Why Obama Will Win in 2012

Today former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) announced that he is running for president. Lawrence O'Donnell, an MSNBC host, predicted that Tim Pawlenty will be the GOP nominee for president. Interestingly I came to the exact same conclusion before he announced the same and for the exact same reasons. O'Donnell's reasoning matches my own: specifically that each Republican candidate has a disqualifying feature of his political ideology that makes him unpalatable to a Republican primary electorate all consumed with red meat conservatism. If we take all the Republicans in the race we can pick them apart by their disqualifying features. Mitt Romney has Romneycare, Ron Paul has his isolationist views on foreign policy and social libertarianism, Gary Johnson has his support for marijuana legalization. Rick Santorum is a bit soft on economics and economics will be the number one issue this year, Newt Gingrich believes in global warming and denounced Republican plans to privatize Medicare, and so on and so forth. There are two solid conservatives in the race, meaning those who hit the right notes for the Republicans on economics, social policy, and foreign policy, the only ones whose politics will not alienate one or more portions of the Reagan coalition of economic libertarians, social conservatives, and foreign policy hawks. One of those is Herman Cain, a candidate with no political experience who stands no chance in Hell and the other is Tim Pawlenty.

Tim Pawlenty is not exciting, he is not an animated guy or incredibly philosophical. I doubt Tim Pawlenty could explain why he is a conservative but he is a conservative nonetheless. Even if he lacks Reagan's charisma he can recite the Reagan doctrine like a true catechism of the conservative faith. Low taxes are bad, economic freedom is good, traditional Christian values should be promoted by government, and America should have an assertive foreign policy. How low taxes can simultaneously exist with a government large enough to "promote family values" and maintain an aggressive imperial foreign policy has always been lost on me, but it is what your average American conservative believes nonetheless. Even if Ron Paul is more consistent in advocating small government at all levels Joe Six Pack is not too likely to vote for a peace-loving, marijuana tolerant weenie like Paul. Even if Rick Santorum hits all the right notes on social issues the business class Republicans might take worry that his Catholic influenced social conservatism may make him less stalwartly laissez-faire. Newt and Mitt, no matter what they say, will never be able to overcome their paper trail in advocating for issues that are anathemas to Tea Partiers long before the Tea Party even existed. This is why Tim Pawlenty is the antidote, he doesn't have the fire in his belly but he hasn't done anything to step on any Republican primary voter's toes. I came to this conclusion independently of O'Donnell, but when you think about it it all logically falls into place.

I am about 60-70% certain my Tim Pawlenty prediction will come true. Of what I am 95% certain is that even if the GOP nominee is not Tim Pawlenty, the GOP nominee will lose to Obama in November 2012 and Obama will cruise to reelection. In a different year Republicans would have a shot but if a Republican wants to win he needs to embrace conservative economic orthodoxy. All Obama needs to do is roll out an ad saying, "Republicans want to privatize Medicare" and it will be over. Even if Pawlenty and others are not Paul Ryan, to Paul Ryan they will be inextricably linked. The bottom line is that privatizing Medicare is the mantle of the GOP now and they will have to wear that mantle to November. There is a concept in politics called the Overton window, a concept which explains that there is a certain window of policies that are palatable to the electorate and another set of policy options that simply are not. One thing Republicans are going to have to learn is that privatizing Medicare and Social Security simply are off the table and always will be, that's the end of it. Republicans can fight reasonably for smaller government than we have now but they cannot expect authentically small government to ever come about except in their deepest pipe dreams. Big government, at least as FDR conceived of it, is here to stay. Republicans can decrease government on the margins but they dare not touch Social Security and Medicare. Anyone who does will commit political suicide.

People will raise objections to my thinking saying that Republicans won in 2010 on a Tea Party platform. I respond by saying that the average swing voter is not well educated and tends to decide things on the moment. What Tea Party candidates talked about was the deficit and the national debt and when they said that we must "cut spending" they described "cutting spending" as an abstract concept. Most of the Tea Partiers unseated Blue Dog Democrats in relatively moderate districts and there is no question that if they had come out for the current Republican Medicare plan in 2010 the "Republican Revolution" of 2010 would simply not have happened. Democrats would have had their majority narrowed, but they would have the majority nonetheless. I expect Republicans to retain their majority in the House but I expect it to be trimmed. I am not predicting an all out Republican annihilation because people's congressional votes tend to be more personal and less ideological. When it comes to president though, Obama simply needs to point his finger and say the words "privatize" and "Medicare" and keep doing that for the next year and a half and he will win reelection. In fact this is what I expect him to do and he is more or less beginning to do it.

Come 2012 Republicans will ask themselves a question, the question will be, "Did Republicans run too hard to the right?" The answer of course will be "Yes" and they will take on a different tune for 2016. It makes sense to me sensible, pragmatic, non-ideological Republicans like Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels are staying out this year. These men know they can't pass the Tea Party filter of 2012 but they know full well they actually have a shot at being president in 2016. Obama will have his second term but I doubt we've heard the last of Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie. As for Pawlenty, he will be the fall guy for '12 and slink away from the political scene and end up in the history books as a decent, conservative politician who ran against Obama and lost. He will be the Alf Landon of our day. If you do not know who Alf Landon is that is my point exactly.