PAWLENTY OUT. Perry in. Bachmann leading in Iowa. With 16 months to go to the US presidential election, the Republican nomination race at the weekend got serious, took a casualty, got a new heavy hitter, and saw the entrenching of the grip on the contest by the hard-right in both its Tea Party and born-again forms.
And it crystallised into what appears likely to become a three-horse race between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney; congressional darling of the Tea Party movement, Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann, and new entry, Governor Rick Perry of Texas.
Republican optimism at the possibility of defeating President Barack Obama is on the rise as his poll ratings dip, but the challenge to the party remains the old one, reconciling a primary system held hostage by a deeply conservative rank and file with the need to produce a candidate acceptable to moderate voters. Currently, electability seems far from its main preoccupation.
Nothing better illustrated the complete dominance of the party by its ideological wing than the candidates’ herd-like unanimity in response to one question in Thursday night’s debate. Adverting to the recent deficit debate they were asked if they would accept a budget deal that offered $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. No way, Jose! Not a penny on taxes, they echoed to a man and woman. Even the “moderates” in the race, Romney and former governor of Utah Jon Huntsman chorused what has become holy writ for Republicans even among those who know they are in danger of making the country ungovernable but no longer dare step out of line.
Bachmann’s weekend victory in the Iowa straw poll of party supporters sets her up well for the first formal voting in the primary season in the Iowa caucuses early in 2012. She has seen off Pawlenty, a conservative rival, and has made up sufficient ground in the public imagination to have gone a long way to eclipsing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin whose intentions are not yet clear.
But the widely anticipated declaration of Perry, another conservative, does pose a serious challenge to her even in Iowa. Popular among evangelicals, on whom she counts, Perry can also lay claim to be a Washington outsider and a job creator in fast-growing Texas which he has presided over for 10 years. Despite his religious views Perry appears able to straddle better than anyone else the gap between the party’s pragmatic leadership, currently favouring Romney, and its radical base. In the end, however, should he win the primary race, stetson-wearing Perry – he recently shot a coyote while out on a jog – may be just too much an old Texan Southern boy for a wider general election audience to stomach.
Romney, whose emphasis is currently on the more winnable liberal ground of New Hampshire, will fight it out with Perry on the economy with the former stressing as he did last week his “25 years in the private sector”. They all face off again in a trio of debates next month, while, as well he might, Obama is also stepping up his own campaign, yesterday beginning a three-day bus tour of the Midwest. The race is truly on.