50 Shades of CPAC

50 Shades of CPAC

We’re back! For a variety of personal and professional reasons, the two primary contributors to this blog have been on something of a hiatus since last summer. Speaking for myself, I’ve been as busy as I’ve ever been in my professional life trying to make demonstrable progress on four working papers under a 3-3 teaching load. There are times I truly envy my friends in the private sector who only have to work 40-50 hours over a five day work week…

In an attempt to hit the ground running, I’d thought I’d elaborate a bit upon John Sides’ take on this go around of the annual CPAC conference. In perhaps what is the best commentary I’ve seen on the event yet, @monkeycageblog tweeted out this gem:

Let me preface the discussion with this: within my short life as a political scientist, I’ve seen clear changes, good progress really, in how the media covers the invisible primary. A decade or so ago, if the words “invisible” and “primary” happened to collide together in the same sentence, your average journalist, perhaps political scientist even, wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea of what it was referring to. Compare that to the last couple of presidential election cycles where reporters have routinely begun to refer to the process and report on it in a much more informed fashion. This is clearly a case where political science’s engagement with journalists has had a positive impact on popular media coverage. Despite this wide recognition of the importance of the invisible primary in steering the parties towards nominees on the part of a growing number of journalists, the media tends to focus on invisible primary events that are most conspicuous. And in this instance, it means focusing in on the wrong place.

The problem with the CPAC conference is that this particular piece of low hanging fruit is probably the least useful in getting a grasp on which candidates are in doing best in the ongoing deliberations amongst policy activists within the Republican party network. The history of success at CPAC is far from perfect in predicting the eventual nomination. Let’s face it, the comments of a few fringe candidates make for interesting news items, despite the fact that they test my faith in democracy in general and more narrowly make me wonder how I ever had sympathies with this particular crowd in years past (yes, it can be painful, hence the title). Couple that with the fact that the straw poll gives a nice quantifiable capstone to the event, you can see why journalists pay it a great deal of attention. However, CPAC is at best a snapshot of the opinions of a few of the “fringier” factions within the party. Libertarian-ish types, check; Populist Tea Party-ish types, check; a good showing of Republican office holders, [crickets].

We know from experience, that the support of members of congress, governors, and other elected office holders is absolutely key in winning the invisible primary because of the organizational resources that they bring with them and the cues they give to others in the party. Voters do indeed take heed to the opinions of the "elite". When the key party actors aren’t present in force for the conversation taking place at CPAC, whatever visible cues we get from conference will be a mighty incomplete picture of the party wide deliberation. 

So props Senator Rand Paul for his continued sweep of this series. And, a shout out to Scott Walker for nearly pulling off a dark horse win. But when you’re a dark horse behind Rand Paul, from a crowd that barely resembles the key constituents of the Republican party network, neither of them, nor Republicans, nor the general public, should be taking any of these results to the bank. I dare say we should stick with Prof. Sides, and look elsewhere for clues as to who's really cleaning up in the invisible primary.

Heritage, CPAC, and Stolen Underwear

            One of my favorite friends from college was Scott. He was (and likely remains) outrageously funny, smart, and sarcastic, and we lived in the same dorm for two years running. Our second year, having abandoned his loutish roommate, he moved all of his belongings into our second floor lounge and squatted there until the custodians locked him out of the room, but that’s a totally different story for another day. Scott came to St. Lawrence University from the Deerfield Academy boarding school, a tradition-rich WASP haven in New England whose motto is “Be worthy of your heritage.” We got several weeks into our first semester at SLU when Scott copped to the fact that he couldn’t do laundry, so we tromped downstairs to the basement of Reber Hall (rut roh!) where I meticulously explained the nuances of Tide and bleach. He had a look on his face that basically said: Isn’t this what we pay people to do? but I endeavored on. I was expounding on an astonishingly wide variety of underwear folding techniques when I stumbled upon a pair of his boxers that had the Deerfield motto and crest on the front, and on the tush was written: “Where the hottest party is the Grand Old Party.” 

            So I stole Scott’s underwear.

            Look, I was a Government major from DC, Reagan was in office, and this just killed me. All of my tee shirts and printed clothing read leftie things like: “Experts agree! Meese is a pig!” so finding something that was so gung-ho Republican was both totally different and really funny. I still have the boxers, and take them out when I’m feeling blue and need a laugh. This may be one of those boxer weeks, actually.

            Anywho, I was reminded of Scott’s underwear after my star-student Antonio sent me this cartoon about the future of the GOP in regards to the Invisible Primary. The Republican Party may very well remain the hottest at Deerfield but they seem to be losing their way off-campus, in no small part to their steadfast devotion to their own heritage. Since the cartoon references yet another Bush (that would be Jeb), we will begin with him and then get to the other members of the Sonnenkinder (that one’s for you Adam Rapp!).  

            We’ve heard a whole bunch from Jeb Bush lately, thanks to the release of his book “Immigration Wars” and the ensuing press tour that landed him on the Sunday morning chat shows. Since it seems fairly straight-forward that one I.P. technique is to write a policy book and hawk it to hell, Jeb was asked repeatedly about his 2016 prospects which brought this rejoinder to David Gregory of NBC: “Man, you guys are crack addicts. You really are obsessed with all this politics.” Umm… Jeb? Did you miss the briefing about what the Sunday morning shows are about? Because I have it filed away on my computer in my “patently obvious” file, right next to the documents titled “Congressmen want to be re-elected” and “Chocolate is delicious!” Back to his book, which is on immigration: His TV sales pitch led to a slew of headlines about whether or not his new immigration stand makes him more in-line with the GOP, a flip-flopper, or a back peddler. But this really was subtext for the big question about his 2016 intentions, and he added fuel to the fire by saying he would not rule anything out. Crack addicts indeed.

            Moving on to CPAC, since the conservatives arrive in DC this week for their annual bacchanal, the conference program is out and the speaking times have been listed by The Atlantic right here. Sen. Ted Cruz gets to speak for the longest amount of time (33 minutes) and after that, my girl Sarah Palin is allowed 16 minutes. Trump, Jindal, Paul, Perry, Rubio, Walker and Ryan each get just over 10 minutes each. I’m not sure if this means too much, but it does give insight to who the cool kids are on the right wing of the GOP. And only at CPAC does Donald Trump count as “cool.”And... Sarah Palin gets more time than the rest of those folks? Really? Moving on....

            Speaking of Sen. Rand Paul, his filibuster last week (the 9^th longest in history, apparently) garnered much I.P. attention, not only because he kept the floor for so long but also because he got great press because of it. Even though a few Republican stalwarts (Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham most notably) criticized the effort as “ridiculous,” Paul gained a ton of support from the likes of House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and GOP strategist Steve Schmidt among others. We already knew that Paul the Junior has his eye on the 2016 prize and would lean forward into any spotlight, but as my favorite Uncle, Larry the Libertarian, notes: What made this special was the boost that Paul got from social media. According to the WaPo, Twitter was on fire with more than a million Tweets. Nicely noted, Uncle! It was this social media attention that brought what our marvelous Nicholas noted to be even more Senate attention from another I.P. favorite, Marco Rubio. Much jockeying for attention, Invisible Primary candidates! Well played!

And so now we double back to the conundrum facing the Grand Old Party: Being worthy of your heritage is not the same as being accessible to the electorate. That seems to be the biggest problem facing the Republicans as they march towards 2016. As Bill O’Reilly noted on Election Night (in terms far more crass than this) you can no longer win an election with just the WASP establishment behind you. You can bet your Gin & Tonics that the lack of ethnic diversity will be problematic for a party that is struggling to re-define itself, since Rubio and Jindal are the two clear exceptions to the white-guy rule seen in our I.P. front runners. But that said, into this void comes a bit of intellectual diversity where Paul in particular doubles-down on the libertarian strain of conservatism. We see this attention to the far right in the CPAC run-down, which (as noted) very specifically excludes a more moderate Chris Christie. Don’t yell at me – I know the “C” stands for “Conservative,” but still. The right wing of the Republican Party is hoping to add a little heat to the GOP.

Long live the Deerfield boxers.