90% Of Life Is Not Dropping Out
So the winner of the “Not Romney” caucus turns out to be a pro-life, hawkish, Midwestern, blue-collar, has-been politician in a non-threatening sweater vest who was polling in the single digits – not just nationally but in Iowa – until mid-December. If Tim Pawlenty isn’t on suicide watch yet, he should be.
Seriously, though, and I’m not a Pawlenty nostalgist – I’m overwhelmingly likely to be supporting President Obama in November, and no Republican actually running was likely to change my mind about that – but let’s look at the handful of things Santorum has going for him that the other “Not Romneys” didn’t. Everybody in the party doesn’t hate him, the way they hate Gingrich. He’s capable of at least remembering his own talking points, unlike Rick Perry, apparently. He’s not an obvious amateur, like Herman Cain, or an obvious crazy person, like Michele Bachmann. He’s not challenging core GOP positions, like Ron Paul is (on foreign policy, the drug war, civil liberties, etc.). His blue collar roots lend credibility to his economic message, whatever it is. He’s a Midwesterner, not a Southerner or a Texan. Every one of these attributes applies to Tim Pawlenty as well.
And his negatives? He has no money to compete nationally, no organization, no support from the party leadership (even Pawlenty wasn’t quite as bad off). He’s an exceptionally annoying person to listen to (call this one a tie). He lost his Senate reelection bid by 18 points (Pawlenty won his, narrowly). And he’s transparently an extremist on both foreign policy and social issues, and even if some GOP voters are thrilled to have a “full-spectrum” conservative to support, transparent extremism isn’t usually considered an asset in a general election. Call Pawlenty what you like, “transparent extremist” isn’t what you’d call him.
All of which goes to prove simply that winners don’t quit, and quitters don’t win. Pawlenty was a pretty uninspiring candidate. But with the exception of Ron Paul, who inspires a relatively narrow slice of the electorate but inspires it a great deal, nobody running is particularly inspiring. Heck, most of the folks running inspire some combination of dread and disgust. Rick Santorum would be a terrible general election candidate. Worse, even, than Mitt Romney. But he earned his hour to strut and fret upon the stage, by refusing to leave it.
“I’m overwhelmingly likely to be supporting President Obama in November, and no Republican actually running was likely to change my mind about that”
How does this square with Operation Victory Denial? Were you just floating OVD as an idea, as opposed to actually wanting it to happen?
— Ben · Jan 4, 09:18 PM · #
Um, yeah: OVD was satire. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
— Noah Millman · Jan 4, 09:46 PM · #
Ah. I guess I should feel dumb now.
— Ben · Jan 4, 10:25 PM · #
Please don’t – it’s really my job to walk that fine line between stupid and clever, not yours.
— Noah Millman · Jan 4, 10:58 PM · #
First, please clarify how he’s an extremist.
Second, is transparency admirable?
Third, please give an example of a non-transparent extremist. Oh, wait. Silly me. As you said: I’m overwhelmingly likely to be supporting President Obama in November…
— jd · Jan 4, 11:15 PM · #
An extremist could be defined as someone more than one standard deviation to the right (or left) of the median voter on a salient issue.
A transparent extremist is someone about whom it is obvious that they are more than one standard deviation to the right (or left) of the median voter on a salient issue.
I’m not sure transparency is admirable (“Bill was a transparent liar”), but it is probably generally morally preferable to non-transparency. What is admirable and what is an asset in a general election are, however, non-congruent sets, so your comment is a non sequitur. Non sequiturs are not admirable.
Your third question doesn’t sound like it’s offered in good faith, but I’ll have a go anyway, since otherwise I’d have to get back to work. George Blake is an example of a non-transparent extremist (since communists were extremists in the context of post-war British political opinion).
— Pithlord · Jan 4, 11:54 PM · #
I’m thinkin’ maybe we can do a candidate exchange and get Youssou N’Dour.
— Kieselguhr Kid · Jan 5, 12:31 AM · #
Pawlenty was governor, not a senator
— jande101 · Jan 5, 02:37 AM · #
Not trying to make Ben feel dumb, but the full title of that post was “Operation Victory Denial: A Modest Proposal”. If that doesn’t signal satire, I don’t know what does.
Santorum favors banning contraception, extremistly, transparently.
— kgaard · Jan 5, 02:40 AM · #
Big difference: Pawlenty’s a hack who merely played an ideologue on TV (a bit like Mitt, but without the likelihood of victory to sustain him), thus his unwillingness or unsuitability for the 800-Pizza Ranch Q&A underfunded submarine strategy.
Another way of saying the same thing, Pawlenty didn’t want it enough.
Maybe he or some other candidate could have timed a later entry, but his weaknesses as a candidate would have shown up sooner or later – and what’s so great about being a Santorum anyway? Odds are that he, or a late-swooping Pawlenty, also won’t get anywhere – after being thoroughly trashed and chewed up in the media.
— CK MacLeod · Jan 5, 02:59 AM · #
You TAS commenters and posters are so smart. I had to BING George Blake. Just for the record. Are Communists now or have they ever been extremists anywhere else?
Does wanting to take control of 1/6 of the US economy qualify as extremist, that is, in the context of Post-War USA opinion? Maybe one standard deviation to the left?
Regarding transparency: It just seemed odd that Millman would use transparency as a negative since his candidate campaigned on it and still trumpets it as a benefit of his regime.
— jd · Jan 5, 03:10 AM · #
Maybe Pawlenty just didn’t really want it badly enough. Only a very few do.
— andrew · Jan 5, 03:46 AM · #
I actually have relatives related to Pawlenty through marriage and way before he ran they were telling me that he didn’t believe any of that tea party stuff—he was just a regular guy—but he had to pretend to believe the tea party stuff because that was how the party was trending. They were telling me this so that I would think better of him.
But the dude is such a weak, pasty, sissy in so many ways he had to have been totally delusional to even run.
If Americans supposedly want a president to be a guy (or gal?) they can have a beer with, why then do we get so many creepy creepy dudes and chicks running for office? Did Pawlenty look at himself in the mirror and decide that, gosh darn it, he was the kind of guy america wanted to go out for a beer with? And what is Santorums thought process? I don’t drink beer but I believe a majority of Americans share my loathing of contraceptives and will therefor be happy to join me for a wednesday night prayer session.
This is my main complaint with most politicians. They are usually pretty creepy, almost the platonic ideal of someone you would not want to have a beer with. That is one reason why I voted for Obama. He actually seemed like a normal person.
Over to you JD.
— cw · Jan 5, 05:05 AM · #
Pawlenty made the right decision. The GOP wants someone who can bloody Obama’s nose. Pawlenty couldn’t shake the initial perception that he wasn’t up to that task.
— Peter H · Jan 5, 07:39 AM · #
I don’t think it’s fair to call Pawlenty a quitter anymore than it will be to call Huntsman a quitter when he has to drop out after New Hampshire. Pawlenty was never about being the right wing alternative to Romney. He wanted to be the acceptable establishment candidate available if Romney crashed and burned, but being that kind of candidate meant building a national organization and that required big fundraising. When Pawlenty planted his flag in Iowa and then lost the Ames straw poll to Michelle Bachmann of all people, his ability to raise money vanished and his whole campaign would have quickly followed.
Don’t blame Pawlenty for being a quitter. Blame him for being foolish enough to put his entire campaign at risk in a straw poll months before the Iowa Caucuses.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 5, 06:14 PM · #
So, he wasn’t going to ask the girl to the dance at all. He was going to show up at the dance, hope the girl got into a fight with the guy who asked her, and turned to him for consolation.
In other words: he wasn’t running to win. So, when his first plan for victory didn’t work out, he decided he’d lost.
McCain could have done that when his candidacy was on the verge of collapse in late 2007. Instead, he became the nominee. Gingrich could have done that when he was abandoned by basically his entire staff. Instead he had a huge surge, which unfortunately for him peaked just a couple of weeks too early.
I don’t want to vote for any of these guys. I don’t want any of them to win. I’m just pointing out that the guy who tied the presumptive nominee for first place in Iowa is a candidate with negligible personal charm, no money and no establishment backing, who isn’t even an Evangelical Christian, who lost his last reelection bid by 18 points and who only a few weeks ago barely registered in the Iowa polls, to say nothing of the national ones. But he didn’t quit.
It was very realistic for Pawlenty to have said, after Ames: I can’t win this thing. Might as well pack it in. But it was at least as realistic for Santorum to say the same thing.
— Noah Millman · Jan 5, 06:54 PM · #
“It was very realistic for Pawlenty to have said, after Ames: I can’t win this thing. Might as well pack it in. But it was at least as realistic for Santorum to say the same thing.”
Except, what the hell else was Santorum going to do? Pawlenty, at least theoretically, has a political future in running for Senate from Minnesota.
Again, if Huntsman drops out the day after New Hampshire, will he be a quitter? Is Bachmann a quitter because she dropped out after Iowa? Does Rick Perry somehow deserve praise for not dropping out, even though it looks like all he’s going to do is waste his time and other people’s money by continuing?
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 5, 07:51 PM · #
I suppose the other reasons are that he’s smarter than everyone else, he will fundamentally transform the United States as we know it, He will stop the rising of the oceans and begin the healing of the earth. Yup, pretty normal guy except for all that Messiah stuff.
That’s the problem with all you smart liberals. You actually believe in government and politicians. They can be better than everyone else AND they can be just like us.
— jd · Jan 6, 03:02 AM · #
Normal people don’t run for President of the United States. Egomaniacs run for President of the United States. Some of them are less transparent than others, and arguably the ability to be less transparent is an asset in a president.
I’ve known a few politicians, albeit at much lower levels. In every case, their personality as perceived by people who interact with them personally is quite different from their personality as understood by the public who know them through the media.
No sensible person votes for a politician based on their personality anyway, although of course if you are a partisan choosing among co-partisans, it makes sense to try to get the one who will be most appealing to low-information celebrity-based independents. It’s not clear though that partisans are good at figuring that out (e.g., 2004 Democratic nomination).
— Pithlord · Jan 6, 08:11 PM · #
“Normal people don’t run for President of the United States. Egomaniacs run for President of the United States.”
The term ‘egomaniac’ is a strange descriptor when applied to Dwight Eisenhower, Margaret Chase Smith, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gerald Ford, or Paul Simon.
— Art Deco · Jan 7, 06:00 AM · #
“The term ‘egomaniac’ is a strange descriptor when applied to Dwight Eisenhower, Margaret Chase Smith, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gerald Ford, or Paul Simon.”
What’s strange about it?
— The Reticulator · Jan 7, 08:21 AM · #
do you know what is interesting to me as a gen-xy-er?
how much my younger cousins and acquaintances loath Santorum.
im surprised they even know who he is, frankly.
its his position on homophobia that animates them to hatred.
like the college students booing him in Mass, i think if the GOP wants to attract the youth they better jettison Frothman in a slap hurry.
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 03:23 PM · #
hei CK….who gets your vote?
Noah is voting for O and does Dr. Manzi get an absentee ballot? Since he lives in France an’ all.
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 03:31 PM · #
Of course, the things that’s so frustrating about all of this talk about who’s annoying and who’s not is that any of these people running would be better for this country than this normal guy.. Even Ron Paul might completely flip flop on foreign policy like Obama had to when he became President. The worst president since Jimmuh Carter and the Republicans are having a hard time finding someone to beat him. How depressing.
Millman writes all these incredibly complicated, densely worded, and intelligent posts about monetary policy, Obamacare, Eurodebt, etc. and then blows off the entire Republican field because they’re annoying. And his choice is the guy who has done more to destroy jobs in this country than any other one percenter in history. The guy whose poll numbers go up while he’s in Hawaii, but go down as soon as he opens his mouth. The non-transparent extremist, not a socialist, not a warmonger, not a typical politician. It seems that 90% of his life is not showing up. God help us.
— jd · Jan 7, 03:34 PM · #
who are you gunna vote for, jd?
im voting for Obama, and im gunna work on his campaign like last time, phones and campus GOTV.
AND…..hes going to WIN.
— matoko_chan · Jan 7, 03:44 PM · #
“And his choice is the guy who has done more to destroy jobs in this country than any other one percenter in history.”
What has Obama done to destroy jobs? I know it’s silly to ask a delusional person to justify their delusion, but what the hey. I’m bored.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 8, 07:10 PM · #
“What has Obama done to destroy jobs? I know it’s silly to ask a delusional person to justify their delusion, but what the hey. I’m bored.”
1. Persuade Congress to raise the minimum wage.
2. Persuade Congress to enact a revision to the financing of medical care which has left commercial companies wretchedly uncertain about the trajectory of their labor costs.
3. Appointed people to the National Labor Relations Board with – uh – innovative ideas on what constitutes ‘unfair labor practices’ which generates uncertainty inhibits investment investment and hiring.
4. Persuaded Congress to run enormous budget deficits, which in turn induces an anticipation of future tax increases, which in turn inhibits investment and hiring.
5. Persuaded Congress to continually extend unemployment benefits and place means tests on mortgage modification schemes, which in turn induces a recession in the labor supply schedule.
— Art Deco · Jan 8, 07:31 PM · #
“What’s strange about it?”
What about the public career or biography of the individuals named would lead you to believe they are egomaniacs? Try to answer the question without the use of circular reasoning.
— Art Deco · Jan 8, 07:33 PM · #
If Obama keeps “destroying jobs”, why has the private sector done nothing but add jobs since his inauguration?
Now, there’s certainly a case to make that Obama did something to destroy jobs, and what he did was accede to Republican demands that he shrink the public workforce.
That’s the problem with all you dumb conservatives – you actually believe in the nonsense you make up. The “Messianic” stuff never actually happened, unless you can’t tell the difference between “me” and “we.” On the other hand, telling people God wants you to be President? That’s some Messianic shit that actually happened, and it happened in your camp, jd, not ours.
— Chet · Jan 9, 01:02 AM · #
What has Obama done to destroy jobs?
This is a perfect example.
It not only shows job destruction (632 jobs) but it’s an example of crony capitalism. Government regulations kill small business; big corporations can absorb the financial hit. It happened big time during FDR’s reign. And it continues. The dirty secret is that Democrats have been as good or better for corporatism than Republicans.
And then there’s the thousands of jobs that might have been if Obama had the balls to make a decision on the Keystone pipeline.
— jd · Jan 9, 03:03 AM · #
“If Obama keeps “destroying jobs”, why has the private sector done nothing but add jobs since his inauguration?”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports both seasonally adjusted figures on general employement levels and figures on government employment. The net change (to the end of last month) in private sector employment since January 2009 has been a loss of 777,000 jobs. Private sector employment was at its trough in December of 2009. There was a net loss of 4.1 million jobs in that 11 month period.
Population in this country grows at a mean of 0.9% per year and the size of the employed workforce generally does increase over three year periods.
— Art Deco · Jan 9, 03:17 PM · #
Art Deco – “1. Persuade Congress to raise the minimum wage.”
What the hell are you talking about? Obama has called for such an increase but it hasn’t happened. The last hike in the federal minimum wage occured in 2009, but that was authorized in 2007. Forget about the whole BS argument that raising the minimum wage destroys jobs, the last federal minimum increase was passed before Obama was elected and happened over 2 years ago. To suggest that Obama is responsible for that increase or that it has had any major affect in the job market is, as I said, delusional.
The rest of your points are similarly fantastical but when the first one out of the box is pathetic, what’s the point in bothering with them?
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 9, 04:49 PM · #
“The rest of your points are similarly fantastical but when the first one out of the box is pathetic, what’s the point in bothering with them?”
Nothing I said was fantastical or pathetic, but if it pleases you to talk like this and think like this, fine. You are not going to have many productive conversations outside a certain narrow circle, but having such conversations does not appear to be one of your objects. Tootles.
— Art Deco · Jan 9, 04:56 PM · #
“Nothing I said was fantastical or pathetic”
The very first thing you brought up in in order to accuse Obama of “destroying jobs” was legislation passed BEFORE he became President and signed into law by George W. Bush. That right there is both fantastical and pathetic.
And I’m actually giving you credit that when you accused Obama of getting the minimum wage increased, you were referring to what really happened. I didn’t assume you were like those spectacular kooks who think Obama has raised taxes even though he’s really cut them.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 9, 06:39 PM · #
If you’re an oil executive, sure. If you’re someone whose livelihood relies on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico – like, say, the millions of Americans who reside in Gulf Coast states – then not so much. So I don’t see much “job killing” in your “example.”
I’m a Nebraska resident, or was, so don’t expect me to fall for the nonsense that Keystone was going to “create jobs.” At best it stood to create about 200 temporary construction jobs. Frankly, that’s too little gain for the risk to one of the nation’s most important aquifers.
— Chet · Jan 9, 10:18 PM · #
The rate of change in private sector employment has primarily been positive since Obama was inaugurated, as can be plainly seen. The Obama presidency has fundamentally been good for private sector jobs, that’s just reality. Art Deco wants us all to ignore the context of a major recession in the background, but the truth is that Obama almost immediately reversed the declining trend in private sector employment. Predictably, he gets zero credit for doing so from conservatives. Obama’s saving the economy and you idiots never even noticed.
— Chet · Jan 9, 10:22 PM · #
Your link goes to a guy who created a “homemade” chart—his own words.
I prefer this one from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Through about the same time period as the homemade graph from your guy, note the huge number of jobs lost per month during the Obama regime versus the job gains during the Bush years.
— jd · Jan 10, 01:58 AM · #
“note the huge number of jobs lost per month during the Obama regime versus the job gains during the Bush years.”
Wow. It’s rare to have someone demonstrate their own idiocy in quite so compelling a fashion. You’ve just directed people to a graph that says all, not some or much or many, but ALL of the net job growth during the Bush years was due to an increasing government workforce. That graph says that even with the 6+ solid years between 9/11 and the economic crisis of 2008, a time when there were no serious external or internal economic disruptions to deal with, George W. Bush STILL saw a loss of private sector jobs during his administration.
Do you actually read this stuff before you link to it?
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 10, 02:42 AM · #
You ass, Bunge. We’re talking about jobs—private, government, whatever, you complete asshole.
— jd · Jan 10, 04:45 AM · #
I’d like to recall that last comment if I could.
What I should have said was this:
This was about Obama destroying jobs. I showed one example where his oil drilling moratorium caused job loss. Then I linked to a graph that shows that there were more monthly jobs created by Bush than by Obama, with a huge loss of jobs during Obama’s regime. Nothing more, nothing less. I think Bunge’s charge of idiocy is transparently extremist.
— jd · Jan 10, 05:07 AM · #
Uh, no, we’re not. We’re talking about private sector jobs. Have been from the start, asshole.
Never mind, I guess, that shrinking the size of government is all conservatives ever say they want; when a black Democrat delivers a smaller government workforce, notice how he gets zero credit from conservatives for doing so. Notice also how shrinking the size of government doesn’t seem to have done anything at all for improving the economy.
— Chet · Jan 10, 04:22 PM · #