1. The current primary-dominated system for selecting presidential candidates has its flaws, but I don’t see us going back to a system in which a conclave of party leaders choose the nominee. A party leader-dominated process like the convention would have spared us some of the freakshow elements of the current Republican presidential race. There would have been no point for a Bachmann, Cain or Gingrich to run in the hopes of getting support from the Republican governors and members of Congress. On the other hand, I think that the primary-driven process has the potential to provide healthy challenges to sclerotic elites. Think Marco Rubio taking on the Florida (and much of the Washington) Republican establishment that backed Charlie Crist. That potential has not been taken advantage of this year. I think the blame lies more within Republican Party elites, the center-right electorate, and plain old bad luck than with the nominating system.
2. Like Peter, I like that right-of-center journalists have gone after Gingrich, and not just because they have played some role in reducing his chances of becoming Republican nominee. Demanding a combination of principle and competence is an early step to getting better candidates who will run better campaigns and (hopefully) govern better. One obvious headline from this season is the rise of candidates like Cain and Gingrich who belong more in a 3:00 AM infomercial selling herbal Viagra than in the White House. A less obvious story is the criticism they have gotten in the conservative press for their shallowness and dishonesty and that their campaigns have faded. The conservative press isn’t the whole (or even the dominant portion) of the conservative media, but I think that, in the medium-term, they will influence the debate over what qualities a conservative presidential candidate should have. I think that hollow sloganeering (Cain - but also Gingrich somewhat) and identity politics-driven hostility to the enemy will become somewhat less important as the campaigns of Gingrich, Bachmann and Cain all fail, one after the other, to secure the nomination.
I also think that the weakness of the Republican field is, to some extent, contingent rather than purely structural. If Mitch Daniels doesn’t have his marriage issues, or if Louisiana has its election for governor two years before a presidential election rather than one (and it is easier for Bobby Jindal to run), then the field looks a lot different. If Obama is reelected (not to be hoped for), the 2016 field could include Jindal and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Right away we go from our current lousy field to one that is darn good. The problem is that, in a lot of ways, 2016 might be too late.
3. I agree that critics of Paul shouldn’t go overboard. I also think that they should focus on policy disagreements and focus on the policy stakes. That is what I like about Ramesh Ponnuru’s column on Paul. But other candidates can’t do this unless they engage on the level of principle. When Paul was going on about ending the Fed and the gold standard, not one candidate made an articulate statement in defense of monetarism or the Federal Reserve’s role as lender of last resort. It was worse than that. The despicable Gingrich (redundancy alert!) tried to steal some of Paul’s thunder by calling Bernanke the “most inflationary” Federal Reserve Chairman in history. Gingrich was a sentient and politically active adult during the Federal Reserve chairmanships of Arthur Burns and William Miller. Gingrich knew damn well that he was lying when he called Bernanke the “most inflationary” Federal Reserve Chairman in history. But Gingrich saw that Ron Paul’s anti-Federal Reserve rhetoric was getting some attention. So Gingrich pitched in and added to the sum total of public ignorance while also injecting his own personal brand of venomous hysteria (Bernanke was also the most “dangerous and power-centered” Federal Reserve Chairman in history) into the conversation. The guy (or woman) who can win over Paul’s more reasonable supporters is the one who can politely take Paul on.
4. I think Gingrich won the news cycle for the day by challenging Romney to a one-on-one 90 minute debate. Romney’s response was weak, it played back into Gingrich’s narrative of being an unbeatable debater, and the media seems to have moved off of the stories about Freddie Mac, etc.
5. Merry Christmas to all.
