters to keep them in the race.
You aren’t going to find more effective governors than Walker and Perry.
I am very sorry to hear of Walker’s departure from the race. He has been my first choice all year. Whither now?
Rubio has been my second choice all year, but I’ll have to think about whether to move him up to the first position. My main concern is his youth.
This cycle a significant chunk of the base has decided that immigration, legal and illegal, is the issue and don’t trust the RNC and the SuperPACs to do anything substantively different from what Obama has done, or what Republicans have done pretty much since Reagan got rolled by Teddy Kennedy.
Trump at least says some of the right things and is not nearly as dependent on the SuperPACs.
Primary voters weren’t the issue, there hasn’t been a caucus or vote yet.
The issue appears to be donors and most are in the bag for Jeb!. Guys like us sending $50 isn’t going to move the needle.
Additionally, I think governors in general are ill suited to this cycle given the anger on the right.
Today he is saying the right things. Three years ago he was arguing for amnesty, but who needs intellectual consistency?
Agree, makes one wonder why the love for Marco Rubio.
Certainly not Scott Walker.
Well, Trump’s idea of entitlement reform is for his buddies to not collect Social Security. If you don’t want to cut entitlements, raise taxes, or go broke, we have to import some taxpayers, since Baby Boomers birth controlled/aborted the next generation of Ponzi scheme victims.
Rubio is great on every issue but immigration, and even there, his intent was always border security first. That he failed to get triggers into the gang of 8 bill which did not allow legal status until there were clear metrics that the border was secured, and e-verify and the visa checkout system were all in place and working, is an indictment of how badly he was played by Schumer.
We can’t have this both ways. If Rubio is a naïve lamb that was sheared by Schumer he has no business running for President. If he was instrumental in writing and promoting the legislation he has plenty of business running for president, just not from any more consistent basis than Trump.
I am not for means testing Social Security or Medicare, but this is a great comment.
And honestly, this is why immigration is *not* my issue. Entitlement reform is. There’s no way to get retirees and near-retirees to accept cuts to their welfare programs. Therefore, our options are jack up my taxes, inflate my savings away*, or bring in more taxpayers (preferably with reductions in regulation like Obamacare to jump start the economy. You think we’ll lose the country with more immigrants? I’m more worried about when we lose our country when our economy goes Greek
*The only good side is that massive inflation will also inflate my debt to something manageable.