In talking about the tension between the primary and general election campaigns of Republican ’16ers at the Prospect this week, Paul Waldman made an interesting observation about the electability arguments I’ve spent a lot of time discussing here:
[B]y next summer, unifying the party with real enthusiasm from all sides will probably mean proposing tax cuts for the wealthy, last-ditch opposition to marriage equality, an interventionist foreign policy, a crackdown on immigration, and doing nothing on climate change (among other things)—and doing so with the zeal of the true believer. That’s not a program likely to win many converts who aren’t already committed to the conservative cause.
The response that most Republicans are gravitating toward (which has been expressed most forcefully by Cruz and Walker) is that this isn’t really a problem at all, because capturing independent votes isn’t about lining up with them on issues, it’s about having confidence in your conservatism. It’s the kind of advice you can find in a hundred self-help books: Keep your chin up and your chest out, walk in like you own the room, give everyone a firm handshake and a hearty clap on the back, and they’ll be drawn to your powerful electoral charisma, with success inevitably to follow.
Pointy-heads like me don’t tend to take this sort of argument very seriously, but Paul’s right: it will sound familiar to an awful lot of Republican voters, especially those who make a living trying to talk people into buying whatever it is they are selling.
