Blue Collar Muse

The title of the post is from a song from a few years back. A gal is looking, of course, for Mr. Right. When he doesn’t materialize, she settles for someone that’s less than what she’s looking for but who is available immediately.

It seems the political Right may be going through something similar searching for candidates at all levels of government. In the Presidential race, there isn’t a breakaway candidate that everyone is getting behind, there’s only the guy with the highest level of support. I understand this is primary season and we’re looking at lots of folks from which to choose. But Rudy, the current frontrunner, only has 24% of the vote according to yesterday’s Rasmussen Report. 10 points back and bunched are Fred, Mitt, Huck and McCain at 14, 13, 12, and 11 respectively.

7 weeks out from the Iowa Caucus and 10 weeks from Super Tuesday and, if nothing changes, just 25% of our people will choose our candidate. Again, I understand how primaries work. But I also understand that Clinton took a beating from the Right for not managing to garner even a slim majority in either of his elections. Further, the flavor of our selection process seems more European than American. There are so many issues and so many candidates with a wide range of positions on those issues that we’ll not be able to decide on the basis of which qualified candidate is the best to represent us. It seems we’ll be deciding based on which candidate can cobble together the biggest coalition willing to live with his perceived shortcomings. In short, we all want Mr. Right (or Mr. Right Wing) but are settling for Mr. Right Now.

I wonder if our current shortage of truly desirable candidates stems from applying the same Right/Right Now criteria to an area other than issues. I’m talking about electability. I’m convinced that if we want strong, effective leaders and steady Conservatives as candidates tomorrow, we need to do some things different today. Chief among those things is the criteria with which we choose candidates - particularly for local and state races which so often feed federal races.

We have admirable goals of establishing solid Republican majorities in the various states and regaining the majorities we enjoyed federally. However, as long as decisions made in “smoke filled rooms” with party movers and shakers deciding who gets to run and other scenarios whereby candidates are slated more because they can be elected than because they are the best ones to govern we’ll be saddled with candidates who have the requisite “R” by their name but lack the guiding principles of what that “R” stands for in their character.

As we look at the important states and races around the country, I’d like to see the Party look more for people with the character and ideology first. Once these folks are identified and have accepted the encouragement to run, then the GOP needs to get behind them and, as Hearst famously said of Billy Graham, “Puff” them.

It may take an election cycle or two to find these folks and longer for them to acquire the credibility they need to be elected.  But money and name recognition can be raised and developed. Character and ideology are harder to come by. If our goal remains finding an “R” who can win with little thought as to how he’ll govern, our fortunes will not change and our dissatisfaction will only deepen. If, however, we put quality in on the front end, while it may take longer and cost more, the end result will be more satisfying and will last a whole lot longer.

Thinking the right way to find Mr. Right is to make some changes right now …

Blue Collar Muse

Popularity: 65% [?]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 5:14 am and is filed under 2008 election season, Common Sense, Conservative, Elephant Bites, Individual Responsibility, 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.