What happened to the Perot voters?

Ben Smith:

Last week, CNN’s Lou Dobbs stirred speculation that he might be the next Ross Perot — and reminded the political world that Perot’s potent constituency is still looking for a presidential candidate to back.

“I believe the person elected a year from now will be an independent populist, a man or woman who understands the genius of this country lies in the hearts and minds of its people and not in the prerogatives and power of its elites,” he wrote in an online column, neatly encapsulating what appears to be his view of himself. He also added that this person would be “a candidate who has not yet entered the race.”

After letting the speculation roil for several days, Dobbs denied that he himself plans a run.

But his hints — not to mention the high ratings for his opinionated CNN show — served as a reminder that while the Texas billionaire may have vanished from the political scene, his ideas, and his appeal, are rattling around this year as loudly as ever.

Perot’s big-eared specter raised its head just last week, in fact.

At the Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Dobbs’ CNN colleague Wolf Blitzer asked New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton about the 1992 debate about NAFTA, in which Perot attacked the proposed treaty and then-candidate Bill Clinton defended it. Perot also famously debated the treaty with former Vice President Al Gore in 1993.

“Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right?” Blitzer asked.

“All I can remember from that is a bunch of charts,” Hillary Clinton replied, before giving as her answer a qualified yes.

“NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would,” she said.

Though Perot has been off the stage for a decade, strategists in both parties recognize that his supporters remain a key bloc and that voters’ dissatisfaction at the end of the administration of the second President Bush has echoes of the mood when his father was booted from office.

What’s more, neither party has geared up to focus on pet issues of the Perot crowd: opposition to immigration, unfettered trade and foreign wars.

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Smith is just flat wrong on the immigration issue, since it is clear that the GOP has been pulled by its base in to supporting immigration enforcement. Perot has been proved wrong on the trade issue and Hillary Clinton is being disingenuous in suggesting that NAFTA has been a failure. We have lower unemployment now than we had when the agreement was passed. There has been no "giant sucking sound." If there were, there would not be so many Mexicans trying to get into the US.

As for where the Perot voter went, in 1994 Perot voters help to elect the Republican Congress and stayed with the Republicans until overspending and corruption issues drove them away. Those same issues are likely to drive them away from Democrats too, if Republicans run an effective campaign in 2008. What Republicans need most right now is someone to give voice to that campaign for the Congress.