I enjoyed reading Frank Rich’s long rant in New York Magazine, and I agree with about 99% of what he wrote. I do have a couple of disagreements, however. For starters, I don’t share his belief that Rick Perry is a more dangerous opponent than Mitt Romney. I laughed when Rich approvingly quoted Jonah Goldberg, who said, “Romney has an authentic inauthenticity problem. There are some animals that just seem fake when you see them in real life for the first time; sharks and alligators come to mind.” The idea here isn’t that Romney is more dangerous than he appears but that he’s so phony that he doesn’t even look real. I don’t dispute that Romney looks and acts disturbingly like a Ken Doll. But I think his anodyne presence is precisely what makes him a formidable general election candidate. After all, if he doesn’t believe in anything, he doesn’t believe in anything all that threatening. And if he has no passion, he won’t passionately pursue a program to screw you and me and everyone who isn’t an executive officer or hedge-fund manager. If the problem the country faces is that the Republican Party has become so conservative that it no longer wants to be a partner in running the federal government, then why not elect a guy who is only pretending to be that conservative? It’s not like the Republicans will agree to work with Obama, but maybe they’ll respond to a president from their own party.
As Rich correctly notes at the beginning of his piece, Rick Perry “might have been computer-generated to check every box in a shrill liberal fund-raising letter.” Facing Perry, Obama will have no problem shoring up his base. With the exception of some small signs of tolerance for Latinos, Perry is more threatening than Romney on every single issue facing the country. And Perry’s positions may have their passionate supporters but they’re not popular with the electorate as a whole. People don’t want to dismantle Social Security and hand it off to the states. They don’t want to execute the innocent. They’e still pro-choice. They aren’t climate change-deniers. They don’t like talk of secession.
Independent voters may respond to Perry’s self-confidence and swagger. They may reject Romney’s epicene demeanor. But the president needs an opponent who he can fairly brand as totally unacceptable. With unemployment high and Congress unmanageable, the president could lose to a milquetoast candidate. It’s highly unlikely that he would lose to Rick Perry.
And, even though Rich is wise to warn against the kind of complacency Washington felt after Barry Goldwater was crushed, I will take a repeat of 1964 in a heartbeat. Another massive repudiation of conservative overreach won’t make conservatives go away or moderate their positions, but it’s the only thing that can break the deadlock in Washington and allow us to move forward on our nation’s many pressing issues.
Rick Perry is a carbon copy of George W. Bush, stripped of all of Dubya’s (few) redeeming qualities.
That’s really all that needs to be said.
‘Redeeming’ is too strong of a word. You need a word that means ‘less than awful.”
CNN backs me up.
Now he only needs to get some Repukeliscum voters to actually choose him from other more repulsive Repukeliscum candidates. He has had trouble on that issue.
Could the “right” veep pic moderate Perry’s general election weaknesses with more centrist (or at least, less radical) voters? I thought part of the benefit for Obama in picking Biden as veep was to bring in enough of those types (who might be weighing fears rather than choosing on the positives), i.e., mitigating perceived or assumed weaknesses.
I don’t think so. Perry is that toxic, I think.
Scott Brown: Rick Perry’s peace offering to the Union.
it’s a pick your poison thing for progressives. if unemployment is north of 8%, but less than 10%, Romney has a good shot at winning (better than 50/50 I’d say) but Perry doesn’t. If unemployment is north of 10%, Perry or Romney will win. And progressives probably can stomach Romney much more than Perry. So i think the calculus is whether you think obama will be beatable or not (which is a function of where you think unemployment will be in a year), and if he is likely to lose regardless, then you’re rooting for Romney.
President Perry or President Romney is a meaningless question if the legislature is controlled by Republicans. Either of them will sign off on whatever the GOP-led legislature passes. And their foreign policy will likely not be substantially different from one another[]. Romney is only “better” in the sense that he’ll speak more intelligently and reasonably than Perry will, but neither of them will do much substantively different fro the other.
Where it gets tricky is who is better in case of a split government – if Dems control the legislature but the GOP has the executive, then Romney is the better choice. He’s more likely to be swayed by the siren call of improving things for the whole country to ensure his own re-election, so he’ll cooperate with the Dems to pass watered down “liberal” reforms (a la Nixon). I doubt Perry would do the same.
[
]Caveat – I would have said the same thing about Gore vs. Bush when it comes to foreign policy c.a. 1999. The idea that Bush would have wandered so far off the reservation when it came to US foreign policy never would have occurred to me. So I’ll stick the caveat in here that Perry might well be as bug-fuck stupid crazy as George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy and that Romney might be more likely to stick with Obama’s attempts to get us back to that pre-W US foreign policy where we still do shit that pisses people off, but we don’t get in their faces about it quite so much. But I doubt it – I suspect either of them would be equally bad.
When I contemplate either one of these sitting in the Oval Office, with a Republican majority legislature sitting in the Capital, and going over the short list for the next Supreme Court Justice, my blood runs cold.
Like choosing between cyanide and firing squad. The end result that really matters is still the same.
I guess what really concerns me is which one has more respect for institutional norms. If things take a weird turn, either from another terrorist attack or another economic crisis, which one would be more likely to abuse the situation to take extreme measures. In that case, the traditional analysis of legislature control is sort of irrelevant. Once things like 9/11 or Lehman happen, all bets are off. In that case, I think we all definitely want Romney rather than Perry, right? I don’t think there’s no difference when it comes to those sorts of situations.
Romney is a antivenin to the Obama campaign’s juvenile “I may have betrayed and marginalized you but…Hark! Aren’t you afraid of [insert Bachmann or Perry]?” strategy of hopelessness and derision. They should be afraid of Romney. Obama copied his Romneycare legislation and passed it…as Obamacare. They both look to be cut from the same antiseptic cloth…elite is elite is elite. The conservative public at large might begin to see Romney as that blank slate that many conservatives glom their dreams to, similar to what liberals did with Obama in 2007-8. I mean, who can fear Romney? Though I don’t trust him, I don’t fear him. And that might just do the trick.
Romney is a antivenin to the Obama campaign’s juvenile “I may have betrayed and marginalized you but…Hark! Aren’t you afraid of [insert Bachmann or Perry]?” strategy of hopelessness and derision.
Physician, heal thyself.
This American Stockholm effect is just so grinding. Let’s hurry up and whine about fixing what the Conservative leader destroyed so we can elect another Conservative disaster who will lock the country in a closet and turn out the lights again.
I hear ya, BooMan
I really missed Frank Rich. I hope he starts writing more often now that campaign season is starting up. I really enjoyed how he called out the Conventional Wisdom Bloviators (except Krugman, who he praised) for being wrong at every turn.
As for Perry Vs Romney and who would be a tougher general election opponent for Obama, who knows? Either one will give him a tough race, in different ways. But I also see him able to defeat either one of them if his team sticks with the “Warrior for the Middle Class” theme to the end. Neither Perry nor Romney can plausibly make a claim like that of themselves.
Hold on.
There are some animals that just seem fake when you see them in real life for the first time; sharks and alligators come to mind.
What is that supposed to mean? This is like something Ralph Wiggum would spout out while other people are having a conversation.
Are we sure this “Jonah Goldberg” person isn’t actually a Borat-type practical joke?
I think Rich wrote that piece before Thursday’s debate and the resulting fall out. The lust Republicans had for Perry dropped like a rock. They’ll all tell you it’s about his unacceptable stance on educating immigrant children but in reality it’s his awful debate performance. That’s 3 in a row, each worse than the last. Right now they’re terrified of the idea of him up on the stage blowing it all with incomprehensible gibberish against Obama. I doubt the base will get any more excited about Romney than they did about McCain. They don’t trust him anymore than they did McCain and he has phony written all over him. Thus the desperate push for Christie.
As a radical right-winger…you are pretty much right on…
If Romney is the best we can do against Obama…then so be it…but it is hard to get enthusiastic about his candidacy…
He’s got no core to him…Obama believes more in redistributionism than Romney believes in…whatever Romney believes in…
But Romney can still win because Obama’s fervent belief in redistributionism is exactly what will keep our economy stalled, or, worse…double dip. What a contest…fervent ideology giving us the exact high unemployment that makes Obama vulnerable…or a guy who can beat Obama because of the aforementioned…but doesn’t really believe in anything…wow…
What a dilemna…
Is Marco Rubio still available…too inexperienced…
Damn.
I like this bit near the end:
That’s more or less what I’ve been thinking since the President began his road show promoting the AJA. I hope he keeps up the pressure from now until the election. It’s nice to see a Dem candidate getting out ahead of the competition. This is the perfect time to take the fight to the Reepubs while they’re busy slugging it out with each other in their endless debate schedule.
The way to run against Romney is to accurately brand him as an out-of-touch empty suit or, if I may appropriate a phrase from Ralph Nader, “A corporation masquerading as a person.” Romney is a phony corporate whore and whatever campaign Obama wages against him needs to emphasize that.