GOP presidential hopefuls try to defuse their 'fatal flaws'

Presidential hopeful checklist: Cultivate fundraisers. Drop by Iowa and New Hampshire. Start opining on the big issues. Defuse the pesky personal problem or past policy position that threatens to blow up your campaign.

Can any of these candidates be nominated? As the Republican presidential field begins to form for 2012, the major contenders have been trying different strategies — apologies, explanations, rebuttals and more — to try to deal with flaws that could be fatal in the eyes of GOP primary voters.

Mitt Romney signed a Massachusetts health care law that President Obama cites, perhaps mischievously, as a model for the federal plan that enrages Republican partisans. Newt Gingrich, wooing the GOP's powerful social conservatives, acknowledges he wasn't faithful during his first two marriages.

As Arkansas' governor, Mike Huckabee commuted the sentence of an inmate who went on to kill four police officers. And Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour faces questions about his sensitivity on racial issues and his background as a high-priced Washington lobbyist.

The most credible contenders to take on President Obama in 2012 must deal first with vulnerabilities that threaten their standing in the GOP — "a deal-killer," says Trey Grayson, a once-rising star in the Kentucky GOP who is director of Harvard's Institute of Politics.

"Going into this cycle, every candidate you can envision being the nominee has a real question they have to answer to Republican primary voters," says former GOP national chairman Ed Gillespie. "There's really not any one of the most significant candidates who doesn't have some issue that has to be addressed before they can capture the nomination."

Having to deal with a big vulnerability isn't new, of course. Four years ago, Arizona Sen. John McCain had to persuade party regulars that he was a loyal Republican despite a history of forming alliances with Democrats on issues such as campaign finance. He eventually won the nomination.

What's notable this time is that everyone seems afflicted.

Some of the candidates have been caught in the party's increasingly conservative tide, having to account for past positions on health care or the environment that weren't so far out of the party's mainstream at the time but now are more in line with Democrats' views. What's more, the profusion of websites and bloggers means issues are raised, circulated and scrutinized with a velocity that's unprecedented.

Contenders are crafting responses, saying they're sorry and meeting privately with critics in hopes of dealing with the issue now so it recedes as the campaign gathers steam.

PHOTO GALLERY: Images of possible GOP presidential candidates

"You have to take the issue head-on, whatever it is, and try to put it behind you," McCain says. "You've got to confront it; you've got to confront it directly. Then when (reporters) ask the question again, you answer, 'I've already addressed that issue.'" All this is better done "early rather than later," he advises.

The era of fact-checking and YouTube videos has made it more difficult to ignore or deny a past indiscretion or inconvenient policy position.

When former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty said on Fox News Sunday in January that he "never did sign a bill relating to cap-and-trade," the non-partisan FactCheck.org quickly detailed provisions of Minnesota's Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, section 216H.02 — a law he signed that required state agencies to develop cap-and-trade plans.

Unfortunately for his campaign, the policy of cap-and-trade, designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, has become anathema in the GOP.

Pawlenty employs another strategy: apologizing. It's one of several approaches presidential candidates are deploying as the campaign begins.

Strategy 1: Apologize

"I made the mistake; I admit it," Pawlenty said last month when conservative commentator Laura Ingraham hammered him on her radio show about his past support of cap-and-trade, including a radio commercial he made for the Environmental Defense Fund. He conceded having "some clunkers" on his record — then without naming names, he suggested his rivals did, too, on the issue.

Pawlenty offered a similar mea culpa in a session with conservative bloggers, winning some positive commentary. Chris Horner wrote on the American Spectator website that he had thought Pawlenty "was just another aspiring politician who could not admit error. And I really can't tell you how refreshingly pleased I am that he has just proved me wrong," he wrote. If Pawlenty still is being blasted for once backing cap-and-trade, he at least scored points for candor.

When it comes to the state law Romney signed on health care, the former Massachusetts governor has chosen not to disavow it but to try to explain and defend it.

Strategy 2: Explain

What once seemed to be Romney's biggest policy achievement as governor now looms as his biggest political headache: a state law that sought to expand health care coverage to nearly everyone, in part by requiring most residents to get insurance.

A similar mandate in the federal health care overhaul Obama signed last year has energized the Tea Party movement and prompted calls by virtually all leading Republicans, including Romney, to repeal the law. Romney says that doesn't mean the state law was a mistake.

"Our approach was a state plan intended to address problems that were in many ways unique to Massachusetts," Romney said in a speech last month during a county GOP dinner in New Hampshire. "What we did was what the Constitution intended for states to do. We were one of the laboratories of democracy. My experience has taught me that states are where health care programs for the uninsured should be crafted, just as the Constitution provides."

Huckabee offers an impassioned defense of his decision as governor to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, who as a teenager was sentenced to a 108-year prison term after being convicted of robbery and theft. The commutation in 2000 made Clemmons eligible for parole. The Arkansas parole board decided to release him.

In 2009, he fatally shot four police officers near Tacoma, Wash.

It is reminiscent of the notorious Willie Horton case. Horton, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence, was released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough in 1986. He failed to return and later raped and brutalized a woman. The issue helped undermine the 1988 presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis, who was governor at the time of Horton's release.

Dukakis, who never effectively responded to Republican attacks on the issue, lost the election to George H.W. Bush in a 40-state landslide.

Huckabee is trying to address the Clemmons case before opponents have a chance to raise it.

"There was a kid who was 16 years old; he committed a burglary — aggravated, but not armed," Huckabee said of Clemmons at a recent session with reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. "He was sentenced to 108 years; 108 years! The kid was black, and if he had been white and upper-middle-class and had a good attorney, he wouldn't have served a day."

He said he would "forever grieve over the fact" that Clemmons went on to kill. "Could that destroy my opportunities and possibilities? Yes, it could," Huckabee said. "Should it? I'll let other people make that decision."

He issued more than 1,000 clemencies during his 10 years as governor, a practice that came under fire in the 2008 presidential campaign

Then there's Gingrich, who tried to explain in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network why he had cheated in previous marriages: "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

That explanation was counterproductive, says Craig Robinson, former political director of the Iowa GOP who writes an influential blog, TheIowaRepublican.com. Social conservatives dominate the state's opening presidential caucuses, and Robinson says Gingrich's infidelity looms as an issue for some.

"I think a lot of Iowans laughed" at Gingrich's explanation, Robinson says. "That was a bad, bad answer and something that rekindled" the issue.

Strategy 3: Fix it

A more effective strategy for Gingrich has been to emphasize his renewed devotion to Christianity, attesting to his current good character. He and his third wife, Callista, have produced a documentary titled Rediscovering God in America that they air frequently at events, including one in Des Moines a few weeks ago.

"A lot of this stuff does help him deal with his personal shortcomings," Robinson says. "It allows him to talk about his faith without having to bring up his past failings."

That reflects a third strategy: to take steps to show that a shortcoming or misstep has been addressed, that it no longer applies.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was parodied on Saturday Night Live and elsewhere when she was McCain's running mate in 2008 for a lack of foreign policy depth. Last month, Palin drew news coverage as she visited Israel, where she toured the Western Wall and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Potential rivals Huckabee, Romney and Barbour also have visited Israel this year, each meeting with Netanyahu as well.

Barbour faces questions about his sensitivity to racial issues, especially after an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard in December. He defended the Citizens Council, which represented the white power structure, in his home town of Yazoo City during the civil rights movement and said, "I just don't remember it as being that bad."

Barbour has scheduled a reception next month at the Governor's Mansion for former civil rights activists returning to Mississippi — an opportunity for him to revisit his perspective on the era. The event commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders who challenged segregation and brutal racism in the South.

"A lot of reprehensible things took place" during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Barbour said in announcing the commemoration, citing "deplorable actions" that "will always be a stain on our history."

Strategy 4: Turn it around

Barbour has another potentially troublesome issue: a past as a well-connected Washington lobbyist. In a Gallup Poll out last week, Americans ranked lobbyists at the top of a list of institutions and groups that wield too much power.

On that, he is trying to spin a negative into a positive, citing his skills as a lobbyist as the perfect preparation for the White House.

"The guy who gets elected or the lady who gets elected president of the United States will immediately be lobbying," he said on Fox News Sunday. "That's what president do for a living. Presidents try to sell what's good for America to others in the world as well as to Americans."

Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, another potential candidate, also may try to turn around his big problem: running against Obama after serving loyally as his ambassador to China for two years. He steps down at the end of this month.

His argument could be that the job gave him expertise on national security, which often has less of a partisan divide than domestic issues.

"There is no such thing as a perfect candidate," says John Weaver, a veteran Republican strategist who is organizing the Horizon PAC, a potential vehicle for Huntsman. "We don't know today which of these hurdles may or may not be that compelling when you get into an electoral process. What's compelling to the chattering class in Washington may not be so compelling when voters are sitting around the kitchen table."

That is the hope of all the contenders: That voters move on, focusing on issues the candidates want to emphasize and leaving questions about personal histories and past positions behind.

"When it comes up, you have to address it," says Karen Floyd, chairman of the South Carolina GOP. "But I don't think you define yourself by your foibles. You define yourself by your strengths."