A House Divided

It’s been an uneventful week on the national scene, so I’m pulling out my crystal ball to see if we can make some predictions about the future of the two parties’ presidential campaigns.

On the republican side, the “house divided” needs to be united behind Romney. The first step in this process is a vanishing act. Serious past contenders for the nomination, i.e. Santorum and Gingrich, will be encouraged to disappear. Their role at the convention may prove to be minimal. This may prove to be a more difficult trick to pull off with Ron Paul, but if you see him not being seen, then you’ll know a deal of some sort has been made.

Most of the votes for the other republican candidates were “anti-Romney” votes, and the more the memory of those candidates can be removed, the more Romney stands alone as the “anti-Obama” alternative… which is probably going to be the major republican strategy. Ron Paul’s supporters are another story. Their support has been based on a positive feeling about their candidate. It’s hard to settle for the “lesser of two evils” when that’s the guy who beat the guy you love. Romney will have a hard time getting the Paul voters, even with an endorsement from the good doctor. That probably is the safest strategy though, and he will likely pick up a little support that way. A less likely scenario would be for Paul to come off the rails and support the libertarian candidate, forcing his supporters to leave him for Romney or else leave him for Gary Johnson. That’s the closest Ron Paul will ever come to a third party run, and even that will likely never happen. The main thing for Romney is to make Ron Paul a vanishing memory or at least a strange bedfellow, not a visible martyr.

The goal of the republicans will be to unite the party, the independents, and the undecided into one monolithic group weary of the downward spiral, principally focused on the economy as the unifying adhesive. The whole spotlight will be turned on Romney as the symbol of that adhesion as if there had never been anyone else.

On the democratic side, the “house divided” will be intentionally even further divided. There are segments of the population that Obama has no chance with. This is not unusual, but there is in this election an issue that is a concern to everyone, the economy, and that issue could prove an effective weapon in the hands of the anti-Obama groups. His campaign will seek to isolate these groups from the rest of the population as if they were a cancer, to keep them from “infecting” with momentum the rest of the electorate.

It’s an unusual strategy. Most presidential candidates since the civil war have eschewed the appearance of dividing the nation; so one must assume that this is the only path to victory the Obama team sees. The strategy is simple, but depends a little on simple minds. Divide off a group of people, pander to them either substantially or symbolically, and then stake your claim on that entire group as if they had no other interest but their inclusion in a particular faction. Their first attempt at this was probably a little too ambitious, as the campaign attempted to secure the vote of half the population by declaring that republicans were waging a war on women. The same-sex marriage gesture was a little more modest and, at least for fundraising, highly successful. I would expect the next group to be targeted to be the hispanic vote, probably by revisiting the Dream Act, or some sort of immigration initiative. After that possibly a further division of the “rich” as the source of all economic woes. He likely won’t waste much time with the black vote, assuming (probably correctly) that he owns that group. The campaign might look for a way to paint Obama as the candidate of the “non-racists”. Other traditionally democratic voting blocks will be thrown small bones to give them some sort of justification to ignore the economy and give Obama a second chance.

The strategy will be to divide the country rigidly… people who are for women, and people who are against women; if you vote for Romney you’re with the group that hates women. People who are for hispanics, and people who hate them; if you vote for Romney, you’re with the group that hates them. The filthy rich, and the regular folk; vote for Romney and you’re siding with the greedy rich. Bigots or homophobes, and the tolerant enlightened; only the evil, backwards and hateful would vote for Romney. Of course that kind of rhetoric has always existed in segments of both parties, but to set it as the primary political strategy in a presidential election is unusual, and seems desperate.

IMHO: Both parties are looking at strategies that involve “a house divided”. The divided house is Romney’s enemy as his strength revolves around the singular uniting issue of the campaign, the economy. He can’t avoid taking positions on other issues, but his emphasis throughout will be to unite on that one subject. If the economy is Romney’s strength, then it is Obama’s weakness. Again, the democrat’s private slogan this year should be “Anything but the economy, stupid!”. If a divided house is the enemy of Romney, it is Obama’s friend, as the divisions will divert attention from the unifying concern of the economy back to the rivalries that will make the election more of a horse race. It may very well prove to be an effective strategy for winning an election, but sadly, it can’t be for leading a nation. If Obama wins by dividing the people, he may find this a country impossible to lead. Echoing Lincoln who was echoing Christ: “A nation divided against itself cannot stand.”