In the six short years since 2000, when Real Clear Politics was founded, that  site has rocketed to the top of everyone's daily "must read" list.  People like Brit Hume, Peter Beinart, and Michael Barone say they check Real Clear Politics every day, and the site's own authors describe it as the place to go for "intelligent opinion, news, polls and analysis:"

 

Each month, more than 500,000 visitors from across the political spectrum go to RCP to take the pulse of American politics. With leading-edge technology, RCP culls the best columns, magazine articles, and web write ups to deliver readers news from all points of the political compass and covering all the important issues of the day. By tapping into millions of weblogs and hundreds of newspapers every day, RCP has become a trusted filter for anyone interested in politics.

Recently we were fortunate enough to catch up with John McIntyre, the Managing Editor of Real Clear Politics and one of its two co-founders.  John is well-known to listeners of the Hugh Hewitt show, where he is a regular guest.  We conducted this interview on September 22, 2006; with the mid-term Congressional elections past, and the focus shifting to the 2008 presidential election, now is a perfect time to consider John's thoughts on the 2008 presidential field, and especially on the questions surrounding Mitt Romney's religion in that context.

_______________________ 

Brown

Our guest today for this Article VI blog interview is John McIntyre, of Real Clear Politics.  John, thank you for joining us. 

Schroeder

Before we start, Lowell, I think you need to give John some kudos. Real Clear Politics has made some major breakthroughs in the last few weeks in terms of partnering with Fox News and Time Magazine and things. They’ve broken into the Big Time, John, and I think you’ve done a good job.

McIntyre

Well, thank you, I appreciate that.

Brown

I’ve noticed that, and you’ve been on my blogroll since day one as a daily must-read.  In fact I noticed yesterday that there was a Daniel Henninger piece on Clear Politics, direct from the Wall Street Journal, on your site.

McIntyre

Yeah, we have a partnership with them.

Brown

We call our blog the Article VI blog, because that’s the Constitutional provision against religious tests for any office in the United States.  Obviously when someone’s running for President, he’s seeking the approval of the voters, and so in that context no religious test really could be applied in the literal sense of Article VI.  Nevertheless, the spirit of that Article is what motivates our blog.

Early on there have been questions raised about Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and whether or not his religious faith, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the Mormons, will be an issue if he runs for President, which seems certain to occur at this point.  You’ve commented on Presidential politics quite a bit and we wanted to explore your thoughts on that issue.  Before we get into that, I thought it might be interesting just to ask you how you see the political landscape now in terms of the presidential front runners.  It’s awfully early to be talking about 2008, but it seems to get earlier every election cycle.

McIntyre

Okay.  As far as the Republican field, I would call them, there’s the Big Three.  And I would say that is McCain, Giuliani and Romney, and I don’t list those in any particular order, but I think they’re definitely the Big Three, as I would call them, and I think everybody else is kind of in another group.  George Allen, Senator Allen in Virginia, I think was in the top tier group, but for a number of reasons, one of which the recent Macaca incident, but it was really developing before that.  I think the macaca incident and the fact that he’s in a very tough re-election now, I don’t think he’s in that same group.  So everybody else, really, is below those three top guys, McCain, Giuliani and Romney, and they all have different pros and cons.

McCain is in some ways the next guy in line, which for Republican nominating purposes, always seems to have a big impact, and he’s in many ways running from a foreign policy/national security aspect following in the footsteps of President Bush, as a continuation of the Bush Doctrine and the War on Terror.

Schroeder

You don’t think he stepped in it big time this week?

McIntyre

I think this detainee issue was a little blip there.  I think McCain gets a lot of cover from his status as a, or not status, but the fact that he was a Prisoner Of War in Vietnam and himself suffered torture, and so I think he gets some leeway on that issue, and it will be interesting to see how this compromise that just broke last night plays out, but it, I think if McCain and the President are on the same page, sort of today and moving forward, I think that part of it will below over.  Now that doesn’t mean, John McCain has a lot of problems with conservatives, and these go on the side of the ledger of his negatives in terms of winning the nomination, conservatives just quite frankly don’t like him, they don’t trust him, there’s an emotional dislike of him.  The detainee issue adds to that, and you can go down a whole host of issues where they, he just doesn’t agree with aspects of this conservative base, whether it’s campaign finance reform or global warming, their skepticism of his commitment to tax cuts, so he has some negatives in that regard.  But, he’s got quite a few positives.  So he’s certainly right there in the bunch of front runners.

I think Giuliani’s status post-9/11 leadership– in contrast to McCain, Giuliani has willingness to be partisan, and Republicans like that, and they want that in their leader, and even though he is very liberal on many social issues, and that will be an issue in the primaries, there is just a clear positive feeling towards him from many conservatives and so he’s very much in the mix. And then Mitt Romney, Governor Romney in many ways, is really the ideal candidate for many social conservatives who are looking for whom to get behind, and they’re not comfortable with McCain and they’re turned off by many of Giuliani’s liberal social positions, in many ways, Romney’s their guy.  And this leads us to the “Mormon issue” that I know that we’ve discussed and the unknown as to how big of any issue really is that, or is it even an issue, but in an encapsulation, those are the three sort of big guys in the Republican nominating contest right now.

Brown

Let’s focus in on Romney, because that’s the purpose of our blog.  John and I have discussed between ourselves and on our blog over many weeks now about the extent to which the “the Mormon question” is real.  It may or may not be; we just don’t know.  A couple of times you have commented on the issue, and have assumed that it is real, and I guess we’re asking, are you aware of any polling data or other basis for believing that really is going to be a problem for Mitt Romney or is that a conventional political wisdom?

McIntyre

Well, I think it is the conventional political wisdom, and a lot of times the conventional wisdom is wrong, but that doesn’t mean the conventional wisdom is wrong all the time, I think, I don’t think polling is the answer here to looking at this issue, I mean, running for President is a brass knuckle type of experience, and John McCain learned that in 2000, everyone who runs for President learns that and understands that this is serious business, trying to win a nomination for the President, and in turn become, really, the most powerful person in the world, and I think the unknown here is the degree to which Mitt Romney’s opponents, maybe not openly but operatives and supporters of his opponents, may try to make the Mormon issue something that could move voters in Republican primary.  I think it’s just an open question.

Brown

Are you speaking of things like whisper campaigns, push polls?

McIntyre

Sure, all that kind of stuff, yeah, I mean and the truth is, it happens, it goes on, it will go on in ’08 and ’07 and I don’t think we know how the voting public is going to react to it.

Schroeder

All right, just a couple of follow-up ideas to that.  I’ll start with the easier one.  The easier one, to me, is that you’ve aligned the social conservatives with Romney in your analysis of the Big Three.

McIntyre

Well, not entirely, but I mean, I should clarify that.  I mean, what I’m saying is social conservatives are out there thinking, who’s their guy, and for a while the thinking was maybe Senator Allen was going to be their guy.  Well, he stumbled.  Okay, so he’s not in the top tier right now, so who are they turning to?  They don’t like McCain.  They don’t trust McCain, they don’t like him.  Giuliani is just liberal across the board on issues that are very important to social conservatives.  I mean, in many ways, Romney’s the guy by default.

Schroeder

John, I don’t disagree with that analysis, but where I’m going with this is that the Mormon question traditionally is assigned to being a problem for Evangelicals and, but Evangelicals largely comprise the social conservatives, and so what I’m wondering is, who are Romney’s opponents that you think would launch these whispering campaigns, are they in fact Evangelicals, or are they more likely to be the Giuliani and McCain camps trying to paint the Evangelicals that way?  Misdirection, if you will.

McIntyre

Well, I mean, it’s not, this isn’t going to be like it’s, there’s going to be a discernible whispering campaign that you’re going to point to.  The reality is, as we get moving into this campaign and these men get put under the, have the spotlight put onto them, you’re going to start to read more and more stories about Mitt Romney’s faith.  That’s going to be in the press, it’s going to be talked about, and I mean, look, it could turn out that this is a lot of noise about something that’s just not going to be that important or relevant to voters.  We don’t know.  I mean, I think what political handicappers speak of is just that it is an unknown question out there, how potential nominating voters may deal with the issue, and something to remember here, is what we’re talking about votes on the margin, or this may be a non-issue with 90% of Republican primary voters, but if it’s an issue with 10% of them, does that have an effect, does it make a difference?

Schroeder

Well, sure, well, and since it’s the great unknown, you’ve led me to my second question, which is with regards to it being a question, with regards to political watchers trying to get a handle on that, one of the things that concerns me, is in asking the question, do we make the question an issue when it might not otherwise be, and if so … McIntyre Fair, look, I think that’s a very fair point. You’re sort of saying, hey, is the press and the punditry, by the fact that they’re talking about this “issue” and perhaps creating an issue that might not have been an issue to begin with.

Schroeder

Right.

McIntyre

Okay.  In some ways, we’ll never know that, okay, because the punditry is just not going to stop talking about this, okay, I mean in the real world, this is going to be discussed, and it’s going to be discussed openly and it’s going to be discussed privately.  And it will, at some point, it’ll enter into news stories as Romney becomes more prominent, if he ever achieves front runner status, and so to your point about whether talking about this is creating an issue that otherwise wouldn’t be an issue, I don’t know how, I mean it’s a theoretical question in my mind.  It’s like it’s going to be talked about, so it’s, I don’t, do you know what I’m saying?

Schroeder

I do, John, but the next question becomes, when you’re a race watcher, which all of us are in this conversation, what duty do we have to try and find answers to the question as opposed to continually pose it, so that you know, as we say it’s going to be asked, we can fill in the blanks, how much is it, how …

McIntyre

Well, yeah, I mean to that point, I think that what would be wrong is for people to take the next step and to make declarative statements like, “Mitt Romney can’t be nominated because he’s a Mormon,” or “Mitt Romney’s religion is going to be a huge negative that is not going to allow him to win social conservative Evangelical votes,” okay, because then you’re crossing, I don’t know that there, I don’t know for someone to say that, what they would necessarily point to, to say “This is exactly why this is going to happen.”  I think, I mean what I’m saying is, is that I don’t know what’s going to happen, okay, and, but it is an unknown issue hanging out there and it affects how you quantify his chances of winning the nomination.

Schroeder

Okay, now you are aware that Robert Novak has made that bald-faced assertion.

McIntyre

That it’s going to be a negative?

Schroeder

That he can’t win because of it.

McIntyre

Look, people make assertions all the time, and we’ll just have to see how this plays out, I mean, Robert Novak at the end might be right.  I mean, we have to acknowledge that that’s possible.  I mean, so, it, I think though, I think speculation like that, too much speculation like that crosses into an area of, well, is that speculation trying to create an environment where he can’t win.  Do you know what I’m getting at there?

Schroeder

Sure.

McIntyre

And I think that is sort of a grey area that I think each individual person and pundit just has to feel comfortable with, I mean, but I think we’re, you’re kind of talking about two different things there in a sense, like there’s the issue of whether it’s “okay” to bring up whether there’s this sort of unknown issue of his Mormonism out there, and how that affects, how that’s going to affect voters, how that’s going to affect his run for the Republican nomination.  And I think, I think bringing that up and talking about that in terms of analyzing the Republican nominating process is just part of it if Mitt Romney’s in the mix, and I think people who don’t do that are not analyzing the race fully.  So there’s that, and then I think there’s another issue if journalists and pundits are flat out saying, day after day after day, Mitt Romney cannot be nominated President, or cannot be nominated for the Republican nomination because he’s a Mormon.  To me those are a little different.

Schroeder

Well, Novak credited unnamed Evangelical leadership with that statement.  Have you heard any of those things yourself, are you in touch with any of those people?

McIntyre

You’ll hear that from people, sure, but it’s not, I would say it’s not said in an anti-Mormon way, it’s said in a political analyst type of way.  People saying, you know, there’s just no way he can win.

Schroeder

So you’re hearing that from analysts, you’re not hearing that from Evangelicals ..

McIntyre

I’m hearing that when you talk to people about about where the Republican race stands and the pros and cons of the different candidates from a political handicapping standpoint, not from whether it’s morally right or whether it’s a legitimate issue or not, just from a political handicapping standpoint

Schroeder

Well, I guess, what my question is going to, is, are you hearing that from pure political handicappers or are you hearing that from evangelical politically active organizations?

McIntyre

No, I am not hearing that from Evangelicals, I’m not, and I think if people are out there saying that Evangelical leaders are saying that about Romney, I think they should say who!

Schroeder

Well, that’s kind of where I am, too, but Novak’s not coming forward with that, so.

McIntyre

I think if journalists or opponents are going to be saying, Evangelicals are saying that Romney can’t be elected, then they should say, well what Evangelicals, is Gary Bowers saying that, is James Dobson saying that, is Jerry Falwell saying that?  I don’t know, I haven’t heard that from them.

Schroeder

And we’ve been trying to get answers out of them, and they’re not talking to us, so if you can send any of them this way for an interview, we’d appreciate it.

Brown

As a matter of fact, anything that those folks, and others like them, say in public or on the record has always been, “No, it’s not going to be an issue.”

McIntyre

I think what’s fascinating, I mean you could maybe see prominent Evangelicals lining up behind Mitt Romney because they look at the field, and they say, don’t like McCain, don’t like Giuliani on the social liberal issues, we’ll get behind Governor Romney.

Schroeder

Well, there have been a number of them go public and say it’s not an issue, Robertson has said it’s not an issue, Haggard said it’s not an issue…

McIntyre

Well, look, there’s a difference between saying it’s not an issue, yet they line up behind Giuliani or McCain.

Schroeder

Oh, agreed, but that’s a start.

McIntyre

The proof in the pudding will be when they line up, if, when you start to see, if you see Evangelical leaders lining up in support of Mitt Romney for, you know, going out and endorsing them, that would be a big step, and that would go a long way, okay, to dispelling some of these issues and quieting these, this kind of scuttlebutt that goes on.

Schroeder

But of course, nobody’s going to declare for him until there’s actually a campaign, which there’s not right now.  Is that kind of fair?

McIntyre

No, that’s true, but we’re still early in the game here.

Brown

I have two questions that are related, so I’ll ask them together. 

First, assuming that this is an issue that Romney needs to worry about, the strategy question is, what does he do about that?  Now, he seems to have said he’s going to wait until the issue presents itself in some visible way and then respond, but he’s not going to bring it up himself. 

Second, I’m wondering, beyond the nomination battle, what might be facing a Romney who is the GOP nominee from liberals and from the left?  In 1994 when he ran for the Senate in Massachusetts, his religious faith was used against him, and I think very effectively, by Ted Kennedy.  I’m wondering, if Romney becomes the nominee, if he doesn’t have more to fear from the left than he ever had to fear from the right?  Do you have any perspective on that?

McIntyre

Well, to answer the second part of your question first, I mean, politics is politics, and depending on who the Democratic nominee is if Mitt Romney were to be the Republican nominee, I suspect that the Democrats would use it as an issue, now they wouldn’t come out publicly, of course, use it as an issue, but I think at the end of the day when you’re talking about who’s going to actually win, and you’re talking about votes on the margin in close states, perhaps like Ohio, yeah, I could envision the Democrats using it, and that’s not meant to be a slur at Democrats, because I could envision Republican Primary opponents of Mitt Romney using it in the same way.  So I just think, I think politics is politics, and it’s, if Romney’s opponents think it could be a, make a difference in whether or not they could actually become President, I think the temptation to, not that they personally would use it, but perhaps operatives or people farther down the food chain interject it in some way as to move votes in the margin is an issue or concern, so that’s to the degree Republicans are weighing how Romney would fare in a general election campaign, I think that’s something they would have to keep in mind.

Schroeder

Has anybody had a chance to look at the papers this morning besides me?  The Examiner had a piece this morning saying that Evangelicals in this current ’06 election cycle are not quite as lockstep Republican as they have been in the past and I haven’t had a chance to go through the article in depth, I just glanced at it briefly, have you seen it, John?

McIntyre

I have not.

Schroeder

Okay.  I was going to ask you to comment on it.  Do you think as a general principal that’s a fair analysis or not?

McIntyre

Well, I mean, you could probably say that about the entire Republican base, right?

Schroeder

Yeah.  Okay.

McIntyre

So I mean, I don’t know that Evangelicals are any more– of Republican voters are any more upset than any other aspects of Republican voters.  I mean you can make a case that Libertarian small government voters are the ones most annoyed at President Bush and this Congress, so I don’t know that I buy that, I mean, just looking at sort of the facts and the issues and what’s been out there, it seems to me what I sense is more frustration on the right comes from Libertarian leaning Republicans, small government Republicans who are just frustrated at the spending and a lot of these Libertarian type voters aren’t necessarily the most enthusiastic backers of a Wilsonian type of foreign policy and those things together create frustration; and there’s the whole Terry Schiavo issue and that was interjected at one point last year, that upset Libertarian leaning Republicans, so I haven’t read the article, and I’d like to read it before really commenting in more detail.  But my initial reaction was, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me.

Schroeder

Okay.  John, one of the things, just thinking about that issue,  I’ve spent you know, 45 seconds with the article this morning myself, but one of the thoughts that it triggered, and I’d just love to get your reaction to, speaking of whispering campaigns, there was, Bush’s first election was united by a unique whispering campaign, too.  There was you know, I got numerous emails in my inbox of stories telling of George W. Bush stopping down the campaign to witness to somebody about Jesus Christ, all of which caused me to roll my eyes because I don’t think any smart political candidate is going to stop down his whole campaign for something like that.  Has there been any work done, …

McIntyre

Now wait, were these meant to be pro-Bush e-mails?

Schroeder

Yeah, they were.  They were circulating among active Evangelicals, saying, see, this is the guy we’re looking for.

McIntyre

“He’s our guy.”

Schroeder

Yeah.

McIntyre

Okay.

Schroeder

And you know, my question is, do you know of anybody who has researched into those to find out the source of them, because that’s got to have been the kind of whispering campaign we’re talking about in terms of the Mormon issue, and I’m wondering if you know anybody who has looking into that kind of stuff and sourced it out, and that sort of thing.

McIntyre

That’s the type of thing that you could have an army of reporters to dig into and it would take a lot of, but just that shows you the type of things that go on when people run for President, okay, and everyone’s heard the stories, and I don’t know how true or untrue they are, of the “smear” campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, and his children, etc., etc.  I suspect some of that, you know, at some point when you see enough smoke there’s some fire, so some of those things probably went on and they happen.  I think people are naïve in the extreme if they don’t understand that. 

Schroeder

John, who do you think, just because we haven’t gotten there, who do you think’s coming up on the Democrat side of the equation. 

McIntyre

Well, the Democrats to me, it’s all about Hillary.  I think she’s been the front runner for a long, long time, she remains the front runner, though I think the inevitability that she was going to be the nominee has chipped away a little bit, and I think there’s people now who see avenues by which she may not get the nomination, which, quite frankly, a year ago, I don’t think there were like plausible avenues like that.  And so, I think it’s all about her, and who else gets in, I think it’s fascinating to speculate whether Al Gore’s going to jump into the fray.  And I think that’s a higher probability than perhaps the conventional wisdom currently thinks.  And I think that would just be an enormous dogfight because the left in the Democratic party is an energized, active, aggressive part of the party, that’s where the growth and energy is, and they don’t like Hillary Clinton.  Now I think they’ll fully get behind her and embrace her if she’s the nominee, but if they felt they had a candidate they could really get behind in full gusto, like perhaps Gore, I think they would, and then you’d have a situation where I certainly could see Al Gore beating her in a nominating battle, you know, now if it’s not Gore, I just don’t know that anyone else just has the name recognition or the stature, and I just don’t see how a Feingold or some other out of the blue candidate comes in and beats her, she just has too many assets going for her.  So, Gore’s out there, and then the other issue is whether at some point a huge element of Democratic powers thinks she’s just not electable and they try to coalesce behind someone who they think is more electable, whether that’s Mark Warner or Evan Bayh, or some kind of moderate, I don’t know, and I guess that’s possible, but as long as she’s running for President, and I don’t have any reason to think she’s not, I think she’s the favorite.

Schroeder

Do you think this upcoming election will be more or less polarized than the last one, the Presidential elections?

McIntyre

Oh, I think it will be more polarizing, though, well, you know what, I should take that back, I think it really depends on who the nominees are, and because I think a united Republican Party, behind either Giuliani or McCain, I think is going to steamroll, and that, to me actually, I think if the Clintons start to sense that that’s where things are going, I think that opens up the possibility of whether they may actually back out, and she may decide not to run.  Because the last thing she wants to do is run and get killed, and I think a united Republican Party behind either Giuliani or McCain, would kill her.

Brown

Do you think Romney is more polarizing than the other two?

McIntyre

Well, Romney is going to run, is going, you know, Giuliani or McCain will be able to run more from the middle than Romney.  Romney would run I think from the right, that doesn’t mean he can’t get elected, but I think a Romney/Clinton battle would be more bitterly divisive.

Schroeder

I find that fascinating because the biggest thing I see right now is people casting Romney as too moderate, have you seen any of that stuff?

McIntyre

Well, you know how all this works, I mean, if Romney were the Republican nominee, he’d be painted as to the right of Attila the Hun.  And the other you’ve got to keep in mind, I mean if Romney is going to win the nomination I think he’s going to have to go hard at the right wing of the Republican base. 

Schroeder

And you don’t think Giuliani and McCain will have to do the same thing?

McIntyre

Well, at some, I mean, they have more of a long track record, and I think it doesn’t comport with where they are, I mean, Giuliani’s a social liberal.  He’s just not going to become a social conservative overnight.  That’s not going to happen, and McCain’s been in the Senate for, I don’t know, 15, 20 years.  He’s got an enormous record, he can’t change that.  And he’s been really the most visible politician in America outside of the President for the last six years, so I don’t think suddenly he’s going to be able to flip that and become a hard right-wing candidate.

Brown

It seems like the issues would be the polarizing factors, because McCain and Giuliani by personality seem to be the more iconoclastic, polarizing type of individuals; Romney is not, but it is probably the positions that Romney would take, not Romney himself, that would polarize.

McIntyre

What leads me to say that, and again I preface this by saying a united Republican Party, because I think you have a small possibility in a McCain or Giuliani nomination, if they’re the nominees, that you could get a divided Republican Party, that’s a whole different can of worms.  But a united Republican Party behind either McCain or Giuliani, I think wins the general election, easy.  And I think that tones down the whole level of partisanship because the press realizes right away that the Democrats just aren’t going to win.  I mean with the McCain and Giuliani, depending on who they pick as their nominee, suddenly Democratic states are in play.  The whole battlefield has changed.  Traditional states that the Democrats have to have as their core to get close to 270 electoral votes, McCain and Giuliani can compete in some of those states.  McCain could win California.  I mean, it’s almost inconceivable to think of how the Democrats can win the Presidency that way in California.  I mean, McCain as the nominee has a really good chance of securing the state of California.  And so I think the press at some point just says, you know this guy is going to win 55% of the vote, why are we going to turn this into a bloodfest when everybody knows what’s going to happen?  I think a Romney/Clinton race is another one of these 50/50 type of deals, and it will be ugly.

Brown

Well, guys, this is really bad form, but I actually have to go.

Schroeder

Well, I’m kind of done anyway.  I don’t have any other questions if you don’t, Lowell.

McIntyre

No, I need to roll too, so, I appreciate you guys taking the time to do this, and hope it was helpful.

Schroeder

It was, well we appreciate you taking the time, and we’ll be sure and let you know when it’s up.

Brown

Thank you so much.  Thanks, guys, bye-bye.

Technorati Tags: John McIntyre, Real Clear Politics, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mormon, whisper campaigns, push polls, Evangelical

 

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