2012 Presidential Election Primary Reveals Republican Party’s Struggle

A presidential candidate enjoying quickly rising popularity among the American voters is now making the senior Republican Party members restless — though unusual in the history of American presidential elections, this is the very situation Texas Governor Rick Perry is in right now.

Last Monday, the left-wing media outlet CNN and an organization under the right-wing tea party jointly held another televised Republican presidential debate. On the same day, former presidential candidate and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced his support of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Pawlenty’s action is regarded as a result of the senior Republican Party members’ worries and concerns about Perry’s rising popularity in the election. More importantly, this reveals a quietly carried out struggle of ideology within the Republican Party: the collision of traditional party leaders and the conservative grassroots working class. And to a certain extent, this is a conflict between party planks, pragmatism and discrepancies in domestic politics and diplomacy.

More and more evidence shows that Perry, the governor from the south, and Romney, the governor from the north, have distinct campaign strategies. As a main supporter of the tea party movement, Perry takes the movement’s conservative supporters as his voter base. Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Romney, who is from a place where liberal opinions are on the rage, takes the strategy of aiming for the swing voters.

Senior members of the Republican Party worry that the spread of the tea party movement will push the entire party to the right; a more radical party would inevitably lose quite a large number of swing voters, which, in the long run, is unfavorable to the party’s future development. Therefore, when some senior party members still have a wait-and-see attitude, some of them are showing their deep concern about Perry’s quickly rising popularity.

Perry’s recent words about Social Security, health care and welfare programs have caused quite a wave within the American political arena. He claims that the Social Security program, established in 1935, is nothing but a “Ponzi scheme” and should be abolished. Today’s Social Security, health care and welfare programs provide 56 million retired American people with retirement pensions. The money comes from the tax paid by employees and employers. The problem the program is facing right now is that it cannot make ends meet; that is to say, the retirement pension it gives out far exceeds its tax revenue. Politicians from the two parties both agree that this is a problem needing an urgent solution, and no one denies the necessity of the program. Perry’s opinion on this issue, however, is even more radical. He thinks that this program runs contrary to the Constitution and claims it is “something we [the American people] have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now.”

Such words are putting senior members of the Republican Party on edge. Quite a few senior consultants state clearly that they do not wish to see the reform of Social Security, health care and welfare programs become the theme of the presidential election next year. Many congressmen still have a fresh memory of the negative impacts brought by the reform of this program in 2005 during the Bush administration. At that time, President Bush tried to privatize the program and created panic among the voters and the Democratic Party and was a main reason for the Republican Party losing the majority of House and Senate seats the following year.

According to a survey carried out jointly by The Wall Street Journal and NBC, if the presidential candidate proposes to kill present Social Security, health care and welfare programs and let employees have the money they should have paid as tax so they can put it in the stock market instead, then 56 percent of the American voters will not support such a candidate. Respondents to the survey included 64 percent Democrats, 57 percent middle-of-the-roaders and 45 percent Republicans. Only one-third of Republicans said they would choose such a president. This is enough to show how dangerous it is for a politician to reform Social Security, health care and welfare programs.

Then why would Perry still take the bull by the horns? Analysts speculate that the two-year-old tea party movement played a significant role in the midterm elections in 2010. Among the candidates they supported, one-third won the election in the end, and these newly elected congressmen helped the Republican Party reattain the majority of seats in the House of Representatives. Apparently Perry believes in the power and strength of these conservative Republican supporters. But recent years’ presidential elections have proved that to win the final election, it’s very important to first win over the large number of swing voters, who can be said to be the key to success in the election. Therefore, if Perry wins the caucus, his campaign tactic may hold him back in the election next year. But then again, that will be a moment to test the influence the tea party movement has on America’s two-party politics.

Established in 1854, the Republic Party consists of many different factions, for example, the fiscally conservative house, the evangelical school, social conservatives and libertarians. These factions usually have overlapping yet still distinguishable opinions. Normally speaking, compared to the Democratic Party, the Republicans are prone to conservatism regarding social issues, such as standing against abortion and gay marriage, and they are inclined to libertarianism concerning the economy. They keep close relationships with Wall Street (national large enterprises) and Main Street (small- and medium-sized enterprises), and advocate for relatively low taxes; yet even so, very few labor unions and organizations will give them support.

Republicans agree that there should be a social security network to help poor populations, but the policies they support usually incur low expenses, receive no governmental support and, at the same time, have high standards for the qualification of beneficiaries. What’s more, the Republican Party strongly opposes the government-oriented universal health care system (for example the systems used in Canada and most European countries).