Todd Beeton at MyDD notes that while Rudy Giuliani's primary campaign may be faltering, he's still an extremely tough matchup for the Democrats in a general election. I expect he's going to find himself trying to make the "electability" argument more explicitly soon, since it's really the best case I think he can make to conservative voters.
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Fearing Rudy
28 Jun 2007 11:04 am
Comments (5)
If all GOP primary voters cared about was "electablity", they'd nominate the same candidate the Democratic party did, and he or she would coast to an automatic victory. Can't get much more "electable" than that.
In reality, "electablity" only matters once you clear the threshold of your election actually being regarded as a positive development. That's where Rudy is having trouble.
I would, BTW, dispute the idea that Rudy is particularly electable. Republican nominees who are openly at odds with their party's base on social issues have an abysmal record of getting elected, outside of liberal enclaves where the local GOP would pass for a Democratic party elsewhere in the country. Rudy would take off the table a lot of issues a Republican nominee NEEDS on the table to have a chance of winning.
Giuliani has an 'in' that makes up for his failings re rightwing positions, and that is his palpable anger. Projecting anger is the most important quality for a GOP candidate at this point. In this sense, the core has moved away from Bush and towards Cheney. They are ready to drop any hint of compassionate conservative, and go for the blood sucking freak. Feeling cornered, in a minority that they are sure isn't true (how many rightwing commenters have I read parsing the polls to show that Americans really support winning in Iraq), the GOP base is facing a dilemma like the Sunnis in Iraq, and are ready to go ballistic. They need a ballistic candidate. Giuliani should let himself go. The more ferocious and irrational and imperious he appears, the better his chances.
Bracketing out the randomness of the universe and the effect of events on the political landscape, I don't fear Guiliani in the general election. Given his troubles in the primary, he won't generate any fervor with the republican base, whose evangelical component--to grab one example out of the air--seems to be showing signs of disillusionment/fatigue with their adventures in politics, regardless of the ideology of their candidate.
Hillary and Obama, except in terms of rhetoric on the war, haven't made any sort of committed leftward swing, so should be ably to nimbly make the classic push toward the center in the general election. And then it seems to me that Guiliani's centrism, which he'll have to emphasize to court persuadables, will make the democratic candidate more palatable in the eyes of republicans and independants. It's not that an immoderate republican would actually vote for a dem, but that they'd be much less motivated to vote against one. Sort of like all those moron democrats who saw little difference between Gore and Bush.
More important than the above considerations, though, I would say that Rudy's primary campaign slide has less to do with his ideology and a lot to do with what people are learning about both who he is and his track record. A candidate's nature is obscured in the general election by the white noise of so many media representations, but Rudy's gaffes and his checkered past seem to me to have a flavor that punches through that veil. The rhythm of his speech is part of this. W, based on some sort of primitive instinct I think, is much cagier about not ever letting a real emotion come out. Guiliani, on the other hand, seems much more prone to feeling justified in his borishness in a way that a) he can't control and b) is personal in a way that transcends ideology.
Compared to a campaigner as blandly conservative (in approach) as Hillary Clinton, I think it would be difficult for Rudy not to come off as an erratic and generally disagreeable figure.
Rudy falters in the Republican primary, decides that the centrist positions that are problematic to the GOP base make him a good independent candidate, joins with Bloomberg on the WeUsedToRunNYC ticket.
Comments closed July 12, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I still feel that Giuliani is a bit of a paper tiger in the general election, given the enormous amount of personal baggage he's quietly carrying around. He'll definitely throw a monkey wrench into some of our assumptions about "Red States" and "Blue States," but I'm not convinced that this shift will work in his favor.
That said, "electability" is definitely his best argument to make with the GOP Primary voters.
Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 28, 2007 11:33 AM