Almanac: At the Capitol

With the understanding that this particular Web-space, along with my own, is usually set aside exclusively for the discussion of Minnesota politics, it's with great reluctance that I steer this particular column towards national events. After all, there is no shortage of national voices to fill the need for Presidential punditry, but there can be something truly local about a Presidential race that is missed if not examined through the local lens. So, in short, bear with me for a moment.

The first quarter fundraising numbers are beginning to be unveiled by the campaign organizations that have imparted so much sweat, blood and tears into their conception, and let me tell you, things are as exciting as ever. Although the revealing of dollar amounts a full nineteen months before an election may not be enough to get the average (wo)man's blood boiling, for us politicos it's like NFL draft season: a preview of how good each team might be. But it's particular exciting if you're in the right division: the Democrats.

Let's start with the weaker division though. For the Republican Party this must be like some strange Morman nightmare. See, the GOP is about as coherent as the Beatles after John Lennon met Yoko Ono. On one hand you have the financial base of the fiscal conservatives that have, in my estimation, been realigned with traditional Reagan Republicans who yearn for a smaller, more efficient Government. And then on the other hand you have the spiritual (pun intended) core of the party: the social conservatives. These two divisions of the Republican party have been barreling on full-steam towards a head-on collision and it looks as though there will be no avoiding it in 2008.

Rudy Guiliani may be the closest thing that the traditional, fiscal conservative base has to cling to this cycle (although he's far from satisfying the needs of many Reagan Republicans) but he is about as far from a social conservative main-stay as you can conceivably get. But with $15 million in the bank in the 1st quarter with a later start than the other GOPers, Guiliani is showing that he's got a real shot.

McCain, on the other hand, is faring even worse than the reports would have led me to believe. John McCain, once the Republican party's one seemingly unbeatable candidate, raised a dismal $12.5 million (what a statement about our political system when raising $12.5 million can be labeled "dismal"; a thing McCain no doubt would have much to say about). The Straight-Talk-Express has hit quite a few road-bumps and these numbers are showing it. Outside of the huge reservations that his own party are having about Johnny boy is the albatross of the surge-policy hanging around the Senator's neck. Even though George Bush's surge policy is in effect a gutted, emasculated version of McCain's proposed plan of attack, it's close enough that McCain will be judged by it (and likely bury his political aspirations next to it). In short, McCain's Q1 numbers show that he not only faces a lack of support within his party but that he cannot make up for this lack of internal support anymore by bringing in fringe members of the party.

And then there's the Coca-Cola abstaining surprise: Mitt Romney. Raising $21million (nearly as much as the current lead-Dem (although Obama has yet to announce his numbers (more on that next column (quadruple nested parentheses!!!)))) as a Republican in this environment is no small feat, but doing so as a flip-flopping Mormon from Massachusetts is simply amazing. And while I don't mean to down-play Mr. Romney's achievement, I think this really speaks to the weaknesses of the GOP right now. Without a true fiscal or social conservative, much less a twofer, the GOP base has found a limited amount of agreement in a second tier compromise. Mitt isn't perfect, but maybe he's ranked #2 on enough ballots to win.

Now, I opened this column with the promise of a local lens but have so far focused almost exclusively on the facts of the national Presidential field. As promised though, I do have a point here. The most substantial problem that the Republican party has right now is compromise. They simply can't seem to coalesce around an electable, potent, state-swinging candidate but have instead (at least for the mean time) focused on a look-alike wannabe. Mr. Guiliani could be a very potent force in slightly left states like Minnesota (although we're really a very left state) but these candidates will probably never see a chance at a general ballot here. Why? Simply because the Republican party has put such an emphasis on ideological loyalty that it has blinded itself to the changing reality of American sentiment.

Not only will this stubborn insistence on party purity hurt the GOP in its attempt to keep the White House, but it will potentially have even more widespread effects in other federal races. For example, it has been a poorly-kept secret that many hard-lined Republicans in Minnesota have been planning a right-wing challenge against Congressman Jim Ramstad because he, gasp, voted with the Democrats on the Iraq War Resolution.

To make an increasingly lengthy article short, it is because of states like Minnesota, and not in spite of them, that the Republicans are in a lot of trouble this cycle. Middle of the road states, like Minnesota, where elections are decided more by the ideas they embrace than the ideologies they push are going to find themselves for want on the Republican side in this coming election. And fortunately for us Democrats, the most recent fundraising numbers show that the Republicans haven't yet gotten past their internal divisions and begun to focus on winning.

Coming up in the next column: the winning division, Democrats.