Republican field has an embarassment . . . of embarassments
Expanding list of candidates might leave credible contenders out in the cold
WASHINGTON— Rick Perry, whose last campaign was an embarrassment, announced his presidential candidacy on Thursday. Donald Trump, walking embarrassment, says he will make a “major announcement” in two weeks.
Trump will not be the Republican nominee. Neither, though, will failed former chief executive Carly Fiorina, never-elected surgeon Ben Carson, or Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator not especially popular in South Carolina.
They are all running. Along with Trump, they might soon make a prominent governor miserable.
The Republican debates of 2012 accommodated no-chance candidates such as pizza businessman Herman Cain and fringe congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
The party’s 2016 field is so abnormally big that the first two debates will relegate established office-holders to the kids’ table — deeply wounding their candidacies six months before the first states vote in February.
Perry was the 10th Republican candidate to enter the race.
Four current or former governors are expected in soon. John Kasich, well-regarded governor of the critical election state of Ohio, is thinking about it. Trump will reveal his decision on June 16.
That makes 16 candidates. Fox will limit the roster of the first debate, in early August, to the top10 candidates from five recent national polls.
Based on current polling, the conspiratorial real estate magnate with the confounding hair could conceivably make the cut over Kasich, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Pennsylvania senator and secondplace 2012 finisher Rick Santorum, and even scandal-plagued New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The Fox decision has confronted the diversity-challenged party with a possibility perhaps even more uncomfortable: Trump forcing out the lone black candidate, Carson, or the lone woman, Fiorina. And it has created a mad scramble for national name recognition among lower-tier candidates who would normally have time to build ties with the faithful in low-population early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, which don’t vote until February.
Bruce Perlo, chairman of the Republican organization in New Hampshire’s Grafton County, said the field will be winnowed down faster than usual.
“I think a lot of people will say, ‘Well, my person isn’t in the top 10, and therefore I’m going to be supporting the other one who is closest to my beliefs,’ ” Perlo said Thursday.
Republican strategists have proposed various respectable explanations for the size of the field: the absence of a dominant front-runner, the belief that presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is vulnerable, fissures between the various wings of a fractured party. There is also money.
Running unsuccessfully for president has become good business. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor now making his second run, parlayed his 2008 candidacy into a Fox News show and a paid gig as a pitchman for an unscientific diabetes “solution.”
Carson, a famed neurosurgeon with an inspirational life story, made at least $5 million (U.S.) doing speeches and selling books in the year before he formally entered the 2016 race.
“It used to be that well, if you run, maybe you can become a vice-presidential candidate or something like that. There was a straightforward political motivation. Now, you have these people running and it kind of makes them a celebrity, and they can profit from it. Pat Buchanan did this in the ’90s,” said David Karol, a professor of government at the University of Maryland.
“A lot of these people: it’s that they have nothing better to do, and it’s careerism.”
The top tier of the Republican race includes Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
The Democrats have four credible candidates in total; the most recent entrant, Lincoln Chafee, is a former Republican who launched his campaign with a call for the metric system.
“It’s a great time to be a Republican. On the Democratic side, I think they’ve really got to be crying in their beer,” Jeff Jorgensen, chairman of the Republicans in Iowa’s Pottawattamie County, said Wednesday.
“Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate if ever there was one. I would much rather be in a position of having 15 candidates or so to vet and observe and get to know — and we’ll get to know all of them.”