GOP Courts Danger with Its Enormous Presidential Field

Washington Post (Plum Line)

By Paul Waldman

May 26, 2016

GOP courts danger with its enormous presidential field 

This is a big week for presidential contenders. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders holds an event today launching his already-announced run, while Martin O’Malley will reportedly be announcing his candidacy on Saturday. Rick Santorum has an event scheduled for tomorrow which will presumably involve him throwing his hat in the ring, and most exciting of all, the boiling cauldron of charisma that is George Pataki will be upending the race on Thursday by announcing his bid.

Depending on whom you decide to count and who joins the race, the GOP primary looks like it will have around 15 candidates or so, which is more than any presidential contest in memory.

So how does a race that crowded affect the decisions the candidates make? And how will that affect the eventual nominee?

The truth is that having so many competitors changes how the candidates themselves approach the campaign. If you look at the current national polls, what immediately jumps out is that no one has that much support. Only one candidate, Scott Walker, manages to crack 15 percent on average, and only two others (Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio) are even in double digits.

That means that most of the candidates are within a few points of one another, and most know that they’re in danger of falling off the media’s radar (and in short order that of voters). The fact that the primary debates will likely not include all of them (Fox News has announced that it will only allow ten candidates in its debates) will inevitably increase the anxiety of those clustered at the bottom.

So they’ll need something to distinguish themselves, and a strong grasp of policy or an interesting personal story probably won’t be enough. So how can you do so, if your positions on issues are virtually indistinguishable from all your opponents?

One answer may be to come up with a dramatic policy proposal, one of a particular type: an idea that many Republicans would find appealing, but that most (or all) Republicans think is a little too hot to advocate publicly.

Chris Christie tried that last month when he came out for cutting Social Security benefits by means testing and raising the retirement age. It went over poorly, because Republican voters like their Social Security too, and the idea of cuts is mostly popular in elite conservative circles. But we could see other candidates try something similar on other issues.

For instance, until now the candidates have been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of ISIS, but have also been extremely vague about what they would do differently. No doubt that’s because they realize that the idea of another large military campaign in Iraq won’t go over too well with the broader public. But there are certainly a healthy number of conservative Republicans who would be all too happy to see us go back to Iraq in force and start kicking some butts. So a candidate who promised to re-invade Iraq would get a lot of attention, and just maybe enough support to vault from the third tier to the second tier.

There’s room to go right on other issues too. When they talk about immigration, Republicans are careful to say that of course we can’t just round up 11 million people and deport them. But some candidate could come up with an immigration plan so tough it could make the rest of them look like immigrant-huggers. Or on taxes: All the GOP candidates want to cut taxes, but no one has emerged yet as the one who wants to cut taxes more than any other. Don’t forget, four years ago many voters found Herman Cain’s “9-9-9″ plan compelling, absurd though it might have been.

Even if these kinds of proposals aren’t exactly the province of someone who’s going to go on to win the general election, they could alter the debate within the party. The top-tier candidates could find themselves having to explain why they don’t want to start bombing Iran now or repeal the Clean Air Act, and they’ll be pulled as ever not to anger any base voters. At the very least, the desperation of the candidates at the bottom could make for some uncomfortable times for those at the top — or give them an incentive to try to grab a percent here and a percent there by going just as far to the right on a particular issue as one inevitable also-ran or another.

With so many candidates splitting the vote so many ways, even the leading ones won’t feel secure until primary voters are left with only a few choices. Until then, the party’s policy debates could be unpredictable, and even, at times, shocking.

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