UGA Presidential Discussion Group – April 4, 2012

It was announced that the Presidential nomination has now been officially clinched by Barack Obama. It was also noted that there seems to be a theme of redemption on the Republican side as Julie Mason of POTUS stated: Romney to redeem his father’s failed run for the White House and Santorum trying to redeem his 18 point loss in the 2006 Senate race. The Republican race is essentially over so we will focus on the Fall contest.

Paul then took us through an exercise about assessing campaigns. There are four main factors that affect a campaign: the parties, the issues, candidate evaluation and the nature of the times. By assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign, each candidate can develop a strategy to win. In 2000 the issues favored the Democrats, the parties were equal as were the candidates. Thus George W. Bush acknowledged that the economy was good focusing on what we could do with the abundance of what we have. He then won by insisting that you can’t trust Al Gore because Clinton cheated on his wife.

Starting with the parties, Obama would appear to have the advantage. The Democrats are united; the Republicans are in the middle of a bruising campaign with the Tea Party fighting the moderates; and it is not clear that Romney has the skills to reunite the Republicans.

Paul prefaced the conversation on issues and ideology by saying that issues do not usually matter much but sometimes they do. Romney and the Republicans can hammer Obama and the Democrats on the growing debt/deficit problems and gas prices if they remain high. Obama and the Democrats can emphasize social issues (particularly with respect to women’s issues and those of interest to the Hispanic community), foreign policy (unless it turns bad and Obama is seen as weak) and the entitlement cuts proposed in the Ryan budget. The wild card is the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Heath Care Act and its political fallout. We described the three most likely outcomes of the court decision (total overturn of the law, overturning the mandate but leaving the rest of the law intact, upholding its constitutionality) each of which could hurt Obama and help Romney, or help Obama and hurt Romney, or not matter much of all. In other words, we came to no consensus on the issue, but it will make for great discussions in the group between the end of June and the opening of the conventions. We left the economy out of this part of the question as we relegated it to the nature of the times.

With respect to the candidates, Obama is favored by his leadership abilities and charisma in addition to the flip-flop reputation and elitist image of his opponent. Romney has the advantage in that he is perceived as a competent manager based on experience in business, government and at the Olympics. He also is from outside Washington which appears to intoxicate anyone who has ever spent time there. Both Romney and Obama have run successful nomination campaigns, but Obama has the advantage of having run a successful Presidential campaign.

The economy is obviously the big elephant in the room. If the economy continues to improve appreciably, most of what was discussed above will have little consequence with a clear advantage to Obama. If the economy goes into another slump (a triple dip) we can look forward to President Romney, #45. A modest improvement in the economy or stagnation foretells a close election where the court decision, price of gasoline, the gender gap, and other factors could become decisive. Perhaps even more important will be the mood of the country between June and November with optimism about the future favoring Obama and pessimism favoring Romney.

Based on this assessment, Obama’s best strategy would appear to define Romney as a flip-flopping Massachusetts politician who is rich and out of touch while stoking the divisions within the Republican party. Romney’s winning strategy appears to be to describe Obama as in over his head and what the country needs is a competent manager who understands how the economy works.

Somebody mentioned that Romney has suggested that Obama is a closet atheist. We do not believe that Romney should be one throwing stone on religion as he is vulnerable on that issue. The President’s statement on the Supreme Court on Monday was also discussed. Some of us thought it was a big deal and not smart to dare the court to overturn it at their peril. Others thought it wasn’t that critical. We also discussed the potential role of negative advertisements in voter suppression. It was pointed out that the most negative campaign in recent history was in 2004 and that the vote was not suppressed. Also mentioned was that the political science literature suggests that negative ads either do not suppress the vote or are over-rated in their effect. Possible third party runs were considered, but they were generally discounted.

In reviewing Presidential elections since 1960, the turnout in millions and % of the voting population was
   
2008        132.6M    56.8%
2004        122.3M    55.3%
2000        105.6M    51.3%
1996          96.5M    49.1%
1992        104.4M    55.1%
1988          91.6M    50.1%
1984          92.7M    53.1%
1980          86.5M    52.6%   
1976          81.6M    53.6%   
1972          77.7M    55.2%
1968          73.2M    60.8%
1964          70.6M    61.9%
1960          68.8M    63.1%
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html

UGA Presidential Discussion Group – March 21, 2012

Paul started our discussion with some data. We had talked about the Norrander proposition on when the last challenger the last two sessions.  The two measures of that are most predictive are the percentage of delegates that separate the frontrunner and the lead challenger (the trigger is 33%) and the gain/ deficit ratio (gain in a week divided by the number of delegates the winner needs to clinch the nomination). Justin Pinkerman has been collecting data since the beginning of the year. As of March 13, Romney led Santorum by 22% in pledged delegates and 19.5% in unofficial delegates. On Super Tuesday Romney had a 27.8% gain/ deficit ratio in pledged delegates and 35.5% (close to the threshold) for unofficial delegates. Although there are different delegate counts, these data suggest that Romney is coming close to wrapping up the nomination.

It was pointed out that Santorum would need almost 70% of the remaining delegates to get the nomination and that Romney needs from 45-50% of them. This discussion assumed that there would not be a major collapse or scandal for Romney. While such a situation is not impossible, we concluded that Romney is sufficiently clean and unexciting that he is unlikely to have any late surprise.

We concluded that the Puerto Rico and Illinois primaries were both a boost for Romney and a major setback for Santorum. If there is such a thing as momentum in this campaign, Romney has it, but this has not been a momentum contest. When Romney wins, he stresses his inevitability and pivots to attacking Obama. Then Santorum wins and steps on his economic message by discussing social issues. Santorum was particularly ineffective in these last two contests, but he has a chance to come back in Louisiana on Saturday and Wisconsin on April 3. A loss in either one will be devastating for him.   

We moved to Gingrich and questioned whether he was still relevant. Our general conclusion is that he is fading fast. He may gain some delegates in Louisiana, but prospects are poor in other states on the calendar. There are two schools of thought on his effect on the race. Some say he is helping Romney by preventing a one-on-one race with Santorum. Others indicate that Santorum’s only chance is to prevent Romney from getting to 1144 with a swing to him at the convention. If Gingrich keeps fading, he becomes irrelevant unless he is keeping Santorum from reaching thresholds at the state or district level in proportional primaries. The question becomes if Romney fails to clinch the necessary delegates before the convention will it turn to Santorum. It would seem unlikely if Romney has a clear advantage in delegates, popular votes in this year’s contests, total number of states won and number of swing states won. 

We then turned to process and how the delegates were being selected. Santorum may do better than currently projected, but it probably will not be that meaningful for the nomination. The proportional distribution of delegates has been blamed for extending the season, but one person’s rough calculation of winner-take-all states suggest that the race would be closer than with the proportional distribution.  Another factor is the Citizen’s United decision that has permitted Gingrich and Santorum to stay in the race longer than they probably would have otherwise. Citizen’s United permits super PACs to pay for advertise, but they still need day-to-day operating money. Gingrich may be very low in operating funds as he doesn’t seem to be travelling to states in play. 

Despite his third-place finish in Illinois, Ron Paul is not doing as well as many expected. He may have been handicapped by Spring Break at the University of Alabama last week and the University of Illinois this week. A discussion followed about how long current students would stick with the Pauls (Ron and Rand). Some of us thought that a gradual accumulation of students over time would come around to their view while others say that politics tend to change as students transition to the real world. Libertarian views combining fiscal conservatism, social liberalism and pacifism may be a hard sell, but a centrist party with the fiscal conservatism and social liberalism might be successful in the long run.

These comments led to a discussion of Afghanistan. Although there is a growing discontent with the war it is not as incendiary as what happened with the Vietnam War. The Republican position on Afghanistan has changed remarkably in the past year with the exception of the McCain wing. It was suggested that an Obama re-election might hasten withdrawal of troops more rapidly than a Republican, presumably Romney as Obama does not need to face re-election and Romney would and could not afford to “lose” Afghanistan. The discussion then degenerated into depressing war talk that led to an abrupt end of the session

Post-Super Tuesday Meeting 3/7/12

Paul suggested that we start our discussion with what happened last night – Super Tuesday. Two of us thought that Romney had a very good night. Others suggested that he did what he had to do but the results were mixed. Also, when most of the East Coast went to sleep, Romney was behind in Ohio with results from Idaho and Alaska still out. Thus, Romney missed the good headlines, but headlines may not be as meaningful with the Internet and television.

We reached no consensus on the implications of Super Tuesday. At this point there are no debates scheduled as Mitt Romney and Ron Paul opted out of the CNN Ohio/Georgia debate scheduled last week, and CNN cancelled it. At this point Romney has no incentive to get back in, but there might be pressure applied to him if Gingrich should drop out and it becomes a one-on-one Santorum/Romney race. There was talk of a brokered convention as described on CNN in a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but Paul is not buying it. He proposed two scenarios: (1) Romney keeps on winning delegates with Gingrich and Santorum eventually dropping out for the good of the party when it becomes obvious that Romney is going to win and (2) Gingrich (or Santorum) drops out after next week’s contests and the race comes down to a one-on-one competition. It will be interesting to see if the not-Romney candidate (presumably Santorum) actually starts picking up Tea Party endorsements. The Norrander proposition on when the last challenger drops out as we discussed last week will probably come into play when one candidate amasses a substantial number of needed delegates.

Then we moved on to Romney’s major gaffe last week on being against the Blunt-Rubio amendment before he came out for it hours later. The gaffe reinforced Romney’s predilection to flip-flopping, whether he really is really a conservative and whose team he is on. His gaffe, however failed to get much attention as it shifted to the Rush Limbaugh comments. Rush appeared to step on the Republican message on freedom of religion making it more about contraception. We then got into a heated discussion as to whether the bishops would close the Catholic hospitals in protest of the Obama policy and the possible reaction by the public. 

Moving on from that discussion we talked about the Obama press conference which not so coincidentally was held on Super Tuesday. He is definitely in full campaign mode. Obama put the Republican candidates on notice to be careful on their statements on Iran. Foreign policy appears to be a strength for Obama, but there are many hot spots that could blow up on him. It was generally agreed that there would be a rallying around him if there was a national crisis, but he could become vulnerable if he is not decisive or if things start going badly. When something happens like an Israeli bombing of Iran, it is not clear how long a honeymoon period he would get. Gas prices will be a factor and whom you really trust will be critical in November if we are still in crisis mode. 

Barring an international crisis, November still will come down to the economy. The unemployment numbers coming out on Friday will be an indication. If it is a Romney/Obama race, neither one will probably be able to capture blue-collar workers. All three primary Republican candidates are sitting at 14% of the Hispanic vote. Many Republican strategists suggest that their candidate has no chance of winning with less than 35% of the Hispanic vote. This situation helps the potential VP candidacies of Susan Martinez and Brian Sandoval. Then why are the candidates are making statements that are alienating the independent voters? The answer probably is an appeal to the base to get the nomination. The old Nixon strategy that you run to the right during primary season and then run like hell to the center for the fall campaign appears to be appropriate, but can Romney pull it off? To paraphrase a classic debate line “I knew Dick Nixon. Dick Nixon was a friend of mine. Governor, you are no Dick Nixon.”  

10/27/11 Meeting

The meeting opened with a discussion about the 2 articles Paul emailed group members about Herman Cain. The first article discussed Cain in the context of the conventional (but often wrong) wisdom that the front runner in the invisible primary in the polls usually secures the nomination (think Giuliani and Clinton). The second article, written by Nate Silver on his FiveThirtyEight Blog, talks about how Cain lacks many of the fundamentals seen as critical to winning the nomination. In order to analyze this, Silver runs some simple correlations to measure how quintessential fundamentals such as organization and fundraising prowess (which he combines to form what he calls the candidate's GPA) correlates with poll standings in November back to the 1992 primaries. He finds that his GPA correlates with poll standings at .80-a relatively strong value. There is, however, one data point that is a considerable outlier: showing a weak non-polling GPA of 4.0 with an usually strong polling GPA of 8.0. And that data point belongs to none other than Herman Cain.

We then discussed one critical variable in Silver's non-polling GPA: the puzzling paradox of Cain's current strong showing in Iowa polls (see the latest Des Moines Register poll of likey caucus particpants http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/cain-and-romney-top-iowa-poll/ despite the fact that he has virtually no presence in the state. Only 2 months out from the election, Cain still isn't actively campaigning in Iowa, focusing instead on his national book tour and on appearances on political talk shows. Meanwhile, Romney's substantial organization in Iowa has yet to result in pushing him to front-runner status, nor in more than 23% in most polls. (For interesting and quick analysis of how support breaks down by demographics see The Des Moines Register caucus analysis page.

This led to a discussion of what might happen should Cain win Iowa without engaging in the traditional boots-on-the-ground retail politics long seen as vital to winning the state. With Santorum spending 65 days thus far in Iowa, and scheduled to make his final appearance in the 99th of Iowa's 99 counties (the only candidate to do so thus far) yet failing to make any headway in the Register poll between June and now-some group members opined that a Cain victory might have 2nd and 3rd tier candidates questioning the effectiveness of the the retail politics strategy in future contests. It certainly didn't work for John Edwards in the 2008 cycle. He literally moved his whole family to Iowa for the year before the caucus only to come in 3rd in the caucus and to drop out of the race.Still, pre-contest organization and retail politics is one thing but the real importance of organization becomes apparent on caucus day. Because of the complexities of the caucus system, candidates need to have caucus experts and insiders on hand to wheel and deal for delegates, as well as the organization to get potential supporters to the caucus. Lacking these resources, it is quite possible that the candidate leading in the polls (Cain) will not ultimately prevail on election day. This is why despite the fact that Romney has not yet spent a great deal of time actually in Iowa, he has a substantial organizational presence there.

Other topics discussed: the chatter regarding Perry floating the idea of not participating in anymore debates (which most group members and pundits alike think would be a fatal decision), Cain's flub on the abortion issue, and Romney's flip-flopping on several issues in the lat 2 years. The group agrees that Romney's triangulation is substantive and not similar to Kerry's mistake of trying to explain congressional procedure which led to his infamous quote which was levied as an effective weapon by the Bush campaign team of being "for [the bill] before being against it." In contrast Romney has changed positions on several key issues and not over  long period of time. Some of this is a result of Romney's tenure as the governor of Massachusetts, a liberal stronghold. The rest is a result of the sharp turn to the right the Republican Party has taken over the course of the last decade, which has forced Romney to waffle on issues as he tries to address his conservative shortcomings, which ironically are some of his best weapons against Obama should he win the nomination and they are both fighting for the coveted Independent vote. Regardless of the rationale behind these policy position changes- voters may be wary of supporting a candidate seen as blowing whichever way the wind blows and just as his fellow GOP contenders are doing, Obama's team will certainly highlight the issue during the general election.

So, that's what you missed at this week's meeting. Only 2 months out from the first contests, the meetings are heating up. Hope to see some new folks there this week! (Thursdays 2:15-3:15, room 302 Baldwin Hall).

10/20/11 Meeting

The meeting opened with a discussion of the latest polling from RealClearPolitics.com. A poll from Iowa showed Cain with a modest lead over Romney with 26% to Romney’s 22%. The latest polling from NH reflects Romney’s current surge with the establishment and more moderate wing of the party with Romney at 40% and Cain at 18%. The SC poll shows that Cain leads Romney by 9% with 31% to Romney’s 22%. Finally, Florida’s poll shows Romney and Cain in a virtual tie with Romney at 31% and Cain at 29%.

Paul provided an interesting update regarding the primary schedule by sharing with the group recent developments of counties in South Carolina refusing to stage a primary due to budgetary concerns. The state is in the process of challenging this in court. Paul opined that the state’s Republican Party would likely receive substantial assistance from the national GOP to stage a party-sponsored primary rather than see the important SC primary canceled.

The rest of the meeting focused on the (at the time) latest debate in Viva Las Vegas. Unfortunately for Romney, what happened in Vegas definitely didn’t stay in Vegas as the airwaves replayed Perry’s and his chest-pointing “fight” over immigration and Perry’s charge that Romney used illegal immigrants as landscapers. But by and large, the debate focused on Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan.  The debate opening with each candidate ripping it to shreds leaving Cain affable but flustered as he tried gamely to defend his plan using an apples and oranges analogy that reminded viewers of Perry’s poorly executed “flip-flopper” attacks on Romney in the previous debate. The criticisms were buoyed by a recent analysis from The Heritage Foundation (among other groups) that found Cain’s original plan (he has since been trying to modify it) would result in a net tax increase for 86% of all Americans: making it dead on arrival to the rest of the field as well as the congressional Republicans.  

Although this developed after Thursday’s meeting, Cain has also come under fire from the other candidates for comments he made in an interview regarding the government’s proper role on the abortion issue. Cain committed the cardinal sin of trying to stay consistent with conservative orthodoxy on limited government by taking a quasi-pro choice position on abortion-leading some to speculate that he has committed political suicide, particularly in Iowa. The base of the Republican Party has not often embraced candidates with moderate stances on abortion-particularly at the presidential primary level. Although they begrudgingly got behind John McCain in 2008 (his efforts to appease them by debating Obama with Pastor Rick Warren seemed to help somewhat) the primary is not a good time to wax philosophical about limited government in private matters, although it was probably well-received by Ron Paul supporters.  As the polling discussed at the beginning of this post was released before this story broke and before the critiques of the 9-9-9 plan were widely covered, it remains to be seen whether Cain will still be the front runner in Iowa by the time the next major debates are held on November 9^th and 12^th.

That’s what you missed-hope to see you next Thursday in room 302 of Baldwin Hall at 2:15pm.

9/22/11 Meeting

* I apologize for the delay in getting this post up. I had to let my dog (my very best friend in the world for the past 15 years) go on Monday night and was unable to do a post.


The 9/22 meeting was focused on the fallout from the Florida Tea Party debate and Rick Perry’s fall from frontrunner status due to his lackluster debate performance. Discussion centered on Perry’s inability to articulate his points contrasted with Romney’s polished performance which looked even more so against Perry’s blunders. Clearly, Romney is benefitting from the experience factor of having competed in the 2008 cycle and the numerous debates he participated in. In 2008, Romney was seen as the frontrunner in the invisible primary period and as such, most of his fellow contenders were focused on him. This has no doubt better prepared him for this cycle’s debates. One group member posited that it was strange that Bachmann, Cain, and especially Hunstman focused their attention on Perry, who came into the debate with a modest lead on Romney in some polls. He argued that despite this modest lead, the other candidates should focus on Romney because he has been consistently competitive, has the best organization, and of all the candidates (aside from Huntsman), he has the best appeal to moderate Republicans and Independents. This point was countered with the argument that the candidates tend to focus on whoever is leading in the polls going into the debate in a classic “attack the frontrunner” strategy and that now that we know beyond a doubt that the field is settled (even though Palin still refuses to publically state that she is not running, the filing deadlines are this week and next) we can expect that debates will focus on trying to mitigate the lead of the frontrunner, which has now reverted to Romney.


However, the most interesting result of the debate is the surge in the polls by Herman Cain, who was identified by the FL caucus members as the winner of the debate. Cain’s surge is largely comprised from people fleeing Perry and switching their support to Cain, who is now the strongest Tea Party candidate in the field. We discussed how Cain’s lack of political office experience and his race might affect Republican primary voters in the early states and in the general against Obama. Because the Tea Party movement has made “outsider” status an asset and not a curse, some group members feel that his lack of elective office experience will only help him with TP Republicans. Additionally, he has an extensive business resume including his time as CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, so as he gains exposure to the masses, more moderate Republicans may dismiss his more extreme right positions and focus on his business credentials as this election cycle will be all “about the economy, stupid.”  I opined that Cain has an advantage over Romney in IA and SC because he is an evangelical Christian whereas Romney is a Mormon. Although some of the mystery about his Mormonism will be tempered by the fact that it was a key issue in the ’08 cycle, it is not clear if social/religious conservatives will be comfortable with his religion. This will be hard to determine because they may reject him purely on the basis of his relatively moderate social issue positions. How this plays out will be one of the more interesting aspects of the primaries should Romney stay in the top tier. Rob pointed out that Romney understood and made good use of the debate rules. He rarely referred to other candidates, particularly Perry, by name because doing so immediately allows that person a 30 second response. However, Perry did not seem to be aware of this, or if so could not discipline himself to not say Romney’s name. This allowed Romney to get a lot of extra talk time, which he used to his advantage.


The group also discussed the potential role of race should Cain win the nomination. If this happened then we would again have a historic election as there would be two African-American candidates as the major party nominees. Should Obama win-his legacy as the nation’s 1^st black president extends to a 2^nd term. Should Cain win, then we would have consecutive black presidents representing both sides of the political spectrum, neither of whom had substantial experience coming into the Oval Office- a tantalizing situation for scholars of presidential politics. Would Cain’s presence on the ticket neutralize the race factor for Obama? Might it also help to neutralize it for the element of the TP that were (and in some cases still are) in the “birther movement?” Would Cain be able to pull any of the solidly Democratic black votes away from Obama or would it have the inverse affect of galvanizing the black vote like in ’08 as black voters become aware of Cain’s decidedly conservative social and economic positions? As far as the primary goes, the group was divided on whether Cain would be attractive to black voters. Statistics on the black vote show that 95+% of black voters cast their ballots for Democrats in most cases. However, if Cain was able to pull even 5% away from Obama it could be decisive in a few cases.


These issues and more are sure to be discussed in this week’s meeting on Thursday, October 6^th at 2:15 in room 302 of Baldwin Hall. Be there or be square. However, I’ll be tailgating in the parking lot of Autzen Stadium in Oregon, so the nest 2 weeks will be blogged by a guest blogger. Should you have any interest in doing the blog for both or either of those weeks-please talk to Paul Gurian.

9/22/11 Meeting

This week's meeting started off with a proposed agenda by fill-in host Rob. The three items on the agenda were a discussion of that evening's upcoming debate in Florida, comments regarding the articles Paul sent via email regarding possible back-lash effects if the Republicans in Pennsylvania indeed change their electoral college allocation system from winner-take-all to a district-based allocation system and an article regarding a possible 3rd party candidacy based on several polls showing a majority of respondents' expressing their desire to see an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. 

This inspired a brief conversation about whether a moderate 3rd party (Republican) candidate would enter the race should Rick Perry win the nomination. Although the group has discussed on several occasions the opposite scenario (a 3rd party candidacy from a Tea Party Republican like Bachmann or Perry), this new and interesting possibility of a moderate challenge evoked some interesting comments. Despite Perry's current front runner status and momentum, it is not clear that voters in states such as NH, FL, and NV will support Perry over Romney because of Perry's general election electability issues. In fact, a recent CNN poll of Republican voters indicates that despite a large divide on issues like climate change and gay marriage between self-identified Tea Party Republicans and "regular" Republicans, a clear majority of both groups indicated that they plan on engaging in sophisticated voting by supporting a different candidate over their preferred candidate in order to give the party the best chance possible to capture the White House. That Tea Party Republicans indicate that they are willing to settle for less than ideological purity in order to "make Barack Obama a one-term president" is an interesting finding. However, Iowans do not traditionally put electability above ideology and the massive winnowing that usually occurs by the conclusion of the Iowa Caucuses could hinder the ability of later-state R voters to select an acceptable alternative to their first choice.

The meeting then moved on to a discussion about that evening’s upcoming debate in FL and the fact that Perry would need to perform better than he did at the Tea Party debate. Of course, the group anticipated that Perry would be under attack from all sides again, because he is the front-runner. A full discussion of the debate will be the centerpiece of this week’s upcoming meeting, so please feel free to join us as it produced some interesting discussion points.

Off agenda-the group discussed the enthusiasm gaps between Republican and Democratic voters in the 2008 and 2010 elections and whether or not Democratic voters will turn up in the rates they did in ’08 for this presidential election. This led me to raise an interesting question. Does the enthusiasm gap stem almost entirely from supporting the out-of-power party or does it have a policy basis? If the Dems don’t show up at the polls in ’12, and the Republicans do-this will provide some anecdotal evidence that out-of-power status is the key determinant of the enthusiasm gap. If however, the Ds turn out in droves again, and the Rs do as well, this would seem to indicate that there is a policy element to the gap. With the biggest issues in many decades on the table (Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes, Romney’s proposed social security changes, and Obama’s jobs bill which proposes ending the Bush Tax Cuts as well as other revenue-raising aspects, and the debacle in Wisconsin galvanizing unions and other collective-action supporters) it would seem that if rank-and-file voter enthusiasm has a policy element, it should manifest on both sides this election season.

So that’s what you missed at the meeting this week. We hope top see you this Thursday at 2:15pm in room 302 of Baldwin Hall. Bring a friend!

9/15/11 Meeting

The week's meeting opened with a discussion of polling results on RealClearPolitics.com, which have Obama's current average job approval number at 44% nationally. Paul commented that this is relatively close to Bush's approval rating at the same time in the ‘04 cycle, as he was grappling with a slowing economy and an unemployment rate that had jumped up to 4/9%-provoking panic from the Wall St. class and the then completely out-of-power Democrats. RCP's averaged national numbers for the Republican primary contenders was also discussed. Although newcomer Rick Perry is just above 30%, Romney remains competitive with 20%. The most notable change is Bachmann's share of the pie, which has decreased precipitously as foretasted as many of her supporters have jumped ship to Perry's campaign. Of course, these are averaged numbers from national polls. What really matters is how the candidates are faring in the early states such as IA, NH, SC, NV, and Florida. The most recent state polling available on RCP is from August, as does not accurately reflect the field's distribution post-Perry's declared candidacy.

            The second half of the meeting focused on the first ever Tea Party debate. Overall group consensus was that Perry struggled in the debate as he came under attack from both the right (Bachmann/Paul) and the left (Romney/Huntsman) of the conservative spectrum. It was clear that Perry particularly struggled with defending attacks on his executive order that bypassed the Texas legislature to require all Texas girls to receive the HPV vaccine as well as on in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the group mostly concurred that Romney performed well, again demonstrating that he is the most seasoned top-tier presidential primary candidate in the GOP field. Perry’s continuing momentum may have done Romney a substantial favor because not many political observers (including this author) would have predicted a Romney victory in the Tea Party debate a month ago. As Romney learned in 08-front- runner status isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, especially in terms of primary debates. Still, despite the barrage of criticisms Perry largely kept himself on message and didn’t respond to the attacks. He also had high moments, such as when his record of overseeing more than 200 executions since being governor of Texas brought cheers from the crowd.

            As for the other candidates, Paul’s “let em’ die” stance on health insurance and controversial comments about 9/11 that were not well received by the audience, were discussed. Gringrich’s focus on Obama rather than on his Republican competitors was led one group member to wonder whether he was trying to set himself up as a potential vice presidential pick, leading another member to quip that “no one would want Newt as their VP.” Bachmann made impassioned attacks on some aspects of Perry’s record as governor of Texas, but it was not clear that the attacks had enough bite to snare back her former supporters from him.

            The meeting closed with a discussion of proposed changes in Electoral College allocations being proposed by some Republicans legislators in Pennsylvania, as well as in MI and WI.  NPR reports that some Republican legislators in PA want to change PA’s winner-take-all allocation system to a district-based system, which would almost certainly result in a split of the state’s ECs between the Republican nominee and Obama. This is certainly within PAs rights and abilities, as the Constitution only provides the framework of the EC system and leaves the details up to the individual states. Two states already have a proportional allocation system-Nebraska and Maine and the Obama 08 campaign famously capitalized on this by focusing in on the Democratic districts in NE, a deep red state from which their strategy successfully eked out 1 EC vote out of the state’s 5 total. Please see both http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/gop-electoral-college-plan-beat-obama-2012  and http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/  for some interesting commentary regarding this and for insights on how such changes could both help or hinder both party's 2012 campaign efforts. 

Next meeting is this Thursday, September 22^nd at 2:15 in room 302 of Baldwin Hall. Hope to see you there!

8/3/11 Meeting

The meeting opened with a discussion of the debt ceiling fiasco's possible effects on presidential politics-particularly nomination politics. The fact that Romney broke two months of silence on the issue just as the bill was being passed was discussed. Some members thought Romney's statement was a blatant effort (and perhaps too little too late) to court Tea Party supporters by condemning the bill, stating “while I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal.” In the last 2 weeks of the showdown-Romney started to take a lot of heat, particularly from the Tea Party for not issuing a statement on his position. This was exasperated by the fact that Michele Bachmann made several statements, including one on Meet the Press several weeks ago, that she would unequivocally be voting against any increase in the debt limit, no matter what. Whether Romney’s rejection of the deal is enough to convince base voters that he is embracing the Tea Party’s fiscal position rather than Establishment Republican’s position which, like that of President Obama and the Democratic members of congress, maintains that failure to raise the debt ceiling would be catastrophic and must be avoided at all costs.

The rest of meeting was focused on recapping topics discussed over the summer CDG session, of which this meeting was the last. As usual in presidential campaigns, each week focused on new candidates, strategies, issues, and campaign events, which reflects the complex dynamics of our presidential nomination system. Paul will be sending out emails to all group members on the CDG listserv regarding availabilities for the fall semester session (if you are not receiving CDG emails, please email Paul and he will add you). Because orientation week and the first week of classes are so hectic, the meetings will not resume until after the first week of the semester. Hope to see you there when they do!