Dispatch #2

We are currently in the midst of the Republican primaries, during which that party will choose a candidate to oppose Barack Obama, the current President and the obvious Democratic candidate. No Democrats have come forth to challenge Obama, a not unusual occurrence, but given the President’s indifferent political success, the drop in his popularity, and the sluggish economic recovery, a challenge wouldn’t have been out of the question. Earlier in this ridiculously long process, some hopes surfaced that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton might make a second run at the nomination. Only the Republican Party would have benefited from that scenario, and the Secretary wisely demurred.

The Republican Party has two major problems going into this election: their ranks are divided between a vehemently ideological “base” and a cowed party establishment with no real vision, pragmatic or otherwise, no original, constructive “message”; their second problem is a weak slate of candidates. The two problems relate to one another in that a number of more promising candidates—moderates with some hope of appealing to “swing” voters in the general election—simply deferred from entering a campaign process that promised to be overly long, loud, occasionally vicious, rarely substantive, and never particularly intelligent. That is, the slate is weak because the party is divided, with no candidate to unify them—except Barack Obama.  Hostility toward the President is the Republican Party’s chief animus, the source of its collective spirit, in so far as it can focus any force at all. Visceral, irrational, and rancorous, this mood ferments from primary to primary.

Mitt Romney, a former one-term governor of Massachusetts and millionaire venture capitalist, is the establishment choice, and generally considered the only Republican candidate with a chance of defeating Obama in the general election. The base choice would seem to be any candidate other than Mitt Romney, and they have gone through their quirky, cranky options almost monthly. A flirtation with Michelle Bachmann, a fascination with Herman Cain, a brief, attachment to Newt Gingrich, and currently a hopeful liaison with Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania. There is little genuine love for Mitt Romney, but at the end of the long primary days, the Republicans will choose him, though tepidly and reluctantly. There will be a primary in Romney’s home state of Michigan this Tuesday. At the moment, polls show Romney and Santorum in a tight race, which shouldn’t be happening in Romney’s home state, but I suspect he will win reasonably comfortably, hardly decisively, but comfortably, and that outcome will probably mirror the contest in general.