IT´S ALL ABOUT THE BANK BAIL-OUTS, STUPID..... / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ( VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

It’s all about the bank bail-outs, stupid . . . 

By Michael Barone

Published: June 2 2011 16:56

After months of shadow-boxing, several of the main contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are declaring their hand. The race has already occasioned a weight of commentary, much inevitably misleading. One piece of conventional wisdom seems to me clearly incorrect: it is that Republicans, a docile and deferential lot, always nominate the candidate next in line.


When you examine the specifics, you find that most of these “next-in-liners” in the past came very close to losing at an early stage. Mitt Romney, who finished second in popular votes to John McCain in the 2008 race for the party’s nomination, is often identified as the frontrunner this time. But he gets only 17 per cent in the realclearpolitics.com average of recent national polls, and that tends to reflect name-identification rather than profound commitment. Mr Romney has a personal fortune and raised $10m in one day – but money, as he found last time, does not necessarily buy votes.


Another familiar rule is that Republican nomination fights tend to be between economic and cultural conservatives. This is not so much the case any more.


Most of the 130,000 Republicans who attended the 2008 caucuses in Iowa, the first battle of the race, did indeed identify themselves as religious conservatives, as one might expect in a state settled by pious Lutherans, Methodists and Catholics. In 2008 they preferred former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee over Massachusetts Mormon Mr Romney despite the latter’s well-organised campaign. This time former governor Tim Pawlenty, an evangelical from next-door Minnesota, is expected to campaign there intensively. So may Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, an electrifying speaker who raised five biological and 23 foster children.


But it is not clear that cultural issues will be as decisive here as previously. The vast expansion of the size and scope of government by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats inspired the Tea Party movement, an on-rush of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, into political activity as large and rambunctious as the peace movement four decades ago. Surveys show that most Tea Party sympathisers are cultural conservatives, but are motivated more strongly by economic issues.


Their conservative views on cultural issues never motivated them to participate in the culture war politics of the 1990s and early 2000s. But the spectacle of imprudent homeowners and bankers being bailed out at the expense of those who had made prudent decisions, and the reality of sharply increased government spending and federal budget deficits, did arouse their ire. There is some moral content to their critique – it is wrong to make the prudent pay for the reckless and feckless – but the policy solutions they seek are mostly a matter of dollars and cents.


New Hampshire, traditionally the scene of the second contest, is clearly economic conservative country. As a colony, it was a haven of smugglers and a refuge from Massachusetts’s moralistic Puritans. As a state, it started the first state lottery and is famously taxophobic, with no sales or income tax. Its Republican primary voters – about twice as numerous as Iowa’s caucus-goers though the state has only 1.3m people – are relatively secular and economically solidly conservative. Mr Romney, who has a vacation house there, seems to be targeting it this time. So – if she runs – may be Sarah Palin, whose bus tour, which started at a motorcyclists’ rally at the Pentagon on Memorial Day, is said to be headed there. Although she is viewed as a cultural icon by both critics and fans, the issues that got her into politics in Alaska were primarily economic.


Two more things should be noted about the 2012 cycle. With no serious Democratic contest more people may vote in Republican primaries and caucuses. This could mean less influence for well-organised conservatives – or an in-rush of hundreds of thousands of previously uninvolved tea-partiers. No one can be sure what new people want.


The other big difference is that Republicans are moving away from winner-takes-all delegate allocation rules, which tends to produce an early winner, to proportionate representation, which Democrats have long favoured. This can prolong the process, as it did for Mr Obama and rival candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008.


Prediction is perilous. The 2004 Democratic nomination was effectively decided in the New Hampshire primary; the 2008 Democratic contest went all the way to the last primaries. After the February 5 Super Tuesday primaries in 2008, Mr McCain led Mr Romney by more than 2-1 in the decisive metric of national convention delegates, and Mr Romney dropped out. But had he won 3 percentage points more of the total vote in primaries that day and Mr McCain 3 percentage points less, they would have had roughly the same number of delegates and the race might have gone on four months more. The only reliable generalisation about the presidential nominating process – surely the weakest and weirdest part of the American political system – is that generalisations are not reliable.


The writer is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of The Alamanc of American Politics


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011