Why Republicans Failed to Find A Not-Mitt

OK, let's stop the pretense. Mitt Romney is going to be the GOP nominee, and the general election has begun. The real question now is: How did an ever-rightward-leaning party that has been searching desperately for the latest incarnation of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan--an authentic conservative--end up with one of the most inauthentic Republicans in recent memory? One answer is that even GOP voters realized that none of the other candidates was remotely qualified to be president, with the possible exception of the suspiciously moderate (but fatally conflicted, given his service as Obama's ambassador to China) Jon Huntsman, and that Obama would demolish them in the general election. The other answer is that only Romney had the organization and the money to win.


The desperate search of conservatives for one of their own continues. But the more telling reason for the anointing of Mitt Romney is that Republicans don't really know who they want to be, despite the tea party movement and record polarization in the electorate. The party has not settled on a common agenda beyond  the primitivist impulse to roll back government. Polls consistently show that Republicans are mainly interested in cutting //other// people's entitlements, not their own. On  foreign policy, the tensions between the old neocon camp (best manifested by Santorum), the traditionalists (like Romney and Huntsman) and the old GOP libertarian-isolationist view (Paul) remain completely unresolved within the party: have you ever seen a more confused and less united response to any foreign policy than the various debate comments that came out of the GOP candidates about Obama's Libya intervention?


What will make this general election particularly depressing is that Democrats don't really know who they want to be any more either. There is deep suspicion about the moral and practical failings of Big Government, as I've previously posted.  Obama is a left-leaning centrist, and Romney is a right-leaning centrist, but they are probably more alike than different, starting with the similar thinking that went into Romneycare in Massachusetts and Obamacare nationally. Romney's vague victory speech in New Hampshire -- in which he talked absurdly about the difference between Obama the European-style socialist (I defy anyone to find Obama on the record saying he wants to emulate Europe; why would he?) and Romney the freedom-loving Americanist -- gave us no clues whatever about any real differences between them. 

So the rhetoric over the next ten months will be stark; the reality will be stultifying. Neither base--liberal or conservative--has a champion in sight. Which is what will make this election one of the most cynical and money-driven ever. Which means Wall Street and Super PAC money will likely be the decisive factors. The Bain Capital candidate meets the return of the Rubinite president. The vote will be close--but so will the alternative agendas of a Romney presidency or an Obama second term.