Ben Domenech raises a disturbing but interesting question for conservatives. Given that the odds are improving of President Obama being reelected, from a conservative perspective, who would be a better Republican candidate in a losing effort? Domenech approaches the question from several angles, but I wanted to focus on the idea of who would get blamed for a loss.
Though elections are generally decided on a myriad of factors, fairly or not, they often get remembered on the basis of simple narratives. Thus, the danger of a Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich loss is that it would play into the hands of those who will argue that Obama was reelected because the GOP became too radical — and perhaps make weak-kneed Republicans gravitate to the left. A Mitt Romney loss, by contrast, would enable conservatives argue that this is what the party gets when they nominate somebody who doesn’t appeal to the right. Obviously, these are both oversimplifications. And certainly, there are those who would even blame a Romney loss on conservatives, claiming he would have won were he not pushed to the right during the primaries. But it would still be a more difficult argument to make than if Santorum or Gingrich were to win the nomination as the “conservative alternative” to Romney and then get blown out in November.
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Now, some would point to Barry Goldwater’s “Glorious Disaster” defeat in 1964, which gave rise to the conservative movement that eventually took over the party with Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980. But a Santorum or Gingrich defeat is unlikely to be as satisfying, both because they are much more compromised than Goldwater was (with a history of being big government Republicans) and the conservative movement has now been around for awhile, so it isn’t as if they’d be introducing a new generation to conservative arguments. Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that LBJ’s landslide over Goldwater had policy consequences — giving us Medicare and Medicaid.
The idea of considering the best loser is obviously not the most uplifting discussion, but it’s something at least worth thinking about.
