For the last three years, the Republican Party has been engaged in a struggle to define itself. They have seen the backlash resulting from the failed policies of the Obama Administration and realized that this is an opportunity to reassert the small government, free market, low tax pillars of Conservatism. We have seen the emergence of the Tea Party, the sweeping midterm election of 2010 and the increasingly abysmal daily tracking polls for President Obama.
As the Republican primary commenced, this struggle played out in the constant tug and pull between a resurgent Republican base and the party establishment. It is, as the media has portrayed it, a struggle between philosophical catharsis (Newt Gingrich) and electability (Mitt Romney). But that dichotomy is deeply flawed.
Romney has been seen since day one as the establishment candidate with a broader appeal to independents and thus better general election chances. The reality of the situation, however, is that Romney’s persona does not appeal to the country at large. In a year when the electorate loathes the political process, and the politicians who guide it, Romney’s image of politician through and through will be viewed with skepticism, at the very least.
His electability is in question for another reason: the Obama Administration, which is inept at governing but unparalleled at campaigning, knows his weaknesses and has a strategy in place to defeat him. They will—in fact they have already started to—paint him as an unattached, job-killing flip-flopper with no moral center, willing to say or do anything and everything to get elected. It is hard to imagine a more powerful strategy for a general electorate which values consistency and boldness over almost anything else.
Which brings us to Newt Gingrich. His recent rise in the polls is the result of his constant, vocal, and sometimes outlandish criticism of Barrack Obama, a cathartic experience for Republican voters who are angry and passionate about defeating him in 2012. But Conservatives, Liberals, and the Obama Administration itself realize the ease with which they would cruise to victory were Gingrich nominated by the Republican Party, for two reasons.
First, his bombastic personality, which is a positive in the primary election, would become a negative in the general election and the chances of him saying something too outlandish would increase day by day. His past statements, such as when he stated that “people like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz” or when he described himself as a “definer of civilization” paint a picture of a Nixonian candidate, one with bold ideas and political prowess but hindered by substantial personal flaws.
Second, Gingrich is not the bastion of Conservatism that the Tea Party thinks he is. The flip-flops on issues such as climate change, the individual mandate, and Libya are well known. But more importantly, Gingrich has shown an utter disregard for some Conservative principles. Last week, Gingrich committed Conservative heresy by responding to Mitt Romney’s statement asking the speaker to return the $1.6 million he received from Freddie Mac with his own challenge to return the money Romney made “bankrupting companies and laying employees off” at Bain Capital. To equate crony capitalism and influence peddling with the market realities of capitalism itself is to completely misrepresent Conservatism and its principles, something voters will realize under greater scrutiny.
If the Obama Administration is content with facing Mitt Romney in the general election, they are licking their chops at the potential nomination of Newt Gingrich. But the dichotomy of Gingrich and Romney is flawed because it doesn’t include the candidate who is the most electable and who the Obama Campaign is most worried about, Jon Huntsman.
As Conservative columnists George Will and Erick Erickson pointed out, Governor Huntsman has the most Conservative record of any of the Republican candidates. The Wall Street Journal and most recently The Tax Foundation, a Washington based Think Tank, endorsed the Governor’s tax and jobs proposal as bold and transformative. The New York Times ranked him as the most likely Republican candidate to defeat Barrack Obama. He appeals to independents because of his consistent record, his foreign policy experience and his nuanced demeanor.
The true dichotomy is not between catharsis and supposed electability; it is between candidates seeking political absolution through shallow verbal barrages and a candidate with the leadership credentials and bold proposals necessary to win. Put simply, it is true electability. Jon Huntsman is truly electable and he is the right leader to set the United States on the path toward future sustainability.
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