Romney, Bachman, Paul and Perry Begin to Shape Republican Field

Michele Bachman photo credit: Gage Skidmore

When Tim Pawlenty, who entered the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary as a promising candidate, dropped out this weekend after failing to ever really get his campaign off the ground, it seemed to draw a line in the field. It's been pretty clear for a while that Pawlenty's run was going nowhere. He was not able to excite the ultra-conservative base in the way that Michele Bachmann did and couldn't manage to sell himself to the mainstream of the party as being more appealing than Mitt Romney, who seemed able to flick the former Minnesota governor away like a pesky fly anytime he went on the attack. As Pawlenty put it while announcing his withdrawal from the race, the path forward for him did not exist.

Pawlenty is correct and his exit drains any remaining credibility from candidates that were far behind him by any metric that matters. Those candidates – Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum – were never likely to get the nod and will in all likelihood fade from the race in the coming weeks or months. John Huntsman, whose credible resume and late entrance gave him an air of possibility, has also seemed to fall into that not quite Romney or Bachmann trap, and while he can credibly push forward through the other straw polls, few strategists on either side are considering him a live candidate.

Huntsman, who himself was sort of drafted into the race by influential Republicans seeking someone better than the dozen or so candidates that had already expressed interest, has, in his own failure to catch on, encouraged the entrance of still another late comer, Texas Governor Rick Perry. Seeking a candidate with Romney's mainstream appeal and Bachmann's passion and energy, many GOP power brokers thought Perry had enough cred to jump in late and make a splash.

He certainly got the attention of the mainstream media, but many analysts see him as landing far closer to Bachman than the hybrid Michele/Mitt model that they had hoped for. Perry has been making news with some of his recent statements regarding things like Fed chair Ben Bernanke and whether or not his vague comments about Texas succeeding were in earnest. But those who know Perry's more extensive bio might wonder how anyone thought he could end up being seen as noticeably more mainstream than Bachmann.

Rick Perry

Perry was actually a Democrat until 1989. In fact, he was even Al Gore's Texas campaign manager in 1988. Carl Rove was reportedly responsible for prompting his conversion and quickly helped him become the Lt. Governor under George Bush, who he would later replace, though there's a bit of a tiff playing out between the two camps over Perry's efforts to distance himself from Bush's legacy of big-deficit spending that could also hurt. Since becoming a convert, Perry has gotten considerably more conservative, though he was knocked for his support of Rudy Giuliani in 2008, who's seen negatively as a pro-gay rights moderate by many on the far right.

Perry recently flip-flopped on the gay marriage issue himself, first saying that New York's law allowing it was a states' rights issue and therefore not a concern of his. When he was bashed by conservative groups and hounded by fellow candidate Rick Santorum, Perry changed his mind and decided he supported a national ban on same-sex marriage – a swing in ideology that didn't sit well with 10th Amendment advocates, especially since Perry himself addressed the issue pretty strongly in his 2010 book Fed Up.

”You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t,“ Perry said at a recent bill signing in Houston. ”You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then something that doesn’t suit you say, ÔWe’d rather not have states decide that.’“

There's a host of other Tea Party problem areas, including his D- rating for immigration and the Gardasil fiasco, but at the end of the day if Perry, who'll bring a record of proclamations of prayer for rain during drought, statements that he believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and global warming does not exist, a refusal to officially repeal a law making homosexuality illegal despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, still has problems selling himself to the far right as a conservative, one has to ask exactly what he's bringing to the current field aside from the fact that he looks and sounds like some guy with good hair who'd play the President of United States in an action movie.

Ron Paul

Considering that he still is nonetheless perceived as more mainstream in his appeal than Bachmann, it's unclear whether the far right can afford to continue to demand something more conservative than Mitt Romney if they remain oblivious to Ron Paul's candidacy. Paul, who continues to poll very well, despite being almost completely, and even compulsively ignored by the mainstream media, brings a 20-year old message of consistently preaching the small-government, states' rights, Libertarian message that the Tea Party types say they want, yet he's still being presented as something of a second fiddle to a much less qualified, experienced and credible Tea Party candidate like Bachmann, who he finished a close second to in the Ames Iowa Straw poll.

In fact, in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that focused almost exclusively on Bachmann, Perry and Romney, Bachmann was described as having, ”emerged from cable-TV land in recent months to be a viable competitor,“ as they fawned over how telegenic the Congresswoman is, while dismissing the veteran Texas Congressman Paul in one parenthetical clause after describing her victory in Ames: ”(Libertarian Ron Paul, who has no chance to win the nomination, finished a close second.),“ was how it read! Apparently the Wall Street Journal is comfortable even at this early point declaring definitively that someone near the top of the field is D.O.A. Perhaps they know something we don't.

Mitt Romney

The piece even insinuated that Congressman Paul Ryan was being prepared to be rolled out and into the race if Perry and Bachmann managed to split the religious right and Romney still emerged out front. Which then begs the question, why not Romney? Do Republican rainmakers really feel he can't win? Or are they worried that without a hands down frontrunner, something unscripted might happen like Bachmann winning, or God forbid Ron Paul actually getting the nomination. It's no secret in many circles that a Ron Paul presidency would privately anger many power brokers at the very top much more than an Obama victory.

As much as many of the financial elite feign hatred for our ”Socialist President,“ the Fortune 500 knows that Obama has maintained a moderate, corporatist set of policies that have been very kind to industries like investment banking, big oil, defense contracting, etc. Corporate profits are at an all-time high and taxes remain at historically-low rates, despite the revenue-starved state of our government at every level. Getting Ron Paul would threaten to upend much more of the status quo than keeping Obama, and as much as they might say otherwise, the most powerful interests in this country don't mind the status quo right now – certainly not enough to change it with revolutionary methods that could impact their leverage in the social order.

All that being said, this thing is far from over. Romney looks to be doing very well by continuing to position himself presumptively as the nominee. He rarely mentions his primary opponents and instead talks about the President in a manner that suggests it's already a race between the two of them. Mitt isn't going to fall down the steps at this point. He's going to continue his jaunt and I predict he'll either win the nomination, or at the very least, lose by a very slim margin without imploding.

The hyper-passionate discourse and accompanying lack of filter that both Perry and Bachmann seem to have in spades always make it feel like either one could go down in flames at any moment. In addition to Ryan, I've even heard rumors of everyone from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough to Jeb Bush being prodded from up high to run. Though it seems like a real long shot, Scarborough has been slamming Perry and Bachmann over the last week and even called Sarah Palin, "the Republican Party's Barack Obama" for her superstar status built on little experience or substance.

In some ways, the race is beginning to look like the 1996 GOP primary. There is a sitting Democratic President that Republicans see as being extremely vulnerable, yet they're still finding it almost impossible to discover someone they are confident can unseat him. Absent a very late entrance by someone new of the brand-recognition level mentioned, real Republicans need to start asking themselves whether they are looking a gift horse in the mouth in buying the counterintuitive notion that the candidate who most clearly and consistently preaches (and practices) classical conservatism can't win a race he's so clearly still in. Otherwise they might be fighting over who gets to be the next Bob Dole. 

Dennis Maley is a featured columnist and editor for The Bradenton Times. An archive of his columns is available here. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com.