The Country Thinker

Ran­dom Thoughts

I said a while back that I was going to stay away from the GOP pres­i­den­tial cam­paign for a while and focus my writ­ing on Gary Johnson’s cam­paign, but two recent events have com­pelled me to chime in once again. I have said for a long time that I want to see the Lib­er­tar­ian Party either emerge as a strong third party, or, if we must have a two party sys­tem, replace the GOP as the Repub­li­can Party did the Whigs before the Civil War. This shouldn’t sur­prise any­one that a card-​​carrying Lib­er­tar­ian would make this pitch, but what has prompted me today is that I’m hear­ing the first seri­ous mur­mur­ings com­ing from con­ser­v­a­tive Republicans!

But let me digress to the first event. It was a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend of mine who is a life­long Repub­li­can. We’re talk­ing about a sub­ur­ban, pro­fes­sional, loafers-​​and-​​gin and tonic Repub­li­can. We were dis­cussing pol­i­tics, Gary John­son, and the GOP field. I told him about Bret Stephens’ arti­cle The GOP Deserves to Lose, and he couldn’t have agreed more.

He told me about what his Repub­li­can cir­cles are say­ing, which is that the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment has thrown in the towel on the pres­i­dency and is focus­ing on sal­vaging its major­ity in the House. This echoes Stephens’ obser­va­tion that all of the top-​​tier Repub­li­can can­di­dates chose to sit this one out. In other words, the cur­rent GOP field is a herd of sac­ri­fi­cial lambs. (That analy­sis doesn’t apply to Ron Paul, who the estab­lish­ment ignores.) These are Bob Doles and Michael Dukakises by design.

The prob­lem is that Dole and Dukakis went up against pres­i­dents with their pop­u­lar­ity was on the rise. Obama’s is in decline! Nev­er­the­less, regard­less of whether it’s Rom­ney, Gin­grich, or San­to­rum, all of these can­di­dates rep­re­sent the GOP throw­ing in the towel and con­ced­ing the elec­tion to Obama—or so it is being dis­cussed in some Repub­li­can circles.

(Worse, as the Clas­sic Lib­eral dis­cusses here, some insid­ers think the GOP estab­lish­ment actu­ally wants Obama to win!)

So, for any­one in the “Any­body but Obama” camp, this has to be dis­turb­ing news, when the party lead­er­ship either doesn’t share your zeal to evict the cur­rent occu­pant of the White House, or actu­ally desires to give him another 4 years.

This leads me to the sec­ond event, which was a blog piece from Rea­gan­ite Repub­li­can titled THIS IS WAR: If They Suc­ceed in Forc­ing a Rom­ney Nom­i­na­tion On Us, The Repub­li­can Estab­lish­ment Must Be Destroyed. Rank-​​and-​​file Repub­li­cans are wak­ing up to how the GOP estab­lish­ment rolls, which is to roll over the rank-​​and-​​file! The author begins:

Hey RNC, get this through your big fat skulls: I will never, ever vote for Mitt Rom­ney… never.

This is the type of manipulation/​denial of basic demo­c­ra­tic rights that stoke the flames of rev­o­lu­tion: I advo­cate a peace­ful rev­o­lu­tion to destroy the Repub­li­can Party estab­lish­ment, if not the party in its entirety (if it can­not be con­quered). This can be brought about by deny­ing Rom­ney votes (and the White House) while boy­cotting all the politi­cians and pun­dits that enabled it.

CUT THEM OFF, people …

… I would add that I—for the first time ever—am open to a third party can­di­date (Palin?) if Team Rom­ney and the RNC are not will­ing to allow Newt to com­pete on the issues.

(Obvi­ously I need to make the Gary John­son pitch to Rea­gan­ite Repub­li­can. Who would work bet­ter with the Tea Party cau­cus than the can­di­date who has pledged to cut the fed­eral bud­get by 43%?)

He con­cludes:

[I]f Rom­ney is nom­i­nated, I will also imme­di­ately change the name of this blog (my polit­i­cal shield-​​and-​​sword from the day Obama was elected) to ‘Rea­gan­ite Inde­pen­dent’… count on it.

You’re never going to be pres­i­dent, Mitt… screw you.

Do the natives sound a lit­tle rest­less? And if you read the com­ments, they are quite inter­est­ing. Mag­gie from Maggie’s Note­book made the fol­low­ing statement:

[The estab­lish­ment is] loath­some. We must have a new party after this election.

To which I added the fol­low­ing comment:

A vote for Rom­ney is a vote for the estab­lish­ment, which is throw­ing away a vote if you feel as RR does. Would 8 years of Rom­ney really be any bet­ter than 4 years of Obama? Talk about a way to ensure that a con­ser­v­a­tive takeover of the GOP will never happen.

So one by one, con­ser­v­a­tives are com­ing to grips with the fact that a takeover of the GOP is never going to hap­pen. They are dis­sat­is­fied that the estab­lish­ment is hand-​​picking a second-​​tier sac­ri­fi­cial Dole/​Dukakis lamb to take on Obama in what many call the most impor­tant elec­tion of our lifetimes.

But, I can tell you that those who feel that Rom­ney will not win are right, although for slightly dif­fer­ent rea­sons than either my Repub­li­can friend or Rea­gan­ite Repub­li­can sug­gest. Yes, Rom­ney is an unin­spir­ing second-​​tier can­di­date who will get devoured by the Obama machine. Yes, con­ser­v­a­tives may revolt against him.

So why am I say­ing that Rom­ney can­not win? Because lib­er­tar­i­ans will not vote for him, and the GOP can­not win with­out us. There are those of us already in the John­son camp. We expect most of Ron Paul’s sup­port­ers to join us. (There’s not a chance he will endorse either Rom­ney or Gin­grich, espe­cially after Gin­grich said he would not sup­port Ron Paul if he got the nom­i­na­tion.) Once Johnson’s cam­paign gains crit­i­cal mass and it becomes obvi­ous that Rom­ney can­not win, we’ll see if John­son can gain at least enough sup­port to at least force a runoff against Obama.

But the bot­tom line is that the Repub­li­can can­di­date is extremely unlikely to win in Novem­ber, espe­cially Mitt Rom­ney. The GOP has given its vot­ers second-​​tier can­di­dates, and the least appeal­ing of them all, Mitt Rom­ney, appears poised to get the nod. (Gin­grich missed the Vir­ginia and Mis­souri pri­mary fil­ing dead­lines, so it’s going to be a tough sled for him to come from behind.) The lib­er­tar­i­ans have bolted, or will bolt when Ron Paul con­cedes. Con­ser­v­a­tives are jus­ti­fi­ably dis­cour­aged and/​or angry. Game over, GOP, and you have your­self to blame.

So, the ques­tion is what the Novem­ber elec­tion will mean to the GOP. If the “anybody-​​but-​​Obama” and the “anybody-​​but-​​Romney” crowds wake up and jump onto the John­son band­wagon, the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment will get rocked to its core. (You’ve got to be bang-​​your-​​head-​​against-​​the-​​wall stub­born to still be sup­port­ing Rom­ney as a path to beat­ing Obama.) A John­son vic­tory might be the begin­ning of the dis­so­lu­tion of the GOP, to be replaced by a small gov­ern­ment party under the Lib­er­tar­ian banner.

You say it can’t hap­pen, but the Repub­li­can Party elim­i­nated the Whigs in a sin­gle elec­tion cycle with­out the ben­e­fit of the tele­phone, much less the inter­net. Her­man Cain went from obscu­rity to Repub­li­can Party fron­trun­ner and back to obscu­rity in a mat­ter of weeks. We live in a fluid, rapidly-​​changing polit­i­cal cli­mate, and any­thing can hap­pen between now and Novem­ber. Any­thing.

Any way you shake it, the GOP made a big mis­take by run­ning B-​​Team can­di­dates this year, unless, of course, re-​​electing Obama is the Repub­li­cans’ aim. But this mis­take may lead to the GOP’s undoing.

Let’s hope so.