Unrepentant frat boy: Rick Perry lectures Ron Paul during a break in Wednesday's debate
(Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)
There was nothing particularly enlightening about Wednesday's Republican debate. Even the shocking parts weren't terribly shocking: Yes, we know Rick Perry and others have nothing but contempt for Social Security, and yes we know that the party constantly shrieking about the
sanctity of life really, really enjoys executing people, even if some of them later turn out to be innocent. Michele Bachmann went from firebrand to also-ran in the span of, what, a few weeks, and nobody has any idea why Gingrich, Santorum or some of the others are even still around.
The post-debate consensus seems to be focusing on Romney and Perry as two poles of a party that is deeply divided in both style and substance:
The divide between the two men reflects an ongoing debate that’s splitting the Republican Party both on the campaign trail and beyond it. Some of its leaders, looking back at the 2010 midterm elections, believe that the party — and the nation — are ready to gorge on red meat as never before. The American people, goes this line of thinking, recognize that entitlements must be addressed and that old-style demagoguery over the issue has become less effective.
Others believe deeply that the laws of political gravity still apply — that Social Security and Medicare reform must be handled with great care, if at all, and that 2012 will hinge on jobs-focused swing voters who are in no mood to revisit the still-popular New Deal-era program during a time of economic uncertainty.
In other words, Romney is trying to be the measured, even-tempered fellow who wants to keep a bit of credibility with voters that might not be keen on supporting a movement that seems to be frothing at the mouth, while Perry is confident that the new "Rabid Republican" caucus is enough to propel him to victory, regardless of how nuts he might sound to anyone else:
Mr. Perry appears eager to run a campaign aimed squarely at the Republican base. His rhetoric is clearly meant to fire up evangelicals, the Tea Party, social conservatives and the Republican Party’s most committed voters — its traditional base.
Mr. Perry did not back down from his claim that Social Security was a failure, even in the face of direct criticism by Mr. Romney. He insisted that climate change science was “not settled.” And he got one of the biggest cheers of the night from the crowd by vowing that killers in Texas would “face the ultimate justice.”
Frankly, I think Perry's approach is probably going to be the more successful one. Romney will be hard pressed to make it out of the primaries when he has already been tagged as insincere or, worse, moderate. He will never live down his past attempts to help sick people, even if he "helped" them in a distinctly Republican way. The candidates who have been doing well, among Republicans, are the absolutists. Rick Perry is as absolutist as they come: Other candidates may want to privatize or end Social Security, but he'll tell you outright he wants it gone. Other candidates may give speeches on how much they want to hurt workers, help businesses, and cut government help to all the poor bastards who are unfortunate enough to need it, but Rick Perry can point you to all the specific people he's hurt. He's actually proud of the dismal wages, bad working conditions, inability to access healthcare, and all those other little Texas Miracles—and the Republican base will eat that stuff up.
I think Perry will serve another role as well, albeit a more subtle one: the Republican desire for a re-do, and therefore a possible redemption, of the Bush presidency. Conservatives have never concerned themselves with actual failures of their policies—they simply declare the implementation flawed, and demand the same things be done all over again. In Perry, they have an opportunity for that doubling-down in very strange, karmic ways. A Texas governor of dubious intellect and record, a sometimes agonizing speaking style, known as a bit of a frat boy, known for bullying behavior, known for his actual pride in executing people with no particular concern for their innocence, a bold God-panderer: Rick Perry is the spitting image of George W. Bush, but with all remaining nuance stripped out. He is the Bush id, with any pretenses at compassion or sincerity stripped away, leaving just the dumb, mean-spirited parts.
I suspect that will have more appeal to conservative die-hards than pundits are currently willing to admit. There is a hunger for mean, among the conservative base, and a hunger for punishing the nebulous other, whether that means the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the old, union workers, public sector workers, immigrants, disaster victims, Muslims, or anyone else. Rick Perry may suit them in a way that a Bachmann, Santorum, or Cain could not. He is just as fringe as any of those tea party favorites, but he has something each of them lacks: He looks like a Republican president. Specifically, he looks like their most recent Republican president.
The Republican base isn't looking for a new Reagan: Reagan was too moderate. They're looking for a new George W. Bush.