Dean, Goldwater, and the Netroots

My discussion with Jon Henke and Patrick Ruffini at The Next Right made it into kos’s Sunday reading and he responded with a lengthy reflection on Howard Dean, the Goldwater Republicans, and the netroots (past, present and future).

Mulling over Henke’s and Ruffini’s respective suggestions that Romney or Palin take the lead of the RNC, kos pulls out an intriguing alternative:

While I’m not keen to offer the GOP advice, here’s who I think (in a genuine, non-concern-troll way) would be their best candidate: Mike Huckabee. He is exactly the GOP’s version of Howard Dean — a popular governor of a small state, with a huge, energized following who briefly led his party’s nomination contest before being kneecapped by his party’s establishment. Like Dean, Huckabee isn’t an insider, isn’t one of them, and as such, isn’t bound by their outdated and obsolete conventions. Like Dean, Huckabee offers a different direction from his party. Dean wanted muscular, unapologetic progressivism. Huckabee wants a more compassionate version of conservatism — not fake “compassion” like Bush’s, but the real stuff. “Big government conservatism”, as his fiercest detractors charge.

kos then goes on to argue that while Huckabee has the support of the theocratic base, the internal divisions between theocons (e.g. Huckabee and Palin) and corporate-cons (e.g. Giuliani and Romney) are likely to sabotage efforts to achieve party unity for quite some time. He also lays out an important obstacle that Huckabee never quite overcame:

But if Huckabee has the ground troops, what is he missing? The money. He got far in his primary race without any, winning Iowa with something like $27. But he won’t be able to rebuild his party on shoe leather alone.

Us Demcoratic rebels bypassed the Terry McAuliffe wing of our party by building our own alternate small-dollar fundraising mechanism. Without that cash, Dean would’ve never existed, and the establishment’s favorite candidate, Hillary Clinton, would’ve been (for better or for worse) our nominee and future president. Her hundred million dollars wasn’t enough because Obama was able to match her dollar for dollar in 2007, and ultimately blow by her in early 2008.

Huckabee, for all his talents, has been unable to motivate his ardent supporters to pony up. That’s the challenge for the GOP’s Huckabees — to create their own independent funding mechanism distinct from the corporate con spigot. Once they have that figured out (perhaps Sarah Palin’s role in the process?), their civil war will be fully engaged.

Conservatives laughed when Dean took the DNC’s helm and look how that turned out. But our differences with the DLC types was a matter of degree and strategy — a little more populist, a lot more aggressive. The fundamentals that united us as a party were not ideologically mutually exclusive.

kos’ assessment takes it for granted that we’re witnessing the collapse of the Goldwater/Reagan alliance of cultural and fiscal conservatism that has been the bread-and-butter of the Republican party for the better part of 50 years. If that is the case, the resulting shake-up may do more than merely re-structure the composition of the Right; it may provide the basis for a much broader realignment of the electorate.

Before I get to that, however, I should point out that the parallel between Dean and Goldwater is illustrative for several reasons, all of which support the view that the Right today faces a totally different sort of challenge. In both cases, the candidate represented a vocal and growing faction within his party. It also helped that these respective factions could boast of robust organizational strategies that successfully scaled at the national level.

Can the same be said of the Palin/Huckabee supporters within the Republican party today? I don’t think so, although I’d welcome evidence to the contrary.

Now, to the question of re-alignment. If the subsequent struggle for power is half as scornful as Peggy Noonan, the GOP will splinter even further than it already has. It’s still too difficult to predict the impact this might have on the national political scene, but the profound demographic and cultural changes that have taken place since Goldwater could facilitate the rise of a new conservative alliance to replace the old.

What would that new alliance look like? Clearly, there are potential constituencies among the Huckabee and Ron Paul acolytes. However, in order to rise to national power, any new conservative movement will need to take a substantial bite out of the groups currently supporting Democrats. I don’t have any insights into how that will happen, but the current jockeying for position within the Republican party will likely determine the available options.

Spare tire or fifth wheel?

In an NYT op-ed today, Glenn Reynolds performs dizzying feats of illogic, twisting and stretching a strict-constructionist definition of the vice-presidency like a balloon animal at a children’s birthday party:

The most important function of a vice president is to serve as a spare president. Using the spare president in the ordinary course of business is as unwise as driving on one’s spare tire. Spares should be kept pristine, for when they are really needed.

If the president resigns or is removed from office, a vice president who has been involved in the activities of the executive branch is also likely to be at risk for impeachment. Just as important, a vice president who is enmeshed in the affairs of the president cannot offer a fresh start for the executive branch.

This odd line of defense of Sarah Palin’s ignorant statements on the subject has very little basis in either precedent or case-law (and last time I checked, that was still the way our legal system was supposed to operate).

Reynolds has been making the same case for years, but has still not found a way around earlier critiques of his underlying assumption that it is illegal for the president to delegate executive powers to elected officials.

In calling for congress to legislate the responsibilities of the VP’s office, Reynolds thus endorses a strangely activist interpretation of the constitution that does not reflect the evolution of the executive branch during the last half century. Forgive me if I’m missing something here, but I just don’t see the point (beyond reading this as a chivalrous effort to save Palin from herself).

If the congress wants to take action to prevent Cheney-esque abuses of power in the future, there are more restrained and direct ways of doing so that do not involve such precious legal reasoning.

Chuck Todd: Palin and McCain “on the verge of pulling a Bullworth”

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. The quote comes around 2:30 into the clip

McCain and Palin are edgy because they’re reading the same polls as Nate Silver.

(h/t TPM)

Must read: Jane Mayer on Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin (photo by scriptingnews cc-by-sa)

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker profiles Sarah Palin in this week’s issue and it’s not to be missed.

There are a number of extraordinary gems – especially the details about how Palin has very carefully constructed her “outsider” reputation by means of east coast publicists and a faux folksy demeanor. Nevertheless, my favorite passage discusses the lead-up to McCain’s decision on a runningmate:

By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”

With just days to go before the Convention, the choices were slim. Karl Rove favored McCain’s former rival Mitt Romney, but enough animus lingered from the primaries that McCain rejected the pairing. “I told Romney not to wait by the phone, because ‘he doesn’t like you,’ ” [American Conservative Union chairman Charles] Keene, who favored the choice, said. “With John McCain, all politics is personal.”

…Charles R. Black, Jr., the lobbyist and political operative who is McCain’s chief campaign adviser, reportedly favored Palin. Keene said, “I’m told that Charlie Black told McCain, ‘If you pick anyone else, you’re going to lose. But if you pick Palin you may win.’ ”

I can only imagine what would have happened had McCain selected Lieberman – they might have taken enough of the Clintonian center-right to win, but then would have been forced to govern without the support of either party. All in all a foolish idea that McCain’s advisors were wise to quash.

Equally interesting are the passages I’ve bolded for emphasis. In these (and other) moments, Mayer conveys a vivid sense of McCain’s testy disposition in the face of a difficulty.

The True Successor to George W. Bush: Sarah Palin

Anyone who harbored doubts as to the political credentials and personal style of Sarah Palin needs to read the profiles published by the NYT and WaPo over the weekend.

The Washington Post piece focuses on Palin’s brief tenure as Mayor of Wasilla, where she reduced her personal responsibilities by hiring an administrator, bought a new car, lambasted taxes and corruption (at the same time as she used growing city revenues to dish out favors and hockey rinks), ousted experienced professionals from positions in the public administration, and raked in a steady stream of pork from D.C.

The Times, on the other hand, offers a close look at the workings of Palin’s inner circle during her stints as Mayor and Governor respectively. Generally speaking, the authors uncover recurring examples of cronyism, personal aggrandizement, secretive tactics to evade accountability and transparency,  absentee governance , corruption, and personal attacks and intimidation against anyone who disagreed with the “typical hockey mom.”

Remind you of anyone you know?

Let’s see…a lack of executive experience, lack of foreign policy knowledge, allegations of corruption and abuse of power, rhetorical support for fiscal conservatism matched by reckless, spendthrift behavior…

Wait, wait, don’t tell me!

Do we really need to wait for Palin’s palls in the Alaska state house to get promotions before we confirm that she (and her supporters) are not up to the job

Approximately 80% of the country agrees that the Bush administration has mismanaged the country. To me, that suggests that further illumination of Palin’s profound character flaws and irresponsible actions will raise some tough questions for the McCain/Palin campaign.

John McCain has argued that he and Palin are “mavericks” who will change Washington. With a voting record that agrees with Bush 90% of the time and a Vice-Presidential nominee who resembles the former Texas governor in more ways than one, this misleading rhetoric will not stick.