In defense of traditional Republican candidates

There’s polling news today from Ohio. An Emerson poll has J.D. Vance leading his Democrat opponent Tim Ryan, 45-42. The margin of error is +/- 3.2 points.

The Emerson poll is good news for Republicans because other fairly recent polls had shown Ryan even or in the lead. But the news isn’t that great when one considers that Ohio has been trending strongly for the GOP and that Joe Biden has only a 39 percent approval rating in the state, according to the same poll.

The news is better for Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor. The Emerson poll has him leading his opponent by 16 points, 49-33. Similarly, a generic poll of Ohio congressional races gives the GOP a lead of 51-41 (if I understand Emerson’s report correctly).

It’s normal for an incumbent governor like DeWine in a sleepy race to be running ahead of a non-incumbent like Vance in a high-stakes contest. Still, the 13 point differential between the two stands out.

I’m going to call DeWine a traditional Republican. One might also describe him as generic, normal, ordinary or (that dreaded word) establishment.

J.D. Vance is none of these things. He’s a celebrity, not a politician (until last year). Ideologically, he departs from traditional GOP views on issues like trade. He owes his status as the nominee to Donald Trump, not to anyone associated with the Republican establishment.

I think Vance will win, now that he’s finally on the air with advertisements. But two other non-traditional Republicans are struggling mightily in crucial Senate races. Dr. Mehmet Oz seems likely to lose the Senate seat Republicans have long held in Pennsylvania. And Herschel Walker trails by 4 points in the RCP average in Georgia, a state that’s trending towards the Dems, but which the GOP still should be able to carry, especially when the Democrat president is unpopular. By contrast, Brian Kemp, a traditional Republican, leads by 4 points in the RCP average in his race for reelection as Georgia’s governor.

It’s clear to me that traditional Republican nominees are, as a general matter, more likely to win elections against Democrats than non-traditional ones. And surely winning elections is a big part of what politics is about.

Governing is also a big part, of course. And being governed by “RINOs” or “squishes” is not to be desired.

But Senators “govern” almost exclusively by voting, and traditional Republicans (as opposed to centrist ones like Susan Collins and flakes like Lisa Murkowski) aren’t squishy in that regard. Sure, they might not embrace Donald Trump’s absurd claim that he won the 2020 election by a landslide. They might also show a bit of irritation when a Trump-inspired mob rampages through the corridors of the Capitol. They are, after all, normal.

But when it’s time to vote on legislation and presidential nominees, they are Republicans both in name and effect.

Ordinary, traditional Republican Senators pushed for and voted in favor of Trump’s agenda at every turn. They voted to confirm all three of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees and virtually all of his many lower court selections.

It’s important, of course, to have extraordinary Senators in the Republican caucus. But this doesn’t require nominating novelty candidates in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia. There are enough solidly Red states to supply edgy, highly-talented conservative Republicans.

Arkansas sends Tom Cotton to D.C. Texas sends Ted Cruz. For those who like even more edge, Josh Hawley represents Missouri.

And by the way, these three stalwarts all rose to senatorial status in non-novel ways — Cotton through military service and a term in the U.S. House; Cruz and Hawley by serving in their states’ top legal job. There’s not a Heisman winner, TV doctor, or autobiographer-before-the-age-of-30 in the batch.

The Democrats understand the risk of nominating hard-edge candidates for the Senate in states that aren’t Blue. In these states, they are content to nominate vanilla candidates who will dutifully vote with the party — Jon Tester and Mark Kelly, for example.

The Dems carried this practice to an extreme when they nominated a vanilla candidate for president in 2020. It worked, though, proving that you can beat something with almost nothing if the “something” is unpopular enough.

Republicans don’t have the luxury of nominating vanilla presidential candidates. For one thing, the media will do everything possible to persuade the electorate that even traditional, non-threatening GOP standard bearers are the devil incarnate (like that “destroyer of jobs and lives” Mitt Romney).

For another, it takes a fair amount of spikiness to govern effectively as a Republican. A path-of-least-resistance GOP president will accomplish very little.

Republican voters understand this, and that helps explain the rise of Donald Trump. Fortunately, though, there are good, spikey alternatives to Trump for 2024.