Happy, Happy…
February 18, 2012 in Articles
The intermittent fault in the power cable?? is back after leaving me alone for a couple days. Happily, I can look forward to getting a new PC when the tax returns which are already shipped in get processed.
But that means my posts, my practise bits, and my keeping updating on Future President Santorum as he crushes the liberal squish Romney are infrequent.
M. J. Young said on February 19, 2012
You probably will never see this comment, but I’ll go ahead with it anyway, and maybe eventually it will spark a discussion.
Do you think Santorum is electable in the general?
He’s probably what would be called an extreme; there are of course several “extremes” in the Republican party–Paul is also an extreme, but his is a Libertarian wing extremism and Santorum is more a Religious Right extremism, fiscally moderately conservative.
Romney’s strength is that he’s much more a moderate conservative. He’s definitely on the conservative side of center on both moral and fiscal issues, but he’s not going to alienate centrist independents the way Santorum (or Paul) might.
Extreme candidates (e.g., Reagan, who was a perennial joke candidate prior to 1980; Obama when Cain couldn’t distance himself from the economic problems plaguing the Bush Administration) get elected when there is high dissatisfaction with the status quo blamed on the incumbent party, and they can’t distance themselves from the problems. At the moment, things are perceived to be improving fiscally–I don’t hear a lot of liberals dissatisfied with their own party, and that means there won’t be much disaffection from the Democratic block no matter who runs. That means whoever runs for the Republicans has to capture the center, or as much of it as possible. That would not be too difficult for Romney, as centrists already see Obama as extreme; but if you put Santorum forward, it will be between the extreme you know and the extreme you don’t know, and if the extreme you know happens to be doing well with the economy by then, he’s going to be re-elected.
It’s a bit like McGovern in ’72. Probably almost anyone the Democrats had put forward would have beaten Nixon; a lot of people were unhappy with Viet Nam and did not believe the war was ending. The Doves (one of the Democrats’ extremist groups) put forward McGovern, and he was slaughtered, because Nixon wasn’t doing badly enough for the centrists to risk an extreme candidate.
Santorum might be the mirror of McGovern: a golden boy with the party extremists who can’t capture the center if Obama doesn’t alienate them. Romney can probably carry the right extremists because he’s conservative “enough” and the Republicans will vote for anyone over Obama. He can probably also capture a lot of the centrists who don’t trust Obama but don’t want to leap to the opposite extreme.
Anyway, I wrote a longer comment than your piece, and don’t expect you to be able to get to it any time soon, but it’s there whenever you’re available.
–M. J. Young