Campbell, Romney and Hagel
To say that the criticism of Campbell is an example of hawks purging one of their own is akin to arguing that skeptical pro-lifers were purging one of their own when they criticized Mitt Romney. ~Jim Antle
That’s not a bad point, but there are a few important differences that this obscures. Campbell hasn’t radically changed his views virtually overnight for the specific purpose of making himself electable on a national level. There were several things made Romney’s “conversion” extremely hard to take seriously. The first was the explanation of how an intelligent, middle-aged man had just pondered the ethical implications of abortion for practically the first time, and still more incredibly how a technical discussion of ESCR had made all of this clear to him. Then there was the timing of the move, which happened almost exactly when Romney began testing the waters for his presidential run. In addition, there was the arrogant presumption to lecture every other candidate on his pro-life credentials when every one of them (except Giuliani!) had a better record. This was combined with a number of other “evolutions” of position that gave the impression that there was nothing Romney would not say for votes. All of these things grated on the sensibilities of many pro-lifers, because they are accustomed to politicians who learn to say the right things and then fail to do anything.
National security hawks don’t really have the same problem with opportunists. In fact, when opportunists realize that hawkishness is their path to promotion within the GOP they are strongly encouraged in that path. Just consider the career of John McCain. McCain went from being a critic of the Lebanon deployment, wary supporter of the Gulf War and skeptic of Bosnian intervention to the most aggressive, most reliable Republican hawk there is. I would have thought that the whole point of enforcing a party line is to make any high-profile candidate toe that line, which Campbell has been doing long before this campaign.
As far as I can tell, Campbell has moved toward the hawks in the last decade, and he had been doing this many years before this current campaign was even on the horizon. His change may have been ultimately opportunistic, as many such changes are, but it has been neither dramatic nor radical. It has not been so obviously tied to the promotion of his political fortunes. The criticism of Romney was rooted more than anything in a lack of trust inspired by his sudden, total, and unconvincing reinvention. It’s not as if Campbell was once a fierce non-interventionist and critic of Israeli military actions. Campbell went from being a fairly standard-issue national security hawk with some qualms about the efficacy of Iraq sanctions and war powers to being an even-more conventional national security hawk who supports Iran sanctions and who has opposed exactly one military campaign in his career.
Then there is the matter of Campbell’s other supposed deviations in the past. The real trouble seems to be that he advocated for a two-state solution before it was the Washington consensus view, and he also supported the reduction of non-military aid economic aid to Israel. The first is a view that is now pretty widely held in both parties, and the second is the kind of argument one might expect from a Republican with an aversion to subsidizing relatively wealthy nations. This is extremely weak stuff. The attempt to use the tenuous link to Al-Arian to try to portray him as somehow sympathetic to Palestinian radicalism or jihadism is outrageously dishonest. Considering how much ground they have been losing in recent years, I would have thought that Republican “pro-Israel” hawks would want as many allies as they could get. Instead, some of them seem to be looking for reasons to run candidates off.
Jim mentions that Campbell is rather like Chuck Hagel, and I think that is a fairly good comparison. Except for his criticism of the “surge,” which earned him his party’s contempt, Hagel was a reliable vote and advocate for every military intervention while he was in office. Republican hawks’ demonization of Hagel always seemed deeply irrational to me. In some ways, he was a much more infuriating hawk than his more aggressive colleagues, because he could usually see all of the pitfalls and dangers of intervention and still supported the action no matter what it was. Hagel was not an ideologue, but he still made all the same mistakes that the ideologues did. When Republican hawks finally did make him persona non grata in the GOP, Hagel had at least disagreed with them in a contemporary debate on war policy. Campbell is being attacked for very modest differences to the extent that any differences exist. The campaign against Campbell is even more irrational than the one directed against Hagel in 2007-08.
Unfortunately, my guess is that Campbell could be counted on to give the hawks what they want just as they counted on Hagel for over a decade.
P.S. Here is a New Ledger interview with Campbell. Non-interventionists and civil libertarians will find it quite discouraging, especially when he pivots from his past opposition to the use of secret evidence on civil liberties grounds and then argues that this is why Guantanamo must remain open for indefinite detention of suspected terrorists. There is nothing in this interview that I or any other non-interventionist would find encouraging.
Campbell is best understood as just what he is, a centrist, moderate, middle-of-the-roader. His opposition to Kosovo, for example, seems motivated by the same sort of moderation for moderation’s sake temperament that motivates his pro-choice and gay friendly social views.
This sort of fiscally moderate, socially moderate, less hawkish profile was quite common back when there were more identifiably moderate Republicans before they all got replace by Dems (primarily in the Northeast). He is a Constance Morella, Nancy Johnson type. This is why Frum likes him.
That may be part of it, but unlike Morella Campbell supported the war in Iraq. As a centrist and/or moderate, Campbell seems to fit quite easily into the hawkish mold that most of them fit. I don’t doubt that Frum wants to back Campbell because Campbell shares some of his domestic policy views, and it is probably the case that the people out to get Campbell are actually driven by their dislike of his domestic views. Their objections might not matter as much in California, so they try to dig up deviations on foreign policy. What I find interesting and discouraging about this episode is that it shows how absolutely non-negotiable party-line national security and foreign policy positions are. It makes clear that the favored route for discrediting someone in a Republican primary is to portray him as “weak” on these things.
This quotation is fantastic:
ll of these things grated on the sensibilities of many pro-lifers, because they are accustomed to politicians who learn to say the right things and then fail to do anything.
How wonderfully understated. And true!
I’d like to know specifically what positions (besides abortion) Romney suddenly changed “virtually overnight for the specific purpose of making himself electable on a national level” lol. I always hear about this sudden transformation but the only position ever mentioned is abortion. Why is that? How do you determine the exact timing of when Romney started “testing the waters”? I don’t find the timing suspect at all because it coincides with him having just become Governor (before any testing of the waters frankly). Up till that time his position on abortion had no real significance. When it came time to put pen to paper on abortion related legilation he decided to become officially Pro-life. I’m not saying it’s easy to understand. I don’t understand how Ronald Reagan went from Pro-Choice to Pro-Life but it happens. And how can you possibly claim to have any understanding of just how long a proccess it was for him? You don’t know. As far as his “arrogance” what’s so arrogant about defending or pointing out ones credentials in a debate?? I can’t help but wonder if some of this obsessive anti-Romney “flip flop” business isn’t just a cover for bigotry. I wonder, how much time will it take before his position on abortion is no longer suspect? Four years? Eight? or more?
Guns, taxes, immigration, and gay marriage all spring to mind as issues where he made major changes and/or denied parts of his record that conflicted with the new political persona he was crafting. There are probably more, but those are the ones that stand out. During his time as governor, he favored gun control, some form of legalization for illegal immigrants, he signed off on fee increases in Mass., and initially he had no particular concern about gay marriage. Suddenly, he became an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, and then he pretended to be some die-hard border-securing, anti-immigration zealot and lamely claimed to be a “lifetime member” of the NRA. This was also the man who gave people Massachusetts a government mandate to purchase health insurance, but then spent the better part of the 2008 campaign berating the welfare state.
One set of positions had served him well in Massachusetts, and another set was needed for the primaries. The changes were obviously opportunistic, but that isn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was the insufferable pretense that he was a sincere, principled advocate of all these positions when it was clear that he had arrived at them yesterday for convenience’s sake.
He first started organizing his campaign in 2005 right around the time he declared his “conversion” to a pro-life view. He had consistently claimed for decades that his pro-choice views stemmed from a family tragedy that had informed the pro-choice views of his entire family. This was a claim he had reiterated as recently as 2002 when he was running for governor, and then he completely reversed everything he said he had believed for all that time. Reagan came onto the national scene as a serious presidential contender shortly after Roe v. Wade was decided. The change he made from when he was governor could at least be explained by that. Romney doesn’t have that excuse.
Romney had no credentials to defend. He pretended that he was qualified to find other candidates wanting on issues on which he had no credibility. It was this obnoxious attitude of his that made all of his rival candidates regard him with particular contempt.
At some point in the next few years, Romney’s pro-life credentials will be well-established enough to satisfy most conservatives. I still regard him as utterly untrustworthy because of what he tried to pull during the last campaign, and I don’t see anything on that score changing in the future.
I can tell that you personaly dislike Romney. Again, I’m wondering what specific positions besides abortion he has flipped on. It seems that you may be taking peices of rhetoric and interpreting them as changes of position. Of course the tone of some of his rhetoric may have shifted, but that is the case with all politicians ( and non-politicians for that matter). Would you try to convince me that the other candidates did not shift their rhetoric throughout the campaign?
Guns? As with most politicians Romney has always (and still does) supported the right to bear arms along with gun control. I’ll concede that his rhetoric may have shifted after he was no longer bound to Massachussets. Understandable. I don’t remember him ever claming to be a lifetime member of the NRA though. I remember him saying he was a life long hunter. Do you happen to have that source?
Taxes? Seriously, Mitt Romney has always been for lower taxes (still is). He lowered taxes in Massachussets. He did not raise them. Taxes were lower when he left office than when he entered office. That’s especially significant when you consider that he also ballanced the budget and left a surplus. It’s true that he did raise some fees, but fees are not taxes. That’s just a fact, besides, they were insignificant compared to the tax cuts.
Gay Marriage? This one kind of baffles me. There’s absolutely no change of position here. Mitt Romney has always been strongly against gay marriage. He defended traditional marriage as Governor of Massachussets when the courts there made gay marriage legal. Come on, the guy is Mormon. Hello, prop 8?
It is true Mitt Romney was responsible for bringing government mandated or universal healthcare to Massachussets and I understand that some conservatives have a problem with making healthcare mandatory. I don’t see how Romney’s Massachussets healthcare plan is in any way reflective of a “nanny state” mentality though. It is definately not like “obamacare”, or “Hillarycare” for that matter. “Romneycare” requires people to purchase their own healthcare from the private sector. It seems to me that Romney’s Massachussets healthcare relies on conservative principles. There is no public option and it’s not government run. Isn’t it a conservative priniple that if you are going to use something you pay into it? I don’t see a problem with making that a requirment.
I don’t understand what you mean when you say he didn’t have any credentials to defend. Of course he did. He did in fact have a pro-life record as Governor of Massachussets even if it was short. He repeatedly said during the debates that everytime abortion related legislation came to his desk he came down on the side of life. Aren’t those credentials? The reason the other candidates had such contempt for him was partly because of his “ken doll”/”sqeeky clean” image but mostly because he had way more money and far superior organizationl skills than anyone else. He was thus seen as having a leg up on everyone. That on top of the fact that he hadn’t “paid his dues” yet. The others resented him for those things. Of course we all know that Huckabee especially resented him for his Mormon faith.
At the end of the day I like Mitt Romney because he is the smartest guy in the room. He has a proven track record. He is always a class act and continues to be. And honestly, he was more truthfull during the campign than the other candidates. John McCain flat out lied about about Mitt Romney supporting a time table for withdrawl in Iraq. He didn’t. Mike Huckabee kept claiming to have lowered taxes in Arkansa when in fact he left taxes higher there. And Guliani kept making the rediculous completely dishonest claim that Romney was running a “sanctuary mansion”.
sambunderson,
“I don’t understand what you mean when you say he didn’t have any credentials to defend. Of course he did. He did in fact have a pro-life record as Governor of Massachussets even if it was short. He repeatedly said during the debates that everytime abortion related legislation came to his desk he came down on the side of life.”
Romney said that, but it’s not true:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/mitt_romneys_flip_flop_flip.html
Also, on taxes, this is from the Boston Herald in 2007:
“In 2003, Romney stunned a roomful of Bay State congressmen by telling them that he would not publicly support Bush’s tax cuts, which at the time formed the centerpiece of the president’s domestic agenda. He even said he was open to a federal gas tax hike.”
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2007/02/08/bad-news-for-romney/
Of course, that didn’t stop Romney from attacking McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign for not backing the Bush tax cuts.
Thanks for the resources. I believe what I said about Romney being the smartest guy in the room. I base that on his record of accomplishments, not his rhetoric. That’s not to say that next time around there won’t be someone smarter or better suited, but given the state that our economy is in I don’t anticipate that being the case. Mitt Romney will run for President and he will be the front-runner, so I like un-biased and straight forward information so that I can draw my own conclusions.
The Washinton Post article is very loaded. Why does it feature a photo from almost 20 years ago? Yes! I am fully aware that he used to be pro-choice. I really don’t care about 1994. The chronology, it seems to me, shows a pretty clear shift from “pro-choice” to “pro-life”. I certainly don’t see stem cell research being equivalent to abortion. I believe he has explained that he does not support “creating life for the purpose of destroying it” nor does he support using stem cells from aborted fetuses. I’m satisfied with that.
Concerning a federal amentment banning abortion, I believe Romney has explained that he does think the issue should be left up to the states for now because that’s where the nation is, but welcomes the day when an amendment could realisticaly be considered and would support an ammendment if it was introduced by the party. He’s right. A federal amenment would never pass in todays climate. A state by state approach is a better strategy. No flip-flop. The only thing I wonder about is the October 15th bill he signed. I’d like to get a better context of that. Giving the “morning after pill” to rape victims doesn’t bother me.
With the Bush tax cut issue, that is a problem for Romney because it looks bad. He should have publicly supported it. Ultimately he did. Not endorsing something though or saying to a group of insiders that you are not going to publicly support it is not the same as opposing it. As I recall he wanted to stay out of that issue. It was bad politics on his part but not a flip-flop. Didn’t McCain activley oppose the bush tax cuts and then try to say that he had actually supported them during the debates?