The inevitability of a brutal 2012 campaign season

By Richard K. Barry

In an otherwise insightful piece, Charles Babbington had an article recently at The Huffington Post with the following headline: "2012 Presidential Race Expected to Be Close, Campaign Likely to be Brutal."

I suppose there may be some disagreement at this point that the race will be close, though I doubt it. This country is pretty much split down the middle, and the past three years of the Obama Administration have done nothing to change that.

But on the point that the campaign is also likely to be brutal: ya think?

From day one conservatives have launched attack after attack on Obama that he is literally not really an American. And that even if he is legally an American, his values are not American, whatever that means.

Rather than having a good faith policy debate about, for example, the optimal size and role of government, conservatives came flying out of the gate, with the help of Fox, and Rush Limbaugh and so many other right-wing crackpots, with arguments that America had very nearly been taken over by an enemy force and that it had to be taken back (and perhaps, it was not infrequently implied, by force).

Yes, as Babbington rightly points out, there are policy differences between left and right, the kind that typically occupy debate amongst Democrats and Republicans, and these will surely play a central role in the campaign.

The differences typically take the form of blind reliance on free market mechanisms from the right and arguments for a robust role for the state from the left. Yes, we all know that.

To that extent, as Babbington writes:

The Republicans have their script: they just need to pick the person to deliver it. It will portray Obama as a failed leader who backs away when challenged and who doesn't understand what it takes to create jobs and spur growth.

Well, yes and no.

If Romney is the Republican candidate, the GOP will probably try to frame the debate in terms of "savvy businessman" vs. "community organizer."

And if the economy remains weak, as it no doubt will, and if the job numbers continue to be poor, this approach is going to be the GOP's best shot to take the White House and other races.

Problem is that the other dynamic at work, the one that won't go away, is that Obama is not just the wrong person for the job, that he doesn't have the skill set, but that he hates America, that he is foreign to our way of life, literally and figuratively.

The Tea Party anger may be expressed as frustration about the functioning of the economy, but its passion has always been fueled by this type of culture war.

This may be why Romney consistently fails to catch fire with enough of the GOP base to put the competition away. This may be why pretenders like Trump, Palin, Perry, Bachmann and Cain are tried on for size at fairly regular intervals.

Romney is not a cultural warrior and the radical right, the truly energized segment of the party, knows it.

Yes, things will get ugly in 2012, but not because of traditional left-right policy disagreements. They will get ugly because 2012 will be a battle for the soul of the nation, as the radical right sees it. And that can't be waged from the perspective of dry policy prescriptions. It can only be fought on the basis of what it means, they would say, to be a real American.

Though I believe Romney will be the nominee, and that he will try to marginalize the culture war narrative in his campaign, the radical right won't let him do it. This has become too important to them.

Romney, as the nominee, will be fighting a two front war: Obama on the left largely on economic policy, and the Tea Party and fellow travellers on his right who think they are fighting an epic struggle to reclaim the America they have lost.

It's going to be ugly, but not in conventional terms. Romney hopes he has a winning script, I'm just not sure he can limit the discussion in ways he might like. In fact, I'm sure he can't.

In politics as in life, any time your opening gambit is that your opponent is a fraud, things can only go downhill.

The practical question is the extent to which swing voters / independents are going to see this kind of ugliness as counterproductive, especially in a climate in which they are legitimately fearful for their economic survival.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)