For Nate Cohn, the outsider candidates aren’t really so outside. Carly Fiorina, for example, is really just Mitt Romney with a uterus, and Ben Carson is the Second Coming of Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum, just with more blah.
You know, could be.
But that little detail about Mitt Romney actually serving in an elected capacity as the governor of a blue state isn’t some minor distinction. The new Romney is actually Jeb Bush, and trying to fit Fiorina into that box isn’t very convincing. The point, I guess, is that she doesn’t get any support from Republicans who earn less than $50,000 a year and her main credential is supposed to be business acumen, however laughable that may be.
Ben Carson can be compared with some of the more successful religious candidates of the past, and Robertson and Santorum (along with Huckabee) were certainly the most successful ones in my lifetime. Frankly, Carson looks a little stronger than them at this point, but it’s still early. I don’t think it will be productive to think of him as this year’s Huckabee, though, because he isn’t a former governor or senator or even a charismatic televangelist. His biggest base of support may come from evangelicals, but his main appeal is that he’s a black man who stood up to the black president. There’s a reason he talks about political correctness at every opportunity. He’s like a magic shield against accusations of racism. He’s also a more personally accomplished person than Gary Bauer or Alan Keyes, which means that non-evangelicals are willing to give him a look.
As for Donald Trump, Mr. Cohn doesn’t know what to make of him. He appears to be a true novelty in Republican politics, although there is at least a little Ross Perot in the man. But Ross Perot never sought the Republican nomination, let alone led the field for months at a time.
The premise of the article is that maybe the thirst for an inexperienced candidate with no ties to Washington DC is overstated. Maybe the voters who are saying they like Fiorina are just waiting from the right moment to get on the Bush Train, and maybe the Carson folks will fall in line in the end, just as they did once Huckabee and Santorum finally flamed out.
I have to do some research, but I think there’s evidence that a lot of Santorum’s voters simply failed to show up on Election Day. And I think if people wanted to support Jeb in the primaries, they’d already be supporting him.
It’s true that if we ever get down to a one-on-one battle between Trump and Bush, a lot of the current non-Trump non-Bush voters will go to Bush, but what makes people think that Bush is going to emerge as the primary alternative to Trump?
In any case, what people are willing to do once a nominee they didn’t support becomes the right’s champion doesn’t tell us how they’re going to vote in the primaries. People tend to fall in line after the convention, but much less so before it.
To me, this is the really important question to ask: Regardless of who wins the nomination, will they ever be able to unite the right?
Would Jeb be able to turn out the base? Would anything like a normal percentage of people fall in line for the nominee if the nominee were Trump?
My answers are ‘no’ and ‘no.’
Do you disagree?
