Rick Perry: 2012’s Howard Dean?

If Mitt Romney is taking the role of John Kerry (2004 edition) then you can trot out a case that Rick Perry is playing the part of Howard Dean. Ross Douthat duly makes this argument:

One interesting quality that Perry has in common with Dean, and which last night’s various back-and-forths brought out, is the extent to which both his national profile and his personal affect are much more ideological than his actual gubernatorial record. Dean was a center-left and fiscally conservative governor who rebranded himself as the leader of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” and whose public persona on the campaign trail — as a stridently anti-Iraq War Vermonter who changed churches over a bike path dispute — seemed to embody all the stereotypes associated with blue state liberals.

There’s a good deal to this, not least since Perry is also in the process of reinventing himself. as Mr Bernstein says, Dean allowed liberals to feel good about themselves. At long last here was a guy prepared to tell George W Bush the truth and if he seemed a little intemperate or overly hacked-off then so much the better. We want our country back, damnit! Dean’s opposition to the Iraq War made him a popular hero on the liberal-left even as it left more moderate Democrats appalled. They could see the likely electoral consequences of Dean’s views and concluded a massacre was more likely than not and they’d have no part of that, thanks very much. The paralells between the Democrats in 2004 and the GOP today may not be exact but they’re not useless either.

The difference, of course, is that true-blooded conservatives are a much greater part of the Republican coalition than honest-to-goodness liberals are of the Democratic movement. Consequently, a red-in-tooth-and-claw culture warrior has a much better chance of prevailing in the GOP than his (or her!) liberal counterpart has in the Democratic primary. (Barack Obama was, in many ways, the liberal favourite – in terms of style, though not always policy – but his appeal was by no means confined to the liberal base.)

Even so, Perry can be outflanked on the right and that’s evidently Michele Bachmann’s new cause. As Ross concludes:

During the Dean bubble of 2004, National Review ran a famous cover story showing a ranting Dean over the banner: “Please nominate this man.” If I were running a left-wing magazine — The Nation, Mother Jones, Tina Brown’s Newsweek — I would consider recycling that cover line with Perry’s picture over it.

Perry is a stronger candidate than Dean ever was (partly because voters sense that being governor of Texas is a better preparation for the Presidency than being governor of Vermont) but the “electability” argument will be heard frequently, while Perry’s (many and regular) deviations from conservative orthodoxy may leave him exposed on the right. Again, the question is whether style notes will be enough to persuade voters to forgive him these heresies or convince the GOP electorate that stopping Mitt Romney is more important than anything else.