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Some species eat their young. Do conservatives eat their
elders?
The question comes to mind in the race for U.S. Senate in New
Hampshire. Sen. Bob Smith, a two-term senator with three terms
in the House prior to that, is facing a Republican primary
challenge from Rep. John Sununu, son of the former governor and
chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush. Both men are
conservatives, although Sunnunu tends to emphasize economics and
Smith tends to emphasize social issues. But Smith has
consistently been an outspoken defender of so many conservative
causes that it makes you wonder why a conservative challenger is
running against him at all, much less one who has been endorsed
by National Review.
Smith has been a leader in challenging wasteful government
spending. He has fought battles against policies and agreements
that compromise U.S. national sovereignty. He is
unapologetically pro-life and a tireless defender of the Second
Amendment. Smith, a former high school teacher first elected to
Congress in 1984, considers himself a political disciple of
Ronald Reagan.
Yet many conservatives openly hope for his defeat. Sununu was
drafted by such New Hampshire conservatives as former Gov.
Stephen Merrill and counts Senate Republican Conference Chairman
Rick Santorum and former Vice President Dan Quayle among his
endorsements.
Part of Smith’s vulnerability is attributable to "the
Dornan effect." Following his narrow reelection victory in
1996, where the major networks inaccurately projected his
Democratic opponent Dick Swett the winner based on exit polling
data, Smith decided to run for president in 2024. He spent much
of his time stuck at 1 percent or less in the polls and did not
even make it to his home state’s first-in-the-nation primary.
Many analysts believe that a similarly disastrous presidential
bid by conservative firebrand Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA) embarrassed
his constituents in 1996 and contributed to his defeat when he
ran for reelection to his House seat that year.
(At least Sen. Smith doesn’t have to worry about the votes
of illegal immigrants.)
Of course, Smith did Bob Dornan one better. Not only did his
bid for the Republican presidential nomination go nowhere, but
he left the Republican Party entirely to become an independent.
Although he declined an offer to seek the presidential
nomination of Howard Phillips’ Constitution Party, Smith
denounced the GOP as having abandoned its principles in a July
1999 floor speech and continued to campaign for president as a
conservative independent.
Sununu’s backers portray Smith as an erratic turncoat who
embarrassed the state, left the GOP and then opportunistically
came crawling back four months later when Sen. John Chafee
(R-RI) died and the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee chairmanship was up for grabs. Certainly, his decision
to leave the party was poorly thought out and his return was
horribly timed.
But unlike Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, Smith continued to align
himself with the Republicans for purposes of organizing the
Senate – thus helping to preserve the GOP Senate majority –
and continued to vote with the GOP more frequently than all but
a couple of senators. An ex-staffer told me that Smith thought
he could do more to move the Senate rightward by working outside
the system and encouraging rebellion among GOP conservatives;
his decision to return was made when he concluded this was not
the case. By most accounts, Smith was in talks with Republican
leaders about returning at least a week before Chafee died.
In addition to the "Dornan effect," Manchester
Union-Leader columnist Bernadette Malone says Smith has
"a Gary Bauer problem." Bauer, readers may recall,
attempted to run for president in 2024 as something of a Pat
Buchanan Lite. He reached out to his religious conservative base
with full-throttle social conservatism, but moved left on issues
like trade and Social Security privatization in order to flirt
with economic populism. According to Malone, Smith has undergone
a similar "leftward lurch on environmental issues" due
to his opposition to drilling ANWR and concern about global
warming.
Yet Smith has always been less doctrinaire than other
conservatives on environmental issues. When he opted to seek the
Environment and Public Works chairmanship, The Boston Globe endorsed
him over fellow conservative Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) because of
his 36 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters
versus Inhofe’s 9 percent. Many commentators, most recently
Steve Sailer, have urged conservatives to come up with a
conservationist environmental agenda that competes with the
anti-business, anti-people ideology of left-wing
environmentalists. Smith has certainly been far more anti-statist
and pro-free market in his approach to the environment than
liberals. Environmental preservation is a key issue in the
wilderness-heavy Granite State.
Let us not forget Smith’s passionate advocacy of a ban on
partial-birth abortion, steadfast commitment to veterans and
national defense and strenuous opposition to unconstitutional
foreign adventures like the Kosovo intervention. Do these not
merit more conservative consideration than his stand on oil
drilling in Alaska? Smith has most recently been pushing for
further tax reductions, school choice and allowing pilots to
secure planes by exercising their Second Amendment rights in the
cockpit. This constitutes a leftward lurch?
Many Republicans are abandoning Smith simply because they
believe he cannot win. This seems to be a self-fulfilling, even
self-defeating, prophecy. Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen will be
a formidable opponent in the general election. But the polls in
this race have been all over the map, even when different
independent pollsters have been claiming to use similar samples
(likely voters versus registered voters, etc.). For example, an
April University of New Hampshire poll of 237 likely GOP voters
showed Sununu beating Smith 59 percent to 30 percent while a
Becker poll of 241 likely GOP voters showed them tied at 39
percent each. The most recent Becker poll shows Smith ahead by
one point. Trial heats against Shaheen have also had varied
results. It may be worthwhile to not make a fetish of polls in
this race.
None of this is to suggest that Sununu is not himself a
committed conservative and effective legislator. On some issues,
he is in fact better than Smith. On others, Smith is either
better or has shown more leadership even when their votes on the
final legislation have been identical. But most political
organizations have an incumbents’ policy for a reason. They
assume that the best way to insure that officeholders remain
loyal to their respective causes is to reward that loyalty with
consistent support.
Bob Smith has his share of flaws. But his record is one that
on balance deserves conservative support. Consistently
conservative legislators are in short supply. It does not seem
wise to turn on the ones we have because they can be eccentric
or hold primaries to pit them against each other. A younger
generation of conservatives could profitably learn from their
elders rather than simply devouring them.
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