Firing up the Base

Firing up the base.

Early poll analysis suggests that Romney lost and Obama won primarily because Republicans did not come out to vote. Romney actually got 2.5 million fewer votes than McCain, even though, unlike McCain, independents did break for him. It was not, as some have said, a case of a surge of non-white voters going for Obama. Non-white voters did go to Obama, but there weren't many more than in previous years.

This seems to me to vindicate Obama's strategy, which I have been criticizing all campaign, of ignoring independents and trying to fire up your base. The originator of this unorthodox tactic was, of course, Karl Rove during the Bush years, and it worked for him as well.

So what may have killed Romney may have been, surprisingly to an old-school hack like myself, his efforts to win the moderate centre. Old codgers like me are haunted by memories of Goldwater and McGovern, but that may not be the way it works any more. There are now two cultures in America. They do not read the same magazines, they do not watch the same TV, they do not listen to the same radio. It is therefore hard to get to the moderate middle—mostly because there is no moderate middle megaphone. The big three networks are no longer watched by everyone; Time and Newsweek are no longer read by everyone. Voters are either reading your outlets, or the other guy's.

In this climate, the only way to win may be to fire up the base.

Of course, I and many others, including some polling, thought the Republican base was indeed pretty fired up. This turned out to be another sort of “Shy Tory” syndrome. A lot of conservative folks were claiming to their own people they were enthusiastic about Romney who really weren't.

After all, why make the effort to go out and pull the lever for your guy when you don't really know what he stands for, or what he would do in office? Romney's problem for at least the past six years has been that he has held both sides on almost every major issue. The Republican base was never enthusiastic about him in the primaries; they just fell in line, ultimately, behind the party leadership, as is the Republican tradition. But it seems their hearts were never in it.

Part of the problem is that the electorate is more aware than they ever were before, thanks to the rising wave of information available. If you flip and flop, they're more likely to know it. And they are far less likely to vote for someone only because they have the correct party label; they evaluate candidates individually. Richard Nixon took it as just standard practice in his time that you ran to the right or left in seeking your party;'s nomination, then moved to the centre in the general election. That was always dishonest. But now, you can't possibly do that within a span of a year or so without people noticing it.

Accordingly, I think what the Republicans need next time is a candidate who is extremely articulate, who stands a chance of setting the parameters of the debate, and one who is recognized as ideologically solid by the Tea Party Republicans. This leaves out Chris Christie and, I think, Jeb Bush. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, on the other hand, look good. Sarah Palin seems to fit the mold too, but personally I have an unshakable sense that she is a lightweight. Mike Huckabee seems a possibility. Bobby Jindal. Sam Brownback.