The Establishment’s “Rudy Strategy”
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 4th, 2008 1:10 amIn light of John McCain’s success, James Joyner wonders:
Perhaps “conservatives” are now a minority, even among Republican primary voters? If so, given that there are virtually no conservatives remaining in the Democratic Party these days and that voters who aren’t aligned with either party are almost by definition non-ideological, that would mean that conservatives are a small minority, indeed, among the American electorate.
Alternatively, perhaps the definition of “conservative” has become so narrow and esoteric that it’s become virtually meaningless?
Here is what bothers me about talk of an “inevitable” conservative “consolidation” around Romney.
Some assume that because conservatives are the largest bloc of GOP voters, their preferred candidate (Romney) ought to win. And that if he doesn’t, this large bloc has slipped into minority status and/or irrelevance. This analysis is fundamentally flawed.
It doesn’t just matter who you win, but how much you win them by. A 15-point lead with conservatives doesn’t do you much good if McCain’s lead amongst the smaller moderate bloc is 30 points. A McCain victory wouldn’t mean that moderates dominate the GOP; it would mean that for whatever reason conservatives didn’t think Mitt Romney was the second coming of Ronald Reagan and were divided.
Isn’t this the same analysis we saw pre-South Carolina? That Obama would win blacks and Hillary would win whites? And that this would be a winning situation for her on February 5th?
Instead, what we’re seeing is that Obama is utterly dominating amongst African Americans and Hillary is barely making up for it with tepid leads amongst whites and Latinos.
Having the biggest bloc is no guarantee of victory. You need to tend to it or else big leads with target groups shrink to small leads. The conservative establishment has taken a lot for granted since late December. They watched McCain win New Hampshire, and waited for South Carolina. They watched McCain win South Carolina, and waited for Florida. They then watched McCain win Florida, and switched into panic mode. In effect, they followed in the electoral footsteps of Rudy Giuliani’s wait-and-hope strategy.
For a long time, I was like most conservatives. I didn’t think John McCain could win. As soon as that assessment changed mid- to late-December, my blogging honed in on McCain. At the time, most of the ’sphere remained obsessed with taking out the niche candidacy of Mike Huckabee. Of the big conservative pundits, I think only Hugh Hewitt and Mark Levin focused on McCain over Huckabee — and even then, there was a fair amount of Huckabashing.
Six weeks later, here we are, with the hated Mike Huckabee with the same shot he had months ago (little to none), but fighting a desperate rearguard action against McCain with less than a week to execute. Sorry folks, but it’s probably too little too late.
The conventional wisdom about moderates like McCain and Giuliani in the GOP primary process is wrong. It’s not necessarily harder for a moderate to win the primary than the general election. Remember that in primary, you only need a plurality of Republicans, including big majorities of moderates, independents, and crossover Democrats, and a minority — perhaps as small as 20% — of conservatives. Blue states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut which the GOP nominee usually writes off in the Electoral College have an outsized say in the nomination process because of winner-take-all (or winner-take-all-by-district) rules. General elections are fought between the 40 yard lines. Primaries are fought over the whole field, with a greater chance of sudden shifts and surprising outcomes.
McCain would have a higher bar to clear in the general than in the primary. In the general, he’d need the enthusiastic support of 95% of conservatives, and every single conservative voter who threatens to stay home is a threat to his electability. In the primary, the bar is set quite low. All he needs now is 30-40%. What we are seeing now is the usual consolidation we see around establishment Republican frontrunners, except at 75-80% strength. So instead of winning 50-20 he’d win 40-30.
My assessment of the unmitigated failure of attacking Huckabee from the other day still stands. If you wanted Romney to be the nominee, you needed to be attacking McCain early and not in the usual ways. You needed to allow for six weeks for a narrative to develop. Huckabee posed a short-term tactical threat to Romney in Iowa; though he hurt Romney, he had no chance of winning the nomination. McCain posed a strategic threat starting in New Hampshire, as evidenced by the floodgates that were opened by that first win. He didn’t hurt Romney so much as he cleared the field of acceptable alternatives for the less partisan rank-and-file.
Tagged: john mccain 
mike huckabee mitt romney strategy
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I’m not sure anything terribly new is going on here. Movement conservatives were always just a little shy of a majority in the Republican Party. They won when the moderates and liberals failed to unite behind a single candidate. They won with Goldwater in ‘64 because moderates were split between Rockefeller and Lodge and only united behind Scranton when it was too late. George Romney’s campaign imploded early in ‘68 so they prevailed by uniting behind Nixon even though they weren’t terribly fond of him. Moderate Gerald Ford beat Ronald Reagan in ‘76 (admittedly in a very close race). But Reagan won easily in ‘80 against a crowded field of moderates. The first Bush prevailed by peeling off a portion of the conservative vote while Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson split the remaining conservatives.
The surprising thing about this year was Giuliani’s strange “big state” strategy that allowed Huckabee to emerge as a credible conservative candidate while destroying Giuliani’s own chances and leaving just one moderate in the field, John McCain. But we shouldn’t conclude that there has been a big change in the moderate/conservative balance.
What has changed is the coherence of the conservative movement. National security conservatives wind up in the moderate wing of the party. (Which is actually where they started in the ’50’s under Ike). Economic conservatives have been practically read out of the party during the Bush administration and Romney doesn’t show much promise of restoring them as he seems to attach more importance to national health care than to a balanced budget or a sound dollar.
Huckabee doesn’t even qualify as an economic conservative in spite of his endorsement of the fair tax. And despite his social conservatism, he doesn’t even do that well among evangelical Christians who are not Baptist.
So what is left of the conservative coalition? That, I think, is the real question that no one is looking at.
[…] Patrick Ruffini wrote an interesting post today on The Establishmentâs âRudy StrategyâHere’s a quick excerptAt the time, most of the ’sphere remained obsessed with taking out the niche candidacy of Mike Huckabee. Of the big conservative pundits, I think only Hugh Hewitt and Mark Levin focused on McCain over Huckabee — and even then, … […]