Is “electability” too “strong” a term?

There has been a great deal of debate in Michigan Tea Party circles about the “electability” of certain Republican senate candidates. The issue keeps coming up again and again, as there is a large field of candidates running, but only two have the money and experience it takes to win. Nevertheless, many grass roots type conservative activists are drawn to the candicacy of a man with no — meaning zero — chance of winning in the general election against incumbent Debbie Stabenow. Were I working for Stabenow, I would hope and pray that the guy with the least chance of winning gets the nomination.

Yet there is also a very good chance that Stabenow will win no matter who runs against her. She can be depended upon to coattail it along with the Obama machine, and when he was here in Ann Arbor he reminded the audience of how great she is.

Now, in the State of the Union on Tuesday, I laid out a blueprint that gets us there. Blueprint — it’s blue. (Laughter and applause.) That’s no coincidence. I planned it that way, Michigan. (Laughter.) A blueprint for an economy that’s built to last.

It’s an economy built on new American manufacturing — because Michigan is all about making stuff. (Applause.) If there’s anybody in America who can teach us how to bring back manufacturing, it is the great state of Michigan. (Applause.)

On the day I took office, with the help of folks like Debbie Stabenow, your senator, and Carl Levin and — (applause) — John Conyers — the American auto industry was on the verge of collapse. And some politicians were willing to let it just die. We said no. We believe in the workers of this state. (Applause.) I believe in American ingenuity. We placed our bets on the American auto industry, and today, the American auto industry is back. Jobs are coming back — (applause) — 160,000 jobs. And to bring back even more jobs, I want this Congress to stop rewarding companies that are shipping jobs and profits overseas, start rewarding companies who are hiring here and investing here and creating good jobs here in Michigan and here in the United States of America. (Applause.)

So our first step is rebuilding American manufacturing. And by the way, not all the jobs that have gone overseas are going to come back. We have to be realistic. And technology means that a larger and larger portion of you will work in the service sector as engineers and computer scientists. (Applause.) There you go. We got the engineering school — there you go. (Applause.) And entrepreneurs. So there’s going to be a lot of activity in the service sector. But part of my argument, part of the argument of Michigan’s congressional delegation is that when manufacturing does well, then the entire economy does well.

While Michigan’s economy is improving, notice that zero credit is given to Governor Rick Snyder. That’s because if Michigan does well, it’s all thanks to the federal government and Obama. And of course if Michigan does poorly, why, then it’s the fault of the Republicans. Fighting such an equation is an uphill battle. (Rick Snyder has few defenders on the right, and many attackers on the left.)

Anyway, just as Obama will be tough to beat in Michigan (where he has an eight point lead over Romney), so will Debbie Stabenow. They are both despised in Tea Party circles, but holding them in low regard will not make them lose.

Stabenow not be defeated by candidates whose public support is in the single digits.

With the Republican primary still six months away, former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra holds an enormous lead to win the GOP nomination to face Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll shows.

But more than half of likely Republican voters — 52% — haven’t decided who they like best.

The poll, done by EPIC-MRA of Lansing this week, shows Hoekstra is the choice of 40% of voters, while Clark Durant, a charter school advocate from Grosse Pointe, has just 3%. Other Republican contenders got 2% or less support.

Their irrelevance does not stop the fringe candidates and their supporters from yelling and screaming.

The local Tea Party is in a war over this stuff, and the debates usually come down to one word.

Electability.

It strikes me that whether a candidate is electable has at least something to do with whether he or she can be, well, elected. Things like positive name recognition, money, and experience are factors. However, spouting the right-sounding words at the right time to the right Tea Party people can cause someone with no experience, no money, and zero or negative name recognition to soar. Among the Tea Party rank and file, at least. There are people involved in the Tea Party who have been around long enough to see what happens when an unelectable person wins a primary — classic examples being Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell.  Those senate seats were occupied by unpopular Democrats and could easily have been won, but the rank and file primary voters were persuaded to get behind unelectable candidates, who lost.

As a libertarian, I am the first to recognize that libertarian candidates are still considered on the fringe by a majority of the general public. Neither Ron Paul nor my choice Gary Johnson has any chance of winning the nomination. To acknowledge this is to acknowledge reality. Like it or not, if they are not electable, it means that they cannot win elections.

While I see this as a simple recognition of reality, I read a very passionate and interesting argument that the word “electability” is a liberal con:

The electability question is a liberal media con. It is posed only when discussing Republicans. And it is posed often. The purpose of the question is to cast doubt on conservative candidates and, ultimately, keep them out of office.

And, tragically, it works.

The electability meme doesn’t merely haunt Republican office seekers. It has slithered into the minds of Republican voters, leading them to be unnaturally anxious when conservative candidates take strong stands. The result of this anxiety is manifest. We either lose (see: Bob Dole, John McCain, etc.) or elect callow, mealy-mouthed imps (see: the hordes of GOP congressmen who think compromise is a cardinal virtue). In short, the electability con has been a destructive, weakening force in the conservative movement for generations. And, as dupes, Republicans continually harm themselves.

The 2010 tea party wave crushed the spirit of the Democrats. It was their biggest loss in 70 years. A more limited government was clearly the will of the people. For a few trembling months, the lame-duck Dems and a dispirited President Obama thought the world was ending because fiscal restraint was coming to town. All of the political winds were at Republican backs. Then, John Boehner insisted that he wasn’t in charge. And the capitulations of our just-elected electables soon followed.

That’s the worst part of the electable meme. It’s hard to root for weak candidates.

I see his point, but there are two kinds of weak candidates. Those who win and those who lose. A candidate perceived as philosophically weak may win, while a philosophically stronger candidate may lose. If being strong means losing,  little wonder that some Republican voters become “unnaturally anxious when conservative candidates take strong stands.”

I mean, what are strong stands, and on what issues? Newt Gingrich has a strong stand on the Drug War and has called for executing people I consider guilty of victimless crimes grounded in consensual financial transactions. This does not merely make me “unnaturally anxious,” it makes me want to puke. And ashamed to be a Republican, which I guess is weakness. (The homo hating crowd has a similar effect on me.) I just plain don’t want to vote for someone like that. However, I do recognize that when Ron Paul calls for legalizing heroin, that, too, might make many voters “unnaturally anxious,” even though I agree with him. There are any number of issues where “strong” positions can translate into ballot box poison. People who are made unnaturally anxious vote, and when they vote they do so in the privacy of the voting booth — often for candidates who do not make them unnaturally anxious.

I might not like it, because there are things that don’t make me anxious that make other people anxious, but I would be a fool not to recognize this simple reality.

Not that I am saying that strength is something that needs to be kept in the closet, because after all, that would be a contradiction, wouldn’t it?

After all, if fear of offending voters is weakness, then we would be ruled by the weak, wouldn’t we?

But if we hate government then, hmmm…..

Now I’m really confused.

Thinking it over, perhaps “electability” is a word that makes some people unusually anxious. How about “can’t win”? Would that be less offensive?

(OTOH, if strong losers are better than weak winners, this debate is pointless beyond my pay grade….)


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2 responses to “Is “electability” too “strong” a term?”

  1. John S. Avatar
    John S.

    As Bill Whittle always says, “Victory is a ratchet.” You do the best you can with what you’ve got. None of the current candidates are ideal in my book, but some of them are higher-risk than others. Gingrich seems to me to be a higher-risk choice than Romney, without a corresponding increase in potential reward.

  2. Eric Avatar

    Thanks John.