I got into a conversation on another website recently about MA Gov. Mitt Romney, whom the proprietor of that site--an independent who generally votes Democrat at the presidential level, is with us on most economic and foreign-policy issues, and is probably to the left of most Kossacks on environmental issues, but is anti-abortion and favors school vouchers--thinks would be a formidable and appealing Republican presidential nominee in 2008. I wrote back to him that Romney, like most "moderate" Republicans who win statewide races in the northeast, might well be a tough candidate in a general election, but would never survive the Republican primaries: the same positions that made him palatable to a sufficient number of Massachusetts Democrats would damn him with both Republican primary voters and--more importantly--the power-brokers within the party, of both the Norquist and Dobson stripes.
This got me thinking more generally about what any Republican who aspires to the presidency post-W will have to say and do in order to get nominated. See what you think:
Social Policy
Absent some cataclysmic event--a Depression-level economic slump, a series of major terror attacks--that could push these issues off the front burner, I don't think any Republican can win his party's nomination (and I use the pronoun advisedly) without positions as or more extreme than Bush's on "God, guns and gays." (Actually, forget guns; Democrats seem to have done so.) At this point, issues of sexual morality are the only valid, philosophically coherent measure of "conservatism"; see below. So whoever gets the nomination will need the figurative, and maybe literal, blessing of SpongeDob Dobson, Pat Robertson, Brent Bozell, and the rest of the KulturKampf Krew.
Even the Bush of 2000 probably wouldn't be sufficient for these guys now. Five years ago, the Republicans were so starved for a winner that they accepted Bush even though, as the Wead tapes illustrate, he was transparently more of an opportunist than a true believer as far as the abortion and homophobia issues. His seeming electability made up for the fact that he compared poorly to Bauer and Keyes in terms of adherence to "a Biblical worldview"; symbolic gestures like naming Jesus as his "favorite political thinker" and the pilgrimmage to Bob Jones U were sufficient in that environment. Especially if Bush doesn't make a major push for the gay marriage ban amendment, the Dobsonites will see 2008 as the time to cash in their chips.
Foreign Policy
Regardless of how ugly things get in Iraq and/or wherever else we invade during the next three years and 11 months, the Republican nominee won't be able to criticize Bush's decisions. He'll have gained the same sort of iconic, beyond-criticism persona that Reagan had by the time he left office. At the same time, absent a draft (which would only happen in the event of a cataclysm anyway), we simply won't have the resources to wage any more foreign adventures. So the foreign policy debate during the Republican nomination race likely will consist of a lot of empty rhetoric about fighting evil and spreading freedom, followed by backtracking (or flat-out dishonesty) when asked for specifics .
What's interesting about foreign policy and the Republicans is that, unlike in the realms of social and economic policy, there's no minimum standard and, as far as I can tell, no behind-the-scenes figure who absolutely must be appeased as an entrance requirement to winning the nomination. So if I'm wrong about any of these issue areas, and there's room for ideological deviation, it's probably here. On the other hand, any Republican who seriously advances "realism" as a foreign policy approach runs the risk of being outflanked by a liberal hawk, of the type that I suspect both Kerry and Hillary will run as.
Economic Policy
This is where the rubber really hits the road for the Repubs. Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth goons absolutely will not let pass anyone who doesn't swear fealty to tax cuts today, tax cuts tomorrow, tax cuts forever. That's bad news for John McCain or any of his Senate followers who might harbor presidential ambitions, but it's also a fact of life. By 2008--again, unless we see a total meltdown--Norquist should be within site of his long-term goal of de-funding the government. At best, any Republican candidate will claim to be "fiscally responsible"--but that could imply criticism of Bush, obviously a no-no.
Republicans have rented power in both the executive and legislature on our national credit, cutting revenues while growing government. They'll continue to play right-wing Santa Claus until the whole thing crashes in on them. If that doesn't happen in the next three years, I expect this will actually accelerate in the primaries, with more anti-factual claims about the flat tax, the magical properties of the Laffer Curve, and so on.
The Twist
Finally, we're going to see something almost unprecedented in American political history: a two-term incumbent leaving office without an obvious political heir. Bush 41 had the inside track in 1988, as Al Gore did in 2000 and Nixon did in 1960; in all cases, the incumbent helped behind the scenes while staying ostensibly neutral, but the "heir" probably would have won anyway.
I mention this because, unless you really believe that Jeb Bush will run, I don't think there's a front-runner and I don't know whom the White House will secretly support. But in this respect, Bush is a lot like Lyndon Johnson: a political animal who will care deeply about who can best represent and defend his legacy. Whether or not he formally signs on with a candidate, Rove can still determine the winner. For this reason as well as Bush's likely iconic status among Republican primary voters, the contenders will fall all over each other to kiss the ring of the Idiot King.
(It might be fun, in a schadenfreude sense, to watch McCain attempting to do this. But that dynamic probably favors someone like Owens of Colorado, or any of the wingnut Senators rumored to be after the prize--Allen, Santorum, Brownback.)
I think this is all good news for the Democrats, not least because I suspect that Bush's approval ratings will stabilize around 40 percent and the country will be howling for a change. Whoever wins the nomination will have to stick as closely to Bush through the primaries as possible, then create as much distance and emerge as "his own man" for the general. The oppo ads should write themselves, and whoever the Republicans run won't be able to draw upon either the veneer of moderation that got Bush close enough to steal it in 2000, or the reptile-brain appeal of 9/11 and "don't change horses in mid-stream" dynamic that saved his foul bacon last year.