thinking 2012: Huckabee? Seriously?

Here are the most recent numbers from InTrade for the 2012 Republican nomination:

1. Romney Bid 26.2 Ask 27.9
2. Palin Bid 18.5 Ask 18.7
3. Thune Bid 16.7 Ask 20.7
4. Pawlenty Bid 10.9 Ask 12.5
5. Gingrich Bid 9.4 Ask 10.4
6. Daniels Bid 8.5 Ask 9.9
7. Huckabee Bid 6.7 Ask 7.9

All these quotes can be had by typing the appropriate string (e.g. 2012. REP.NOM.ROMNEY) into a search engine. Navigation to the appropriate aggregate listing at the InTrade site is a bit cumbersome.

First of all, Mitt Romney is looking more like 2012’s version of Bob Dole: inevitable winner of the Republican nomination, inevitable loser of the election to an incumbent Democrat; right now InTrade has the Republican nominee at about a 40% chance of winning the Presidency. Second, I think the Thune and Palin numbers only look like a dead heat; if Palin lasts until the primary season starts in earnest the primary schedule favors her over Thune at least.

Finally, I don’t understand why there’s any buzz surrounding Mike Huckabee; see e.g. this article from GOP12, where his favorable/unfavorable numbers couldn’t be distinguished from Romney’s in a blind test and this Mark Byron article, where Byron picks Palin and Huckabee as favorites.  If I could I’d happily short Huckabee, since he’s two below “the Gingrich line” (any viable candidate must poll as well or better than Newt Gingrich), he has someone to hurdle to reach each of the three major Republican constituencies, he apparently does not have a natural constituency even among the Religious Right, he has to explain how Maurice Clemmons got out of prison, etc.

I may as well come out and say that either Huckabee, as a pastor, had no business leaving his church to become a politician or he was never called to the ministry in the first place. Either way I have no interest in voting for him, sight unseen. The job descriptions for “pastor” and “President” are just too different for anyone to be qualified to do both.

thinking 2012: Mark Byron’s draft list

Mark Byron has a post defining the field for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012 on his blog dated this past Monday. It looks like he’s lining up to say Palin-Romney-Pawlenty-Huckabee maybe Daniels or Jindahl and a bunch of dwarfs. I like his reasoning; I’d like to think Gingrich won’t still be in the conversation a year from now. I’m disturbed to see Gingrich e.g. flogging the Ground-Zero-Mosque issue as a fundraiser; I don’t believe for a second that giving a dollar to Gingrich’s political action committee will make Cordoba House less likely, slow the spread of sharia in the Western world, or touch any of the scary stories Gingrich tells in his article.

I don’t know why Byron doesn’t mention Thune; I’m guessing it’s a result of his picking a Pawlenty-penned list as his starting point, and that list doesn’t mention Thune. Intrade still has Romney 30%, Palin 18.5%, Thune 15%, Pawlenty 11.5%, Gingrich 11% and nobody else going off at better than 8%.

thinking 2012: Mitch Daniels

Mark Byron noted a social conservative objection to Mitch Daniels on his blog the other day, and Byron separates out the three constituencies in the Republican party this way:

modern conservative economic thought is essentially modified libertarian thought with some of the more chaotic and anti-traditional parts tamped down. If I can borrow Postrel’s framework of dynamist versus statist, modern conservatives err on the dynamist side, except where it runs afoul of drugs, sexual or sanctity-of-life issues.With those exceptions, libertarians and standard conservatives are fairly similar in their policy prescriptions. Thus, they’ve been able to make common cause politically in many cases.

What differentiates things is the roots from where their values flow. Libertarians tend to be more secular in their outlook while conservatives tend to have a stronger religious component in their framework.

The article is mainly about how Mitch Daniels (and to a lesser degree, Newt Gingrich) needs to reach across one divide or another to win the 2012 nomination; Daniels is either presenting himself as a libertarian while being more or less an establishment conservative or coming out of the libertarian closet. He’s already picked out a position with the third group by calling for a truce on social issues.

thinking 2012: 3 constituencies, 9 viable candidates

I’m already thinking about the 2012 Republican nomination for a number of reasons. One is that people I know socially from my days at Liberty started talking about 2012 in November 0f 2008; another is of course Glenn Beck’s appearance at Liberty graduation this year and Jerry Falwell Jr’s subsequent comments about political priorities. But personally I’m interested because the field appears so wide open and the candidates are so poor.

The Republican party has for the last several election cycles (say since 1976 or 1980) had three big constituencies (and a host of minor ones). These three are more or less

• The former fiscal conservatives: the captains of industry, pro-business types, so-called country-club Republicans.
• The social conservatives: the Religious Right, the Theocons, what-have-you.
• The libertarians.

Among these three groups it’s hard to win the nomination without strong support from one of the three and at least middling support from one of the others. The art of the campaign involves pitching messages that will be heard a particular way by one or more of these groups without coming back to haunt the candidate in the general election, and/or finding groups that overlap these groups and getting their support without alienating others. Breaking down the party this way explains why for example Ronald Reagan needed George H. W. Bush or maybe George W. Bush needed Dick Cheney, but why John McCain had a tough job motivating his base even with the help of Sarah Palin.

Wikipedia lists about twenty current candidates, which I think is about the size the list was a couple of months ago. I’ll use that as my baseline. If I had to pick first and second tiers of candidates from that list I’d probably pick the following:

1. Romney, Palin, Huckabee, Paul
2. Gingrich, Daniels, Pence, Pawlenty, Thune

And at the moment I don’t consider any of the others viable candidates. I’d probably break those nine down as follows:

• Pro-business/establishment Republicans: Romney, Gingrich, Daniels
• Social conservatives: Palin, Huckabee, Pence, Pawlenty, Thune
• Libertarian: Paul

Among the pro-business types, Romney is probably the prohibitive favorite. Unfortunately for him he doesn’t currently have much appeal among social conservatives (apart from other Mormons, of course). Gingrich has reached out to James Dobson and been on his radio show, so he has at least made overtures to the Religious Right. Daniels is probably just Vice Presidential material.

Among the social conservatives, there’s Sarah Palin and everybody else. Huckabee has experience but has already run one failed campaign. Thune, a graduate of Biola, probably has the best evangelical credentials, but he’s from a small state. Palin, because of her appearances at various Tea Party events, stands a good chance of overshadowing Ron Paul as well.

I don’t really consider Ron Paul a real candidate; he’s older than John McCain and might fail to win the primary in his home state if Rick Perry were still in the race, but he’s the most solidly libertarian of the bunch.

Here are the InTrade bid/ask values for everyone with a bid of ten or more:

1. Romney 24.2/27.6
2. Palin 17.0/19.2
3. Thune 13.3/16.7
4. Pawlenty 11.0/20.1
5. Gingrich 9.1/11.4

A bid of ten is an arbitrary cutoff but it does a pretty good job; the other four cluster around 5-7%.

The real challenge for any candidate is to appeal to two of the three groups; Palin has crossover appeal at the moment between the Religious Right and the Tea Party crowd; everyone else is in for a tough road. At the moment it’s hard to imagine how Romney can manage to appeal to the Religious Right or the libertarians, unless of course he can package himself as a Mormon who is acceptable to evangelicals, a la Glenn Beck.