June 6, 2010
Bitching and scandal bedevil Republicans
From The Sunday Times
Tony Allen-Mills
For a man who doesn’t want to be president and isn’t running for office, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and older brother of George W, is suddenly sounding remarkably like a candidate.
Last week he popped up in New York warning Republicans that internal divisions might hurt their chances of ousting President Barack Obama from the White House in 2012. He also urged them not to be “grumpy . . . we can’t be saying no, no, no all the time”.
Bush is not the only prominent Republican who is saying “no” to a presidential run of his own but might end up saying “yes”. As Obama’s poll ratings flounder in a sea of BP oil and economic gloom, a volatile leadership vacuum is developing in the Republican party.
The absence of an obvious frontrunner for the 2012 presidential nomination, and the emergence of the disruptive right-wing Tea Party movement, is beginning to unnerve senior Republicans, acutely aware that a lack of unity may quickly unhinge their hopes of exploiting mounting disenchantment with Obama.
“United, conservatives need to be joyful in this quest to regain control,” warned Bush. Yet the early evidence from this year’s mid-term elections has been anything but joyous, as Republican campaigns are beset by mud-slinging, scandal and rampant bitchiness.
The latest victim of fratricidal fallout is Nikki Haley, a South Carolina legislator who shot to the front of the primary race for governor after she was endorsed by Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, who is steadily building a network of conservative women candidates she refers to as her “mama grizzlies”.
Haley, a 38-year-old mother of two, was promptly assailed by allegations that she had an extramarital affair with a former aide. No sooner had she denied that liaison than a Republican lobbyist popped up with lurid accounts of a supposed one-night stand with Haley at a Salt Lake City hotel during a party conference in 2008.
“Two or three months ago I was Nikki who? And now we have had everything thrown at us,” said Haley, who insisted she never betrayed her husband in 13 years of marriage. “This is just disgusting politics.”
The leading Republican in the Connecticut Senate race wasn’t faring much better. Linda McMahon, a businesswoman whose family runs a television wrestling empire, appeared to have a stranglehold on the Republican nomination after her staff helped expose Richard Blumenthal, the leading Democratic contender, as a fraud who had lied about serving in Vietnam.
Instead, McMahon has become the target for conservative Republicans appalled at her links to the racy excess of her wrestling business, World Wrestling Entertainment. “WWE is to the popular culture what the BP spill is to the Gulf of Mexico,” one right-wing columnist noted, “a relentless gusher of pollution.”
Even Scott Brown, the former male model who became a Republican pin-up after he seized the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat from the Democrats four months ago, has stirred conservative wrath by voting with the Democrats on several key issues.
While Republican sights remain fixed on Senate and congressional races this autumn, the presidential race is already looming. There is no shortage of party heavyweights with the credentials for a White House run — from former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker; Tim Pawlenty, the widely admired governor of Minnesota; Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor turned conservative talkshow host; and Mitch Daniels, the popular Indiana governor.
Overshadowing them all is Palin, whose presidential plans are the subject of intense speculation. Many conservatives are egging her on; others believe she is making too much money as a right-wing icon to risk her budding business empire on an unsuccessful campaign.
With none of the obvious contenders appearing likely to satisfy both conservative and moderate wings of the party, a vacancy remains for an inspirational figure who could both halt the infighting and trounce Obama.
Bush, 57, has so far ruled himself out, although he recently told Fred Barnes, a columnist at the Weekly Standard, that he did not believe the Bush name had been poisoned by Dubya’s turbulent presidency. “The Jeb Bush political saga hasn’t come to an end,” Barnes predicted.
The wildest card remains General David Petraeus, also 57, the head of US Central Command, architect of the Iraqi surge, and the Dwight Eisenhower-like military giant who fills many a Republican strategist’s dreams.
As a serving officer unswervingly loyal to his commander-in-chief — the man he would probably have to run against in 2012 — Petraeus has resolutely denied all interest in a political career. “I thought I’d said ‘no’ about as many ways as I could,” he said recently. “I really do mean ‘no’.”
It is a measure of continuing Republican nervousness, despite their growing advantage in the polls, that few take Petraeus’s denials seriously. Everyone remembers what Obama said when he was asked if he would run in 2008. “I will not,” he replied. |
