The nuttier elements of Wingnut World were on high-profile display last week in Greenville, SC, as Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party held the first event billed as a 2012 candidate debate. With the exception of Tim Pawlenty, everyone who showed up has about as much chance of winning the nomination as I do.
One of the under-discussed topics of the endless wind-up to the 2012 race is the extent to which an abundance of fire-breathing minor candidates can distort the tone of the GOP contest, and particularly its televised debates. The Greenville event showed it could get pretty weird, even with a tightly controlled format and with Michele Bachmann and Roy Moore not in the room.
As is almost always the case at Republican gatherings with no stiff entry fee, the live audience was dominated by very loud followers of Ron Paul. The enthusiasm for Paul was not diminished by the presence of a second libertarian, Gary Johnson. Meanwhile, one of those famous Frank Luntz focus groups watched the show and went gaga for Herman Cain, another familiar phenomenon from the early campaign trail. Cain is smooth and keeps things simple, which separates him a bit from other 100 percent red-meat stemwinders who always sound like they want to deliver a 3,000-page book written all in capital letters, with more shouting in the footnotes.
But if Herman Cain won the night, Rick Santorum may have won the week in South Carolina with several events (he’s now been to SC sixteen times already) capped by winning the straw poll at a state party fundraising dinner. He was, of course, the only candidate who showed up. The same day, oddly enough, in the very same city, Jon Huntsman made his first public appearance after stepping down as U.S. Ambassador to China, as the commencement speaker at the University of South Carolina. Aside from some remarks about patriotism that some are interpreting as an elliptical defense of his service in the Obama administration, Huntsman made it through his speech without having to address the kind of right-wing concerns about his commitment to the Cause he’ll soon be facing if he runs for president.
While we are on the presidential topic, Newt Gingrich has let it be known he will announce his candidacy on Wednesday, after several false starts over the last month. Gingrich will try to extend the press surrounding his announcement with a Major Speech at the annual convention of the Georgia Republican Party.
Newt isn’t being taken that seriously as a candidate by most of the punditocracy, but it does respect his money, as reflected in a very interesting piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the vast and well-financed array of organizations he’s put together since leaving Congress in 1999, often called “Newt, Inc.” Like Mitt Romney, Gingrich is a candidate who harnesses tremendous organizational, fundraising and (conservatives think, at least) intellectual skills to a pattern of flaws that may or may not prove disqualifying.
The other presidential buzz this week involves the man beloved of many Beltway Establishment Republicans who believe he can save them from a presidential field sporting the likes of Cain, Santorum, Gingrich, Romney and the rest of them: Mitch Daniels. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post nicely captured the thinking of these folk:
A Daniels candidacy probably would be taken as a sign that the games are over for the Republican Party, that it is time to buckle down and organize to beat President Obama.
“He will turn a race that is about less serious politics into a race about more serious policy,” argued Alex Castellanos, a Republican media consultant who is not aligned with any candidate heading into 2012. “Daniels is the adult in the room saying the party is over, it’s time to clean house. That contrast in maturity is how a Republican beats Obama.”
Any time you read this many references to seriousness and maturity, you have to figure the political professionals in the GOP are very worried about their presidential field, and, moreover, willing to accept the risks involved in a “serious” candidate who wants to undertake very unpopular policies in order to nominate someone who seems as presidential as Barack Obama. But the more immediate problem is that the people being implicitly derided as immature, unserious brats happen to be the grassroots conservatives who tend to dominate early-state caucuses and primaries—and to cheer Herman Cain and Rick Santorum when they call for total war against the godless liberals and Beltway elites alike.
