Leaving the Past in Michigan
January 15th, 2008Mitt Romney is a man who has to hold photo-ops with campaign workers’ mothers because he doesn’t have the support of all that many people. Still, he won Michigan tonight over John McCain in convincing fashion. What does that mean? Perhaps it is his real hometown state and therefore his victory there is not very convincing of anything — he is, after all, the son of its former Governor and grew up there. Maybe it tells us that McCain is toast anywhere not named New Hampshire or Arizona because he hasn’t got much of an organization or money.
I think there’s truth to both of these possibilities but counters, as well. Nobody in the Republican campaign is all that well organized and nobody on the Right has all that many sure-bet states, making it a great gamble to call the election for anyone. As I emphasize so frequently, this is the biggest cluster of “traditional non-electables” in post-industrial revolution American history and these back-and-forths by the traditionally unified Republicans could be true to that.
What I think it shows is that this is a weak crop of Presidential candidates who are going to keep pecking at each other feebly until the weakest of the weak drop out and become candidates for the Darwin Award instead of the Presidency. The ultimate “victor” will get prepared to run a nasty smear campaign against the Democratic candidate and all will be well with the Right on the surface; deeper, if they win. Or this shows us that the conservative revolution in American government that has gone on since 1968 is finally dying and the Republican candidates are becoming like the Democrats of yesteryear (politically, electorally, not by position) and Democrats are becoming like the Republicans of yesteryear (politically, electorally, not by position). How do I figure?
Democrats have a frontrunner who is going by “name” and “experience” and sort of a “my-turn” kind of thing, as Republicans are famous for, while the Republicans duel in disorganized and messy fashion without a frontrunner of any sort and do their best imitation of the Democratic Party from the 1980s that gave us the Terrible Trifecta of Carter-Mondale-Dukakis. Is the Republican Party breaking? Maybe, and I’m starting to think so, but they’ve been declared near-dead before and bounced back. Democrats have to win an election and then another and then another for a man as conservative as I in making predictions to even breath easily against such losers as Romney or Huckabee or McCain or Thompson, but maybe we are seeing the end of an era and the rise of a new, successful Democratic Party. Who the nominees are, who wins and how said candidate governs will ultimately be the proof, but perhaps we are seeing the Republicans shed their past as electoral conquerors and great purveyors of discipline and organization in Michigan.