Post-Iowa thoughts

Posted by noonante on January 5, 2012
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Now that actual humans have had their say on the Republican field, where does the campaign go from here?

  • Michele Bachmann has called it quits.  I must say I will not miss her in the debates where every factual statement she made had me wondering if it were true.
  • Rick Perry is apparently going on.  I read a piece recently that described the campaign strife between his Texas advisers and those with experience in national elections.  According to Bill Nichols of Politico.com, the latter told Perry it was time to leave but the former are pushing him on.  He has money in the bank and continuing gives him a chance to recover from a legacy that now stands as one of the biggest flops ever in presidential politics.
  • Newt Gingich has fire in his eyes and, I’m guessing, a score to settle with Mitt Romney.  Romney’s super-PAC (oh, I forgot that there cannot be contact between the super-PACs and a candidate) did a number on Gingrich through negative advertising.  Gingrich has actually called Romney a liar for denying a connection with the super-PAC as well as for the content of the ads.  Now, I haven’t seen any of the ads, and I know that Romney has no qualms about prevaricating, but why would you have to lie about Gingrich with his substantial  —  and known  —  baggage?  Gingrich had basically declared himself the likely nominee within the past month, so I think we are going to see a scorched earth approach against the guy responsible for him not becoming President.
  • Ron Paul continues to surprise me, but he is obviously hitting a chord with a chunk of voters, and may be in the fight for the long haul.
  • In Rick Santorum’s last foray into electoral politics, he lost his Senate seat by 18 points.  Now there is certainly precedent for losing a state-wide election and coming back to become President (see Nixon, Richard), but an incumbent losing by that margin is remarkable.  Not much attention has been paid to Santorum because he had been polling in the low single-digits, but losing by just 8 votes will change all that.  Now we get to hear about equating gay sex with man-on-dog sex and his opposition to funding for contraception.
  • Mitt Romney cannot be happy.  He had started acting like the winner before the first vote was cast, even saying he expected to win.  His winning percentage of 24.5 percent is the lowest in the history of the caucuses, and actually smaller than he achieved four years ago.  Although he had earlier professed to not making a big effort in Iowa, he spent about $4.5 million (including the super-PAC), an amount topped only by the hapless Perry campaign.  (These figures are from buzzfeed.com.)
  • Whither the enthusiasm gap?  The conventional assumptions have been that Obama would be hurt by disenchantment among his left-leaning supporters, but that Republicans could barely contain themselves in their desire to oust him.  So why did fewer Republican voters show up in 2012 than in 2008?  While more Iowans voted in the 2012 GOP caucuses, there were larger numbers of Democrats and independents.  According to David Weigel’s figures at Slate.com, 92,000 Republicans caucused in 2012 compared with 103,000 in 2008.
  • Herman Cain is back.  Just when you thought things might start to settle down, the Hermanator announced a bus tour to promote his “9-9-9” tax plan.  I can understand why he may feel the “desire” for a road trip, but I am not aware of any serious support for his signature campaign issue.

Newt quote for January 3 – “WOW”

Posted by noonante on January 3, 2012
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WOW!!  That’s all I can say after watching this video clip of Newt Gingrich on CBS’ The Early Show, copied from the Talking Points Memo web site.  After calling Mitt Romney a liar, he agreed with Bob Schieffer’s characterization of Romney as being a “bald-faced liar” (who would, nonetheless, be a better President than Barack Obama).

I am not suggesting that Gingich’s assessment is incorrect  —  indeed, I think Romney’s penchant for distorting the truth will be a major element in the ongoing campaign  —  but this statement is from the man who in many of the GOP debates chastised moderators for trying to get the Republican candidates to fight among themselves.  He has also foresworn (at least for now) negative advertising, but to his credit is saying these things directly and not through what are essentially anonymous “super-PACs.”  If Romney becomes the nominee, this will not be the last time you will see segments of the following quote from Newt:

“This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC – it’s baloney. He’s not telling the American people the truth.

 It’s just like this pretense that he’s a conservative. Here’s a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in ‘Romneycare,’ puts Planned Parenthood in ‘Romneycare,’ raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he’s magically a conservative.

 I just think he ought to be honest with the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points, and I think he ought to be candid. I don’t think he’s being candid and that will be a major issue. From here on out from the rest of this campaign, the country has to decide: Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won’t level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine.”

The quoted portion is from the CBS News web site.  One thing seems certain  —  the Saturday night debate on ABC just became a lot more interesting.

Newt quote for December 26

Posted by noonante on December 26, 2011
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Just this past Friday, The New York Times ran an analysis of the resurgent Gingrich campaign in which it opined that “a man whose late-life maturity and mellowness help explain why [he] …  has succeeded in methodically rebuilding his presidential prospects and avoided predictions of self-destruction.”  Before the Christmas weekend was over, his campaign manager issued this statement on the decision of Virginia to disqualify him from its Republican primary ballot:

“Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941:  We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.  Throughout the next months there will be ups and downs;  there will be successes and failures;  there will be easy victories and difficult days  —  but in the end we will stand victorious.”  (Quotation taken from Alexander Burns’ blog on Politico.com on December 25.)

What did the Commonwealth of Virginia do to create this contemporary day that will forever live in infamy?  They concluded that Gingrich did not meet the legal requirement for gathering enough signatures to appear on the ballot.  Now I have never run for President  –  let alone be a self-proclaimed “transformational” figure that those less intelligent cannot appreciate  —  but I do know that each state has its own unique requirements for gaining ballot access, and that this is one of those nitty-gritty details to which competent campaigns must attend.  So, in one fell swoop, the Gingrich campaign reinforced two of the negative narratives accompanying his campaign:  He has a colossal self-regard unrelated to reality, and he is incapable of getting things done.

Mitt caught in fib?

Posted by noonante on December 20, 2011
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Talking Points Memo has uncovered a Mitt Romney video from 2010 in which he implicitly refers to the individual mandate as one of the “good” parts of the federal legislation he and his Republican competitors refer to as “Obamacare.”  The mandate is purportedly the most abhorrent aspect of the Health Care Affordability law if one is to believe Tea Partiers and the Republican candidates, although I think the truly repugnant part of it for them is that Obama is the one who secured it.

The topic of the mandate was at the heart of the Rick Perry – Romney dispute in the debate of December 10 where Romney proffered his $10,000 bet in support of his view that Perry was mistaken.  It will be interesting to see how the Romney campaign wriggles out of this one.

Newt quote for December 19

Posted by noonante on December 19, 2011
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I have already prematurely predicted his political demise, but the former Speaker is now replicating the pattern of all the previous “non-Mitt” candidates with his poll numbers in Iowa sinking like a stone.  While the pundits were waiting for an implosion that would doom his candidacy, the cause appears to be a raft of negative advertising that Gingrich does not seem to have the financial resources to withstand.  Of course, the anti-Newt ads are based on a history of statements that, at the time, could have resulted in an implosion, so I guess we are witnessing the first ever slow-motion one.  Nonetheless, we do not want to miss a continuation of our greatest quotes from the wise one (and we have only reached 1989), so here is today’s installment:

The left-wing Democrats will represent the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness, and the total right to cripple innocent people in the name of letting hooligans loose.

From Mother Jones April 7 article by Tim Murphy and David Corn entitled “Newt in His Own Words: 33 Years of Bomb-Throwing.”

Republicans Against Democracy

Posted by noonante on December 15, 2011
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Fred Barnes, the Executive Editor of one of the conservative movements leading organs, The Weekly Standard, came out this week with an editorial I found astonishing.  His opening line says it all:  “Republicans are paying a high price for allowing their presidential race to be dominated by nationally televised debates.”  As a consequence, the incumbent President is allowed to get his own message out, and the GOP candidates are prevented from “[f]undraising, building an organization, developing policy papers.”  So let me get this straight.  Instead of talking to those human-like entities known as voters, candidates should be dealing with rich people and political insiders.  Policy papers?  How many have you read?

The Republican elites are becoming increasingly concerned that the result of this time-consuming need to appeal to voters, someone such as Newt Gingrich  —  dismissed by Barnes as being driven from Congress following a revolt by his Republican peers  —  has moved to the front of the pack.  Barnes is distressed that the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas isn’t able to capitalize on that fact because of his poor performance in the debates.  Don’t those responding to polls  (i.e., potential voters) know any better?

Then we have Dick Morris on the Bill O’Reilly show lamenting the fact that Ron Paul is preventing a “fair fight” between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.  (Clip from Andrew Sullivan’s blog.)  He makes no mention of the “lesser” candidates, including current and former governors, senators and congresspeople who are also messing up his desired race.  Morris’ comments are part of what Andrew Sullivan sees as a a conscience effort by Fox News to diminish the candidacy of Paul, a libertarian who has the temerity to not follow Roger Ailes’ orthodoxy.

In Ailes’ and Barnes’ world apparently, the intelligentsia of the Republic Party should be the ones to anoint the nominee  —  and this from the folks who brought us Sarah Palin.

GOP debate of December 10

Posted by noonante on December 11, 2011
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A social game of poker is one of my true joys.  By “social”, I mean a game among friends, and friends of friends, where the stakes are set in advance so everyone can be comfortable should they lose a certain amount of money.  I first started playing in high school when I would have my friends over after my parents took the rest of the family to Cape Cod for a vacation.  We would have a big vat of coffee since playing all night was our goal.  Most recently, I played in a garage with neighbors where we had a fire pit going to ward off the autumn chill and lots of cold beer which had the opposite effect.  In between I played with plenty of different people in different settings, but learned one indelible lesson.  You can tell a great deal about someone from the way they conduct themselves at a poker table.  Every now and then there would be a real jerk.  One memorable one was the guy who tried to win by betting as much as he could as often as he could so the less well-off players would fold.  In last night’s debate, Mitt Romney revealed himself to be that guy.  He is a rich jerk.

In a vignette that will undoubtedly be the most repeated one of the debate, Romney offered Rick Perry a $10,000 wager to support his view that Perry was wrong about something.  The substance of Perry’s claim doesn’t matter.  He has made the same point in prior debates and when he said it this time I thought to myself, “Doesn’t this guy have anything else to say?”  Perry has demonstrated during these debates that he has one skill.  For some reason, he is remarkably adept at getting under Romney’s skin, and Romney unfailingly rises to the bait.  Perhaps Romney has been looking for his Reaganesque “I paid for this microphone” moment, but this effort could well have the opposite effect.  A $10,000 bet?  That is walking around money for Mitt Romney?  It seems that with every passing day in this campaign Romney’s public utterances are making him smaller and smaller.

It was Newt Gingrich we were watching to see if he would implode.  The current front-runner in every early state save New Hampshire, however, came across as fully in command and willing to engage on any subject.  A couple of times he even winked at someone in the audience while Romney was speaking, as if to say “we got him where we want him.”  He deftly handled the “values” question intended to get at his three marriages and adultery by saying he had made mistakes, and that his character is a legitimate area of inquiry.  As for being the career politician that is one of Romney’s attack lines, he observed that the only reason Romney was not a career politician was that he lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994.

In one of the most interesting exchanges of the evening, Romney and Gingrich debated Gingrich’s early statement that Palestinians are an “invented people.”  As Newt the historian pointed out, the Ottoman Empire did not include a nation known as Palestine, so its recognition is not based in history or fact.  How this view by a President of the United States is going to further the cause of peace in the mid-East is beyond me, and Romney correctly took Gingrich to task for bomb-throwing.  The two then engaged in a battle of who knew Benjamin Netanyahu the longest, and who could be the most subservient to the policies of “Bibi”  —  as he was called.

The candidates at the bottom of the polling pack each took their shots at the two front-runners.  Rick Perry’s most notable contribution, other than irritating Romney, was commenting that a candidate who cheats on his wife could also be expected to cheat on his “business partner.”  He drew what may have been the biggest applause of the night in blasting Barack Obama for neither destroying the drone captured by Iran, nor attempting to recover it.  No one asked him if the first were possible or how he would do the second.  Michele Bachmann had one of her strongest debate performances since early June and came up with the clever (I thought) phrase “Newt Romney.”  Rick Santorum had a typical Santorum performance, meaning he didn’t say much that was memorable.

Then there is Ron Paul.  He is polling about where Romney is in Iowa, and unlike both Romney and Gingrich, he will not be attacked for pandering.  On the issue of Palestine being “invented,” he observed that Israel was not a nation in the Ottoman Empire either.  On the individual mandate for health insurance (which he opposes as he does any mandate), he pithily observed that we don’t have a choice on paying Medicare taxes either.

All in all, these Republican debates are doing an excellent job of revealing the candidates.  In this one, Newt Gingrich did nothing to hurt his status as the front-runner, but Mitt Romney’s camp has got to be plenty worried about the state of his candidacy.  We may soon start hearing about the “non-Newt” candidate.

The next debate, the Jon Huntsman/Newt Gingrich “Lincoln-Douglas debate,” is scheduled for Monday at 4:00 pm, but there is no word yet on where it wil be broadcast.

Upcoming GOP debates

Posted by noonante on December 9, 2011
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It’s crunch time.  Over the next six days there will be three Republican debates, although one will only have two participants.  After that, the next serious event will not occur until January 7.

The first one is scheduled for Saturday night at 9:00 pm on ABC and will feature six of the seven top candidates.  Jon Huntsman was not invited because of his polling numbers.  The early buzz is that this will be  —  as one site phrased it  —  the “alpha dog” showdown between long-presumed nominee Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the current leader in most early state polls.  According to the pundits, this will be the first time for Romney to demonstrate that he can recover from Gingrich’s surge, and for Gingrich to show that he has what it takes to stay on top.  Everyone who follows this stuff is waiting for what most believe will be the inevitable Gingrich implosion, which, in turn, will lead to the once-inevitable Romney actually being inevitable.

The next event is one that I think will be very interesting.  It is a “Lincoln-Douglas” debate between Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman.  Gingrich is a big fan of this style which, as I understand it, involves actual debating between two opponents without time limits or even a moderator, although I am not clear on that last point.  He favors such an approach because as the smartest person on the planet and a skilled debater, he will win every time.  He has proposed seven such encounters with President Obama after he becomes the nominee, and has already had such a debate with Herman Cain.  Jon Huntsman is not Herman Cain.  He is smart, articulate and, as a former ambassador to China and popular governor, one must assume he is quite savvy.  For those looking for the Gingrich implosion, I think this event has considerable potential to produce it.  He will not be able to use his bullying style or pompous platitudes against Huntsman.  Just go back to the way he backed down from Mitt Romney when challenged on his support for an individual mandate in health care.  At this point (Friday afternoon) I am not aware of a time or carrier for a debate scheduled for Monday.

Then there is the debate scheduled for December 15 at 9:00 pm on Fox News.  After that it is a hiatus of more than three weeks for the next serious event on January 7.  In between, however, is the Donald Trump debate scheduled for December 27.  Five of the seven leading candidates have declined to participate, with only Gingrich and Rick Santorum agreeing to show up.  The latter can use all the publicity he can get.  I think this is another opportunity for Gingrich to implode.  He will be seeing himself as half-way to the nomination and I anticipate he will be in all his pompous glory.  That could spell trouble for advisers hoping he avoids intemperate remarks.  That’s all I need, though, to be watching this spectacle.

Newt quote for December 9

Posted by noonante on December 9, 2011
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In Newt Gingrich’s long history of statements that are pompous, ridiculous, offensive, or a combination of all three, this one may be the worst.  It is from a 1989 statement to The Washington Post explaining why he fights with his second wife:

“It’s not even that it matters to me.  It’s just the habit of dominance, the habit of being the center of my staff and the center of the news media.”  He gives the marriage a “53-47” shot of surviving.

From Mother Jones  April 7 article by Tim Murphy and David Corn entitled “Newt in His Own Words: 33 Years of Bomb-Throwing.”