It’s a Treadmill! No, it’s a Mobius Loop! The Never-Ending Invisible Primary

It’s the least wonderful time of the academic year when the last assignments are handed in, grades are due, students are weepy, and every single honor society and campus group hosts an awards banquet. Most of us are pie-eyed with fatigue as we ping from exam to meeting to mandatory-fun social event, but the end is nigh and in a few short weeks we get to hit the re-set button and set off for summer. This is one of the selling points of an academic career for those of us optimistic about the future: There is an actual finish line and we get to cross it, once every 14 weeks. Some of us sprint across the tape, hands held high in a Nixonian victory pose and some of us stagger in, limping and wounded. But done is done.

Not so for our friends running in the Invisible Primary, because they are never through campaigning. If 2016 seems like a long way off, set your peepers on 2020 – because that’s when some of these folks will still be running for president. Think about it this way: Mittens ran in 2008 and 2012. Jeeze, Joe Biden ran in 1988 and in 2008, and that’s a looong time in between runs to constantly position yourself as presidential. These folks are in the positioning period right now, shoring up their leaderly legacies, mounting their accomplishments on their walls like the heads of dead hunted animals, all aiming to sell themselves as the big electoral winners.

And so we turn to this week’s most notable IP contenders to see how they are presenting themselves for public consumption.

#1: Ted “Ain’t No Squishie” Cruz: The Texas firebrand jumped to the front of the “Look at Me!” pack with this National Review article announcing his “consideration” of a presidential run. One Cruz associate (Cruzzy? Cruzite? Cruzzociate?) said “Ted won’t be opening an Iowa office anytime soon, but he’s listening.” Let me translate: “TED’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT! GIVE HIM MONEY!” Don’t believe me? The dude is going to South Carolina to campaign. The Palmetto State (besides being the home of the newly elected rep from the Philandering Phirst District – but more on that later) is one of the early presidential primary states, thus an important one to win.

Cruz seems to be grabbing our attention thanks to this analysis (or something along these lines) from my student Amazing Antonio: “Ted Cruz is big because Marco Rubio isn’t conservative enough for the wacknuts.” Truly, Cruz seems to be making his mark through the kind of agitator politicking that garners white-hot camera lights and truckloads of attention. The only hitch in the giddy-up for Cruz is that he has about 4 minutes of experience, which tends to piss off the gray beards in the party, but he can easily parlay his 2016 IP action into a Fox News gig (ala Palin & Cain) or use it to move the ball downfield for 2020. See? 2020.

#2: We move now to my boyfriend, Jumpin’ Joe Biden. Veep Bee is apparently mulling over yet another run for the top job, and we know this because… he’s going to South Carolina. Seriously, what on earth does this state have that I do not see? They just elected Mark Sanford. AGAIN! (but more on that later) Anyhoo, VeepBee is headlining a sold-out fundraiser in S.C. on Friday, which means the guy is presenting himself for public consumption. Of course, as everyone knows, the major wrench in his plans is going to be Hillary, whose maybe-maybe-not candidacy led to this absolutely side-slapping observation about a Biden pitch from political strategist Bob Shrum: “Because she’s a Democrat, I can’t say she’s the elephant in the room, but she’s certainly the dominant donkey.” Seriously, I love this stuff. I’m happy you’re in the game, Joe! It allows us to frequently use one of my favorite descriptive words about you: Avuncular.

#3: Finally, on to New Jersey Gov. Chris “Don’t Call Me Avuncular” Christie, who revealed that less than 2 weeks after a dust-up about his weight in February… he had gastric band surgery. Normally, this kind of thing falls under the heading of “Wait… why are we talking about this?” except that everyone was talking about his weight. This then means that doing something about it is some sort of indication that the Gov. is presenting himself for public consumption. Perhaps a poor choice of words. OK. Put another way, this revelation shows that Christie is cognizant of the chatter around him and wants to change the trajectory of the conversation. Mike Huckabee famously lost more than 100 pounds before his 2008 bid for president, and while that didn’t do very much for his electoral results it did sweep away the disparaging remarks and totally change the narrative. And the narrative in the IP is incredibly important.

Other IP players are doing the same sort of reconstruction of the fables (a tip of the hat to R.E.M.) to include Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Bobby Jindal ofLouisiana. Both of the Bobs are facing a wee-bit of trouble as they look ahead, but I think we will have to let that play itself out more before we address it here. See? Something to look forward to.

I would be remiss were I not to briefly discuss Mark Sanford’s SC-1 win last night. In a fun interview with the National Journal I said that his win was more about party politics (S.C.-1 being an R+11 district) than about the people actually liking Sanford – or about Sanford actually hosting a true comeback. I will not disparage the obviously troubled voters of South Carolina, but instead leave it to the genius Andy Borowitz who came up with this headline and this posting on the Borowitz Report: Sanford’s Comeback Gives Hopes to Liars. I leave this posting with the line I came up with yesterday but was not used in the Journal piece: "The Republicans of S.C.-1 were faithful to their party, even if it meant voting for a guy who wasn’t faithful to anybody.”

I really do love this stuff. Even if, at this time of the semester, I am exhaustipated.

No! No! Don’t do that!

There are times in our lives when events conspire to make us stop and thump our heads against our desks in astonishment. People (not you savvy “Invisible Primary” blog readers, of course, but some people) make incautious errors, some people are socially tone deaf, and then there are those who are straight-up dum-dum, ass-hat nincompoops. According to no less a scholar than Big Bird, everyone makes mistakes: Your sister and your brother and your dad and mother too. Yes, everybody screws up… but mistakes are enormously fun to watch in the political realm.

Politics is a fecund field for the accident-prone, if only because of the spotlights and cameras that shine upon those who crave elected office. This means that a verbal slip-up or a miscalculation has the propensity for wide coverage. This is the force of the modern media, and it is the gift that brings us to today’s IP Media coverage: The unforced error. Several things hit my IP radar this week which made me bonk my head against my desk and yell “No! NO! Don’t do that!” to my computer screen. And so what I expect to be a long-running series, the first installment of what I will call “No! NO! Don’t do that!” (NNDDT! for short)

Our first NNDDT! Award goes to… former First Lady Barbara Bush.

I am not picking on Babs herself (she looks terrific, by the way) so don’t jump on me for carping on a civilian. Instead, I am giving the NNDDT! award for her comments about her son Jeb’s possible presidential run (See, Dave, I got there! Sometimes it just takes me a chatty while, as you well know). When asked by The Today Show’s Matt Lauer if she would like to see Jeb run, Barbara responded: “He's by far the best qualified man, but no. I really don't. I think it's a great country. There are a lot of great families. It's not just four families or whatever. There are other people out there that are very qualified. We have had enough Bushes.” I totally get that she’s a mom and she’s talking about another son going for another grueling campaign season and I appreciate her candor and her moxie and all that jazz… but the magic of editing just opened the door to every. single. oppo ad of 2016 featuring the quote: “There are other people out there that are very qualified. We have had enough Bushes.”

Mrs. Bush: NNDDT!

Or at least send Jebby a fruit basket with an apology note.

Moving right along, the second NNDDT! Award goes to… Sen. Rand Paul for taking the horrific Boston bombing and using it to throw a torx wrench into the nascent debate on immigration. The so-called “Gang of Eight,” which included IP fave Marco Rubio, had just unwrapped their immigration proposal when Sen. Paul sent a public letter to the media to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urging: “We should not proceed until we understand the specific failures of our immigration system.” Good gravy. It makes me want to scream at my colleagues like a zealot. No wait – that was the two Chucks (Schumer and Grassley) over the head of poor Pat Leahy. Never mind. Anyway, it’s silly and you’re doing this to get attention and being obstructionist is no way to position yourself as a potential Free World Leader, so NNDDT!  

The next NNDDT! Award goes to… my man, former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner. Who went back on Twitter. And says there might be more saucy pictures of him out there. And he’s back on Twitter – I think this bears repeating. I suppose he might be trying to do it and get it out of the way, but this is no way to mount a comeback. Ha! OK, not enough? How’s this, from Stephen Colbert: “Weiner is ready to stick it back in. And that takes balls.” Better? Anyway, Weiner is going to face some stiff competition. And I suspect he’s going down. OK, I’m done now. But all of that said, he’s BACK ON TWITTER! Tweeting is not a necessity, by any means, not even a must for public office. And for Weiner, who had to resign from office BECAUSE OF TWITTER I suspect it is fraught with possible problems. I just cannot figure out what the heck he is doing, besides launching an effort to swell his support by intensifying and surging his popularity. OK, NOW I’m done. Is it hot in here?

Anywho: Anthony Weiner, put down the phone and as for Twitter…NNDDT!

The last NNDDT! Award goes to… former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford who, after last week’s revelation that he broke into his ex-wife’s house, did the next most unconscionable thing: He took out an ad in the Charleston Post & Courier newspaper which began with the words: “It’s been a rough week.” Yes, Governor. It has. For the people for Boston and the people of Texas who had to suffer through real tragedy. And now you have just reminded people that you broke into your ex-wife’s house. Remember her? The one you cheated on with your current fiancé? Tone deaf. Senseless. Bonk, bonk, bonk. My head hurts too much to even tell you not to do that. Just please go away.

So those are the first of the NNDDT Awards. I suspect more will be on the way as our IP candidates hog the spotlight and step on their own… toes. Nominations will be accepted at this blog on a rolling basis. First come, first served.

OK. Now I’m done.

A Visible Primary

I know that the focus of this blog is to investigate the Invisible Primary, the run-up to the real presidentials where candidates vie for media, mindfulness, and money. At times, however, when circumstances demand it, we have to veer off course and pay attention to a very real (and visible) primary election in order to more fully understand the political climate of our beloved IP.

And so our eyes turn to South Carolina, where (sigh) disgraced former Governor Mark Sanford has belied all of my predictions (sigh) and won the GOP special primary run-off election to fill the vacated 1^st congressional district.

Sigh.

To avoid a serious case of solipsism, I will not write endlessly about how I wrote this should never happen. Instead, I want to take a peek at the reasons Sanford won and the impact this win might have on Republican politics writ large.

First things first - the comeback kid. To recap events, just in case you weren’t paying attention the first time: When Mark Sanford was Governor of South Carolina in 2009 he disappeared over Father’s Day weekend, his security detail couldn’t find him, and his office staffers said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Turns out he was in Argentina visiting a woman-not-his-wife and when he finally returned all hell broke loose. Sanford kept his job, lost his wife, and gained a fiancé when the Argentinian lady came to the states and set up shop. He is currently on his political redemption tour, which apparently includes running for Congress. Voila: You are up to speed. So how the hell did Sanford win the primary? Well, it was a crowded field that was so crowded; a run-off was mandated because no one won a majority of the vote. Sanford is now pitted against Elizabeth Colbert Busch (comedian Stephen Colbert’s sister) in the special election to be held in May. She has money, momentum, and name recognition, and there’s a very real chance she will win.  

But South Carolina’s political flavor plays a big role here. The Palmetto State is red, red, red. The State Legislature and Governor’s Mansion are occupied by Republicans, and of the state’s seven US House members, only one (James Clyburn) is a Democrat. So there’s that. Also: Redistricting. Lonce and Chris have both addressed how redistricting plays important roles in shaping the election map, and so I will instruct our readers to look down-blog a bit for more info on this. Suffice it to say here, SC-1 is a very conservative district, one that Sanford himself represented before, one that has been redrawn to be even more right-leaning. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the district by 18 points. So it seems natural that a Republican would win (easily) here. BUT, you put this into the larger national conversation about the future of the GOP and there emerges a hitch in the giddy-up. Folks at the federal level are worried about losing this seat, and this brings us to the nationalization of this race and the tie-in to the IP environment.

As stated in an earlier posting, the GOP is up against a narrative that it is anti-immigrant, anti-poor, and anti-woman. Since Sanford’s fiancé is from Argentina, we will assume that he is pro-immigration, but since he humiliated his wife in the process of finding his true love there is a very decent chance the women’s vote is in play. Sanford tried to mitigate this damage by asking his ex-wife to run his new congressional campaign, a maneuver that undoubtedly made women everywhere say “Wait. Whaaaaa?” as they banged their heads against their desks.

Sigh.

Colbert Busch went immediately on the offensive launching ads after Sanford’s run-off win that accused him of being untrustworthy and anti-woman. This is a narrative that could not only gain traction against Sanford, but could also play a more considerable role in the national GOP. No one in the South Carolina delegation has endorsed Sanford, an indication of his unpopularity and of the baggage he would bring with him to the Republican Party. Apparently, national GOP figures are asking Sen. Tim Scott, who was appointed to the Senate and thus coughed up the SC-1 House seat, to endorse Sanford. But in 2009, Scott signed a letter that asked for Sanford to resign, saying Sanford’s actions had “reveal[ed] a pattern of poor decision making and questionable leadership.” Whoops.

And herein ties the SC primary race to the present conundrum of the GOP: The voters want candidates to stand for something, and to back up these stands with consistency and action. When the GOP says it is going to be the Kinder Gentler Party (version 2.0) and its representatives use terms like “wetbacks,” something smells amiss. Similarly, when GOP candidates and officials call for family values, I do not think they are calling for multiple families or situational values. I could be wrong about that. I am confident, however, that the party needs to appeal to a larger swath of the voting public, and seeming wishy-washy on their  stands and on their beliefs ain’t gonna cut it.

Sanford is, wisely, trying to frame this fight as a battle between a fiscal conservative and a tax-and-spend liberal, but Colbert Busch’s business experience may stymie that narrative. The Republicans, who are now positioning themselves for the 2014 midterms and the 2016 show, are keeping an eye on this race because it may prove to be a bellwether of things to come.

It is also fairly well certain that our Invisible Primary contenders will be watching the race to see if personal foibles actually do lasting political damage in our hyper-partisan, overly-mediated climate. As we navigate the unchartered media waters these things are, apparently, undetermined. Just a warning shot: If this portends a 2016 Weiner run, I’m outta here. 

Sigh.