Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg wrote in their post-election recap this morning that Barack Obama overcame “powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising” on his path to electoral victory. To political pros on both the left and right, it is certainly noteworthy that the country voted as convincingly as it did to reelect the president after the past four years of frustration and sluggishness. But for his part, Obama once again showed himself to be a gifted campaigner, overcoming not only the shortcomings of his first term in office but also a spirited fight from his opposition and his own woes at the debate podium. Optimism about the economy is now on the rise, though perhaps not as a direct consequence of the policies that the Obama administration has pursued or the ones it championed during the campaign.
For the Republican party, as for the New York Yankees, the focus now shifts to questions about what needs to change. Mitt Romney ran a long and often thoughtful campaign, though at times he seemed hampered by the pull of extremism from within his own party. Pundits may look back at the Republican primary season, for instance, and argue that Romney’s pull to the right was too hard for him to recover towards the center in time for the general election. The Obama campaign certainly fashioned effective rhetoric out of the ideological inconsistencies between Romney as Massachusetts Governor, Republican Primary Candidate, and Republican Presidential Nominee. And, though perhaps to a lesser extent, comments made by the likes of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock later in the campaign did not help the cause, nor did the apparent iciness between Romney and conservative darling Chris Christie in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Much apart from the Tea Party fervor that roused the base during 2009 and 2010, however, Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, presented a subtly new direction for the Republican Party, particularly in the waning months of the campaign. Romney presented a tax plan that, although never fully articulated, proceeded from sound economic theory and was thought by many analysts to be a good recipe for short-term growth. During the third debate, Romney distanced himself from the neoconservatism that drove Bush-era policy and showed a willingness to strategically limit America’s role in world affairs. Both Romney and Ryan demonstrated an ability to balance concerns about the national debt against concerns about the looming fiscal cliff. They even, at times, gave hints of a more hands-off attitude towards social issues, marking out an important distinction — though one that hasn’t been popular with the base — between personal values and policymaking.
During the 2000 election and even more so during the 2004 election, the Republican party thrived on its “big tent” constituency. George W. Bush won those elections with votes that cut across racial, demographic, and socioeconomic lines, and just as Obama did in 2008, he owned nearly all the swing states. But one question that must now be on the minds of Republican strategists is whether that big tent, which gave Bush and Cheney the White House for eight years, has gotten too big. At one point or another during the primary season, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum each seemed like serious contenders for the Republican nomination for president, their limited credentials and alarming ideas notwithstanding. That the nomination eventually went to a candidate with a more moderate background and superior command of the issues may say something about the underlying geology of the party, despite what the foliage on the surface has at times suggested.
Mitt Romney’s quest for the White House is over, but Paul Ryan, at the spry age of 42, has emerged as a clear party leader along with the headstrong and plainspoken governor of New Jersey. If this writer had to make an absurdly early prediction about the 2016 Republican ticket, it would contain those two men. Which invites the question, is the Republican party returning to the north once more, both ideologically and geographically? Is it jettisoning the deep social conservatism of the south, the neoconservatism of the early aughts, and the ignorant histrionics of the Tea Party in favor of some combination of fiscal pragmatism, social liberalism, and domestic nation-building?
A 2016 Republican ticket premised on the belief that climate change is real, gay marriage is tolerable, and budget deficits are sometimes okay, might be considered a late entrance into the realm of reality but would nonetheless present a stiff challenge to the Democrats. The question then is whether party leaders can root out the voices — which, for the time being, are many — that would seek to prevent that shift.
Mack Lannahan 