On Also-Rans and the Issue of "Electablity"

The recent victories of Rick Santorum in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri, coupled with Ron Paul's improved showings in Maine and the CPAC Convention leads to a gratifying feeling that the remaining four Republican candidates will have an engaging campaign through the remainder of the season.  The complacent world of journalism tends to generalize too soon, and a failure of producing a string of endless Mitt Romney victories has put the pre-presidential campaign of Barack Obama vs. Republican contender into a desirable limbo.  We are far from electing a president at this time, and straw polls and surveys are lame substitutes for the reality of November 2012.  We have four candidates, and all have made token remarks to win over the conservative element of their party.

The general misgivings on Santorum and Paul has been the idea that they would not fare well in a theoretical showdown with the President at this time.  Voters have been given the specter of some entity called "electability."  This quality is presented as a sine qua non for candidacy.  As these two have not done well in the early primaries, it has become a foregone conclusion that Paul or Santorum are not qualified to run.  A campaign of two candidates would be more appealing than one with four, especially if the two definitely present something of a widened political spectrum, a moderate versus a conservative.  Too many conservatives seem to be superfluous.

However, the argument could be expressed that the standing conservative, with his unsavory marital history, has unyieldy baggage, allowing the moderate (aka, a conservative's liberal) a decided advantage.  Even I, whom I would label as "conservative," would have difficulty pushing Newt over Mitt.  I am delighted that the other two candidates have persisted in their efforts, and that some success has come of it all.  I am against the candidate that too soon becomes a "media darling" or the expressed choice of the party's "powers-that-be."   As a veteran of last year's Walker vs. Neumann primary, I hold especially any favored status promoted by the party (e.g. "electability") to be an insult to the voting populace.  As a "Neumann backer," my friendly advice would forever be "find the man the party proposes, and vote for the other fellow."  After all, I remain of the opinion that the man (or woman) I would back must hold to the fundamental positions I support.

Thus a field of four offers more hope for those who believe that the 2012 must field two candidates of varied political positions, the classic liberal vs. conservative showdown.  Two moderates lacks a feel for entirety.  The victory that Obama secured over John McCain four years prior could easily have been a mandate to elect the first African-American to demonstrate progress towards  a noble goal.  It could also easily be seen as the Republican Party's effort to offer a candidate that has qualities similar to the Obama juggernaut.  But that smacked too much of a "me-too-ism" that was featured in the Kennedy-Nixon debates, a series of encounters that showed two candidates, one young and dynamic, one young and haggard, with similar positions.  The aura of dynamism that Kennedy held was the edge in that election.  My hope is to allow a real choice in this year's election.  But to do this, any weight that a strawman argument such as "electability" has to be seen as the smokescreen that it is.  The country should vote its conscience according to the issues that guide the nation, not political opportunism.