AMES, Ia. This has been quite a week or 10 days for Republicans. Rick Perry has just announced he’s running for president.
Pundits will parse the polling to determine which candidate is up and which down or out. But more important than the fate of individual candidates has been the rush of events going the Republicans’ way.
President Obama’s job rating has slid to record lows in the Gallup poll, and his job approval fell under 50 percent even in New York. His Aug. 8 speech had a deer-in-the-headlights quality even as he turned mechanically from one teleprompter to another.
Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the government’s credit rating for the first time. The stock market went through a week of horrifying gyrations. Then, on Friday, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals struck down as unconstitutional ObamaCare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance.
Obama’s policies are in shambles; things aren’t working out the way he and his advisers expected. His journalist cheering section has been voicing doubts and dismay. But it’s not clear where Republicans want to go, either, or whether they have candidates with the potential to take them there.
Yes, they have some quick answers. Repeal ObamaCare? By all means. Approve a tax hike in return for genuine large spending cuts? All eight candidates at the Washington Examiner-Fox News debate of Aug. 11 dutifully raised their hands to say no. Beyond that, not so much clear direction.
Some candidates did mention intelligent policy initiatives in the debate. Mitt Romney called for more high-skill immigration, a policy backed by a bipartisan Brookings panel. Michele Bachmann called for buying health insurance with tax-free money, a homey way to advocate elimination of the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance.
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), whose candidacy has attracted little attention, called for tough stress tests and recapitalizing the big banks by debt-for-equity swaps. These are all solid ideas, and they even have the potential for bipartisan support.
Unfortunately, some candidates put great emphasis on constitutional amendments to require a balanced budget and to ban same-sex marriage that will never pass. Nor is it clear these are presidential issues. Article 5 of the Constitution says it can be amended by supermajorities in Congress and among the state legislatures. The president has no more say than any other voter.
So it’s possible that the Republican nominee, if he or she avoids stumbles and conditions remain as they are, can win just by running against the failed policies of the Obama Democrats. But that’s not necessarily enough to govern successfully.
Republicans can argue successfully that Democratic promises of absolute security can’t be kept. Federal entitlements are, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, running out of other people’s money.
The problem for Republicans is that one can’t foresee exactly how free-market policies will improve people’s lives. Back when Ronald Reagan was running during a similar Democratic breakdown in 1980, no one foresaw the Internet.
The best attempt to suggest the possibilities I’ve heard here in Iowa came from McCotter, speaking at the Des Moines Register’s soapbox. “The answer,” he said, “is not to put your dreams in centralized bureaucratic Washington. The future is self-government, empowerment of the individual, a citizen-driven and more horizontal government.” We need policies that enable us to choose our own future, just as we choose our own iPod playlists and design our own Facebook pages.
That could have special appeal to young people, who voted 66 to 32 percent for Obama in 2008. The hope and change he promised have turned sour, and Democrats’ welfare-state policies have proved to be more a straitjacket than a safety net.
Republicans are winning the argument over Obama’s policies, but they aren’t yet making the strongest case for their own.