Could the race for the Republican presidential nomination have turned out differently? Sure, says Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle. If Republican primary voters had rationally sought to pursue the goal of nominating as conservative a candidate as possible who could win the general election, “the field would have consolidated around Marco Rubio, and Democrats would now be anxious rather than openly celebrating the nomination of a no-hoper.”
McArdle argues persuasively that Rubio’s campaign was defeated by “a series of completely irrational decisions” by Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich. I tend to agree.
Bush’s irrational decision was his decision to run, even though he was leading the Republican polls when he announced officially last June 15. The idea of having a third president from the same nuclear family was always bizarre. Plus, the retrospective job ratings of his father and brother, though they have improved in recent years, are still not robust, and not as positive as the retrospective rating of Bill Clinton.
Bush had an admirable record as governor of Florida for eight years, but he last faced voters in 2002, 14 years ago. And his platform, while detailed and intellectually serious, was similar to that devised by his brother in the very different circumstances 17 years ago. At a time when voters were seeking change, he was inevitably a candidate of continuity.
Why did Bush run? The line among his many supporters, like Sen. Lindsey Graham and the donors who raised $100 million for his super PAC, was that he was the best prepared and most competent candidate — and that Rubio, once his protege, was far less qualified. You could make intellectually serious arguments for the first proposition, though Bush doesn’t have actual foreign and defense policy experience. But he was poorly positioned to win the nomination and polled weakly against Hillary Clinton. He may have been prepared to be president, but he was not prepared to become president. And the decision made by his super PAC supremo Mike Murphy to spend much of the $100 million on attacks on Rubio helped make sure that Rubio wouldn’t be either.
Chris Christie’s irrational decision was his attack on Marco Rubio in debate just days before the New Hampshire primary. It’s a cardinal rule of politics that in a multi-candidate race, an attack by Candidate A on Candidate B can hurt B, but it also can hurt A and help someone else. Christie’s charge that Rubio was a robo-candidate did in fact hurt Rubio, because he, who had usually shined in debates, behaved like one then. But it may have hurt and certainly didn’t help Christie, who finished sixth in New Hampshire and then left the race.
My theory is that Christie’s motive was jealousy. He had been campaigning intensively in New Hampshire, and was plainly getting nowhere. Rubio, in contrast, had finished an unexpected close third in Iowa and was clearly surging in New Hampshire, and seemed headed for second place to Donald Trump there. In my interactions with candidates over the years, I have found that many in their small talk with reporters and opponents are reasonably, perhaps surprisingly, frank with each other. But not Rubio, who has a winning smile but is very guarded in such encounters. I’m guessing that Christie, who prides himself on his frankness, resented this, and decided to take Rubio down.
If Rubio had finished second in New Hampshire, would John Kasich have even stayed in the race? Unlikely. Kasich, like Christie, concentrated heavily on New Hampshire. Like his campaign manager John Weaver’s 2012 candidate, Jon Huntsman, he found niche support from upscale, high-income, high-education voters who shared the distaste he, Huntsman and Weaver express for religious conservatives and indeed most Republican primary voters. Huntsman won 17 percent in New Hampshire, a third-place finish far behind Mitt Romney and behind Ron Paul, and left the race shortly afterwards. Kasich won 16 percent, a second-place finish far behind Trump, and stayed in the race for three months.
In those three months he managed to carry, beyond his home state of Ohio, seven counties (four in Vermont, two in Michigan, one in New York) and one congressional district (in New York). Those seven counties cast 120,172 Republican votes out of more than 25 million cast so far in Republican primaries and caucuses. Outside of Ohio, his appeal was confined almost entirely to upscale voters, who otherwise would have cast the bulk of their ballots for Rubio. If Kasich had left the race as his 2012 counterpart Huntsman did, Rubio would have surely won the primaries in Virginia and have finished a strong second in South Carolina, Massachusetts, Vermont and Michigan, and a significantly stronger second in Georgia and his home state of Florida.
If Rubio had been able to remain in the race after a very narrow Florida loss on March 15, as an alternative to Donald Trump he would have combined Ted Cruz’s appeal to religious conservatives with Kasich’s appeal to upscale voters. He would have been able to point to general election polls showing him running better against Hillary Clinton than Trump or Cruz. He certainly could have won Wisconsin, as Cruz did, and would have been more competitive than Cruz in Indiana and, if he won there, in California. He might have left Trump visibly short of the 1,237-delegate majority and have been well positioned to win the nomination on the second ballot.
Or maybe not. Counterfactuals always break down at some point. But I’ll continue to believe that Donald Trump’s victory was not inevitable, and that it was helped along by what McArdle and I agree were irrational decisions by Bush, Christie and Kasich. Of such things is history made.
