GOP candidates trying to fool base
At least 17 Republicans are running for president. I believe the last time either major political party had that many candidates was the Democrats in 1976. Their winner was a long shot from Plains, Georgia, named Jimmy Carter.
Can the GOP race get any weirder? I’m waiting for Little Richard, Ariana Grande and Tom Brady to announce that they’re running — because all of them could make the Fox News debate before John Kasich or Bobby Jindal. Heck, throw in the lion-hunting dentist from Minnesota — even he could hardly poll any worse than Lindsey Graham.
If 100 percent of the GOP electorate was evenly split among the 17 candidates, each would have 6.25 percent in the polls. Therefore, any politician who gets double-digit poll numbers is considered a serious contender.
The amazing thing is that only one or two of them manage to routinely do so. The numbers would almost look the same if they were driven by random chance, except that then Chris Christie might get above 5 percent at least some of the time.
This situation puts a premium on any candidate who can grab the media’s attention. Business mogul Donald Trump’s crude media grabs have the other candidates trying to “Trump” each other. We’ve seen Ted Cruz on the Senate floor accusing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying; Lindsey Graham taking a baseball bat to his cellphone; oh, and there’s Mike Huckabee charging Obama with leading Jews “to the ovens,” and the iconic Rand Paul taking a chainsaw to the tax code. It’s a theater of the bizarre.
Obviously, the Republican Party needs to win over a majority of the American people, but this is the primary stage, where cannibalism and extremism reign. And it’s just getting started.
Tonight in Cleveland, Fox News will host the first of many national debates. (Cleveland is also the site of the 2016 Republican Convention). Fox decided to select 10 candidates based on their placing among the top 10 of the five most recent aggregated national polls. Fox selects the polls. And candidates desperate to goose their numbers are buying ad time on … Fox News. It may be madness, but there’s method in it.
All the candidates are trying to appeal to the GOP’s core constituency, which is not representative of most voters. The Republican base cannot get much smaller without becoming a third party — but it’s certainly getting more and more subdivided. It says something that three candidates who have served two or more terms as governors of major states — Rick Perry, John Kasich and George Pataki — are not considered to be top-tier candidates. At least not yet.
Donald Trump is targeting an alienated minority of mostly white, older conservatives by running a race of fear and prejudice. He’s going down a dangerous road. And while anger is a strong motivator, I continue to believe the Republican nominee will turn out to be one of the governors.
As for the six Republican governors who are seeking the presidency — especially my home state governor, Bobby Jindal — I have to wonder whether their governance of their own states has been distorted by their plans to appeal to the far right of the Republican Party.
We’re stuck in the same rut that has derailed national politics for years now: Neither party’s primary base represents the moderate middle, yet their national candidates are picked by voters with the strongest of passions. And for every step the Democrats take to the left, the Republicans take three steps to the right.
This leaves us in a situation where the issues that the candidates talk about in the GOP debate will not be the issues most American voters care about, and the opinions the candidates will express won’t reflect where the majority of voters stands on those issues.
For instance, Trump has introduced illegal immigration as the hot issue among Republican voters. But polling consistently shows most voters view undocumented immigrants favorably.
They want to provide a path to citizenship, let America reap the infusion of new strivers, and move on.
The candidates will also spend a lot of time talking about how on day one they will repeal everything Obama has accomplished. Scott Walker has already said his first act in office will be to revoke the Iranian Nuclear Agreement, meaning his first act in office would be to create an international crisis.
If you’re a moderate Republican, an Independent or a Democrat, the debates will do little to inform you of where the winner of the GOP nomination stands, because the nominee will likely move to the middle immediately following the convention anyway.
The entire GOP primary is designed to appeal to the hardcore base — and it does so by trying to fool them.
(Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.)