Canadian Cincinnatus

Steve Schmidt: the reason John McCain lost

One of the reasons I had so many reservations about Mitt Romney is that I feared, being an establishment moderate, he would run the kind of gentlemanly loser campaign that John McCain ran in 2008. With the exception of picking Sarah Palin as the running mate, McCain’s campaign did everything wrong. And it even managed to mismanage that one success: after Palin’s firebrand acceptance speech - the one that propelled McCain ahead of Obama in the polls (for the first time in months) - the McCain campaign hid her away but did nothing to prepare her while she was sequestered. The architect of that defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory debacle was the bullet-headed Steve Schmidt.

For this reason, I was much interested in this expose article on Schmidt at Big Journalism. A very informative article that deserves to be read in its entirety.

For some background information, check out Schmidt’s wikipedia entry. This is what it says about his early campaigns:

In 1995, Steve Schmidt managed the unsuccessful campaign for Kentucky Attorney General of Will T. Scott, who is now Deputy Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court [in other words Scott was good, his 1995 campaign run by Schmidt just sucked]. This Kentucky campaign's advertising strategy was featured in the second edition of George Magazine. In 1998, Schmidt ran California State Senator Tim Leslie's unsuccessful race for Lt. Governor of California. Also that year, he was the Communications Director for California State Treasurer Matt Fong's unsuccessful campaign to unseat U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer [I remember this campaign; Fong was widely viewed as having a credible shot at unseating Boxer]. In 1999, he was the Communications Director for Lamar Alexander's presidential run, leaving in June when the campaign reduced its senior staff.

You will notice that the two things common with each campaign: Steve Schmidt, and the fact that his employer lost. While it is true that he led Arnold’s 2006 successful gubernatorial campaign, this was accomplished when Arnold was at the apogee of his popularity. As far as I am able to determine, this has been Schmidt’s only campaign victory - ever.

I agree with Moe Lane, who said:

The faction of Team McCain represented by Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace should not be allowed anywhere NEAR a Republican Presidential campaign for the rest of their lives.

Hear, hear. Steve Schmidt is the John Tory of American politics.

What Mitt Romney should do if the Supreme Court cans Obamacare

If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare or the individual mandate, this will be a grievous blow to President Obama. Pace Democratic strategist James Carville, who opined that a Supreme Court loss for Obamacare would actually help Obama’s re-election prospects because it would give his followers something to rally around (reinstating socialized medicine), it would hurt Obama. A lot. As unpopular as it is, Obamacare remains President Obama’s signature achievement. If that gets declared unconstitutional, he will look impotent and incompetent – not attractive qualities in a leader. Political strategist, Dick Morris agrees.

But if Mitt Romney wants to be more than a passive recipient of good news, he has to do more than pop the champaign cork - particularly with the spectre of Romneycare in his past. If he wants to hits the ball out of the park he has to articulate an alternative. Because that’s what real statesmen do: they lead the way forward. A “I’m not as bad as the other guy” candidate - which is what he is now - will never attract more than tepid enthusiasm, regardless of how favourable the electoral environment is.

For a vision, he could do worse than follow the proscription given by Investor’s Business Daily:

• “End the tax discrimination against individual insurance buyers. 

• Let consumers buy plans across state lines, giving states an incentive to rein in their out-of-control benefit mandates.

• Let small groups establish association health plans to get benefits of scale.

• Ease the rules that are choking off the medical savings account market.

• Reform the nation's tort laws.”

In politics he who frames the debate, wins the debate. If he talks positively about the future, with concrete proposals, Romney will leave Obama in the dust, fumbling on the roadside with his broken-down, Rube Goldberg contraption.

 

How to make sure Obamacare is struck down universally

The votes have been taken and the decision made in the Supreme Court of the United States, but those votes can still be changed before June. As one would expect, the Democrat appointed justices have likely voted in favour of  Obamacare; four of the Republican appointed justices have likely voted with the U.S. Constitution, and therefore against Obamacare; with the Republican appointed Justice Kennedy being the sole swing vote. Reading some of the questions from Justice Kagan makes it clear that she sees her appointment to the SCOTUS as a political appointment. This is probably how each of the Democrat appointees see themselves.

There is a simple method that, if publicly announced, could make the defeat unanimous. The trick is to make it obvious to everyone, including the SCOTUS, that the "Individual Mandate" can be used by later governments in a way that they haven't considered.

President Romney's first term may suffer from an unexpected crime spree resulting from the "Individual Mandate" to buy health insurance, and the inability of poor Americans to pay for the insurance or the IRS fines for non-purchase. The nearly bankrupt Treasury would also find it difficult to increase funding for law enforcement. A simpler solution might be to invoke the "Individual Mandate" and require all Americans to buy a handgun. Clearly 100% ownership of handguns would reduce violent crime and break-&-enters to near zero. To make this measure universally effective, anybody who refuses to buy a handgun could be imprisoned, thus guaranteeing their safety (and healthcare).

An argument like this would be far more effective at convincing the justices to overturn Obamacare than the example of Americans being forced to buy broccoli or Chevy Volts.

 

guest-post by Wiseguy

 

Canada’s Lesson for the Republican Party

Here is an interesting article about the collapse of the Progressive Conservative party and the rise of the Reform Party in Canada. The author, Neil Flagg, hits the nail right on the head. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had a so-where-can-they-go? attitude with regard to his party’s right-wing. Well, in 1993, he got his answer. They formed a dynamic new party that energetically courted the hearts and minds of conservative Canadians. The ensuing vote splitting in ridings all across the country ensured that Mulroney’s party went from 169 seats in Parliament to two, while the upstart Reform Party went from one seat to 54.

A result like that can’t be blamed on Mulroney’s hasty replacement, Kim Campbell. (Like a rat, Mulroney had deserted his sinking ship barely four months before the election). She was little more than a populariser of dumb blonde jokes, but one hapless boob can’t construct an electoral catastrophe that complete in such a short time period. For that to occur, the rot had be deep.

While this resulted in “13 years of corrupt and aimless Liberal Party rule” (as Flagg says), I think it can also be said that the result was worth the cost; the old Progressive Conservative party had to be destroyed in order to be saved. The 1993 federal election was the first time that I, and many other Canadian conservatives, voted for somebody. 

To be sure, the Republican Party of 2012 is in far healthier ideological shape than the Progressive Conservative Party was in 1993, but GOP big-wigs are making a big mistake if they think there the old Progressive Conservative Party’s fate contains no lessons for them.

The most important lesson being: don’t take your core supporters for granted. Not ever.

Mitt Romney underperforms yet again

In yesterday’s Iowa caucus Mitt Romney beats Rick Santorum by a whopping 8 vote margin. He spent $10 million, campaigned 4 years and was unable to crack the 25% mark. Meanwhile Rick Santorum, the man who was polling in the low single digits barely a month ago and who only spent $500K in Iowa, pulled off a photo finish. Tell me again money matters in politics.

And tell me again that Mitt Romney should be the Republican nominee because he is the most ‘electable’ candidate.  Electable – based on what? It was the same story in Iowa back in 2008. He spent almost 4 years, $10 million and all he managed to do was to increase his popular support from 22% to 25%. He likes to tell Newt Gingrich that, unlike Newt, he isn’t a career politician. What he doesn’t say is that he is not a career politician for lack of trying. He has been trying to get elected to something since 1994 when he lost a senate race to Ted Kennedy. All he has to show for his effort was one term as governor of Massachusetts. When he left he was the 48^th most popular governor in the nation. Admittedly, Massachusetts is a tough state for Republicans, but still, where’s the proof he’s electable?

Furthermore, there is a huge peril in being the ‘inevitable’ candidate. The problem is that if that is all you are, and your inevitability gets pricked by an unexpected loss or even a Pyrrhic victory, all of a sudden you have nothing. The emperor has no clothes on. If you don’t believe me, look at Prime Minister Paul Martin. Less than a decade ago he bestrode the Canadian political landscape like a colossus, but after Stephen Harper held him to a minority, the Martin balloon quickly deflated. Behind the inevitability myth, the Paul Martin phenomenon was just hype. And Paul Martin came with a serious achievement under his belt – balancing the federal budget. What corresponding political achievement does Mitt Romney have? Romneycare?

Aside from the Romneycare millstone around his neck, I think it is the reputation for being a flip-flopper that cause so many people to mistrust Mitt Romney. The reason Mitt can’t shake the charge is that it is true. In deep blue Massachusetts he had to say and do many things that are heresy to the conservative voters he is now wooing. Fine. You have to do what you have to do. But now, when it is most expedient for him to be a born-again conservative, that’s exactly what he is. So do you believe him? Me neither. How will he do when he is President and the really hard spending decisions must be made to balance the budget? Don’t hold your breath.

Conventional wisdom says that his flip-flopping is only a liability in the GOP primaries, but that if he gets the nomination, his moderation will make him an easier sell to the general electorate. Wrong! This is a complete misunderstanding of the moderate voter. As I have pointed out in the past (here, here, here, here and here), we political junkies completely misread the motivations of the people who inhabit the mushy middle: we ascribe our value system to them and this is false. We appraise candidates by examining where they stand on the issues and assume the non-political voter does the same. Jettison a few ‘extreme’ issues and move towards the ‘center’ if you want the independents. Big mistake. Because the moderate non-political voter doesn’t think like that. He doesn’t care about issues. At all. To the extent that he thinks about politics, he cares about personality and leadership. And when he sees a flip-flopper like Romney, he doesn’t see a ‘moderate’ who isn’t ‘extreme’, a guy like him; he sees weakness. He sees a lack of leadership. And when he sees him failing to inspire his own side - the people who know him the best and who make up his team – all he sees is more weakness. This is why it is often the case that politicians who are either on the right end of the acceptable political spectrum or the left end of the acceptable political spectrum are the most successful with the non-political ‘middle’ voters.

For an example look at Ronald Reagan, a man well to the right of the average American voter - and considered eminently electable by them. And for an example from the left, look no further than Barack Obama. He was far to the left of the average American voter in 2008 but he was charismatic and he had his base fired up into a state of religious rapture. As a result, the non-political people wanted to follow Obama, not John McCain, who was 2008’s GOP cod liver oil candidate (“hold you nose and vote for him, it will be good for you”). The non-political independent voter wants a strong leader, not a wishy-washy ‘moderate’ like himself.

Another example of an electable GOP moderate loser? Take Thomas Dewey. Read Zachary Karabell’s Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election. Dewey comes across like 1948 version of Mitt Romney. And like Romney, his primary virtue was considered to be his inevitability. And famous headlines aside, we know how that turned out.

 

Why the left is out to get Herman Cain

The first and foremost reason is that having a black opponent will upset Barack Obama’s reelection strategy, which is to promiscuously play the race card against the Republican nominee: every time the GOP contender criticizes Obama, it can only be because he is raciiist. They can’t do that if Cain were the nominee. Or rather, they can and they will, but every time a white MSM reporter/Obama water carrier calls Herman Cain an anti-black racist, he look like an idiot.

The second, and more revealing, reason is that the existence of Herman Cain offends them - offends them personally. To many liberals, they measure their own virtue by how much they care about various designated victim groups, groups such as blacks, women, homosexuals, etc. So every time a member of one of these groups plays the victim card, it affirms their own saintliness: “See, look how bad society treats [member of victim group]. Good thing there are people like me to show compassion to the less fortunate.” And since compassion doesn’t require any effort on their part, the whole racket is very convenient.

But what if a member of a designated victim group refuses to play ball? Even worse, what if a victim group member tells the white liberals to stick their condescending paternalism where the sun don’t shine because it actually damages the interests of individual members of those groups? Now, a monkey wrench is thrown into the whole works. Their – their own personal – goodness is called into question. How dare they! 

That’s what conservative like Herman Cain and Allen West do to white liberals. And for that matter, what Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin do to feminists. For our emotionally crippled elites, it's personal regarding people like Herman Cain.

 

Herman Cain’s competitors lose by exposing Cain’s past indiscretions

According to National Review’s Jim Geraghty, Herman Cain isn’t exactly suffering from the sexual harassment controversy he finds himself embroiled in. After allegations of harassment surfaced by Politico earlier this week, Cain now leads polls nationally, in Iowa and in South Carolina. In addition, his campaign is also benefiting from a money bomb.

Why is this happening? Specifically, why isn’t this scandal hurting him?

I think it is because conservatives really hate the mainstream media for the hit jobs they perpetrate on good conservatives. They saw what the MSM did to Clarence Thomas, George W Bush, Dick Cheney and especially Sarah Palin, and they really, really don’t like it. Their natural (and proper) instinct is to sympathise with the victim and rally to their defence, which is what they are doing in this case – with gusto. 

So will it hurt Cain in the long run? I think that depends on how serious Herman Cain’s improprieties were 15 years ago when these things allegedly happened. If it turns out that he merely acted obnoxiously around some female employees, I don’t think very much at all. As well, any moral outrage that the scandal has stirred up will subside by the time New Hampshire votes. As well, I think many people realize that anti-sexual harassment statutes are intrusive, left-wing laws that criminalize bad manners and victimize good people.

(Incidentally, this is why I believe the Republicans made a strategic error by going after Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinski affair. The public rallied to Clinton’s defence because the scandal illustrated the intrusive, big brother aspects to sexual harassment laws. If the Republican Congress had been smart, they would have demanded a repeal of these statutes, forcing Clinton to choose between hypocrisy and throwing his feminist allies under the bus.)

Of course, if it turns out Cain did have an affair - or worse, he had tried to leverage power for sexual favours - all bets are off. But fortunately, we will likely have a good idea of the truth by the time the Republican primaries begin.

Which is why I believe the source for the original Politico story was one of Cain’s fellow competitors and not the Democrats. The Obama campaign has nothing to gain by releasing such information now. How does stopping a damaged-goods contender from getting the GOP nomination help him? It is in Obama’s best interest to hope Cain gets nominated so that he can ambush him with the story two weeks before the general election, giving him no time to recover.   

In contrast, it is in the interest of Cain’s GOP adversaries to hit him with it now so as to halt his building momentum. This is why I think Romney, Perry or one of the others Republican candidates is responsible for this too-clever-by-a-half strategy. 

Which candidate leaked the story?

Here’s a hint: According to a follow-up Politico story, a GOP pollster from Texas, Chris Wilson, says he witnessed the harassment personally. Politico says this about Wilson:

“Wilson is a Rick Perry supporter and does polling for a Super PAC that supports the Texas governor's presidential bid.”

On the other hand, Free Republic says Wilson is closely connected to Karl Rove, who supports Romney.

If Romney and Perry were really smart, they would rally loudly and publicly to Cain’s defense. As a consequence they would look magnanimous and demonstrate that they stand against the mainstream media, because right now - among likely GOP primary voters - it is they who are under suspicion.

George Will: “Conservatives should rejoice” over Occupy Wall Street movement

In a perceptive article, George Will makes the following point about the ultimate consequences of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

“Conservatives should rejoice and wish for it long life, abundant publicity and sufficient organization to endorse congressional candidates deemed worthy.”

“From 1965 through 1968, the left found its voice and style in consciousness-raising demonstrations and disruptions. In November 1968, the nation, its consciousness raised, elected Richard Nixon President and gave 56.9 percent of the popular vote to Nixon or George Wallace. Republicans won four of the next five presidential elections.”

Will makes many interesting points in this article so please go and read the whole thing, but it seems to me that this is his most important point: the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is a gross political miscalculation by the left.

Many commentators on the left note that OWS is the left’s equivalent of the Tea Party, clearly assuming that, as the Tea Party propelled the GOP to midterm victory in November 2010, OWS may similarly propel the Democrats to victory next November. As George Will pointed out, this hope is completely misplaced.

They are wrong because the Tea Parties, contrary to the vicious MSM demonization campaign, are infused with middle class sensibilities. The Tea Partiers were orderly, polite and cleaned up after themselves. Their ranks are composed of working people, or the recently unemployed who only want honest work. In contrast, the OWS is composed of anarchists, communists and other extremists who revel in violent confrontation and clearly enjoy subverting public order with activities like illegally occupying public spaces for extended periods. Ordinary nonpolitical people can sympathize with Tea Partiers but recoil in horror at the ostentatious radicalism on display at the OWC ‘sit-ins’. I think the average nonpolitical American has the same sentiments about OWC that boxer Joe Louis had about the Third Reich when he publicly told Adolph Hitler, “there is nothing wrong with America that you can fix.”

If you don’t believe me - or George Will - or Joe Louis - then perhaps you should reread Saul Alinsky. He made the same point in Rules for Radicals. He thought the long hair, the flag burning and dirty clothes were about the worst things the left did to themselves. Right away they drove a wedge between themselves and The People. No wonder they lost, Alinsky concluded. 

That the Alinskyite, Barack Obama, does not see this and instead appears to welcome the coming of the OWC movement is a testament to the fact that he has completely lost whatever political touch that he once had in 2008. 

 

Obama might pull out

Yesterday, Bill Clinton’s strategist, Dick Morris wrote an article speculating that President Obama’s name might not even be on the ballot in 2012 because he might withdraw it.

“As bad news piles up for the Democrats, I asked a top Democratic strategist if it were possible that President Obama might ‘pull a Lyndon Johnson’ and soberly face the cameras, telling America that he has decided that the demands of partisan politics are interfering with his efforts to right our economy and that he has decided to withdraw to devote full time to our recovery. His answer: ‘Yes. It’s possible. If things continue as they are and have not turned around by January, it is certainly possible.’”

This echoes what I said in a Feb 2010 column on this blog:

“Interestingly enough, I think there is a fourth option that neither President Obama nor Charles Krauthammer have considered, that Obama might be a one-term president because his name will not be on the ballot again. It has struck me that besides his left-wing idealism, another core theme running through his personality is a delicate narcissism. When he ran for President, he was a blank slate and, as Chairman Mao once put it, “on a blank sheet of paper the most beautiful poems can be written.” And so it was. Everybody wrote their own beautiful poem on the bank slate called candidate Obama. In this way he became the Messiah, the One. If nothing else, the election campaign of 2008 was a great ego pump. But who will he be in 2012? Not a blank slate. No, instead of offering vague platitudes, he will have to defend the messy details of his record as President. Does Obama want that role? Or more to the point, is he any good at it? Bill Clinton could bob and weave and let the water run down his back like a duck, but can Obama do that? I don’t think so. He certainly hasn’t shown any skill at this. I think he might take the easy way out - declare victory as a good one-term President and ignominiously depart the scene.”

One of the things I based my assessment of was the possibility of a second recession coming up in 2012 caused by Obama’s anti-business policies and, even more importantly, by the stagflation induced by ‘Helicopter Ben’ Bernanke’s printing press.

Fortunately and unfortunately, respectively, I may be right on both counts.

 

The six requirements for a presidential candidate

Michael Ledeen lists his six requirements for a presidential candidate:

“Most of the time, we elect either state governors or generals who have won wars.  There are good and obvious reasons: We want leaders who have executive experience making difficult decisions, whether on the political or military battlefield, leaders who know how to manage a large and complex enterprise, leaders who have dealt with internal and external criticism, and who have kept together sometimes-fractious teams of advisers, colleagues and subordinates.”

“Second:  I don’t want someone from business who has no experience in politics or the military; the worlds are too different, and we don’t have time for the next president to learn the basic rules.

Third:  I don’t want a legislator whose career has been almost exclusively in politics. Congressmen and senators only give speeches. If the speech doesn’t work out too well, they give a different one next time, they rarely pay a meaningful price for getting it wrong. And they don’t have management experience, they’ve never been tested as leaders.”

“Fourth: I have a strong preference for someone who has failed, learned from failure, and overcome it. One of my heroes is Thomas Edison, whose search for a workable filament for the first electric light bulb produced thousands of failures. He delighted in them, learning from each one. We are fallible; our presidents are going to make mistakes. I want a president who knows that going in, and who is quick to spot his blunder and will look for a better way.”

“Fifth and closely related to #4:  I don’t want a ditherer, I want a decision-maker. Years ago I asked one of my favorite Americans — a great success in business — how he’d done it. ‘Well it certainly wasn’t brain power,’ he said (he’d had a mediocre college record at a middling school). ‘The most important thing was to keep making decisions. I knew most of them would be wrong, so I watched for them to fail, and then tried something else.’”

“Sixth:  I don’t want someone who is obsessed with doing the ‘right and proper and good thing.’ Sometimes there is no good option and the president will have to choose among various poor, and sometimes even evil, options. It’s a legitimate and urgent choice, and I want a president who will make the best choice available. The president has to make some tough decisions. Sometimes they are terrible decisions. But they have to be made.”

“In tough times like today’s, those who have had to make such decisions are more often than not military leaders, and  I am convinced that the best group of contemporary Americans are those who have been in war. I’m delighted to see veterans winning political office, and we may yet see a presidential candidate emerge from their ranks, either this time around or in the near future.”

I suspect conservatives would be enthusiastic about items 1, 3, 4 and 5, but especially 3. Pure legislators know nothing about leadership and they are often little more than influence peddlers and panderers.

With regard to item 1, I have always felt that one area where American political life is superior to Canada is the Americans preference for making governors presidents. Canadians have never chosen a provincial premier to lead our country. We tend to select leading MPs and – in the long run - are poorer for it.

I also suspect conservatives are less enthusiastic about points 2 and 6, but especially 2. In spite of being a conservative, I nevertheless agree with both points, but most especially #2.

Ledeen is right, business is too different from politics for the experience to translate. In a legal dispute between businessmen, the businessman’s instinct is, that beyond a certain point, it is better to split the difference so that everybody can go back to making money. After all, fighting is bad for business. This is the correct attitude in private life because wealth creation is a positive sum game. Politics is much more zero sum: if I am to win two seats, you must lose two. Not understanding this, businessmen-politicians routinely surrender when they think they are compromising (cf Mitt Romney).

Another thing businessmen don’t get is the central role played by emotions and symbols in politics. You see it all the time when some business type, commenting on politics, fails to see a symbolic victory as a real victory and a symbolic defeat as a real defeat. What the businessman-politician does not understand is what the prize of politics really is - the hearts and minds of the voters. If your voters are hopeful and your opponent’s are dejected, you are winning. If your voters are demoralized, you lose.