US election: Republican field finally gets settled

The likely candidate so far is a conservative governor.

In countries that are used to six-week election campaigns, the American system of nearly non-stop presidential campaigning must seem hopelessly inefficient – but also highly entertaining.

Case in point: the Ames straw poll, which took place last month. Located in a town of not quite 60,000 people, in the middle of a state with 1% of the nation’s population, the straw poll is not even part of the official primary process – it is more of a hybrid between party fundraiser and carnival.

And yet, it still draws the presidential hopefuls, who spend more money to win the poll with each campaign cycle.

If anything, the 2012 Republican nominating process is a more compressed affair than it was in 2008. Four years ago, the candidate field was more or less clear in January 2007 – a full year before the first primary voting (also in Iowa) and nearly two years before the general election.

This time around, it took until the end of the summer for the field to fully materialise. But don’t worry: there will be no shortage of political drama from now until the first votes are cast on February 6, 2012.

At this point in the primary campaign, there is no single figure dominating the field. There are, however, three candidates with a credible chance of becoming the Republican nominee who will challenge President Barack Obama in November 2012.

Wildcard time fading
As a caveat, the polls are still fluid, and a lot can change between now and February – such as the wildcard possibility that someone new will enter the race at this relatively late stage. That said, the odds of any other candidate making it to the top tier look decidedly low.

As the newest Republican in the race, Rick Perry has been campaigning for just a few weeks but in many of the latest polls he has emerged as the front-runner. On the Republican spectrum, Mr Perry is a conservative hardliner, raising questions about his chances in the general election, though his electoral track record in Texas has been exceptionally successful. Mr Perry, who has been governor of Texas for 11 years – making him the nation’s longest-serving current governor – has never lost an election in his home state.

A substantial portion of Mr Perry’s popularity among Republicans is his closeness to the Tea Party, and in fact he was one of the first major politicians to embrace the movement when it emerged in early 2009. Texas also has the nation’s best track record (in absolute terms) for job creation over the past decade, though critics point out that many of the new jobs are in the low-skilled, minimum wage category. While Mr Perry has pursued what could be termed an “industrial policy” by doling out government cash to favored industries, he is still regarded as a reliable fiscal conservative.

Mr Perry has positioned himself in ideological contrast to Mitt Romney, who had been regarded as the front-runner until the Texas governor’s entry into the race. Mr Romney, who served four years as governor of famously liberal Massachusetts, is a relative moderate compared to Mr Perry, though in the course of the campaign he has been forced to move further to the right on such issues as the federal debt and climate change.

A scion of a wealthy and politically connected family – his father ran for president in 1968 – Mr Romney’s personal background is also in stark contrast to Mr Perry, who frequently cites his own upbringing on a small farm in rural Texas.

Health plan stigma
Mr Romney was the third-placed Republican in the 2008 primaries (when he and Mike Huckabee lost to John McCain) and, with Mr Huckabee not running this year, he benefits from well-established name recognition.

However, Tea Party activists regard him with some suspicion, not least because of the healthcare reform plan that he implemented in Massachusetts – a plan that was specifically used as a template for Mr Obama’s national reform, opposition to which unites practically everyone in the Republican Party. Mr Romney has refused to recant from the Massachusetts law, though he has said that he would work to repeal the so-called “Obamacare” if elected.

The third-ranked candidate in the top tier is Michelle Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota. Until Mr Perry’s entry into the race, she had been the main conservative alternative to Mr Romney and now she is fighting her new rival for the Tea Party vote.

Often compared to Sarah Palin, Ms Bachmann shares more than just gender with the former vice presidential nominee –she is equally uncompromising and strident in her rhetoric, against Democrats as well as Republicans whom she considers insufficiently conservative. In 2008, she famously accused Mr Obama of being “anti-American.”

Few policy differences
Ms Bachmann has already notched one milestone: she won the Ames straw poll, following which Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of her home state and a long-standing political rival, exited the Republican race.

However, Mr Perry – widely perceived as a more electable figure – represents a serious threat to her presidential ambitions, since the two are courting the same key constituencies – fiscally conservative Tea Partiers along with social conservatives. In the increasingly unlikely event that Ms Palin joins the race – she has promised to decide by the end of September – she would aim to take votes from both Mr Perry and Ms Bachmann.

It’s worth noting that there are few substantive policy differences between the major Republican candidates. On fiscal policy – Washington’s overriding debate over the past six months – all are on the record opposing last month’s debt ceiling compromise between Mr Obama and congressional Republicans, and all promise a range of tax cuts to revitalise the moribund US economy. All call for the repeal of healthcare reform and all are opposed to any carbon trading policies.

As of this writing, the smart money is on Mr Perry to be the nominee – literally. Intrade, which bills itself as “the world’s leading prediction market,” gives Mr Perry a 38.4% chance, followed by Mr Romney at 30.3% and all others in the single digits. Still, never say never – just ask President Hillary Clinton about the predictions from four years ago.

Pavel Molchanov is a financial analyst in Texas. pavel@alumni.duke.edu