My New Take on 2012

The Supreme Court decision on corporate campaign funding and word that the RNC aims to take out Palin next year have made me change my opinion about the 2012 race. The 2012 election will be between New America, one which wants to make a transition in its political economy, versus Old America, one which will seek to preserve the financial status quo. All the teabaggers and religious right are just noise--although they may have an impact in the 2010 elections. The Republican financial backers will ensure that no populist wins and that the religious right's influence will appear to be minimal. The thinking is that the base has no where to go and if the mortal enemy is Barack Obama, they must accept the decision of Republican elders.

Let's take CPAC. The only "straight" Republican who did well was Mitt Romney, who had won the straw poll three times in a row. His second-pace finish was basically the same percentage by which he won over the past three years. What I found striking in his speech was his homage to George W. Bush, which appealed to the conservatives who attended the first few days. Romney himself had benefited from former President George H.W. Bush giving him a podium during the 2008 election to make a declaration concerning his Morman faith, a major stumbling block in a party dominated by fundamentalist Christians. The Romney-Bush connection is likely to linger during the 2012 elections. If you remember, John McCain had to beg George W. Bush to fund raise for him during the campaign and even that was a bomb. Romney isn't going to forget this and the money machine the Bush Family still has access to.

Quietly, the thinkers behind the Republican triumph in Massachusetts were all from the Romney campaign and Scott Brown paid homage at CPAC in his introduction to Romney.

2012 will look similar to the two previous elections to 2008. If one recalls the Obama campaign, it's important to remember that Democrats controlled the key posts of attorney-general in vital states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia,and New Jersey. This was important so as to prevent voter suppression efforts by the Republicans against minorities and college students. Major fights occurred in Virginia and Ohio over allowing college-age students to vote on their campuses. By 2012, all four states probably will have Republican governors and attorney-generals, thereby ensuring voter suppression efforts.

A minor note at CPAC, which I believe the Republicans will run on in 2012, is the theme of Obama's incompetence. It allows them to bury the racism deeper in their campaign and on the surface it benefits only Mitt Romney who will tote his success in the financial sector. If you look at the Tea Partiers sponsored by Freedomworks led by Dick Armey, you will find most of the major corporate donors to the Republican Party. These will swing big-time behind Romney.
Basically, the Republican formula right now is to recruit photogenic candidates who made a fortune in the private sector. Mitt is the role model.

Republicans are basically an authoritarian party, who support only those who have run in the primaries before. They are not going to risk the Party to people who do not share their class and their views or who might not be controllable.

Romney has to overcome the perception he is remote, too rich and a mannikin. He will have been removed from political office over eight years, which would be a liability in most years but an asset after a polarized four years of combat in D.C. He is not a creationist and is now pro-life but religious conservatives don't believe it. His own version of health care reform in Massachusetts will be a moot issue because we should have something in the next few months. His No Apologies, his defense of America's greatness, will give him a book tour opportunity this Spring, where he is expected to attack Obama's foreign policy. He has already given a major address at the Heritage Foundation lamenting the fact that Obama has cut (that's what he claims) the defense budget. Romney should be picking up the remains of the neoconservatives for his campaign and has had the support of the National Review.

What he learned during the last campaign was that he needs a stalking horse candidate to draw votes away from his major competitor. McCain used Huckabee to do this to deprive Romney of primary victories and he will adopt the same strategy. Facing the religious right in Iowa and South Carolina off the bat, Romney will have to quietly back a Christian Right candidate like Rick Santorum to siphon off the votes to allow him to remain competitive before the larger states.

I believe Romney will have a bottomless campaign chest throughout the primaries and the general election. The oil companies with George W.'s help will be pouring money into his campaign to stop any efforts at climate change policies offered by the Obama Administration.

Barack Obama himself will be handicapped by his own responsibilities as President from waging the type of insurgent campaign he did in 2008. He will also be looking at an economy that may have recovered but with unemployment hovering between 7 and 8%, a situation likely to linger for years to come. Romney will campaign as a successful businessman who "knows" how to create jobs and will be "trusted" by Wall Street to set the economy in the right direction. I would suggest that Obama run right at this since Romney's personal wealth has come from turning around companies through massive lay-offs. Even McCain snapped at him that he profited by making people unemployed.

Strangely, the Obama advantage by 2012 may well be his national security policy. If he hasn't taken out Bin Laden by then, he will have severely crippled Al Qaeda and will have withdrawn from Iraq and should be down-sizing our troop levels in Afghanistan. However, Iran will remain an issue--one which the neoconservatives will be poundng on. To counter the advantage the Democrats have in national security, I expect Romney--after conducting the usual ballet on the vice presidential choice--to pick General Petraeus.

Then Romney can promise the Religious Right their usual booty with faith-based initiatives and defense of marriage amendments. He will also have the Morman mafia at his disposal to form the underground links to the fundamentalists.

It's important to realize that there are two basic strongholds of the Republicans--the military-terrorist complex, which is a $1 trillion enterprise; and Wall Street, particularly oil and oil-related industries. These have to be preserved at all cost. While such things as the common good demand attention to social welfare , health and education, these are no longer Republican concerns. It is clear that the congressional Republicans now want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. What will appear to be a cultural war in 2012 really will be a struggle over the fate of America as a viable political economy.

Just to give you some idea, American corporations created ZERO jobs in the last TEN years but had record profits. Romney will be putting a pretty face on dismantling all social programs, a process that will be accelerated by Republican governors.

I was puzzled in the last campaign why Republicans never mentioned the word "middle class". The 2008 Convention was a stunning return of Republicans to their 1920s economics, something that surfaced again at CPAC. Social Darwinism is the platform of the GOP. As someone who knows the Romney people very well and is a born-again Morman, Glenn Beck said,"You have a right to fail." The Republicans are committed to preserving and extending the tax cuts to the very rich and to eliminate as many corporate taxes as possible, even though this will create no jobs.

The electoral college landscape will revert to an approximation of 2004. The race will depend on the line from Minnesota through New Jersey. Obama's victories in Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida will be in doubt. This will be a red-blue election. The Dailykos did a follow-up review of the 2008 that showed that McCain won counties that George W. did by larger margins and Obama won Clinton counties by even larger margins. The polarization of the country had deepened not lessened.

The Romney campaign will have to resort to large-scale voter suppression to minimize Obama's overwhelming advantages among Blacks, Hispanics and college-age voters. Right now, the GOP only has a demographic advantage among voters age 65 and above and among Generation Xers, who came of age during Reagan. By 2012, the GOP should have the ability in key states to engage in this.

It will come down to who would you rather hang out with. The tipping points will be the debates as always, where Obama should do his usual excellent self. What the GOP will bank on is that Obama's self-regulations against taking money from lobbyists will doom his effort. If Romney gets really swarmy, he will use his wife's MS and his position of being a minority religion to get sympathy. And if he does choose Petraeus, a Rockfeller Republican, expect him to claim the General as the real generator of Obama's foreign policy successes. I also expect the race to be as vicious as you will see. The stakes will be the future of the country and we have seen the entrenched financial interests throw everything they have at Obama.