Marcus Carey’s On the Marc: Process
is messy but it’s the American way

In the GOP primary race for the presidential nomination it is beginning to look like the choices are going to be Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum. Gingrich has faded and Ron Paul has never gotten any traction in the general polling, although his campaign spokesman Doug Wead says they have a secret weapon in the delegate count.

Wead told Rachel Maddow that the Paul campaign is counting on a number of delegates who are prepared to vote for Paul at the convention despite the results of the caucus in some states. That kind of stealth campaign may or may not develop, but it does raise some very interesting questions about the integrity of the nomination process.

It is true that the delegates used to gather in convention and choose the parties nominee. In those days party bosses and stronger organizations in various states spent as much time twisting arms and making deals as they did anything else. In those days the nominee was not really chosen until the convention. Today however, with the number of big “winner take all” states, the primary is usually determined before Kentuckians ever get the chance to vote. This year could be different.

Romney is still outpacing Rick Santorum in money, delegates won and seems to have the kind of staying power to end up carrying the banner for the party in November. But considering the number of times thus far that the “Not Romney” vote has shown up, could this mean that Barack Obama might be facing a less-than-committed Republican Party?

Santorum has recently lurched toward social issues in a bold and eye-catching way. His campaign has resorted to some very old tactics to get attention. One of those tactics is having someone in your campaign make a highly provocative statement so that the media goes into a feeding frenzy over it thereby giving your campaign a huge boost in media attention. If the statement seems to win you some support (usually measured by an uptick in contributions) then you hammer it some more. If not, and the negatives start to roll in faster than the positives, the candidate can disavow the statement and the campaign person can fall on his/her sword.

Santorum employed this tactic this week when a supporter suggested that women can use aspirin for birth control. You remember the old saying, right? Super PAC spokesman Foster Friess used it in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC and sent the press into a tizzy. Santorum had to back pedal away from it, but the comment drove press his way, and earned media is certainly less costly than the purchased kind.

A number of republican pundits have gone out of their way to argue that social issues won’t work this time around, that the issue on the minds of most voters is the economy. Ron Paul even jumped into the debate and warned that trying to make abortion a national issue was a mistake for a presidential contender, not only because the economy was more important, but also because abortion laws are better left to the state, he said.

For those of us who have watched and studied national politics for a long time, from afar, what is playing out right now is the kind of behavior among the GOP presidential candidates which is likely serving up high fives all around in the Obama campaign.

Not only are the republicans still fighting among themselves, but they have now resorted to debating social issues, which were originally thrust into presidential politics most successfully by Karl Rove as a “wedge issue” in 2000.

Back in the days of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan’s epic battles, Goldwater commented that every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the @$$. Goldwater is quoted as saying about Washington DC that “If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.”

Today such talk is considered almost Neanderthal within the modern GOP. But with the possibility of a brokered convention this year the re-emergence of throw-back, bare- knuckled politics might be on the horizon.

Could someone else come along and end up the compromise candidate after all of the other players have fallen on the battlefield? That is highly doubtful. In fact, it looks like Romney will probably win enough delegates on Super Tuesday to ruin the chances for much brokering at all.

Even should he come up a bit short by the end of May, Romney would certainly be in the best position to negotiate himself to the top of the ticket since he’d have need of the fewest number of delegates and have to work far less hard to get to 1,144. And if Santorum continues to peel off social conservatives from whatever odd base it is that prefers Romney, maybe his strategy at this point is to position himself for a VEEP invite.

Through all of this, as republican voters seem to be uniformly clinging to the hope that somebody will rise to change out the presidency, dissatisfaction with the choices being offered could result in a lower turnout due to lack of enthusiasm than earlier predictions had it scored.

All of this drama makes for an interesting season. But then again, it’s America on display, the beacon of liberty for the entire world where the orderly transition of power is the hallmark of our nation of laws. And as frustrating as it might be from time to time for those who don’t like all the controversy, it sure beats the kind of bloodshed that accompanies transitions in other parts of the world now doesn’t it?

Marcus Carey is a Northern Kentucky lawyer with 32 years experience. He is also a farmer, talk radio host and public speaker who loves history and politics. He is a prolific and accomplished writer whose blog, BluegrassBulletin.com is “dedicated to honest and respectful comment on the political and cultural issues of our time.” He writes a daily commentary for KyForward.