A lot happened in the presidential campaign sector of Wingnut World this last week. The GOP field for 2012 probably became fixed. The calendar for the nominating process shifted and jelled. Rick Perry’s dive in the polls, and Herman Cain’s rise, accelerated, even as the Texan’s status as co-front-runner with Mitt Romney remained central to the conventional wisdom.
It’s not clear how many sincere wingnuts were part of the noisy posse that tried, unsuccessfully, to drag Chris Christie into the presidential race (a lot of the Draft Christie momentum came from northeastern donors associated during the last cycle with Rudy Giuliani). His ferocious YouTube videos and confrontational attitudes towards public sector unions were very popular in Tea Party circles. But his positions and record on immigration, guns, global climate change, and same-sex civil unions were sure to get him into serious trouble with ideological conservatives had he actually pulled the trigger.
With Christie definitively out, the only major pol who hasn’t fished or cut bait is Sarah Palin, who continues to insist she hasn’t made up her mind about whether or not to run in 2012. But recent polls show two-thirds to three-fourths of Republicans—including many who profess admiration for her—saying she should not run. So that development is unlikely, unless Palin simply decides it’s the best way to recapture the public attention she seems to have gradually lost.
If the 2012 field is “closed,” the calendar is also nearly finalized, though not without a revolt against the RNC’s rules led by Florida and followed by the privileged “early states” whose prerogatives Florida challenged. The original scheme to reduce “front-loading” of the nominating process involved a February “window” for Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, with all other states pushed back to March or later, and states holding primaries or caucuses in April or later retaining the right to use winner-take-all procedures to increase their clout. Initially, the plan seemed to be working, with most states moving their contests as intended, and quite a few (e.g., California) choosing to coordinate later presidential primaries with regular primaries to save money. The mega-primary of “Super Tuesday” is going to be a shadow of its former self.
But Florida’s decision last week to hold its primary on January 31, in the face of sanctions that would forfeit half its 2012 delegates, messed up at least part of the scheme. The chain reaction of early states (SC has already moved to January 21) is almost certain to push the start-date in Iowa to the first week in January. But if the competition survives that early phase of states from Iowa through Florida, the pace of the schedule of events will be much slower, with a big gap in February and less of a logjam in March than in past years.
For the candidates, the implications of a early-beginning process with a more deliberate pace are two-fold: an early “knock-out” is possible, but unlikely given the high probability that the Iowa winner will lose New Hampshire to Mitt Romney. A longer slog to the nomination favors candidates with superior resources, like Romney and Perry, but not Herman Cain.
Speaking of the candidates, polling this last week emphatically showed Rick Perry in a virtual free-fall after his bad stretch of appearances in Florida, with Herman Cain—who trounced Perry in Florida’s “P5” Straw Poll on September 24—getting a significant share of Perry’s vote and Romney’s support barely moving at all. Perry dropped from 23 percent in mid-September to 12 percent in the latest CBS poll, and from 29 percent to 17 percent between early September to the present in a new ABC/Washington Post survey. Cain rose from 5 percent in the CBS poll and 3 percent in the ABC/WaPo poll to 17 percent in both today.
There are two quite different theories about Rick Perry’s fall from grace which have a significant impact of what might happen next. One is that his clumsy behavior in debates, and his overall good-ol-boy Aggie Yell Leader persona, just aren’t very presidential and make him less electable than, say, Mitt Romney. Polls do show Perry not running as well as Romney in trial heats against Obama, but presumably his problems could be fixed by a good debate performance or two or the expenditure of some of the $17 million he has raised since announcing his candidacy in August.
But the other theory is that Perry isn’t quite turning out to be the simon-pure Tea Party conservative he was advertised to be when he first announced his candidacy at a RedState gathering in South Carolina, and is in danger of forfeiting the treasured “conservative alternative to Mitt Romney” mantle. A lot of this was entirely predictable to anyone familiar with his record in Texas, but still, many conservatives seem to be shocked by his adamant defense of a wildly unpopular position favoring in-state college tuition for the kids of illegal immigrants (opposed by 86 percent of Republicans in the latest CBS poll). And accordingly, a total collapse in his levels of support among Tea Party supporters—from 45 percent a month ago to 10 percent today in the ABC/WaPo poll—is at the heart of his overall slide in the polls.
If ideology rather than “electability” is Perry’s main problem, and he doesn’t find a way to fix that, then irony or ironies, after driving the Republican Party decisively in their direction over the last three years, wingnuts could wind up without a viable presidential candidate they feel really good about. Perhaps Herman Cain can somehow turn his present popularity into a real, functioning presidential campaign, but his track record on campaign management is not great and GOP elites don’t take him seriously as a potential president. Michele Bachmann’s campaign seems to have run into a deep ditch in her best state, Iowa, and if Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum are going anywhere, it’s not apparent by any objective measurements. Ron Paul, of course, is permanently unacceptable to a majority of serious wingnuts because of his foreign policy views.
Unless Rick Perry can repair his ideological reputation, it’s beginning to look like “movement conservatives” will once again have to make a choice between less-than-ideal candidates. Perhaps they can console themselves with the recognition that today’s “moderates” in the GOP are several degrees to the right of yesterday’s howl-at-the-moon hard-liners.
Photo Credit: mjecker
