Republican pandering

Kevin Drum floats a theory about Republican pandering:

This year, for the first time, the interest group pandering is looking a lot more obvious on the Republican side and a lot less obvious on the Democratic side. Why? I suppose it's more the changing fortunes of the parties than any actual substantive change.

I think that's about half true. I think the other half of this is that the two front-running GOP candidates are extremely transparent panderers. This gets into the whole psychodrama of American politics and the importance of perception and so on, but I think that, for voters and critics, there's really something to routine and consistency. The idea, for example, of "doubling Guantanamo" looks much more like a pander coming from the former Governor of Massachusetts than it would from George W. Bush. And, of course, Romney had to say that in order to prove that he wasn't some incognito liberal.

All to say that it's hard not to suck up to the rottenest elements of the GOP if, like Rudy and Mitt, you have a history of universalizing health care, or regulating guns, or being friendly to "the gays." In recent history, the Republican party has been better at keeping people like that from reaching any real prominence.