A Tale of Two Ricks
January 2nd, 2012


More from Iowa, a couple days old at this point, though.

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Rick Perry. Rick Ankiel. Abortion.
November 10th, 2011


Was that ugly, or what? I’ve been trying to think of a worse debate moment and the only thing that comes close is Bentsen-Quayle. There’s no telling what structural damage it inflicted, but my guess would be more rather than less.

That said, the entire episode is instructive of how unpredictable electoral politics can be. A few thoughts:

(1) There were plenty of Perry skeptics from the beginning. (I was not one of them.) But it turned out that none of the weaknesses they noticed actually hurt him. Remember, the argument against Perry was that he was prone to shooting from the hip; too bible-thumpin’ conservative; and would remind voters too much of W.

But what really damaged Perry was (a) He was too liberal on immigration; and (b) He had two debate moments (his attempted flip-flop attack on Romney and the Lost Third Agency) in which he looked old and doddering and lost.

The other thing that hurt Perry is that he emerged prepared to counter attacks from Romney, but was totally blind-sided when Santorum, Paul, Bachmann, et al took after him like he was a spliced hybrid of Nelson Rockefeller and Saul Alinsky. (This was not an unreasonable assumption on his part, since this group had given Romney a pass for several months.)

(2) Debates have never played as important a role in the primaries as they have this cycle. It’s unclear whether this is an aberration or a new reality. But try to remember a single moment from any primary debates since 1999. The only thing I come up with is “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” The gang-tackle of Perry in his early debates clearly crippled his candidacy–I’d argue more so than his one-on-one jousts with Romney.

(3) Is it fair that Herman Cain gets to say that China doesn’t have nuclear weapons and that he’s for-and-against abortion and that he’d trade hostages with terrorists, but that Perry doesn’t get to have a couple of brain blanks? Nope.

But fair’s got nothing to do with it.

(4) Unless the conversation changes between now and the convention, it would seem that immigration has replaced abortion as the key ideological litmus test in the Republican party. Now, maybe that’s just a function of the candidates needing a club to beat Perry with and immigration being the best-available weapon. But maybe it’s a more foundational shift. If the latter is the case, then this is a real tragedy for conservatism. A few reasons:

* Illegal immigration causes very real problems, but those problems tend to be economic. (Though some of them certainly have a cultural aspect.) Economic problems can be fixed more easily than cultural problems.

* The argument over abortion is–at least to pro-abortion forces–about a lot more than just the killing of babies. It’s about an absolute, iron-clad right to consequence-free sex. Which is, if you think about it, probably the single biggest legacy of the 1960s. If the left holds to anything at all, it’s that sex must never have negative consequences–no unwanted pregnancies, no diseases, no moral disapproval from third parties. That’s why the AIDS campaign was such a vital left-wing cause in the ’80s and ’90s. It’s the root of liberal support for same-sex marriage. It’s behind the idiotic claims that “love can never be wrong.”

All of this is why the only liberal cause Bill Clinton wasn’t willing to sell out for political gain was abortion. He vetoed the partial-birth ban at some real cost. But ingrained in liberal boomers is that this first principle is the cornerstone for the entire structure of sexual “freedom.” Admit that abortion (even in some cases) is wrong and you undermine a continent-sized chunk of liberal ideology and a huge portion of what has become our dominant cultural mores.

* For a host of complicated reasons (I go into this at some length in the book), illegal immigration is likely to significantly decrease in America during the next 20 years–no matter what policies we pursue. (Short version: As fertility rates go sub-replacement, a country’s outmigration dries up, as it has, for example, with Puerto Rico. Nearly all of Central and South America will be sub-replacement within 20 years.)

So debates over, say, building a fence or giving in-state tuition to illegals are more about ideological purity than actual consequence. Unlike abortion, where 50 million lives have been taken since 1973, with no end in sight.

31 comments


The Pain Train
November 8th, 2011


Boy, how about that press conference. Herman Cain was using the third-person in reference to Herman Cain before the end of the first paragraph of his remarks. Also–and I may have misunderstood him, I’ll need to look at the transcript–but I think he might have suggested that some women have sexually harassed him.

But the most interesting moment, for my money, was when Cain was asked about Romney’s remarks on the situation. (He called the allegations troubling or some such.) Keep in mind, Cain is the guy who jumped all over Perry when the Washington Post tried to tar him for being racists. So what did Cain do? He alibied Romney and explained that Romney didn’t mean it the way the reporter–and everyone else in America–took it. Because Romney is a man of immense “integrity.”

I’m not quite sure what the moment meant, but it was pretty interesting.

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Perry. Romney. Federer.
October 12th, 2011


I’m getting enough email about Perry that I want to, again, clarify something: I’m not in the tank for the guy. I’m not even sure I like him and I’m certainly not sure that he’d be a good president. Let me put it this way: I was never very impressed by George W. Bush and the best line about Perry is that he’s the guy W. was always pretending to be.

People seem to confuse what I think about Perry’s prospects with what I, personally, want to see happen. (In much the same way some people thought that I was a Federer hater just because I realized his eclipse had begun. I doubt you’ll find anyone who loves Federer more than I do, and I hate watching him in decline. But that doesn’t mean that he’s not declining.)

And so: Despite everything, I still like Perry’s chances.

Now, one big thing happened, which I certainly didn’t expect: I thought Perry would unite the insurgent and establishment wings of the party. Not only has that not taken place (yet?), but the opposite occurred. The establishment pushed back against Perry, hard. Like, Palin-in-2009 hard.

But the big question is whether establishment types (both in the actual establishment and the voters who reflect their thinking) are enough to win the nomination today. I think that’s also a very open question.

I’d remind people that for the last two cycles, everything we knew about the nomination fight changed drastically and quickly in the lead up to the actual voting. Dean imploded. Kerry used Iowa to catapult himself away from the entire field. (It helped that he had the money and organization to take advantage of the win.) Huckabee came out of nowhere in Iowa, and Romney was never able to make the sale in any of the other important early states. Obama used the split anti-Hillary vote in Iowa to drive the early part of his march through the caucuses. (If he loses Iowa, I think it’s an open question whether or not he wins the nomination.)

I mention all of this not to say that Perry is Kerry (or Obama, or anyone else) but just to remind people that with three months before the voting, I think fundamentals are more important considerations than a tight-grouping in the polls.

So what are the fundamentals of the race that (for now) we know?

* Romney has firmly secured the GOP establishment, as he did in 2008.

* Romney is an improved candidate, but is still the guy with a very poor electoral record. This doesn’t mean voters will never warm to him. But I’d like to see it happen before I’ll believe in it.

* Supporting the idea that voters are resisting Romney is the pinging around of poll numbers among the other candidates. First Bachman. Then Perry. Now Cain. Clearly there is a substantial anti-Romney vote that’s coalescing, breaking up, and then re-forming around other candidates.

* The question is, will these voters give up the ghost and sign up with Romney at some point? Maybe. But maybe not. In 2003 people thought, My God, the Democrats can’t be crazy enough to nominate someone like Dean! And despite Dean’s lead, they were right. It seems entirely possible that, like the anti-Dean votes in 2004, the anti-Romney votes are eventually going to stop being split among Santorum, Bachman, Gingrich, Perry, and Cain and coagulate around one of them. Of that group, Perry has the money and the infrastructure to best take advantage of such a move.

* That doesn’t mean it will happen, of course. But I keep coming back to this: There must be a reason why Republican voters haven’t rallied around Romney the way they did George W. Bush in 1999. Remember, there was an anti-Bush vote then, too. But it was never substantial enough to challenge the front-runner. Bush was up over the 40 percent mark by summer of 1999 and was at 62 percent by October 1999. If Romney had those kinds of numbers, he’d be unassailable. But I think it’s telling that, despite his money, his organization, his establishment backing, and the fact that he’s been running the longest–he hasn’t been able to get over the mid-20s. If you like Romney’s chances, you have to have an explanation for why this is.

* Remember: Even Bush, with his 40-point lead, got dragged into a dogfight with John McCain–who was in third place until late fall of 1999. Why? Because one of the axioms of American politics is this: All races tighten.

* None of this means that I want Perry to win or that I want Romney to lose. (The only thing I really want is for Mitch Daniels to suddenly jump in and ride to the nomination. And that ain’t happening.) What it means is that I believe Romney has structural weaknesses and has not been seriously challenged by his opponents yet; that early momentum from Iowa has proved very powerful; that Perry has positional and political strengths (to go along with his obvious weaknesses in the debates and on immigration); and that a 7-point gap between lead candidates right now is not dispositive.

* I still think it more than an even-money proposition that someone other than Romney will be the nominee; and of those alternatives, I’d give Perry the best odds. (Though probably all of them–even Santorum and Huntsman–will get a second look by the time New Hampshire rolls around.)

90 comments


Debate Post-Mortem
September 23rd, 2011


Rick Perry had a pretty tough night; the worst moment of which was his attempt to paint Romney as a flip-flopper which meandered and faltered, eventually making Perry look tired, confused, and old. It was pretty grim. But I’m not sure it was more than a tactical victory for Romney, because Bachman keeps shrinking and Perry wasn’t structurally harmed. So the essential dynamic of the race remains.

(For the record, Romney had three–I counted!–moments where he genuinely seemed like a real human being and would have fooled even the most sophisticated Voight-Kampf test. Also, he had one truly great line: “I want everybody to be rich.” Pitch perfect.)

But here’s the problem with Romney: Perry landed one solid blow on him, the line about Romney removing a line on healthcare from the hardcover to the paperback edition. (How’s that for detailed oppo?) Romney’s response was to claim that this simply wasn’t true, implying that Perry was either confused or a liar.

Yet in the spin room immediately after the debate, a Romney aid quickly fessed up that actually, it was Romney who was wrong. Perry was right. The line he quoted had been deleted from one edition to the other. The problem for Romney is that for a guy who has such a command of everything else at the debate, it’s hard to believe that he was just confused on this point. It seems much more likely that he was bald-facedly lying.

Which wouldn’t, in itself, be a problem. All politicians lie. (Wouldn’t you like to see some evidentiary proof of Rick Santorum ever having stood at the Texas-Mexico border?) Except that part of the whole rap against Romney is that he’s been lying about everything since the day he first decided to seek elective office back in 1994. This latest little debate fib just feeds into the underlying problems with his trustworthiness as a candidate. So far as I can tell, nearly every Romney supporter in the conservative establishment makes their peace with the idea of being on Team Romney by thinking to themselves, “Well, he’s on our side now, so at least he’ll stay bought.” Unlike all those other times when he flipped.

And maybe he will. Maybe this time will be different.

Caveat: I feel compelled, again, to reiterate that I don’t have anything against Romney personally. In fact, I think one of the great mysteries about him is why his political persona seems so crazily divorced from his real character. Here’s a guy who has been married forever, seems to have a great family; and seems to engender nothing by admiration in those he encounters in life. (I know a bunch of people who’ve worked for him or around him; to a person, they all like him.) But he has this weird political persona where he acts like a snake when he runs for office. He’s the mirror-opposite of the typical politician. It’s a conundrum.

PS: Between the audience cheering over the death penalty a couple debates ago, and then cheering the idea of letting the hypothetical young guy with the deadly disease who chose not to buy insurance die (was that the same debate? I forget), and then last night booing the out-and-proud gay soldier, it’s enough to make you think Republican voters are kind of unserious and mean-spirited. Or at least make you really, really uncomfortable.

6 comments


RomneyBot 4000: Install Palin 2.0 Update
September 22nd, 2011


This is great: Mitt Romney telling USA Today–without being prompted, it seems–that he hopes Sarah Palin will get in. “She would make the race that much more exciting,” he said.

Oh yes. Goodness knows Mitt Romney craves excitement! He’s a lot like that rock-band, guitar-playing Jon Huntsman in that way. And he certainly appreciates having a subtle political mind like Sarah Palin’s as part of the national conversation. As he’s been telling everyone who will listen, the problem in Washington is that you’ve got all these career politicians. And at least Sarah Palin isn’t a career politician. In fact, she was willing to sacrifice her political career to avoid becoming a career politician. If Rick Perry wanted to be qualified to govern the United States of America, he would have resigned as governor years ago. It’s just a fact. Science.

This is vintage Romney–bald-faced political positioning done with utterly transparent insincerity. You can see the processors whirring as the logic board does the calculations.

Perry commands support from “conservatives” and “Tea Party.”

“Conservatives” and “Tea Party” have pushed RomneyBot 4000 to second place in polls.

Chances of victory for RomneyBot 4000 while in second place: .28746322017. 

Must add new candidate to split “conservative” and “Tea Party” support.

Palin 1.0 commanded intense support from “conservatives” and “Tea Party.”

Will engage developers to push Palin 2.0 module into campaign model.

Perry support will halve.

RomneyBot 4000 becomes frontrunner again.

Victory assured.

He’s like a particularly humorless Dalek, with Just For Men hair. (The fly-away look he’s been rocking must have focus-grouped really well.)

If you want to know why Romney keeps losing elections, it’s because of stuff like this. Voters can smell it.

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President Zero
September 21st, 2011


With Pawlenty out of the race, Michael Bay has put his considerable talents behind Rick Perry. But it’s better than you think. The killer? The jump cut with the line “I’m just gettin’ started.” Ouch.

 

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Perry v. Bachmann
September 13th, 2011


Last night was something new in the recent history of presidential debates, I think. I’ve never before seen a debate where the entire field dog-piled on the leader like that. Not in 2008 (on either side), nor 2004 against Dean, nor 2000 against W, or 1996 against Dole or 1992 against Clinton. I don’t know that the big pile-on Perry show means anything; I just don’t think we’ve seen something like it before, where the field doesn’t feel even the slightest need to be fake-pleasant to the leader.

Romney did pretty well, by his standards. But the performance fed into his structural liability as a candidate: Voters don’t quite know what to make of him when he’s sunny and positive. When he goes negative, he’s even more unappealing, because even his attacks are transparently manufactured.

Perry did okay, considering that he had to stand there and take it on the chin for two hours and that the debates are going to be the weakest of his campaign modes. That is, he did okay with one big exception.

I don’t quite get Michelle Bachmann’s strategy of trying to get to the right of Perry by painting him as being somehow inauthentic. Voters might buy that she’s more monolithically conservative than he is, but does she really think she can sell the idea that Perry is a fake–which is what her attacks last night seemed designed to do. I don’t think that dog hunts and, worse, it positions her as a Jacobin who refuses to acknowledge anyone else as a “true” conservative. In the long run, I don’t think that’s where she wants to go.

All of that said, she goaded Perry into one huge mistake, his bizarre, off-putting response that he was “offended” by the insinuation that he could be bought for a mere $5,000 because–hey, didn’t you know?–he raised $30 million.

There’s no way to look at this response that isn’t damning. And her rejoinder about being offended on the part of all the poor, innocent little girls (whose parents couldn’t understand an opt-out) was classic. Memo to RomneyBot 4000: That’s how you go negative.

What Perry should have said was something like this:

“I’ve said I made a mistake. And I’m not afraid to admit it. That’s part of being a leader. Now, I’m glad to know that Michelle has never made any mistakes–and good for her. But maybe if she’d ever been in a position of responsibility where she had to make executive decisions and hard choices, she wouldn’t be so lucky.”

It highlights her weaknesses (that she’s just a backbencher) and it diminishes her, instead of elevating her. Also, it keeps him on the mea culpa line for the HPV issue–which is where he should be, instead of trying to link it up to anti-abortion language.

This isn’t a mortal wound or anything. But it’s a sign of what Perry looks like when things go sideways for him. And its the first moment since he announced where his political instincts have actually been wrong.

2 comments


Romney Rising!
September 12th, 2011


Great news for Mitt Romney in the new CNN poll. Sure, he’s down 12 points to Perry, but that’s a big improvement from the last CNN poll, which had him down 13!

But wait, it gets even better. In the last CNN survey, Romney only polled at 14 points. Now he’s up to 18. Where did those points come from? Michelle Bachman, mostly. And now that Tim Pawlenty has joined Team Romney, things will really start to accelerate for the governor as the conservative establishment coalesces behind him. Once Pawlenty’s 2 points get factored in, Perry’s lead should get cut to +10. And from there, Katie bar the door.

2 comments


More on Social Security as Ponzi Scheme
September 12th, 2011


Stanley Kurtz does the actual research that I couldn’t be bothered with. It’s a great piece and it acquits Perry fully.

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Is Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme”?
September 8th, 2011


I’d argue that it is (I’ve got a whole section of the America’s One-Child book on this). But reasonable people can certainly debate the sentiment. What has amazed me over the last week or so is the silliness of those who treat the argument as if it’s somehow out of bounds just because Rick Perry is making it. Believe it or not, Rick Perry is not the first person to view Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”

The first person I’ve found drawing the parallel is economist Paul A. Samuelson. In the November 13, 1967 Newsweek Samuelson defended Social Security by pointing out that it was linked to population growth and that “A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised. And that is a fact, not a paradox.” (I found this quote in Phillip Longman’s excellent essay “Missing Children,” in the latest issue of the journal The Family in America. I can’t find the original Newsweek cite to provide full context, but Longman says that Samuelson was defending Social Security and I’m happy to trust him because Phillip Longman is stone-cold awesome.)

Now, Samuelson is not a crank. He won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1970. The New York Times calls him “the foremost academic economist of the 20th century.” If you majored in econ during the last 30 years, there’s a good chance that you used his textbook, Economics.

Nor is Samuelson a conservative. Remember, his likening of the underpinnings of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme were meant as a defense of the institution. And in 2003 he was one of a group of economists to sign a letter inveighing against the Bush tax cuts.

You might argue that the Samuelson/Perry view of Social Security is ultimately incorrect–but you cannot argue that it is troglodytic and beyond the pale. Anyone who does so either misunderstands economics and demography, or is playing an angle.

Update: Ed Driscoll pulls the full original Samuelson quote. As expected, Longman’s characterization was completely accurate:

The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. [italics in original] Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in. And exceed his payments by more than ten times (or five times counting employer payments)!

How is it possible? It stems from the fact that the national product is growing at a compound interest rate and can be expected to do so for as far ahead as the eye cannot see. Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real income going up at 3% per year, the taxable base on which benefits rest is always much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired…

Social Security is squarely based on what has been called the eight wonder of the world — compound interest. A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox.

37 comments


And We’re Back
August 29th, 2011


A bunch of catch-up items:

* I’ve got another longish essay on Obama’s vanity. I’ll stop writing these pieces when he stops giving me material.

* Galley Friend Mike Russell has a long, angry, awesome defense of David Foster Wallace.

* President Obama wants to remind Americans that just because they elected him president three years ago, they’re not off the hook for being a bunch of racists yet.

* The history of the Nature Boy’s legal and financial problems is yet another depressing chapter in the story that is professional wrestling. Styling and profiling have their costs.

* That over-under we had going on when Perry would overtake Romney in the RCP average was a sucker’s line. Perry passed Romney on 8/24. The next question is, when does Perry open up a double-digit lead? Before, or after, Ron Paul passes Romney? We’ll have more–lots more–on Mitt Romney . . . coming up next!

4 comments