Right Wing, Party of Four: Why Republican Candidates May Fall Short in 2012

There are few things in D.C. more certain than the reelection of an incumbent president. The non-incumbent party knows that they are fighting an uphill battle, and in many cases probably refrain from trying too hard in a practically unwinnable election. Hillary Clinton, for example, could have chosen to run for president in 2004, during her first term as New York Senator instead of her second. But she did not run in 2004; she ran in 2008, when she narrowly missed becoming the Democratic candidate to Barack Obama.

Generally, a political party will withhold its stars for the real fight, which occurs every eight years. But quite a few people seem to think that President Obama faces a real challenge this year. The five remaining Republican contenders who hope to run against Obama this year have painted themselves as the last saving grace of America, and the only ones capable of saving the country from certain ruin. One candidate, former Texas representative Ron Paul, has a plan on his official website to “restore America” if he is elected president. Another, former senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum, calls America “the last best hope of earth” and promises that “if we do not reverse course soon, we will truly have something to apologize for.”

But even Republican voters seem less than enthused.

In a CBS News poll taken Jan. 9, 58 percent of those who responded, all Republicans, said that they were “dissatisfied” with the current Republican field. Another CBS News poll put President Obama’s disapproval rating among Republicans at a whopping 83 percent.

So what do Republicans really want?

Despite all the Armageddon-like talk from the GOP hopefuls, Republican voters seem to view this election cycle as just another no-win situation against an incumbent. But the candidates themselves are pulling out all the stops, and Republican party leaders have not shied from calling Obama a “one-term president.” Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told Fox News back in July that the “single most important thing” that Republicans want to achieve in 2012 “is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

I do think that the Republican party threw its best hopes into the ring this year. There is a true desire to beat Obama in November’s election.

But their best just isn’t good enough.

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After the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in early January, the country entered full campaign mode. Herman Cain had withdrawn after allegations of sexual infidelity overshadowed his poor knowledge of world affairs. Michelle Bachmann dropped out after Iowa when she couldn’t manage to motivate an increasingly blasé voter base. Jon Huntsman, perpetual last-place-holder, dropped out of the race after being criticized for actually having knowledge of world affairs.

And then there were five. The remaining candidates appear on paper to be quite strong: there is a former powerful Speaker of the House, a former governor and senator of two very important states, and two veterans of previous presidential races who have never quite made the nomination.

Their policies, however, are less than inspiring.

On the Economy
Mitt Romney wants to reduce, reduce, reduce. He has promised to repeal many of the regulations that the Obama administration has passed, and to require congressional approval of all future regulative measures. He promises to cut the size of government, cut spending, cut taxes, cut regulations and cut government programs. If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll decide to cut off that ridiculous Leave it to Beaver hair he’s been rocking for the past 40 years.

Rick Santorum, being from Pennsylvania, likes freezes. He proposes to freeze spending levels on defense and social programs like Medicaid, Housing, Education, Job Training and Food Stamps for five years. He also wants to freeze the pay of non-defense federal employees for four years, cut the federal workforce “by 10 percent with no compensatory increase in contract workforce,” and begin to phase out benefit plans for new federal workers. He has yet to explain how cutting 10 percent of federal jobs makes him a “job-creator.”

Ron Paul, everybody’s favorite elfin libertarian gynecologist, would like to end the Federal Reserve system, which acts as the central bank of the United States. The Fed dictates the country’s monetary policy and is tasked with regulating banking institutions, which it pretty plainly did not do before the financial crisis. Ron Paul’s answer to this is to dissolve the Fed completely. Paul also criticizes the Fed of “creating money out of thin air” and encourages a return to what amounts to a new gold standard: in short, taking the power to assign value to currency away from the U.S. government. Who would then assign value to currency, and what that currency would be, has not been defined.

Newt Gingrich—former Speaker of the House under Bill Clinton, Washington insider, thrice-wed and every bit as slimy as his reptilian namesake—plans to cut corporate taxes even deeper than Romney. Gingrich has promised to reduce corporate income taxes to 12.5 percent, and offer Americans an “optional flat tax of 15 percent.” Newt has also enlisted the help of his wife-bot, Callista Gingrich, whose own views are profiled on Newt’s campaign site under the heading “Callista’s Canvas” (which sounds vaguely like children’s show Allegra’s Window, except with fewer puppets—except, of course, for Callista herself).

On Foreign Policy
Most of the GOP candidates’ foreign policy stances center on national defense. Most also reference Ronald Reagan in some fashion. All hold on to the idea of American exceptionalism on the international stage.

Romney’s foreign policy outline admits that growing powers such as China can be positive contributors to the open market, and need not necessarily be feared. His policy encourages “know thyself” first; that is, he believes that the U.S. should be forthright and clear about its intentions abroad. This is very similar to every other candidate, who all promise to be transparent about any foreign intervention on their watch. Look forward to hearing this from every future presidential candidate, for as long as the name George W. Bush is known.

Santorum says that the U.S. should “[see] the world for the way it truly is,” including evil that should be “confronted,” and decency that should be “nurtured.” Santorum seems to believe that “good” and “evil” have become equalized in the U.S., and urges the cutoff of diplomatic relations with Syria. He also promises to treat Iranian nuclear scientists as “enemy combatants,” in the same vein as people who lay roadside bombs. Despite this fairly radical rhetoric, Santorum is the only candidate who says that he would increase humanitarian aid as president.

Ron Paul’s number one priority is border security, yet he also wants to abolish the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Some of his more centrist policies include terminating the Patriot Act, eliminating waste in the defense budget, and “avoiding long and expensive land wars,” opting instead for using “constitutional measures” to capture and kill terrorist leaders.

Newt Gingrich prefers a “know thine enemy” approach to foreign policy, mainly focused on “radical Islamism.” He is also unique among the other candidates in highlighting math and science education as a tool for developing high-tech weaponry for the armed forces. One hopes that he realizes that math and science education can be useful in areas other than building bombs and fighter jets. But then again, Gingrich also wants to replace the EPA with an agency that would “work cooperatively with..industry to achieve better environmental outcomes.” Because we all know that industries really, truly care about the environment more than their bottom line.

On Health Care and Social Issues
Every single candidate promises to repeal President Obama’s health care reform laws. They prefer to call it “Obamacare.”

Romney wants to make health care work “like a market.” He would prefer to hand the power to make health care legislation to states, and give states “innovation” grants in order to pursue “alternative” methods of resolving medical malpractice suits. This is strangely unlike the Mitt Romney who, as governor of Massachusetts in 2006, enacted the first statewide comprehensive health care reform in the country. While Romney has tried to distance himself from these reforms in recent years, preliminary results show that the number of people in Massachusetts who have made a doctor visit for preventative care rose by 6.7 points between 2006 and 2009. This is widely viewed as a huge success by medical professionals and Massachusetts residents alike.

Santorum, like Romney and several others, highlights Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) as important factors in his proposed health care plan. HSAs are tax benefits applied to money saved for medical expenses, and are currently available for people who already have health insurance with high deductibles, which Santorum says he hopes to continue as president. He does not clarify how strengthening HSAs, which as mentioned only apply to people who already have health insurance, will ensure that “every American has access to high-quality, affordable health care.”

Ron Paul’s health care plan focuses on tax benefits. He vows to make medical expenses tax-deductible, and allow those with terminal illnesses to be exempt from paying payroll taxes. Paul’s HSA reforms would, he says, extend eligibility to all Americans, and remove “government-imposed barriers” to obtaining them (though not industry-imposed barriers, I suppose). In addition, Ron Paul declares that the Food and Drug Administration has no right to dictate what is and is not safe for human consumption, and apparently that people take their health into their own hands when consuming food or medicine.

Newt Gingrich claims that more Americans will have access to health insurance when they can buy it across state borders, and when insurers are barred from dropping coverage of people who become sick while insured. Gingrich also goes through the motions of praising HSAs, reforming Medicaid, and stopping frivolous lawsuits. But Gingrich is the only candidate who places preventative medicine as an important step in his health care plan. He claims that he will give health care providers more latitude to design plans that incentivize healthy behaviors, and reward Medicaid and Medicare providers that offer high-quality health care at low costs.

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In short, despite what the candidates would have you believe, none of them are truly radicals. Ron Paul wants to take the most extreme action, by dismantling the Fed and returning to a quasi-gold standard, but he appears to be in the running to be the new Ralph Nader, and will never actually get the nomination. Today, Mitt Romney is the front-runner among Republican voters, and has been shown in polls to be the best challenger to Barack Obama out of all the GOP hopefuls. His policies are generally the most even-keeled in a race that sometimes appears all about who can out-radical each other. Even Newt Gingrich’s harshest criticism of Romney—that he’s a “Massachusetts moderate”—seems to be doing the former governor more good than harm. So could Romney actually beat Obama in November?

Not all incumbent presidents have been shoo-ins. Since Herbert Hoover’s disastrous mid-Great Depression loss in 1932, two presidents have sought and lost reelection: Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Carter was swept out of office in 1980 by Ronald Reagan (known among Republican circles today as Saint Ronald), who rode in on a wave of socially conservative “Reagan Democrats,” which now make up the majority of the Republican base. Bush lost the 1992 election to another charismatic former governor, Bill Clinton, while Independent candidate Ross Perot drew votes away from both sides.

Notice the common theme in both of these cases: an unpopular president in the midst of economic turmoil is unseated by a charming, charismatic opponent.

But none of this year’s Republican candidates are particularly charismatic, or even likeable. Their senses of humor appear to have gone on permanent hiatus, and the president can still rally a crowd better than any of them. Front-runner Mitt Romney would only be “enthusiastically” supported by 27 percent of the Republicans who would vote for him, according to CBS News.

While normally I would say that the Republicans are not trying because they are running against an incumbent, it does actually seem that the party has put their top people on the job to beat Obama.

What this says about the Republican party is that it needs to do some serious soul-searching if it hopes to take the White House in 2016. When “Massachusetts moderate” is the harshest insult that can be levied at someone—that someone being the front-runner—you know you have some serious disconnect between voters and their party. The Republican party must decide which direction they want to take: moderation toward compromise, or hard-headed far-right partisanship?

Kelsey Allagood can be reached at kallagood@spartans.ut.edu.