THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BUCKLEY RULE

The GOP is currently undergoing the process of regrouping in the aftermath of last year's disappointing elections.  Part of that process involves a new generation of leaders stepping up and taking charge, both for the sake of the party, the sake of the Conservative movement and, of course, their own presidential ambitions.  The group runs the gamut from Texas Tea Partier Ted Cruz to New Jersey RINO Chris Christie; from Libertarian/Conservative hybrid Rand Paul to Florida golden boy Marco Rubio.  And there are many others as well.

On Tuesday Michael Barone had an article in the Washington Examiner titled "Republicans struggle to agree on candidates who can win."  He points out that while the GOP has lost the presidential election four out of the last six cycles the Republicans have had quite a bit of success on the state level.  For instance, the GOP has won control of the House of Representatives eight of the last ten cycles.  Success on the downticket has more to do with the quality of the candidate than anything else.

The fact is that some candidates who rise up from nowhere turn out to have good political instincts, like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, while others make game-losing mistakes.

The Republican Party has benefited on balance from the infusion of new people symbolized by the Tea Party movement, just as the Democratic Party benefited on balance 40 years ago from the infusion of people from the peace movement.

But such outsider movements also produce some candidates with a gift for campaign-losing gaffes. And they produce primary electorates who prefer a disastrous purist over someone not far off in views but also capable of winning an election.

Assessing whether a candidate has good political instincts is a matter of judgment about which reasonable people will disagree.    

There will come a time to cull the herd and make decisions as to which of the contenders is going to carry the banner of the GOP into battle with the Democrats in the 2016 presidential race.  And before that, the crucial 2014 midterm elections will determine whether or not the GOP can continue to hold the line against the Obama agenda.  Elections have consequences.  And when decision time comes you can be certain that the Buckley Rule will be invoked.

Everybody seems to agree that the Buckley Rule has been around for a long time.  Beyond that, however, there seems to be a great deal of confusion about its origins and true meaning.  Here is an example from 2010:

Conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley (1925-2008) was asked, in 1967, whom he would support in 1968 for U.S. president. Buckley responded with what would later be called the "Buckley Rule" for primary voting: "The wisest choice would be the one who would win. No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest. I'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win. If you could convince me that Barry Goldwater could win, I'd vote for him."

The term "Buckley Rule" wouldn't be popularly used until the 2000s, but the language "rightward-most viable candidate" (not the exact words) has been often repeated. The word "viable"—a candidate who is the most likely to win the general election—adds an element of pragmatism to the conservative philosophy.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh disagreed with the "Buckley Rule" and established a new "Limbaugh Rule" on September 14, 2010. Limbaugh said that it requires clairvoyance to determine who will win the general election, so one should just simply vote for the most conservative candidate.

While debating the true meaning of the rule may seem rather academic and abstract it is, in fact, a very important concept to understand.  It goes straight to the heart of the matter as to whether it's better to nominate a stalwart or a centrist; a grassroots favorite or an establishment darling.  It's important to remember the context in which Limbaugh instituted his rule:

We still have people who think that professional Washington politicians are the way to fix this, and clearly it isn't. Some of these people are citing the Buckley Rule. Now, I can honestly say that I know what the Buckley Rule is. I can honestly say I knew William F. Buckley and Buckley was a friend of mine. The Buckley Rule is, ostensibly, that you vote for the most electable conservative option against a Democrat in November. You vote for the Republican, slash, conservative who can win. To me, this requires clairvoyance, as is being currently applied in the Mike Castle-Christine O'Donnell race in Delaware, to use an example. The polling data is that Castle will win big and O'Donnell will lose big. If she gets the Republican nomination today, if she wins the election she'll lose big. The polls say she'll lose by 25 points; that Castle will win by 20 points. But who knows this? The election's a long time off. In a year like this, it seems to me that Americanism versus socialism can make up 25 points. Why the hell not try to? Is what I don't understand. Why not try to make up the 25 points?

Okay, let's just assume that it's correct. Let's assume that Christine O'Donnell is down in the polls, Democrat polls, by the way, by 25 points. Okay, fine. If she's the best option we have to stop what's going on once she gets to Washington, why not try to make up the 25 points? We got socialism, communism, liberalism on the ropes. It's too risky? Let me tell you something. It's worth the risk. We're talking about saving the [blank] damn country. What do you mean, too risky?

Limbaugh complained that Castle had, among other things, voted to investigate George W. Bush for lying about Iraq.  Rush wanted to support feisty grassroots favorite, O'Donnell, whom he felt could win in a year when the Republicans seemed assured of a strong showing (he wasn't wrong about the strong showing).  So he came up with his rule:

So we have professional Washingtonians now telling us that Mike Castle's the only option we've got. Well, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, for the Limbaugh Rule to supplant and replace the Buckley Rule, because the Buckley Rule requires clairvoyance. The Buckley Rule requires people who can't possibly know the outcome of anything in the middle of September to support or not support somebody based on what they think's going to happen in early November. Christine O'Donnell can't win, she's 25 points down. Can't win? If a constitutional conservative can't win in this climate coming down from 25 points, we need to find that out, find out where we are. Why not go for it? The stakes dictate it, do they not? Here's the Limbaugh Rule: In an election year when voters are fed up with liberalism and socialism, when voters are clearly frightened of where the hell the country is headed, vote for the most conservative Republican in the primary, period.

Of course with the support of the Tea Party, Limbaugh, Palin, DeMint and other staunch Conservatives, O'Donnell did defeat Castle in the remarkably bitter primary.  

Following her upset win, O'Donnell continued to face a split reaction from the leaders in the local, state, and national Republican Party. Castle said he would not support O'Donnell. The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a statement almost immediately following O'Donnell's win, stating that they would not spend money to support her or her campaign. John Cornyn, chairman of the NRSC, released his own statement claiming he had not authorized the issuing of the first statement.  He then offered the maximum $42,000 donation to her campaign; Cornyn acknowledged, however, that he was not sure if she could win. 

Mitt Romney also contributed to O'Donnell's general election funds. However, former White House adviser and Republican strategist Karl Rove said following O'Donnell's victory, "This is not a race we're going to be able to win." His remark triggered a fusillade of criticism from conservative talk radio.  

The morning after the primary, Public Policy Polling released a tweet indicating that their polling found that primary voters who voted for Mike Castle supported Chris Coons, the Democrat opponent, over O'Donnell 44% to 28% in a general election.  "Bottom line is, if she’s nominated, Republicans lose the election automatically," Castle said in an interview with NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. "It’s that simple."

Charles Krauthammer was disappointed by the primary result.  He wrote:

Tuesday in Delaware was a bad day not only for Republicans but also for conservatives. Tea Partyer [sic] Christine O'Donnell scored a stunning victory over establishment Republican Mike Castle. Stunning but pyrrhic. The very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Obama's social democratic agenda may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate and definitively stop that agenda.  Bill Buckley -- no Mike Castle he -- had a rule: Support the most conservative candidate who is electable. 

  
After O'Donnell lost the general election to Coons by nearly 17 points, there were numerous discussions within Republican circles regarding whether the party had blown a sure thing by nominating her instead of Castle. The pragmatists said that this had happened, and pointed to other races in Nevada and Colorado where Tea Party-favored candidates had lost races against Democrat rivals.  

The purists rejected that assumption and said that running candidates who supported fundamentally conservative values was always worthwhile - essentially, the Limbaugh Rule. For her part, O'Donnell felt betrayed by the GOP establishment and said the consequent lack of support had led to her defeat.

Two years later the GOP blew another opportunity to take back the Senate in 2012.  Clumsy and foolish statements about rape cost the GOP wins in Indiana and Missouri and even managed to undermine the Romney campaign.  The debacle in Indiana was preceded by a GOP primary result that was strikingly similar to the 2010 Delaware race.  The defeated establishment incumbent, Dick Lugar, was unapologetically bitter about losing to upstart Richard Mourdock and was unhelpful in the general election.  As of last week Lugar is STILL bitter!  The Republicans also lost seemingly winnable races in North Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin and Virginia.

The Democrats are still in control of the Senate. 

So what would Bill Buckley have done?

Last week Neal Freeman, a former National Review staffer and editor who was there when the Buckley Rule was created, wrote an article titled "Buckley Rule - According to Bill, not Karl" intended to clarify its origins and meaning.  What exactly did supporting "the rightwardmost viable candidate" mean to Buckley?  And what was the point of it at the time?

According to Freeman, the rule was originally formulated to settle the debate at National Review as to who would win the magazine's endorsement for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination. The contenders were Nelson Rockefeller (supported by the formidable editor James Burnham along with Priscilla Buckley and Arlene Croce) and Barry Goldwater (supported by editors Bill Rusher, Bill Rickenbacker and Freeman himself).  Burnham laid out the case for Rockefeller:

First, Rockefeller was running well ahead of Goldwater in the trial-heat polls against incumbent Lyndon Johnson. Second, Rockefeller was an Ivy Leaguer, a well-connected establishmentarian, a sophisticated candidate who could expect more positive treatment from the eastern press. Third, Rockefeller had the financial resources. (Even Rusher conceded this point.) Fourth, the influence of Rockefeller’s family was marbled through institutional New York — Wall Street, medicine, the real-estate moguldom, big philanthropy, a rainbow array of well-endowed ethnic and racial groups, the cultural centers. (Every New York museum worth visiting seemed to be chaired by one Rockefeller or another.) Burnham’s political point? As governor of a northeastern state, Rockefeller could put at least parts of the region in play, a rare and highly valuable asset for any GOP hopeful.

Burnham’s most powerful argument, his closer, was that on the overriding issue of the day Rockefeller would stand with us against our mortal foes: the capitulationists in the twilight struggle with international Communism. In Burnham’s telling, Rockefeller had shown himself to be a reliable anti-Communist in his tenure at the State Department. His family’s businesses around the world had cooperated with what were euphemistically known as “agencies of the U.S. government.” And most significantly for Burnham, Rockefeller had retained as his principal foreign-policy adviser a young academic with impeccable anti-Communist credentials named Henry Kissinger. Burnham concluded by suggesting that, because of the depth of his experience and the range of his contacts, Rockefeller might be even more effective in prosecuting the Cold War than the boisterously anti-Communist Goldwater.

It was a very powerful argument.  But it must be remembered that William F. Buckley, Jr. and the magazine he founded were part of the Conservative movement within the Republican Party.  The goal was not simply to win this election or that election but to advance certain principles.  One cannot understand the Buckley Rule without understanding this point.  The case for Goldwater was this:

First, the polls were to be dismissed. As well as he ran against Goldwater, Rockefeller was still trailing Johnson by open-water margins. There was little chance that the American people were going to want a third president in less than a year: Johnson was the beneficiary of a halo effect as the country came together in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination a few months earlier. Second, Goldwater would make our brand-new conservative case — a case that most Americans had never heard — with verve and impact. Third, a Rockefeller nomination would mute both the social issues and the limited-government issues and, as a consequence, might stunt or splinter our fragile fusionist coalition. (Rockefeller was a social liberal and, quintessentially, a big-government Republican.) Finally and most important, we argued that Goldwater would advance our cause strategically. He would rip the Republican party from its roots in the eastern establishment and push it into the future — toward the West and toward the South.

The implications are clear.  There was virtually no difference between East Coast millionaire Republican Nelson Rockefeller and East Coast millionaire Democrat Jack Kennedy. (Ironically, Buckley himself was an East Coast millionaire and, like Kennedy, a Catholic - but with a political philosophy at odds with the liberal consensus espoused by both Kennedy and Rockefeller.)  And now that Kennedy was a martyred hero there was essentially no chance of his successor, LBJ, being defeated less than a year after the assassination.  This meant that with no chance of winning, Rockefeller's "electability" argument was effectively nullified.

If victory in November was no longer a possibility, was there anything to be salvaged from the campaign?  From the perspective of the Conservatives at National Review the answer was a defiant YES!  And that's when Buckley issued his ruling:

These intramural arguments, as I say, were protracted, begun in the winter and carrying on into the early spring. WFB sat at the head of the table, encouraging others to speak, keeping his own counsel. In early June, after Rockefeller had won the Oregon primary and Goldwater had won California, after all of us had had our say, after rumors had begun to creep out of 35th Street that NR might shift its support to Nelson Rockefeller — the equivalent, today, of word leaking out of 15th Street that the Washington Post might endorse Michele Bachmann — Bill, who rarely proposed, decided that it was time to dispose. With each of us in our assigned seat and with six pairs of eyeballs staring at him unblinkingly, Bill announced that "National Review will support the rightwardmost viable candidate."

Victory for Team Goldwater! We all knew what "viable" meant in Bill's lexicon. It meant somebody who saw the world as we did. Somebody who would bring credit to our cause. Somebody who, win or lose, would conservatize the Republican party and the country. It meant somebody like Barry Goldwater. (And so it came to pass. For the next 40 years, the GOP nominated and elected men from the West and the South. Nixon won twice, Reagan twice, the Bushes thrice. Only in recent cycles has the GOP reverted to its habit of nominating "moderates" favored by the establishment. Dole, McCain, Romney — all of them were admired by the fashionable media until they won the GOP nomination, at which point they were abandoned in favor of the liberal nominated by the Democrats.)

Bill Buckley was careful with words. If he had opted on that June day for the words "rightwardmost electable candidate," we would all have recognized it as a victory for Team Rockefeller. And life might look very different today. If there had been no Goldwater, National Review might not have become so influential, and if there had been no Goldwater, no National Review, there might have been no Reagan.

One thing that Freeman did not mention in his article was a fact with which everybody at National Review would have been familiar at the time.  Four years earlier, during the 1960 GOP primaries, when Vice President Richard Nixon, a staunch anti-Communist from the West, was trying to succeed his boss, President Eisenhower, Rockefeller had stood in the way.  Although Rockefeller had officially dropped out of contention in December of 1959, it was well known that he was still manipulating things behind the scenes.  There was still a chance he could mount a challenge to Nixon at the convention, which was held in Chicago.

Two nights before the convention was to open, the party's platform was a mess. Nixon panicked. He had his men call Rockefeller and held an all-night meeting with party leaders to come up with a coherent policy. What came to be called "The Pact of Fifth Avenue" contained 14 points--seven concerning foreign policy and seven domestic--mostly Rockefeller's agenda and a promise not to challenge Nixon or raise a fight on the convention floor. Rockefeller announced the plan to the press on the eve of the convention.

Convention leaders were appalled and saw this as a weakness on Nixon's part. The convention was on the verge of being out of control, which prompted Nixon to fly to Chicago to meet with delegations and smooth things over.

Buckley wanted the Pact of Fifth Avenue to be the last hurrah of the Eastern establishment wing of the Republican Party.  It's fair to say that in this he and National Review were successful. 

Avik Roy responded to Freeman's article, claiming that by nominating Goldwater the Republicans had handed a victory to LBJ and the Dems, which resulted almost immediately in the passage of the Great Society:

This “Goldwater’s defeat begat Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement” thesis is common among a certain vintage of conservative thinkers, all of whom are wiser than I. But it’s worth pointing out that the landslide defeat of Goldwater to Lyndon Johnson led to the enactment of the Great Society, and most notably, Medicare and Medicaid. In other words, the very fiscal crisis we face today — for which, at our most courageous, we recommend but modest reforms — was a direct result of the disastrous Goldwater campaign.

We may all prefer the policies of Goldwater to those of Rockefeller. But it’s at least debatable whether or not the conservative movement was better off, or worse off, for having nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. Indeed, the 1964 election may be the most salient example of what happens when we don’t pick the most conservative candidate who can win.

When quickly reminded that LBJ was more or less unbeatable in 1964, given the circumstances, and thus Rockefeller's defeat in the primaries was not the deciding factor of the general election, Roy came back with this argument:

However, it is certainly true that anti-Goldwater sentiment led Democrats to achieve far larger majorities in Congress than they would have otherwise; the resultant electoral rebuke led many Republicans—who had been resisting Medicare up to that point—to go along with the plan. 

As DrewM at Ace of Spades HQ pointed out, the Social Security Act amendments of 1965 that created Medicare and Medicaid passed with significant support of Republicans in Congress:     

The House adopted a conference report -- a unified House-Senate version of the bill -- on July 27, 1965, and passed it by a 307-116 margin. That included 70 Republican "yes" votes, against 68 "no" votes.

Then, on July 28, 1965, the Senate adopted the bill by a vote of 70-24, with 13 Republicans in favor and 17 against.

It's a bit silly to think that 70 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate were "shamed" into supporting the legislation because of Goldwater.  The margin of the victory might have been slightly less if Rockefeller had been the GOP candidate in 1964 but clearly it was always going to be a triumphant year for the Democrats.  

Furthermore, if Rockefeller had been the nominee and had found a way to defeat Johnson, there's no evidence to suggest that he would have opposed the legislation.  There is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence to suggest that he wouldn't.  Rockefeller was promoting a version of Medicare as early as 1962.  His record as governor of New York indicates that he did not oppose the proliferation of government bureaucracy.  Nor was he interested in cutting spending, as his approach to Medicaid demonstrated.

Rockefeller enjoyed a great deal of personal popularity in the media.  He was the "cool" candidate.  He was viewed as being much cooler than Goldwater (despite Goldwater's cool glasses, which would now be classified as "hipster").  But this was mostly due to the fact that Rockefeller was essentially a liberal who merely called himself a "Republican" because that was his family's traditional party affiliation.  Men like Rockefeller and his fellow New Yorker, Senator Jacob Javits, were "Republicans" who were far to the left of many prominent Democrats.

William F. Buckley was as familiar with the Rockefeller-type "Republican" as anybody.  Buckley understood that while Rockefeller's habit of attacking other members of the GOP made him popular with the media establishment (in much the same way that Chris Christie has recently boosted his popularity), in the end Lyndon Johnson was unbeatable.   

Thus the dilemma that led to the Buckley Rule was NOT whether Republicans should win with Rockefeller or lose with Goldwater but rather should Republicans lose with Rockefeller and leave the status quo of the liberal consensus alone or lose with Goldwater but only after having used the opportunity of a general election to powerfully present the case for Conservatism.

So yes, the Goldwater campaign did begat the Reagan Revolution.  Yes, the Goldwater campaign laid the groundwork for GOP victories in five of the next six presidential election cycles.  Yes, Buckley and the National Review made the right choice.

Now do I think that Bill Buckley would have endorsed Christine O'Donnell over Mike Castle in the 2010 Delaware primary?  The answer is no, he wouldn't.  He would have recognized that there's a difference between a watershed moment like the 1964 presidential election and a midterm Senate primary.  

Presidential elections are unique in a variety of ways.  They require special consideration.  Congressional elections, on the other hand, are about capturing majorities in the House and Senate.  The best thing for Conservatism, ultimately, is to prevent the other party from having the ability to ram through harmful legislation as happened during the 111th Congress.  Would a moderate Republican from a blue state have a perfect voting record from the perspective of a diehard Conservative?  Probably not.  But it will always be better than that of the Dem-witted alternative.

For me the issue comes down to ability, not electability.  Electability should be the reward for those who have the ability.  We need candidates who have the ability to bring the Conservative message not just sincerely but effectively.  We need Conservative candidates who are able to skillfully defend themselves and the message from the relentless hostility and bias of the Establishment Media.  We need Conservative candidates who can relate to and communicate with all the demographics of the electorate.  We need for all the party leaders - local, statewide and national - to always remember that yes, politics is about winning.  Obama and his degenerate handlers understand that all too well.  

It's still a relatively free country and so people are able to debate political ideology whenever they feel like it.  But for those who want to step up and play the political game they had better be prepared to play to win. And they had better have the skills to win.  Ideological sincerity is admirable, of course.  But all else being equal, I'll take the candidate who has the sincerity and the political skills to defeat the enemy.

The Buckley Rule was established during a time of political revolution.  It was the right thing to do.  But I feel confident in assuming that Buckley understood that there's a time for revolution and a time for governing.  And you can't govern if you can't get elected. Clumsy, inept candidates are no longer welcome in our party.  We simply can't afford them anymore.

Call it Moira's Rule.