5/25/11

The last two weeks have been a flurry of activity. Gingrich and Pawlenty both formally announced their campaigns, while Trump, Daniels and most notably, Huckabee officially bowed out. We spent some time discussing who is most likely to pick up Huckabee's substantial share of voters, with most group members opining that Pawlenty will benefit unless Palin or Bachmann decide to throw their hat into the ring.

We also spent some time discussing Gingrich's rocky start, a bi-product of his controversial statements on Meet the Press where he came close to endorsing a federal mandate for health insurance and called the Ryan budget "right-wing social engineering." Some in the group argued that Gringrich still has plenty of time to recover (and the backpedaling began immediately) but also believe that these will only be the first of many verbal missteps from the gaffe-prone Gingrich.

One thing that became clear from the backfire is that support of the Ryan budget will likely be a litmus test for the party's conservative base. The last week has been filled with soundbites of other Republican nomination hopefuls tactfully trying to endorse the Ryan budget while still leaving themselves the wiggle room needed to triangulate with the general election audience, with whom the Ryan budget's proposed medicare changes polls very poorly.

This led the group to spend some time discussing the apparent division in the party between establishment members and party strategists, and the party purists and Tea Party contingent. Despite playing it cool for the press, the outcome of Tuesday's New York 26 congressional race no doubt has the attention of party leaders and Republican presidential nomination candidates as many pundits speculate that Republican candidate Jane Corwin's endorsement of the Ryan budget played a key role in Democrat Kathy Hochul's upset victory in a district that hasn't gone Democrat in over 40 years. Of course, if the majority of the 9% of votes that went to Tea Party candidate Jack Davis went instead to Corwin, she probably would have still pulled out a win. Some discussion of the Tea Party and their influence in both the presidential elections as well as the 2012 congressional elections ensued.

The meeting wrapped up with some discussion about historical campaigns and how it came to be that the Republican Party is dealing with the intra-party divisions that used to plaque the Democrats. The 2008 nomination campaign failed to produce a nominee that fired up the both the base and attracted independent voters. Of course, the extreme unpopularity of Bush and the Iraq war, as well as an economy spiraling out of control made it a tough contest for any Republican to win. Thus far, the field of declared candidates and potential candidates has failed to produce a Republican that seems suited to accomplish this goal in 2012 leaving some in the group to wonder why. Additionally, the emergence of the Tea Party in 2009 seems more likely to exacerbate these issues than to resolve them. The meeting closed with a discussion of the possibility that some of the GOP's strongest candidates are waiting for 2016 and an open contest rather than taking on the formidable Obama campaign machine.

4/15/11-5/6/11

The last couple of weeks have centered on mapping potential candidates on a 2 dimensional social and fiscal conservatism space. Thanks to Jaeyun's efforts, a graph was presented at the meeting and was the focal point of discussion. The data for the graph are derived from a poll of Republican strategists who were asked to rank their top 5 choices, with Romney and Pawlenty garnering the most votes. Some worried that it may be prudent to use polling results instead, because the data produce a graph that seems to distort the size of Romney's lead. However, there aren't any current polls that list all of the potential candidates so using that method would mean leaving candidates such as Huntsman and Bachmann out. So the graph is a work in progress, but provides a useful visual aid for understanding how the candidates compare ideologically.

The size and location of each candidate's circle is determined by the number of votes they received in the straw poll, and by how group members perceive their ideological placement on both fiscal and social conservatism. The graph shows Romney and Huckabee alone on the two left quadrants because both candidates are more moderate than their counterparts on fiscal policy and Romney is alone as the only moderate on social and fiscal issues. That the rest of the candidates are clustered together in the right hand side quadrants led several in the group to comment that they may be well-positioned because the clustered candidates will largely be fighting over the same voters.

The conversation then turned to the death of Bin Laden, which some group members see as a major coupe for the President that can be useful in his reelection campaign, provided the Democrats are strategic and develop smart ads that remind voters of it. If nothing else, Obama's success neutralizes any "soft on terrorism" attack ads the GOP may have otherwise run and goes a long way towards buffering up both his foreign policy credentials, and the way the public views him as Commander and Chief. Others feel that Afghanistan still poses a major problem for Obama.

The group will not be meeting next week, but will resume the following week at the regular time and place (3:00pm Friday Baldwin 326). Now that the semester is finished we hope that attendance will grow. See you there!