The Cinch Review endorsement for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination goes to …
Before issuing my all-important and fiendishly well-timed endorsement (on this, the day of the Iowa caucuses for the GOP presidential nomination) let me just review the record of my thinking a little bit. I’ve been following the Republican race attentively since early in 2011, and writing on it periodically during that time. As I believe I wrote somewhere along the line, my interest was in seeing a good contest among good candidates and seeing the best one win. I think that has been the attitude of many voters. No one can be without prejudice in these matters, but I attempted to stay as open-minded as reasonably possible for as long as reasonably possible. Certainly, I’ve been predisposed against Mitt Romney from the beginning, for a number of the same reasons that many others have been predisposed against him (there’s little reason to rehash those at this particular juncture). I thought it would be a good approach to hold off settling my decision for sure until actual voting began taking place, and that is today—although my own state doesn’t vote for months yet.
I did have one philosophical and/or strategic bias, I admit: I thought that a governor—current or former—with a sturdily conservative record of success would likely be the best candidate to look for. I agree with many political observers that senators and congressmen do not seem to make either great candidates or great presidents. Executive experience and a record of responsibility do matter. (Check current situation at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and associated nation for more info.) For a non-governor to rise to the level of very serious consideration would require more spectacularly superior characteristics of some kind. This is why, early in my op-eds on the campaign, I took a good look at former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. He’d been successful, and successfully re-elected, in a relatively liberal state while governing in a generally quite conservative way. He was mild-mannered, but that didn’t seem to be such a terrible thing, considering that the Obama 2012 campaign was bound to depend on demonization of the GOP candidate, and it’s difficult to demonize someone who comes across so mildly. However, I didn’t count on Pawlenty being demonized by Republicans (with a major assist from the media) for that very mildness itself, illustrated by his choice to eschew going after Romney hard on health care in one of the first debates. But Pawlenty also made the ill-fated tactical gamble of putting all of his eggs into the Iowa straw poll of August, 2011. (Who could care about that result now?) So in the final analysis his candidacy was a victim of his own political misjudgments.
With his exit came the entry of another governor: Rick Perry, with a ten-year record, great job creation numbers and from a state—Texas—that has had the best vote of approval you can get: people and business have been moving there in large numbers, while so much of the rest of the country has been in the doldrums or worse. However, while seemingly a powerhouse on the campaign trail, he plainly floundered in the debates. I did not, however, dismiss him.
Herman Cain briefly attracted serious attention with some strong debate performances and the prospect of a game-changing role as an African-American conservative figure. However, the attention he attracted turned out to be far more serious than the attention he himself had given to the idea of running for president. It wasn’t the sexy stories but the lack of coherence on some fundamental issues that did him in for me.
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Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, changed a lot of peoples’ image of him with his persistently positive approach in the debates. He got the second look that almost no one expected him to get, thanks to his verbal deftness and mastery of so many issues of policy and history. And didn’t the Republican revolution he masterminded and led achieve much of what it set it out to do in the 1990s? Still, Newt seemed awkward as a new frontrunner, arrogantly predicting sure victory and then thrown off-kilter by the inevitable wave of attacks by the other candidates and by a Republican establishment which is clearly in the bag for Romney. His campaign can continue, however, despite what may be a very bad showing in Iowa, and he will get more chances to make his case to a national audience in televised debates.
In Iowa today, a new insurgent campaign is making waves and may even win the day in the caucuses: that of Rick Santorum, former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. A major part of his own argument for his candidacy is that he succeeded in winning election as a conservative in a “blue” or largely liberal state. Yet, in his last election there in 2006, he was defeated by 18 percentage points, making his boast an odd one, to say the least. While I would agree with Santorum on many issues—as, indeed, I would agree with just about all the candidates on many issues—I think he fails the sunny test. A dear friend of mine is fond of referring to an analysis of presidential races that states that the sunnier candidate always wins. There is substantial truth in it. Look at the races of the TV/media age, from Kennedy vs Nixon on down, and it’s not hard to make the case that the candidate with the more optimistic aspect and message has won in each and every match-up. (It would take too long to go through it all here but have fun at home.) This doesn’t mean that we should be looking for Barney the Purple Dinosaur as our candidate, but it is a major strike against a candidate like Santorum who, when he should sound persuasive instead sounds pleading, and who when trying to be critical comes across as whining. He may be the single candidate on the GOP side who could make Barack Obama, in 2012 and with his abysmal record, seem just slightly sunnier.
Cut to the chase. My endorsement this day goes to Governor Rick Perry of Texas. I am aware that merely hours from now he may be effectively out of the race, if he does sufficiently badly in the Iowa caucuses. However, if he exceeds expectations sufficiently to keep going, he has a real chance of reviving his campaign in the southern states.
The major knock against Perry seems to be his fumbling in the debates and his inarticulate manner. Certainly, I would love to see an end to the pattern of elections where the Republican candidate is portrayed as a hick and a fool as compared to the supposedly smooth-talking and intellectual Democrat. Yet … Republicans have not done so badly in those match-ups, have they? Obama’s ability to decimate an opponent with alleged eloquence in a debate is greatly over-rated, and especially so in 2012 when he is running with the weakest record of any incumbent in living memory, and a history of making false promises and spewing lots of clever-sounding nonsense. Rick Perry can beat him, because people—including especially the all-important swing voters—are looking for substance over sophistry and record over rhetoric.
Perry is solid on the issues. I like his tax plan. I like his energy plan. I like his aggressiveness on Social Security. I like his stance on issues of life. I like his basic take on foreign policy. I like that the Washington establishment doesn’t like him. I like that he loves dogs. I am happy to endorse Rick Perry. He will have that endorsement as long he remains in the race (an encouraging prospect for him, I am sure).
Iowans now have all the information they need to caucus.
