I like the fact that he [Romney] tricked liberals into voting for him. ~Ann Coulter

I like the fact that Ann Coulter can be so easily duped by the Romney campaign’s spin about his rank opportunism.  Presumably he voted for Paul Tsongas and donated money to Democrats as part of the elaborate ruse!  Isn’t there something a little bit strange about this kind of “endorsement”?  Who was the last nationally-known Republican frequently associated with the word trick?  Hint: it wasn’t Reagan, and it wasn’t complimentary!

In 2000 he felt he could take on Christian conservative leaders in the South. Bad timing. In 2000 they were at the peak of their 20 years of power. Now their followers are tired and questioning after a generation of political activism. And many leaders seem compromised–dinged after all that time in the air. Mr. McCain could rebuke them now and thrive. Instead he decided to attempt to embrace them. ~Peggy Noonan

This is an interesting column on McCain, and most of it makes a lot of sense.  What I think Ms. Noonan underestimates here is just how much McCain’s shots at religious conservative leaders angered religious conservatives around the country, and not because of any particular fondness of or loyalty to Falwell and Robertson, the main targets of his derision.  This would have been true whether or not those leaders were very influential or not.  What mattered was the language McCain chose to use and the targets he chose to direct that language against. 

In hitting Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” he actually came off sounding like someone who believed that religious conservatives in the party as a whole were also “agents of intolerance,” which reinforced the image and confirmed the reality that McCain was not only not “one of us” religious conservatives (which everyone already knew) but that he would be only too glad to skewer Christian conservatives if he thought it would make for good press.  It was part of his, “I’m an independent, moderate guy” shtick and he said it to curry favour with the press and convince independent voters that he was their kind of guy.  It was the signal of contempt for Christian conservatives as a whole that really sank his chances in 2000 in South Carolina in particular (not helped by his flip-flopping on the battle flag and the brass-knuckles tactics of the Bush team) even more than his tangling with somewhat influential pastors.  That is why he crawls back to seek the support of the people he mocked last time, yet ironically the leaders he now flatters have less influence than before while the religious conservative voters themselves are not impressed by McCain’s sudden re-discovery of their importance in the nominating process.  If Romney has flip-flopped, McCain has simply flopped as far as these voters are concerned, and they have no interest in letting him get back up.

While Sam Brownback is a good speaker, his seemed to be trying to touch as many bases as possible, flitting from the war on terror to a flat tax to to ending cancer (huh?) to gay marriage to abortion to energy independence. (The energy stuff was the usual replace-oil-with-corn pipedream; I’m not sure why he didn’t retool his speech for a non-Iowa audience.) Far better to get a little deeper on a few big themes than to skate over the surface of so many little ones. ~John Tabin

What, no Darfur references?  I’m disappointed in Samnesty. 

I certainly share Mr. Tabin’s puzzlement with Brownback’s “end cancer in ten years” preoccupation.  Even when you remember that he had a cancer scare himself and became a strong advocate for research and treatment, it is still fairly bizarre in its way, yet it is one of the items that crops up in his major speeches with remarkable frequency.  In principle, reducing deaths from cancer and increased research and improved treatment are all things that reasonable people can and, I think, do support pretty much wholeheartedly, but “ending all deaths from cancer in ten years” is the essence of an unrealistic, absurd political proposal.  It is unfortunately rather typical of Brownback’s overall style–he wants to show that he cares so much that he will make the most outlandish proposals to demonstrate the extent of his concern.

The scatter-brained approach to policy speeches seems to be a Brownback favourite.  His announcement speech was very much like this one, at least from what I can glean from Mr. Tabin’s description.

Update: Ed Morrisey has items from Brownback’s speech.  Brownback felt the need to repeat his idiotic “yellow brick road to the White House” line.  Ross, if you have any influence with this guy and can persuade him to stop using this phrase, all political observers everywhere will be grateful to you.  Morrisey remarks on the end of the speech:

Wrapping up; he says in answer to “why us, why now?”, “Because … it is your destiny.” In my mind, it instantly recalled Darth Vader trying to convince Luke to switch to the Dark Side.

The phrase does have that association (it also comes just after he has sliced off Luke’s hand, which makes it even more menacing), but I will say that I think Darth Vader might be a bit of a harsh comparison for Brownback.  Even so, beware politicians who talk about destiny, whether theirs, yours or, worst of all, “ours.”  They have a funny way of compelling people to go to other countries to get into wars to fulfill that “destiny,” and it usually doesn’t end well.  The idealist’s talk of destiny winds up creating a very different destiny for the country that follows said politician than it would have otherwise had, and not in a good way.

Your next speaker grew up in Brooklyn when the Dodgers were still there, and nevertheless rooted for the Yankees. ~George Will at CPAC

How does treason to one’s home borough recommend a man to anyone?  You might as well say, “Our next speaker grew up in America during the Cold War, but nonetheless supported the expansion of Soviet communism.”  How on earth does it make him comparable to Margaret Thatcher?  Was she also in the habit of despising her hometown?  I think not. 

What sort of decent person roots for the Yankees anyway?

Fair enough, I guess. But still, the primaries are a long way away. You’d think it might be the role of a magazine like National Review to try and promote the fortunes of a proper plain-vanilla conservative Republican. A Jim Gilmore or a Mike Huckabee or whomever. It’s not exactly a rare breed in the country, it’s just that nobody who fits the bill (except for Jeb Bush) has the requisite level of ex ante fame to get buzz. But why be a journalist if not to try and generate buzz about people you think are being unjustly ignored?

Do conservatives understand that given the gross unpopularity of Bush’s military adventures at this point, nominating someone whose main profile as a conservative is grounded in his strong rhetorical support of Bush’s military adventures isn’t going to work out well?  ~Matt Yglesias

Unfortunately, many really don’t understand that, or, what may be more striking, they simply don’t care.  Once you have tied yourself to the Iraq war as closely as many conservative pundits have done, especially those at National Review, and argued year after year that the Iraq war is essential to national security, McCain’s identification with the actually makes him appear to them to be a “stronger” candidate in some ideological sense, even if it almost certainly makes him unelectable.  Many a Republican primary voter regards McCain’s position on the war to be one of his best, while they find his lack of enthusiasm on granting the President discretion to define torture to be proof of his treachery.  In such an environment, rational political calculations tend not to prevail.  As far as the pro-war pundits are concerned, McCain passes the Lieberman test (indefatigable support for the invasion) and therefore all else can be forgiven.  This is because passing the Lieberman test means that nothing else really matters.

The aversion to talking up the lesser candidates is a little harder to explain.  It certainly seems politically suicidal to entrust your party’s political success to one of the three big clunkers.  Part of it is sheer establishmentarian bias: the celebrity candidates are part of the party elite, so members of the party and movement elite want to boost the celebrity candidates who belong to that group.  Part of the reason is undoubtedly the Iraq war.  McCain and Giuliani in different ways serve for these people as symbols of Republican “toughness,” and therefore qualify as “leadership material” regardless of whether they are actually good leaders rather than egomaniacal gloryhounds.  (They throw in Romney as the acceptable alternative for people who want to crack down on the southern border and make threatening noises about Iran, but the interest in him has been waning–he is acceptable because Romney will probably do very little about the border but will endorse crazy foreign policy adventures.)  The other candidates have either shown what these folks would call “irresolution” on Iraq (Brownback) or have not distinguished themselves with reckless, sabre-rattling rhetoric in the past (as Romney did when he was grandstanding about Khatami’s visit and again at Herzliya). 

Plus, Brownback wants America to go fight in…Darfur.  This does not get the pro-war pundit’s blood racing.  Huckabee wants to sponsor education in the arts and reduce obesity!  Again, not much enthusiasm for this among the big pundits.  Hunter is automatically out of the establishment sweepstakes because he is an anti-immigration politician who actually means what he says, and he opposes “free trade” deals that are a central part of GOP orthodoxy.  Tancredo is viewed by most of the established pundits as slightly mad and certainly unelectable.  The day establishment pundits get behind Ron Paul will be at the end of the world.  Gilmore?  Gilmore, from what I have read about him, is supposedly generally non-interventionist and only supports wars fought in self-defense, which means that he is automatically unacceptable.  That leaves Tommy Thompson.  These pundits may like Thompson all right, but when they can get behind real warmongers why bother with a mild-mannered Midwestern welfare reformer?  The rush to anoint the top three of the presidential field and studiously ignore the others has everything to do with the Iraq war, and it shows just how profoundly the war has confused and warped the priorities of the party.

But it was revealing. The entire speech didn’t work. The whole thing was off. It was boring. Rudy entered the hall welcomed as a rock star. He then put the crowd to sleep as his lack of preparation became a glaring weakness. ~Dean Barnett

Conservatism would be in trouble, Norquist added, if the top candidates were saying, ‘I’m not where Reagan is, and I don’t want to be.” 

“There’s no Rockefeller wing of the party left,” he observed. ~The Politico

Well, that’s just ridiculous.  Of course there is a “Rockefeller wing” or its equivalent, or else Giuliani wouldn’t even be Republican.  The whole “metro Republican” idea reflects a new ascendancy of people who are culturally and politically far more attuned to the spirit of Rockefeller.  Having co-opted the exurbs, suburbs and countryside to its cause, Red Republicanism can now burst forth once more in all its dreadful urbanite, Yankee corruption.  

What a stupid thing it is to say that there is no more Rockefeller wing, and how perfect that the oblivious Norquist would be the one to say it.  What were/are the defining features of Rockefeller Republicanism?  Social liberalism or, more accurately, indifference to social issues, a willingness to coexist with a large, centralised welfare state, which they wanted to more “efficiently” manage , an embrace of high levels of taxation (mighty budget-balancers were they) and reliable support for the interests of Big Business.  Immigration was not as much of a burning issue in the ’70s, but when it became a burning issue later these were people who could be relied upon to support mass immigration in all its forms, again because Big Business wanted it that way.  Regionally, they were often the Republicans of the Northeast.  Weirdly, even though everyone has been crying about how the GOP has been routed from the Northeast, we are being forced to endure a presidential field where two of the top three “major” contenders are Northeasterners by birth or by choice and whose careers certainly match up with the cultural and political leanings of Rockefeller Republicans much better than they do with Sunbelt conservatives.  The Rockefeller wing has not only survived–it has in most respects triumphed within the GOP and increasingly within the movement itself.  For much of the transformation of the latter you can thank FDR-admiring neocons and appeasers of the welfare state such as Newt Gingrich. 

In other words, the policies embraced by neoconservatives domestically and championed by “moderate” Republicans such as McCain and Giuliani are almost exactly the policies of the Rockefeller Republicans.  It is McCain’s Rockefellerism that makes him so unpopular with conservatives and which makes him a laughable successor to Goldwater; Giuliani is a more pure embodiment of the policies, if not exactly the social background, of the old Republican left.  To the extent that “mainstream” Republicanism differs from the bad old days of Rockefellerism at all, it is mainly only in tax policy and the occasional obligatory, usually meaningless nod to the concerns of social conservatives.  Not only has the Rockefeller wing never disappeared, but it has actually managed to grow and dominate more and more of the conservative movement itself.  The difference now is that the Rockefeller Republicans have the good sense to pretend that they respect and admire Reagan and pretend that they are good conservatives (or work steadily at redefining what conservative means so that it includes them), while continuing all of the same policies that conservatives used to oppose and still should oppose if they don’t actually oppose them right now.  The conservatives, meanwhile, in what I suppose must be a desperate attempt to convince themselves that they have accomplished something lasting in the last ten years, tell themselves that they have vanquished the spirit of Rockefeller, when all they have done is made it obligatory for the Rockefeller Republicans to pay homage to Reagan and then go about opposing everything the conservative movement used to stand for (and which some parts of it still do stand for most of the time).  That one of the big-name players in the movement does not see this or cannot publicly acknowledge it without destroying the credibility of the entire project tells you how bad things are.

“There is no agenda,” said Soren Dayton, a young consultant and blogger, complaining that GOP candidates are only offering up predictable platitudes.  “You say you’re pro-life, you say you’ll ban gay marriage and you say you’ll cut taxes.” ~The Politico

Of course, my fellow blogger has a point.  There is certainly not much new out on the hustings, even if there are some smart conservatives wonkishly contemplating problems of social policy.  Contrary to the claims of “Smiling Eyes” Kristol, there are no “fresh ideas” on offer from the candidates, and I think this is because none of them thinks any new ideas are necessary.  All of them, except for Ron Paul, Hunter and Tancredo, seem to think that most of the policies of the current administration were on the right track and just got fouled up in the execution.  The motto of the rest of the field besides these three (who obviously take strong exception to major parts of the Bush consensus), would seem to be: “Like Bush, but competent this time!”  This reflects a far deeper problem than gloom and malaise in the ranks, and this is the apparently widely held view that the principles of the policies the GOP enacted while in the majority were sound and just got muddled in implementation.  There does seem to be broad agreement that spending got out of hand, but there seems to be much less agreement about how and why that happened. 

That being said, being anti-tax, pro-life and opposed to gay marriage are all part of “the agenda,” broadly speaking, and have been for some time.  The problem with today’s GOP is that it has already cut taxes as much as their free-spending habits will allow for the near future, it never does anything about reducing or restricting abortion and it merely gestures at gay marriage and makes shrieking noises.  It ignored or dithered on one of the great policy problems of the day (immigration), punted on anything related to entitlements, servilely submitted to corporate interests on trade policy and offered a foreign policy vision so simplistic and childish that it would embarrass nine-year old players of Risk.  Many Republicans don’t even see anything wrong with these things and regard Risk-worthy leadership skills as proof of foreign policy mettle.  “Giuliani promised to invade Kamchatka next turn–we should vote for him!”  So many of the areas where Republican candidates could break with their party’s immediate past and chart interesting, popular and smart courses are out there waiting for someone who can conjure up something more than the old bromides, but they would either run into entrenched opposition or would probably fail to inspire a lot of voters.  Many good policy reformers make lousy national political figures and vice versa, because the focus and expertise of the former make them appear monomaniacal to a national audience while the latter can only make vague gestures in the direction of policy details without losing that awful superficiality that being on the national stage seems to require.  In other words, there’s no agenda in the presidential race right now because…it’s the presidential race and policy unfortunately tends to take a backseat to a tiresome focus on biography, personality, clothing choices, whether the candidate loves his wife (and how much he loves her), etc.  Indeed, what does anyone expect in a mass democratic election but a lot of sloganeering and boilerplate rhetoric?  They don’t really expect a battle of ideas, do they?  Oh, they do. 

On the other hand, there is no more specific “agenda” at this stage for the simple reason that you don’t roll out concrete policy proposals 10 months before New Hampshire.  You give broad, thematic speeches and “introduce” yourself and your record to the voters.  Political junkies want to know in detail how you plan to fund the mind-boggling liabilities of welfare programs and see a chart with your projections of benefit levels through 2035 (actually, I don’t want to see any of this, but someone must) and they want it now, which is, of course, completely absurd in March 2007.  If you rolled out your Social Security privatisation plan already, the same people would be complaining about how the candidate was campaigning on the same Social Security plan for a year and a half.  “There are no new ideas since last spring,” the junkies would start complaining.  With the explosion of blogs and news channels, the need to avoid saying very much for a very long time has only grown.  We chatter so much that we have compelled candidates to say nothing that we might find controversial, which therefore shuts down most interesting avenues of discussion. 

Perhaps what Mr. Dayton means is that all of the candidates are simply going through the motions, because they think they can win support simply by mouthing tired platitudes.  If Romney’s early endorsements are any indication, mouthing tired platitudes will convince some people, but apparently not enough.  Certainly, with Romney and McCain, you get the distinct sense that they say the things they say on any number of issues because they believe they have to use the right code words to convince people that they are what they and everyone else know they are not, namely reliable conservatives.  (McCain is actually conservative on a few things, but not nearly enough and not enough of the most important things.) 

But there is a certain disconnect here between conservatives who complain about the lack of credible conservative candidates and the same people complaining that the candidates are mouthing all the right phrases designed to appease a conservative audience.  (Not that they would call it appeasement, of course, because people at CPAC would tell you that appeasement is Very Bad and would probably throw things at someone who made kindly remarks about diplomacy.)  There is the feeling that any pol saying all or most of the right things is being insincere or unsatisfactory in his sales pitch, but the failure to say all or most of the rights is also disqualifying.  In other words, this is an almost unreasonably tough crowd. 

If a candidate says something new and potentially interesting for the field, such as, “Let’s withdraw from Iraq right now,” most CPACniks would metaphorically (and perhaps actually)tear him limb from limb.  If he does not hit every issue and state his commitment to the right view in just the right way, he suffers politically by appearing to be unreliable or uncommitted.  Look at poor Sam Brownback and his position on the “surge”!  He is generally more pro-war than just about anybody you could find and loves the idea of intervening in other countries, but because he came to a different prudential judgement about an ill-chosen tactical deployment he has been cast into the outer darkness of villains where people like me reside. 

If the candidate actually holds a different view, instead of being praised for his interesting, different take that might reflect the mind of a serious, thinking human being, he is shunned as an agent of corruption and perversion of the true message.  When you have a politics where successsful candidates have to subscribe to a laundry list of widely accepted, not necessarily connected positions to “prove” their fidelity to “the cause,” you are going to have candidates rattle off predictable statements of devotion to…the cause.  Some politicians do this easily and without breaking a sweat (e.g., Tancredo, Hunter, Brownback with some important exceptions), because they either know the spiel backwards and forwards or they really believe in all of these things, while others make it seem as if they have been rehearsing this stuff over the last few months because they know it is what they have to say but don’t really know how to unite it in any sort of coherent, comprehensive vision.  Romney’s NRI Summit speech was just such a listing of positions without any imagination or thought given to them–he declared that he was against the welfare state!  Talk about being behind the curve.   

You can almost see the Mitt going over his announcement speech: “What’s wrong with government is that it’s too big…I have to remember that one, that’s a good line…too big.  And the people are….oh, I keep forgetting this part…we are…oh, that’s right, we’re overtaxed.  Right, tax hikes are bad.  I really have to carry that around on a card or something, or else I will forget that I am now against tax hikes.” 

It is important to scrutinise candidates certainly, because there are frauds who will try to present themselves as people who hold fast to the platitudes they are reciting.  The difference is not so much in what the different candidates say, because they are all going to repeat more or less the same basic points, but in whether they have any credibility when they say it.  Based on their records, Giuliani, McCain and Romney do not, while the others, to varying degrees, do.  But there should be no expectations that anyone will be offering clever or interesting new ideas in the coming weeks and months.  What is worth watching is whether any of them find a new and interesting way to convey the same old positions, because the candidate who can do that (and it certainly isn’t any one of the Terrible Trio) is the candidate who stands a decent chance in the general election.  And, no, Sam Brownback, this does not mean recycling “compassionate conservatism.”

“It’s a struggle,” said conservative activist and public relations specialist Mike Thompson.  “Conservatives want to win, but they aren’t really sure the guys at the top of the field are conservative.” Reconciling purity and pragmatism is always a challenge, Thompson added, but it’s especially so going into 2008 because “of the fear of the other side.” ~The Politico

May I just note that it is this sort of obsession with “fear of the other side” that ushered in the disaster of the Bush years?  No matter how badly the man governed, no matter how many principles he betrayed (or never held in the first place), the mantra was always, “Well, the other side would be worse.”  Perhaps some people sincerely believed that in early 2002; I might have even agreed with it at that unusual moment.  But it didn’t hold for long. 

To choose your standard-bearer based in this fear of Democrats will usually result in the selection of someone who might be good at kicking around political enemies but will otherwise be incredibly incompetent when it comes to governing and setting the kinds of policies that you and yours want.  Principled “purity” and pragmatism are arrayed on one side of the balance in this calculation, while the pure lust for power exists on the other side.  There is nothing pragmatic or worldly wise about selling yourself to ambitious pols simply because they hold out the promise of winning elections.  That is, in fact, the definition of being a gullible patsy.  Bush was one for winning elections for the GOP, but was an all-around nightmare for advancing most of the things conservatives thought they were in politics to advance.  Now many have buyer’s remorse…but seem set to do the exact same thing all over again, and all because they are scared of Hillary or some other bogey from the left.  Not exactly inspiring to watch, is it?

And on some issues, someone else will be more conservative than I am, but that just depends on the issue, and I’m by no means the most conservative on all issues. ~Mitt Romney