Republicans

On to Boulder

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COORS12PKCANS3bfhrp6SlXf_anHTonight, fourteen of the fifteen remaining Republican candidates meet at the Coors Event Center in Boulder, Colorado for their third debate. As before, the size of the field forced the organizers to split it into two debates. In the first, which no one will watch, Bobby Jindal, Lindsay Graham, George Pataki and Rick Santorum will struggle for attention. Jim Gilmore wasn’t invited. How much longer will these men continue to campaign? Jindal, alone, has a chance of breaking out of the pack, and even his odds are looking longer by the day.

In the main debate, erstwhile frontrunner Donald Trump will participate from behind in the polls for the first time. He must do something to regain his dwindling fanbase, but I don’t think it’s possible. What brought them to him in the first place had nothing to do with words or reason, and no words or reason can bring them back. What will be interesting is how he tries: will Trump attack the new favorite, Ben Carson, or will he continue his assault on Jeb Bush?

Carson, who now outpolls Trump in Iowa by a significant margin, is difficult to figure out. It’s hard for the other candidates to go negative against him because even people (like me) who don’t want to vote for him still think of him as a decent man. The usual Trump bombast might backfire. On the other hand, a more solid performance from Carson might increase his lead, especially if he looks less bewildered than last time.

For Bush, who I think who would do the best job as President, the challenge is to show himself as the best candidate. His campaign has featured the most well-thought-out policy proposals of any of them, but he has yet to translate earnest desire for the job into a more inspirational fire in the belly that will draw supporters to his cause.

Of all of the candidates, Marco Rubio has risen the most in my estimation through his debate performance. He consistently knows what he’s talking about and comes up with thoughtful, conservative answers. His poll numbers have been rising, and another good performance could convince undecided voters that he is up to the job.

Since her inspiring performance last time, Carly Fiorina has been coasting back down to the middle of the pack. She’s the most credible of the outsider candidates, and this is her chance to show it again. Cruz, too, could use this debate as the chance to push ahead of the pack. As the only candidate to straddle the outsider-insider divide, he could pick up some of the supporters Trump is losing, especially if he manages to sound more bellicose. They seem to like that.

Christie has been out of the news so much I keep forgetting he’s running. He had a good showing last time, but something seems to be holding him back. Likewise, Kasich has been getting some supporters, but seems blocked by the other mainstream candidates. Paul will keep looking for the libertarian moment. Sadly, I don’t think 2016 is it. But some good answers on civil liberties questions might brighten his candidacy.

Huckabee will probably make some good conservative answers and sell a few more books, which seems to be the point of his candidacy.

If you’re tired of my opinions, here are some from a few other people:

Two throwbacks

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As promised, this is the next in a series of posts on my thoughts about the 2016 presidential candidates. Today, I’ll cover two of the less popular candidates: Jim Gilmore and George Pataki, both of whom should just give up already.

Besides consistently polling below 1%, the two have a great deal in common. Both were governors of large states around the turn of the century: Gilmore in Virginia (1998-2002) and Pataki in New York (1995-2006). Both have considered running for President before, with Gilmore launching an exploratory committee in 2008 and Pataki trying to gin up support in Iowa in 2012. Both would have made excellent candidates in years ago and both have been out of elected office for so long that they have no real chance in 2016.

Gilmore is 66 years old and is best known in Virginia for reducing the car tax. That tax still exists down there and even my Democratic friends there still complain about it, so it must have been a real bear. After leaving office in 2002 (Virginia’s governors are term-limited) and making a failed bid for the U.S. Senate in 2008, Gilmore has served on various boards and contributed to Fox News. He made a good impression in the first Republican debate, but he was in the secondary group that received far less attention. He seems eminently qualified, but I can’t help thinking that being out of office for thirteen years has diminished the voters’ awareness of him to the vanishing point. I don’t know why he’s still running.

Pataki, at 70, is the oldest candidate in the Republican race (Trump is next oldest at 69). He served three terms as Governor of New York, having defeated lefty icon Mario Cuomo in 1994, a great year for Republicans. He was about as conservative as a New York Republican can be, bringing back the death penalty and cutting taxes while being more to the left of the national party on the environment and gay issues. Pataki was reelected twice and retired from the state house in 2006. After declining a run at the Senate in 2010, Pataki has been around, but not in office. In 2008, he probably would’ve made a good candidate. In 2016, having not run for office in fourteen years, he, too, has been forgotten by many voters. His debate performance stood out to me mostly for his enthusiastic endorsement of NSA surveillance. I don’t know why he’s still running.

Both of these men have decent credentials, but their time has come gone. The best thing they would do is drop out, endorse somebody more popular, and work to keep the party from nominating Donald Trump. But I think it will take a few more undercard debates to drive it home to them.

Tangled Webb

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It looks like the end of Jim Webb’s quest for the presidency, at least as a Democrat. I thought he would hang around a little longer but, having given reporters a chance to dust off the word “quixotic,” Webb’s campaign appears to be an end.

As we discussed last week, Webb was bound to fail because the constituency he represented most strongly, Appalachian Democrats, no longer exists in any strength. The shift has been dramatic, much more so than the lowland South’s fifty-year mosey over to the party of Lincoln or New England’s gradual drift to the party of Jeff Davis. Parts of Appalachia, like eastern Tennessee, have always had Republicans (V.O. Key made that point in Southern Politics in 1949!) but much of the region stayed strong until much more recently. Look at the George Bush’s 1988 landslide: even as every state around it voted Republican, West Virginia was Dukakis’s sixth-best state. Clinton carried it twice, and it wasn’t even close! But since George W. Bush narrowly won it (and the surrounding regions of nearby states) in 2000, the Democrats have given up on West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia. Webb’s fate just proves the point to anyone who had any doubt.

Being abandoned by one party, though, doesn’t make you love the other. Plenty of Webb Democrats are now Republicans, but I suspect many others simply view the G.O.P. as the next best thing, rather than a true political home as FDR’s Democratic Party was to them. Without an effort from the Republicans, Webb Democrats have as much chance of becoming Trumpites as anything. Republicans have been getting better at envisioning solutions to urban poverty, they should not neglect the plight of the rural poor. The national Democrats have abandoned a whole section of America. The GOP should not do the same.