So John Thune isn't running for president, after all.
Thune's slot, as David Frum argued last week, was "generic Republican." A position undermined to some extent by some of the votes he's had to cast as a US Senator, as Dave Weigel points out. Still, I'm always a bit suspicious of claims like Weigel's that a single vote -- in this case, TARP -- makes it impossible for a candidate to win the nomination.
The thing is that someone has to win, and most candidates wind up with at least one difficult vote or speech or proposal in their past. No one is truly generic. Senators have all had to cast votes, and governors have all had to sign bills -- plus they can be held accountable for anything that's happened in their state. And it's impossible to navigate these things perfectly, even for a pol who has the White House in mind very early in their career, because it's impossible to know which positions that seem safe today will wind up being dangers tomorrow. That's true for TARP (supported by a Republican president and the Republican nominee for president; it's true for Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan (supported by conservative policy wonks at the time).
Of course, some positions -- some current positions -- draw the vetoes of key party groups and are therefore absolute disqualifications. No pro-choice Republicans or pro-life Democrats are going to win a presidential nomination. But the record on even that most sensitive issue is that conversion experiences can make up for old records, whether it's George H.W. Bush or Al Gore. The bottom line, in my view, is that if the people and groups who choose the GOP presidential nominee had decided they liked John Thune, odds are that TARP and other past votes wouldn't have stopped him.
Meanwhile, the role of generic Republican remains available, although I think that Tim Pawlenty has been the leader for that spot for some time now -- although Rick Perry still seems to me like the most logical candidate for that spot. Under a year to Iowa...
Showing posts with label John Thune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Thune. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Burning With Optimism's Flames
Matt Yglesias makes a great point about running for president, with regard to John Thune:
Thune is very different. Right now, he's just a generic statewide elected official. There's no particular reason to think he'll win, but then again there's no particular reason to think he won't. Such candidates mostly lose...but only because there are lots of them, and only one nominee per cycle. And sometimes they win, as Mike Dukakis did in 1988.
Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to wait, but generally they should be personal, not political, reasons. Mounting a serious run for the White House is a huge, life-consuming effort that presumably almost no one enjoys. It puts your entire family in jeopardy of having their darkest secrets splashed all over television (or the stupidest thing they're going to do getting taped and going viral). It means being open not to the friendly press of South Dakota, but to the collective attention of the national press (and all sorts of nastiness from partisan, and even intraparty, rivals).
I could also imagine political reasons involving the rest of someone's career; for example, a Senator might want to avoid running in one cycle if it meant giving up his or her seat. Running may, too, pose some risks for reelection, so if staying safely in office is a priority, then the longshot chance of being winning or even being nominated might not seem worth it. If a candidate has good reason to believe that he or she will be a much stronger candidate in the future -- say, a Member of the House who can move up to the Senate -- then waiting makes sense. That's about getting stronger oneself, not waiting for a better year.
But I fully agree that waiting for the cycle in which a candidate has the best chance to win is a fool's game. For all anyone knows, next year could be like 1980, and the nominee and runner-up will hold the nomination for the next three cycles, making 2028 the next real opportunity. Figuring out how the dynamics of the field will work this time around is really impossible right now (will Huck be involved? Palin? Perry?), let alone having any sense of how it will compare to 2016 or 2020. If you're ready to run, run.
[T]his idea of picking your year doesn’t make much sense. There’s a ton of uncertainty inherent in any presidential campaign because the dynamics of primaries are very hard to predict, and because the underlying economic trends that weigh so heavily on general elections are also hard to predict...Have Republicans waged a primary campaign, then lost, and gone on to have successful future political careers? Yes. The conclusion is clear—he should get in. Unless the issue is that he doesn’t actually want to be president (understandable, in my view, though I would love the airplane) in which case he should shut the door on this.I agree! Now, you might say -- wait, Plain Blogger, weren't you just ridiculing a Jon Huntsman campaign? The answer is that the cases aren't at all the same. Huntsman, at least in my view, has no chance to win the Republican nomination for president in 2012. His issue positions, and his actions, have made him an entirely illogical candidate. The only such nominee during the modern era was, perhaps, Jimmy Carter -- and Carter would have had no chance under the system as it evolved after 1980.
Thune is very different. Right now, he's just a generic statewide elected official. There's no particular reason to think he'll win, but then again there's no particular reason to think he won't. Such candidates mostly lose...but only because there are lots of them, and only one nominee per cycle. And sometimes they win, as Mike Dukakis did in 1988.
Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to wait, but generally they should be personal, not political, reasons. Mounting a serious run for the White House is a huge, life-consuming effort that presumably almost no one enjoys. It puts your entire family in jeopardy of having their darkest secrets splashed all over television (or the stupidest thing they're going to do getting taped and going viral). It means being open not to the friendly press of South Dakota, but to the collective attention of the national press (and all sorts of nastiness from partisan, and even intraparty, rivals).
I could also imagine political reasons involving the rest of someone's career; for example, a Senator might want to avoid running in one cycle if it meant giving up his or her seat. Running may, too, pose some risks for reelection, so if staying safely in office is a priority, then the longshot chance of being winning or even being nominated might not seem worth it. If a candidate has good reason to believe that he or she will be a much stronger candidate in the future -- say, a Member of the House who can move up to the Senate -- then waiting makes sense. That's about getting stronger oneself, not waiting for a better year.
But I fully agree that waiting for the cycle in which a candidate has the best chance to win is a fool's game. For all anyone knows, next year could be like 1980, and the nominee and runner-up will hold the nomination for the next three cycles, making 2028 the next real opportunity. Figuring out how the dynamics of the field will work this time around is really impossible right now (will Huck be involved? Palin? Perry?), let alone having any sense of how it will compare to 2016 or 2020. If you're ready to run, run.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
It's a Trap!
And so, despite all the flashing lights and clear screams, John Thune has voted for the Kenyan socialist budget-busting midnight Christmas tax increase of 2010.
(Midnight? Wasn't the vote at 1PM? Yes, but cloture time ran out at 12:30 AM; if the Senate health care vote could be a Christmas Eve vote because it happened the morning of Christmas Eve Day, then surely this one can be a midnight vote. Those Republican activists love hearing about midnight votes).
That's final passage; he had already supported cloture, but I suppose he might have had an argument wiggling out of that if he had voted against final passage.
And that's before I just read Dave Weigel's tweet about Thune's earmark requests. Thune, of course, was already saddled with TARP.
Remember: single votes by politicians rarely matter, and never matter a lot, in general election campaigns. But highly-informed activists looking for ways to differentiate between seemingly identical candidates can and do care about such things. That's not the only thing that matters in presidential nomination politics, but it isn't irrelevant, either. Another way to put this: Republican politicians are more conservative than Republicans in general, but Republicans who play a large role in the presidential nomination process are most likely to the right of either group. You don't want to be voting against Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint on taxes, and that's what John Thune just did.
I think I'm moving towards Ed Kilgore's view: Thune is a Beltway candidate with essentially no campaign, and no constituency, out where Republicans actually live.
(Midnight? Wasn't the vote at 1PM? Yes, but cloture time ran out at 12:30 AM; if the Senate health care vote could be a Christmas Eve vote because it happened the morning of Christmas Eve Day, then surely this one can be a midnight vote. Those Republican activists love hearing about midnight votes).
That's final passage; he had already supported cloture, but I suppose he might have had an argument wiggling out of that if he had voted against final passage.
And that's before I just read Dave Weigel's tweet about Thune's earmark requests. Thune, of course, was already saddled with TARP.
Remember: single votes by politicians rarely matter, and never matter a lot, in general election campaigns. But highly-informed activists looking for ways to differentiate between seemingly identical candidates can and do care about such things. That's not the only thing that matters in presidential nomination politics, but it isn't irrelevant, either. Another way to put this: Republican politicians are more conservative than Republicans in general, but Republicans who play a large role in the presidential nomination process are most likely to the right of either group. You don't want to be voting against Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint on taxes, and that's what John Thune just did.
I think I'm moving towards Ed Kilgore's view: Thune is a Beltway candidate with essentially no campaign, and no constituency, out where Republicans actually live.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thune/DeMint
Still catching up on GOP presidential nomination politics...
Andrew Sullivan responded to my questions about Palin's candidacy by asking:
As I look at the GOP field, what I see are two kinds of candidates up against Palin, who as I've said I see as a personal factional candidate. The first is what I think I'll call Empty Suit coalition-style candidates. These candidates -- Tim Pawlenty, John Thune, and Mitt Romney -- draw their strength from the oddball field of Republican candidates in 2008, which featured an array of people who drew vetoes from some part of the GOP coalition. So for this group, being an Empty Suit is a feature, not a bug; the problem in 2008 and perhaps in 2012 for Mitt Romney is that he's not empty enough, what with having a possibly problematic religion, a past that draws questions from social conservatives, and a past that draws questions from small-government conservatives. Among these candidates, the current boomlet is for Thune, although Dave Weigel believes finds him not empty enough too, because he supported TARP. Is he right? Well, Weigel is an awfully good reporter, and that's the kind of information we need to analyze what's going on in the invisible primary. My question about Thune would be: do GOP leaders in general like him, in which case they would tend to downplay TARP as an issue, which might well mean that it gets less traction if he's attacked over it in Iowa and New Hampshire? Or is the interest in Thune really more of a Washingtonian, Capitol Hill thing, with GOP leaders out in the rest of the nation having little interest in him. If the latter, well, Thune wouldn't be the first candidate who seems imposing from the United States Senate Press Gallery who turned out to have nothing going on elsewhere. In other words, while I do respect Weigel's judgment on these sorts of things, I guess I see TARP more as a weapon to use in public than something like taxes, missile defense, guns, or abortion which disqualifies a candidate with the leaders of crucial GOP factions. Presumably, one of the things that happens as the process moves forward is that we find out whether or not that's true -- we'll see if GOP activists, at least, consider TARP a litmus test issue.
And speaking of factions, and again I'm not a reporter, just a consumer of news, it sure seems to me that Jim DeMint is the current leader of the hard-core conservative faction of the Republican Party. He's far more consistent with his endorsements than any other conservative leader, and unlike Palin he can claim that he's actually been doing something effective for the cause. For the conservative/Tea Party faction, presumably the trick is to be as far to the right as possible without actually sounding crazy to those outside the faction (and thus perhaps drawing vetoes from more pragmatic conservatives, and possibly some GOP-aligned interest groups). At least as I read the reporting, DeMint seems to be pretty good at keeping to that line, and he certainly must be more reliable both for that crowd and for more pragmatic types than Palin.
To know more, we need more solid reporting. Hey, reporters! We know activists hate TARP; is it a make or break issue for them? What about other important groups within the GOP? And, while of course Tea Partiers and conservatives generally are fond of the Sage of Wasilla, do leaders of those groups seem more likely to turn to her or to DeMint (or perhaps to another candidate) for leadership? How much good will did DeMint buy with his endorsements and support in primary season 2010?
Andrew Sullivan responded to my questions about Palin's candidacy by asking:
And who, I ask again, can beat her? That's the other side of this equation. Obama did it against the Clintons. Why couldn't Palin do it against ... no one?Good questions! Time for a speculative post about some of the possible answers.
As I look at the GOP field, what I see are two kinds of candidates up against Palin, who as I've said I see as a personal factional candidate. The first is what I think I'll call Empty Suit coalition-style candidates. These candidates -- Tim Pawlenty, John Thune, and Mitt Romney -- draw their strength from the oddball field of Republican candidates in 2008, which featured an array of people who drew vetoes from some part of the GOP coalition. So for this group, being an Empty Suit is a feature, not a bug; the problem in 2008 and perhaps in 2012 for Mitt Romney is that he's not empty enough, what with having a possibly problematic religion, a past that draws questions from social conservatives, and a past that draws questions from small-government conservatives. Among these candidates, the current boomlet is for Thune, although Dave Weigel believes finds him not empty enough too, because he supported TARP. Is he right? Well, Weigel is an awfully good reporter, and that's the kind of information we need to analyze what's going on in the invisible primary. My question about Thune would be: do GOP leaders in general like him, in which case they would tend to downplay TARP as an issue, which might well mean that it gets less traction if he's attacked over it in Iowa and New Hampshire? Or is the interest in Thune really more of a Washingtonian, Capitol Hill thing, with GOP leaders out in the rest of the nation having little interest in him. If the latter, well, Thune wouldn't be the first candidate who seems imposing from the United States Senate Press Gallery who turned out to have nothing going on elsewhere. In other words, while I do respect Weigel's judgment on these sorts of things, I guess I see TARP more as a weapon to use in public than something like taxes, missile defense, guns, or abortion which disqualifies a candidate with the leaders of crucial GOP factions. Presumably, one of the things that happens as the process moves forward is that we find out whether or not that's true -- we'll see if GOP activists, at least, consider TARP a litmus test issue.
And speaking of factions, and again I'm not a reporter, just a consumer of news, it sure seems to me that Jim DeMint is the current leader of the hard-core conservative faction of the Republican Party. He's far more consistent with his endorsements than any other conservative leader, and unlike Palin he can claim that he's actually been doing something effective for the cause. For the conservative/Tea Party faction, presumably the trick is to be as far to the right as possible without actually sounding crazy to those outside the faction (and thus perhaps drawing vetoes from more pragmatic conservatives, and possibly some GOP-aligned interest groups). At least as I read the reporting, DeMint seems to be pretty good at keeping to that line, and he certainly must be more reliable both for that crowd and for more pragmatic types than Palin.
To know more, we need more solid reporting. Hey, reporters! We know activists hate TARP; is it a make or break issue for them? What about other important groups within the GOP? And, while of course Tea Partiers and conservatives generally are fond of the Sage of Wasilla, do leaders of those groups seem more likely to turn to her or to DeMint (or perhaps to another candidate) for leadership? How much good will did DeMint buy with his endorsements and support in primary season 2010?
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