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Why 2016 Won’t Be Like 1980

Cruz's "analysis" of 2016 is exactly the same as Romney's view of the 2012 election.
Senate Vote
UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 27: Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, left, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, speak to the media after the Senate voted to pass the continuing resolution. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (Newscom TagID: rollcallpix079693.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

Ted Cruz offered this thought while speaking to a “pro-Israel” group in New York:

Where we are today is very much like the late 1970s. The parallels between Obama and Carter are uncanny—same failed economic policy, same disastrous foreign policy. And I think ’16 will be like 1980.

Apart from the inaccuracies in this comparison, Cruz’s “analysis” here is entirely derivative and it is exactly the same as Romney’s view of the 2012 election. Romney took for granted that Obama was “the same” as Carter, and assumed that more or less running a reheated, stale version of Reagan’s 1980 campaign complete with policies thirty years out of date was the key to success. The problem wasn’t just that Romney was making the wrong comparison, but that assuming this sort of repetition in electoral politics is extremely misleading. The Republican victory in 1980 happened during the Cold War decades when Republican candidates had normally been winning presidential elections rather than losing them. Whatever the disadvantages that the Democratic candidate faces, 2016 follows six presidential elections in which the Democratic candidate won the popular vote five times.

If Cruz thinks that we are presently going through anything like the “the late 1970s,” that doesn’t say much for his powers of observation. Barring unforeseen disaster, economic conditions today have little or nothing in common with the late 1970s, and as dissatisfying as Obama’s foreign policy record has been there is fortunately nothing comparable today to the hostage crisis. Cruz says this in part because he thinks this is what his target audiences want to hear, and he says it in part to flatter himself that he could play the role of the new Reagan, but if he actually thinks it is true he is doing nothing more than substituting nostalgia for analysis.

Cruz takes for granted that the GOP will lose if the next Republican nominee comes from the “moderate establishment.” His interpretation is obviously self-serving, but it also misses the more important reasons why they lost in 2008 and 2012. Above all, Republicans lost those elections because economic conditions favored the other party both times. If the economy continues to recover over the next two years, that could well be true again next time. The next Democratic candidate will have the baggage of Obama’s record and his approval ratings, which will probably still be mediocre, but it would be fairly strange if the incumbent party were to lose while presiding over continued growth. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but it suggests that the 2016 election would have more in common with 2000 than 1980.

Another reason they lost is that Republicans ran twice on an exhausted, discredited agenda that had little or nothing to offer most voters. Cruz proposes no significant changes to that agenda, and based on his foreign policy statements he seems eager to emphasize some of the least popular parts of it. Finally, the party was weighed down by its high unfavorability that it inherited from the Bush era and which it has since worked to increase. For his part, Cruz has worked overtime to make himself and his party more unpopular by being gratuitously insulting and pointlessly combative. In terms of temperament and political tactics, Cruz is in many respects almost an anti-Reagan, and a party foolish enough to follow his lead would face a defeat at least as bad as the ones it suffered in 2008 and 2012.

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