Well, what a difference a few months makes. After the Democrats lost the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the common perception in the media was that the Barack Obama’s presidency was in a potentially fatal crisis.
Today, however, he appears to be a heavy favorite for re-election next year. CNN polls, for instance, showed that the president’s approval rating has improved from 48 percent in mid-November to 55 percent in the latest poll. The rise in Obama’s approval can probably be attributed to several factors, including the successful lame-duck session of Congress, his heartfelt and uplifting response to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and last week’s State of the Union. While all of these events have helped Obama’s re-election prospects, Obama’s greatest advantage in 2012 was revealed in the responses to his State of the Union, namely the sharp divide evident in the Republican Party.
For the first time in history, this year we had two opposing responses to the President’s State of the Union message. Congressman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the chairman of the House Budget Committee and one of the GOP’s so-called “Young Guns,” gave the official Republican Party response. Immediately afterward, though, Congresswomen Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., gave the official “Tea Party” response. While most of the news focused on Bachmann’s hilariously awful performance — looking off-camera the whole time — the real story here is the unprecedented party divide that these dual responses represent. The fact is that Ryan and Bachmann perfectly exemplified the two warring factions in the Republican Party as they prepare to choose a nominee in 2012.
For the business-orientated, fiscally-conservative Republicans that Paul Ryan spoke for, the preferred nominee for 2012 is clearly Mitt Romney. According to them, only a moderate businessman like Romney can defeat Obama by offering a clear plan to improve the economy.
To the more socially-conservative evangelical Republicans like Michelle Bachmann, however, the clear choice for 2012 is Sarah Palin. To them only a social warrior like Palin can reverse the course that the so-called socialist Obama has put America on and restore it to its glorious and mythical past. It would be impossible to find two more contrasting candidates, yet they are their party’s two primary front-runners.
The great problem for the Republican Party, then, is that neither candidate’s supporters appear willing to support the other should they become the nominee. To Romney supporters, Sarah Palin is at best an unelectable, polarizing figure and at worst an unqualified idiot incapable of performing the duties of an American president. Just last week, a prominent Romney supporter named Mark DeMoss said Palin was unable to be a “competent” enough president and compared her public appeal to Justin Bieber.
Palin supporters, on the other hand, see Romney as an unprincipled flip-flopper who committed several unforgiveable sins as governor of Massachusetts, including instituting a universal health care system (which happens to be very similar to the dreaded “Obamacare”), as well as being pro-choice for much of his political career.
It’s hard to see how the Republican Party can unite behind one of these candidates as the 2012 campaign begins. Nevertheless, this problem has probably been seen as an opportunity for other potential candidates, particularly Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, to become a possible compromise candidate. Such a task will be extremely difficult, though; and with the President’s poll numbers already bouncing back, the prospects for Republicans have significantly dimmed.
If the Party of Romney can’t live with the Party of Palin, and vice versa, then the Republican Party will have no chance in 2012. Republicans would ultimately do well to remember the words of their party’s first President, Abraham Lincoln, who infamously stated that “a house divided against itself can not stand.”
Nick Field is a junior in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist.
edpage@theeagleonline.com
