As predicted before the election, there’s been a massive round of post-mortem analysis focused on where the Republicans went wrong and the disastrous state the party is in at this point. Here’s a roundup of some of the pieces that have appeared on CNN.com on this topic recently (I tend to use CNN.com as my main source of main stream news – not because I think it’s particularly unbiased but simply because it often has the broadest coverage, and has recently added commentary from key figures on both sides – an interesting feature):

• GOP faces identity crisis in months ahead
• Commentary: Conservatives didn’t lose election, GOP did
• Is Romney the man to save GOP in 2012?
• Zakaria: GOP bereft of ideas or trapped by wrong ones
• Moderates to blame for GOP losses, conservative leader says

It’s a mix of stupid stuff, more thoughtful stuff (some of which is still wrong) and sensible thinking. The first post is just ridiculous, having as one of its main arguments that the Republican party doesn’t have a leader – did the Democratic party have a leader in 2000 or 2004? No – of course not – that’s just not the way US presidential elections work – unlike, say, UK general elections, where the leader of the losing party remains leader unless an explicit change is made.Zakaria makes some of the same arguments more thoughtfully, and though I think he’s wrong on most of what he says, it at least appears he’s thought about them.

On the other hand, I find Governor Sanford’s remarks (the second link in the list above) and those of Tony Perkins (in the last link) to be much closer to my own views on this subject, as expressed in my final pre-election thoughts a couple of weeks ago. I really think the issue for the GOP hasn’t been its ideas are stale or wrong, but that it hasn’t argued them cogently or governed accordingly when in power.

The whole ‘Joe the Plumber‘ episode towards the end of the election cycle proved that when GOP ideas are well articulated by the right people they have real appeal. Unfortunately, Joe the plumber made the case much better than John the politician, and there’s lots that the leaders of the Republican party can learn from him and those like him – and from Ronald Reagan, who was really the last leader of the GOP to do this well. Newt Gingrich has real potential in this department, but I think his role should be helping a presidential candidate formulate arguments along these lines rather than running for that office himself in 2012.

CNN has a piece today about Huckabee’s forthcoming book:

Two weeks after the next president is elected, Mike Huckabee will publish a book sharing details on his failed bid for the White House and offering his vision for remodeling the conservative movement.

It’s those last few words I take issue with. Huckabee does not represent the “conservative movement” – he represents one wing of it – Christian evangelicals (and to an extent, though not wholly, social conservative s generally).  The group he never brought on board and has virtually no appeal to is fiscal conservatives, who are famously the other half of the conservative coalition that has been winning elections for so many years. His “fair tax” plans and happy-go-lucky approach to public spending (“add an extra lane to I-95”) made fiscal conservatives hugely skeptical of both his seriousness as a candidate and his commitment to the issues that are dear to them.

As such, Huckabee can only really articulate a vision for the social conservative movement, or even more narrowly, Christian evangelical conservatives. He successfully acted as if he was the conservative candidate once Romney bowed out, but no-one but him and his campaign believes this nonsense. He carried a certain percentage of the base – arguably, a segment roughly equally as radical as the Ron Paul crowd – which refused to go for McCain even once it was obvious no-one else had a chance of winning. Do we really want this crowd dictating electoral strategy for the Republicans for the next four years. I’d much rather have Romney, who – for all his changes in position – at least now espouses solidly conservative positions across both the social and fiscal policy fields.

With all this talk about “bitterness” in Pennsylvania, I’ve actually been thinking about the two Primary campaigns and the fact that the Democratic campaign appears to have become more bitter than the Republican campaign was. Howard Dean told CNN that he wants a nominee chosen ASAP because:

We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time. We’ve got to know who our nominee is.

Did the Republicans need “healing time”? There were one or two stories about the bitterness behind the scenes – mostly on the part of the other candidates and directed at Romney. But that has blown over so quickly that it’s barely a memory at this point. Romney, of course, is campaigning for McCain. Thompson and the others have endorsed McCain strongly. Huckabee is perhaps the weakest link at this point, but it really didn’t take very long for the “healing” process to take place.

The other point that strikes me is the fact that the bitterness on the Republican side (other than that directed at Romney) was mostly between rival factions who had distinctly different policy goals. Huckabee supporters distrusted the other candidates because they were not conservative enough on social issues. Thompson and Romney supporters mistrusted Huckabee because of his unserious policies on taxation. This was, on the whole, not about personality differences.

On the Democratic side, however, the bitterness is very much about personality, since there’s very little that separates the candidates on the major issues. And that may make it that much harder for them to “heal” afterwards, because the criticisms the two camps have directed at each other have not been about differences of opinion on policy. If they were – as on the Republican side – they would be easily overcome by taking the approach that the Democratic platform is ultimately what people need to get behind. But suggestions that your opponent is too inexperienced to be President are not so easy to brush off when they become the party’s nominee. Some of McCain’s best ammunition in the general election will be comments made by Hillary about Obama (assuming he’s the nominee): “If your own party doesn’t think you’re experienced enough to govern, why should the American people feel differently?” etc.

Long may the Democratic primary continue.

As in almost every election cycle recently (or so it seems) there have been allegations from some quarters that there is little to separate the candidates on the issues, and this is one of the reasons why people aren’t engaging in the process more. There’s always some truth in this, and certainly (for all Barack Obama’s protestations to the contrary) all candidates and both parties are more or less equally guilty of playing the game of politics as usual.

But it is worth remembering that there are real and significant policy differences between the major candidates and especially between the two major parties, and pointing out what these are. This, after all, is what we’re all fighting for.

So, what are we fighting for?

• Taxation – the Democrats want to revoke the Bush tax cuts and generally raise taxes, with the only significant difference being how open they are about the latter aim. Certainly the increases in spending they propose must lead to increases in taxation, but they’d rather leave the voters to connect those dots themselves than spell it out for them.
• Foreign Policy – the Democrats are essentially embarrassed for America and want to make things right with the rest of the world. Rather than believe that the US needs to act in its own interests, they believe it needs to do what will make the rest of the world happy. This means mea culpas over Iraq and Afghanistan and a speedy withdrawal from the former regardless of the consequences to the US or Iraq itself.
• Judges – at least in theory, John McCain would appoint the kind of judges Bush has to the Supreme and lower courts – that is, strict constructionists who will not read the constitution’s aura to find new “emanations” and “penumbras” containing hitherto hidden meaning justifying massive increases in governmental power. These judges would further continue to take the court in the direction it has been going in the last several years on abortion, finding room for more restrictions on it and perhaps eventually overturning Roe vs. Wade and leaving individual states to determine their own abortion laws.
• Healthcare. Here, the Republican position is essentially to do nothing to change the current system, which has flaws but consistently provides higher standards of health care to the vast majority of Americans than citizens of any other country enjoy. Democrats, of course, want to effectively nationalize healthcare and turn the American system into a more expensive version of Britain’s National Health Service, with bloated bureaucracies and massive waiting lists coupled with second-world care.

These are, I think, the four key reasons why anyone who supports the Republican position on these issues needs to be actively engaged with the electoral process and committed to getting John McCain elected. The economy is a red herring as an issue, other than as it relates to tax policy. Education is another where there is little daylight between the positions of the candidates or parties. But these issues ought to get Republicans energized and invested in the process, because if they don’t win there will be a significant negative impact on our economy and way of life.

Jonathan Martin of Politico has a piece up about Huckabee and what his real reasons are for staying in the race. While everyone else has been suggesting (in my opinion rightly) that Huckabee is staying in the race to keep pressure on McCain for favors down the road, or possibly just for vanity’s sake, Martin appears to have swallowed large mouthfuls of what the Huckabee campaign has fed him, to whit: he believes it’s really about 2012.

I have a draft post that’s not ready for publication yet on the 2012 field on the Republican side, and my comment about Huckabee was this:

Of this year’s candidates, few are likely to run again apart from Romney…

Of the rest, Huckabee appears to be burning his bridges by staying in the race this long – many party leaders are annoyed that he isn’t stepping aside when it’s clear he has no chance of winning. He appears to concede this fact himself too.

That link in the second paragraph is to a CNN article quoting Huckabee as saying he’s probably doing himself more harm than good, and I agree.

If you take apart Martin’s article, the comments suggesting Huckabee will be a force in 2012 come from the following people:

• “Huckabee strategist Ed Rollins”
• “Former Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.), a top Huckabee ally and frequent surrogate”
• “Joe Carter, an aide at the Family Research Council who briefly worked for Huckabee last year”

Note, three Huckabee supporters. “Republican strategist Craig Shirley, a McCain backer and author of a book on the 1976 presidential race” is also cited, but only describing the Huckabee strategy, not subscribing to it. So all the people on whose opinions the article is based are Huckabee supporters. No independent voices, no-one from outside the Huckabee circle. And yet Martin reports it as if it’s gospel. There are one or two contrary comments, but it would at least have made sense to contrast this with the wide swathe of people who have suggested that Mitt Romney is now well positioned in 2012.

There are those who want to see silver linings on every cloud, and others who are conspiracy theorists, who believe Huckabee staying in the race is good. The only good argument for this point of view is that McCain is getting more coverage because there’s still a nominal race on the Republican side. But how does this benefit McCain? Is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard of him at this point who somehow will between now and when the general election starts?

And on the negative side, finite resources are being spent on McCain’s primary campaign instead of being saved up or put in the bank for the general election campaign. Huckabee is the largest remaining barrier to the conservative wing of the party swinging behind McCain, and only gives them false hope that McCain’s nomination is not inevitable. Huckabee won’t be the nominee, McCain will, and Huckabee staying in the race smacks of egotism and vanity more than anything else, no matter how much he dresses it up in the language of giving voice to would-be primary voters. No previous candidate in recent memory has dragged out a primary campaign this far once it was clear who the front-runner was, and even Ron Paul has had to face reality and essentially drop out at this point. Why should Huckabee be any different?

One rather senses that Martin just regurgitated what he was told by Huckabee’s campaign rather than challenging it more thoroughly, in the hopes of having an interesting story to tell about what is becoming a tedious campaign. It rather falls flat in that aim.

Lots of speculation at the moment about what Romney has planned next, with the most obvious option being running again in 2012. Some have suggested that 2008 was the equivalent for Romney of Reagan’s 1976 campaign, when he lost but then came back four years later to win the first of his two terms. Others have rightly pointed out that there are a lot of differences between 2008 and 1976, and the biggest is surely that Romney hasn’t proven himself as a conservative champion. Although he belatedly became the conservative standard bearer as it became clear McCain would likely win, this was mostly a victory with the conservative radio hosts, not the public (or Republican primary voters) in general.

As such, Romney now has to spend a good chunk of the next four years burnishing his conservative credentials so that he is well positioned in 2012. There are several risks with this strategy:

• If his Mormonism was a major obstacle this time around, it will be again in 2012, especially if there is an evangelical Christian running with otherwise similar (or better) conservative credentials
• Other well-regarded conservatives who weren’t quite ready this time around will have four more years of experience under their belts as Senators or Governors in 2012 and could make a strong showing. Some of them at least would have more consistent conservative records in both campaigning and governing / voting
• There will be two elections between now and then – this November’s presidential and Congressional elections and the 2010 Congressional elections. It is possible (though not necessarily likely) that there will be a backlash against conservatism during that period and that the Republican party will go through a period of low self-esteem similar to what the British Conservative Party has been going through since the early to mid 1990s.

None of these is a foregone conclusion. Polling will answer the first question one way or the other and ought to be taken very seriously. No more “would you vote for” questions but lots of “why did/didn’t you vote for” questions. Get to the nub of what it was that people liked or didn’t like about Mitt Romney in 2008.

Secondly, he has to really put in a lot of work over the next four years, and the best suggestion is funding and leading a MoveOn.org for the right wing crowd. An organisation that ordinary conservatives can really rally behind, that will campaign for their causes, and that will provide him with a natural base which can rally around him in 2012 as it didn’t in 2008 (at least until the last week of the campaign). Hold regular events, champion conservative causes, build a consistent conservative platform and hold politicians accountable by rating them against it, and so on.

Doing that is still no guarantee that someone else won’t show up by 2012 who seems a more natural fit, or that McCain himself will win in 2008 and decide to go for a second term in 2012. Romney doesn’t need the age question on top of the other questions but it would undoubtedly be asked if he had to wait until 2016.

Lots to play for, and lots of money to do it with – that’s the good news. The bad news is that, as Harold Wilson once said, a week is a long time in politics. If that’s the case, four years is an eternity, and anything can happen.

Time’s debate scorecard for last night’s debate demonstrates some incredible mental dexterity from Mark Halperin, who gave McCain a winning B grade (Romney got a D). The following quote is the first two thirds of his blurb on McCain’s performance:

As a testament to his suddenly strong position in the battle for the nomination, he showed off all of his worst traits — and still won! Alternately cranky, elderly, caustic, equivocating, inarticulate, passionless. But he flexed his ability to intimidate Romney as needed, usually with an arch one-liner that was 3/5 mean-spirited and 2/5 light gag. Made little effort to defend his own tax record or negative Florida attacks, and failed to drive a positive message.

And this is the guy who won? It reads like satire. The idea that Romney was intimidated bears no relation whatsoever to what actually happened in the debate, where Romney stood very firm and countered all of McCain’s smears. In the last third of Halperin’s summary he suggests that questoiners and the other candidates treated him as the front runner. No doubt the questioners did – this has been their line for the last several weeks, even when McCain was badly lagging Romney in the delegate race. But given there are only two serious candidates left in the race, who else was Romney to go after? Huckabee? Paul?? And McCain certainly focused his attention on Romney – does this mean he thinks Romney is the front runner? The whole thing is bizarre, and another sign that the media is desperate to have McCain as the nominee – either because they believe he will implode or because they like his centrist positions better than Romney’s conservative stance.