Exactly who speaks for the Republican Party these days? According to the latest Gallup poll, 18% of democrats think Rush Limbaugh is the primary speaker for the Republican Party, while republicans themselves can’t come to more than a 10% consensus for any republican leader. Only a year ago the answer would have been a resounding ‘John McCain.’ But the subsequent political maneuverings of the McCain campaign not only compromised McCain as the present and future leader of the Republican Party, but also left the party without a clear direction, as reflected in this latest poll. Even during the Republican primaries there was a great deal of political division among the republican presidential candidates and the priorities of their voter constituencies - most notably between the Christian base of Mike Huckabee, the Mormon and fiscal bases of Mitt Romney, and the military and moderate republican bases of John McCain.

Shortly after McCain prevailed in the primaries, it became clear in the polling that McCain was not appealing broadly enough to Romney or Huckabee supporters. The McCain campaign, aware of the Republican Party’s already somewhat maximized base, felt compelled to do something extreme - adding Sarah Palin to the ticket. In choosing Palin, the campaign picked a VP candidate very different from its presidential nominee. They augmented the ‘John McCain as the one voice atop the Republican Party’ strategy into the ‘John McCain and Sarah Palin as the two separate voices atop the Republican Party’ strategy. At the time, the Republican campaign saw that the less-than-unifying McCain would not carry the 2008 electoral vote. But, perhaps with a pseudo-second ideological leader appealing to an entirely different set of voting blocks, the republicans could achieve a broader appeal and win over the electorate.

Now if at this point you’re asking yourself how the Palin selection was any different from every other VP selection, allow me to clarify. Joe Biden, for instance, was selected to provide international relations experience and to help carry the state of Pennsylvania, among other considerations. While Obama and Biden have their political differences, these are minuscule compared to their common ground and as such it’s safe to reason that the vast majority of both Obama and Biden supporters viewed either candidate as an adequate leader for the Democratic Party. However, can the same claim be made about the McCain/Palin ticket? Seeing as the two Republicans hit the campaign trail - and indeed embodied - substantially different ideological messages, I would say no.

In contrast to the prototypical VP pick, which serves to complement and reinforce the presidential nominee’s positions, much of Sarah Palin’s appeal actually clashed with McCain’s appeal and vice versa. McCain campaigned primarily on his experience, both in military and political matters, as well as his ability to bring about real change in republican leadership. Palin, by contrast, offered zero experience and looked like a reincarnation from the Bush Administration with her colloquialism and lack of precise public speaking. Similarly, for Palin supporters, Palin appealed primarily as a strong female leader and as a religious conservative, qualities both somewhat at odds with John McCain’s past divorce from his then recently-mangled first wife and his questionable pro-life record. Furthermore, Palin’s populist demeanor clashed somewhat with McCain’s long-held ‘I’m a maverick’ posturing - despite the McCain campaign’s attempt to bring Palin into the maverick fold.

I’m not suggesting that the McCain campaign was oblivious to these clashes. Quite the opposite actually. The McCain campaign simply hoped that republicans would view the McCain/Palin ticket as covering all of the essential ideological bases, while choosing to overlook the hopefully not-to-egregious contradictions. Not only did this effort fail to win the presidency, but it left the Republican Party with a confused message and lack of direction. It should come as no surprise, then, that without a united policy agenda Republicans cannot agree on a single representative leader. And if anyone’s to blame for this lack of cohesion - which is always a fun and productive thing to do - my vote is for McCain.

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Tags: 2008 election, John McCain, political poll, republican leadership, Sarah Palin

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under In American Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.