OKLAHOMA CITY—Are the Republican presidential candidates ready for Hillary? All three who addressed the Southern Republican Leadership Conference Thursday gave sharp speeches that were well received by the audience and seemed to be spoiling for a fight. It’s nevertheless possible that the answer is no.
The sample size is admittedly small. The candidates on hand for the first day of the Oklahoma cattle call represent not even a quarter of the 14 GOP presidential aspirants included in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Only one of the three, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, currently has an obvious path to the nomination. None of them have formally declared.
Yet it was striking that all three of them were at least as focused on Barack Obama as Hillary Clinton. Even many of their attacks on Clinton came by way of her service as secretary of state under Obama, an extension of their critique of the incumbent president.
Rick Santorum warned attendees that the Republican Party must do more than bash the president. Yet it was Obama the former Pennsylvania senator named as the culprit in the creation of the Islamic State, suggesting only that the media hold Clinton responsible for the part she played (though he did get a dig in at her refusal to answer questions).
Rick Perry said that America’s biggest problems could be solved with a change in leadership, something that will occur in 2017 regardless of whether Republicans retake the White House, thanks to the 22nd Amendment.
It’s a strategy that has been successfully employed before. In 2000, George W. Bush campaigned on restoring honor and dignity to the White House. That was more of a shot at Bill Clinton, the sitting president, than his actual general election opponent Al Gore.
Similarly, Obama ran his successful 2008 campaign as a referendum on the Bush years. John McCain wasn’t exactly unscathed, but he wasn’t Obama’s main target. It’s easy to imagine an Obama-McCain contest occurring in some parallel universe outside Bush’s shadow that might have been more competitive.
On foreign policy, Obama and Hillary Clinton are inextricably linked. Secretary of state was her most recent government position. Her service in that role is driving the questions embroiling the Clinton Foundation. And it makes her bear responsibility for Obama administration choices on the world stage that don’t appear to be paying off.
We’re a long way from ‘Osama bin Laden is dead but General Motors is alive.’ From the failed Russia reset to Libya to the continued deterioration of Iraq, Clinton’s fingerprints are all over the international problems that will be a major topic of the 2016 debates.
That would seem to explain everything if it weren’t for the fact that the Republican candidates also trained their fire on a Democratic president from the distant past: Jimmy Carter.
Both Walker and Perry compared today’s conditions to 1979, when Carter was bumbling his way through the Iranian hostage crisis. Perry specifically mentioned Carter’s presidency as a dark time through which this resilient nation persevered.
Every Republican presidential candidate wants to be Ronald Reagan slaying Jimmy Carter. Carter is also the archetype of the modern, feckless liberal Democratic president: content with stagnation and malaise at home, decline and diffidence abroad. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg even mentioned Carter when teasing his interview with the president.
When the American people see the parallels between the current Democratic presidential candidate and Carter, the analogy can be brutally effective. When voters don’t see shades of Carter — as they manifestly didn’t in the case of Bill Clinton, whose Democratic Leadership Council existed in no small part to counteract the party’s Carter-related public relations problems — the attacks fall flat. Republicans might as well keep running against the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.”
The similarities between Obama and Carter, and connecting the dots to Hillary Clinton if not Bill, are obvious to any Republican audience. Will they be apparent to people who don’t attend the Southern Republican Leadership Conference?
However indistinguishable various liberal Democrats look to the conservative eye, the next Republican presidential nominee will not be running against Obama. They will not be running against the nonagenarian Carter. Barring a massive upset, they will be running against Hillary Clinton.
They’d better be ready.
