From Rick Santelli to HopeandChange

I front-paged Rick Moran's last post not because I agreed with it entirely, but because he raises a very important point about the two-edged sword that is populism. Yes, virtually every successful political movement has used it to turn itself around and reclaim power. But it alone was not enough to get it to the mountaintop. The Rick Santelli rant is a necessary and vital part of what the GOP needs to stand for in the coming months -- giving voice to honest, middle class Americans who, in Bill Clinton's parlance, "worked hard and played by the rules" only to get saddled with the bill for those who didn't. But there's a downside if this card gets overplayed, Rick argues: 

Tapping in to the rage of taxpayers by exploiting their fears then, would almost certainly result in unanticipated problems for the GOP. But beyond that, is this the way the Republicans wish to return to power? The Rovian strategy of using wedge issues to cleave the electorate over gay marriage, abortion, and other social issues got Republicans elected but also sowed the seeds of their own destruction. By the time 2008 rolled around, those wedge issues had lost their potency and there was ample evidence of a backlash by center-right and center-left moderates against the GOP and their perceived intolerance. It was Obama who exploited this backlash by promising to govern based on not what divides us but by what unites us. His “post partisan” message – a campaign gimmick we know now – resonated powerfully with the center who had tired of the back biting and poisonous partisan atmosphere in Washington and longed for “change.”

Rick's prescription is as follows: 

The Republicans can reclaim the “feel-good” mantle by appealing to one of America’s greatest strengths; the ability of our citizens to look to the future with hope. Obama played to that strength during the campaign and is now abandoning it in favor of fear mongering. It’s s delicious political opening that the GOP ignores to its detriment.

I am very sympathetic to this, but we need to remember that political recoveries happen in stages. Barack Obama could not articulate a message of change and hope without the electorate first buying into the notion that Bush had failed. Before 2008 there was 2006, when we lost Congress? Can anyone remember the positive Democratic message in that campaign? There wasn't any. It was pure BDS. Thus, Obama could afford to run on a hopeful message because the Democrats' negative message message was already ingrained in the mind of the American electorate. 

This was the way back for Reagan. By 1980 Americans were fed up with Carter and clientilistic liberalism. And though Reagan had some great oppositionist lines ("Are you better off than you were four years ago?") the fundamental takeaway from his 1980 campaign was one of optimism and restoring America to greatness. 

Every significant party changing Presidential election in the last generation has featured an eventual winner who was less negative than he could have been -- precisely because the negative message had so permeated the electorate that they could afford to be.

Negative messages about Obama have not permeated the electorate, so the situation now is different. The education process still needs to occur -- and the gluttonuous explosion of new policy in the next couple of years should act to speed up that process considerably. This is why I think it's important to play up Santelli-esque populist backlash now -- and why we may need to shift into a more hopeful gear for 2012 if it works. 

The cautionary parallel here is 1994-1996. We won back Congress in 1994 on the back of Perotesque populist discontent of the early 1990s, and were able to do so on the backend of a recession. The Republican campaign in 1994 was actually atypical in that it was a bit more positive than it needed to be with the Contract with America. Sheer backlash is usually enough to propel major Congressional gains (they were in 2006), but the exercise of putting forward a positive agenda even without ultimate implementation authority could only have helped. 

So what happened in 1996? Republicans got more negative once in office and paradoxically ran a more negative campaign in a Presidential than in a midterm -- when the President is not on the ballot and the bar is lower. Also, populist anxiety from the early 1990s had begun to fade. Republicans were caught with their proverbial pants down by overstaying their populist welcome. 

Once Americans have grown convinced that change is needed, only then can a hopeful message take root. But this may take time. Republicans absolutely must articulate positive alternatives to Obamamania, but first they need to convince Americans why more Obama bailouts are not the answer. Only then can we get people to take our alternatives seriously. And only then will we be fully ready to cross the bridge from Rick Santelli to whatever our version of HopeandChange looks like.