A GOP Reality-Show Race, Thanks To The Tea Party
The contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination has been described as a reality show and a circus. But what’s happening inside the GOP is quite rational and easily explained.
The obvious Republican nominee was Texas Gov. Rick Perry — obvious because his government-bashing, ideology-mongering, secessionist-flirting persona was a perfect fit for a Republican primary electorate that has shifted far to the right of Ronald Reagan.
The yearning for someone like Perry was inevitable. He combined the right views — actually, very right views — with experience as a chief executive that made him seem like somebody who was ready to be president.
Consider that even before he had gotten into the race, mere word that he might run sent Republican voters scrambling his way. He already had 18 percent to Romney’s 23 percent in a late July Gallup poll. Michele Bachmann was next at 13 percent. At that point, Newt Gingrich was at 6 percent and Herman Cain was at 4 percent.
After Perry announced his candidacy, he soared. The
Aug. 17-21 Gallup survey had him at 29 percent, Romney at 17 percent, Bachmann down to 10 percent and Gingrich and Cain both at 4 percent. (Ron Paul, holding aloft the libertarian banner, holds his core voters no matter what’s happening around him. Paul was at 10 percent in July, 13 percent in August.) Another survey at the time by Public Policy Polling put Perry at 33 percent to 20 percent for Romney.
This nomination was Perry’s to lose, and lose it he appears to have done. This opened the way for the relatively short-lived, if entertaining, Herman Cain show, which finally closed on Saturday.
Yet Romney still can’t take off, and a lot of ink and online pixels have been spent trying to explain why. I see four factors holding Romney back. That he is a flip-flopper is no longer a charge by his opponents; it is taken as a given. His refusal to repudiate his Massachusetts health-care plan goes down badly with conservatives. His public personality is, well, stiff and patrician enough that the Internet is now full of videos of Romney’s awkwardness. And he is a Mormon, a problem for some conservative evangelicals.
It’s outrageous that Romney’s religion is an issue, and anyone analyzing its impact has a moral obligation to say so. Alas, that does not mean it has no effect. And Romney ought to be proud of his health initiative — although it’s disingenuous of him to deny the strong links between what he did and what President Obama fought to get enacted.
But what’s going on is not just a Romney problem. The Republican Party’s core electorate has changed radically since 2008 — and even then John McCain won the nomination against the wishes of many on the Republican right because the opposition to him was splintered.
A party that lived by the tea crowd in 2010 is being severely hobbled by it now. The Republican right wants the kind of purity that led it to take candidates such as Cain and Bachmann with great seriousness for a while. The same folks took Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller seriously in the 2010 Senate primaries, too. None of them got elected.
Perry once seemed the answer to this problem. Now that he, Cain and Bachmann have faltered, lonely conservative hearts have turned to Gingrich. This is odd, since Gingrich can give Romney an excellent run in any flip-flopping contest.
But Gingrich has always kept at least one foot in the camp of movement conservatism, and he talks like a movement guy. This could be enough. The question is whether he has the discipline not to say something really foolish between now and Jan. 3, the date of the Iowa caucuses. (Free advice to Newt: Stop talking about yourself in the third person as a world historical figure.)
There is talk of the “Republican establishment” swooping in to save matters, and things certainly seem ripe for a draft write-in campaign for some new candidate. But the Republican establishment, such as it is, is essentially powerless. It sold its soul to the Tea Party, sat by silently as extremist rhetoric engulfed the GOP and figured that swing voters would eventually overlook all this to cast votes against a bad economy.
That’s still Romney’s bet; yet his failure to break through suggests the right wing will not be trifled with. Republican leaders unleashed forces that may eat their party alive. And the only Republican really enjoying what’s happening is Newt Gingrich.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 4, 2011
“A Shell Of Her Former Self”, Olympia Snowe Keeps Falling
With time running out, President Obama used his weekly address yesterday to call on Congress to approve an extension of the payroll tax cut. Economists project a significant economic hit if lawmakers fail to act, and the president said, “Now is the time to step on the gas, not slam on the brakes.”
Then there was the Republican address, delivered by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
…Snowe put her emphasis on a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, saying ,”We have no greater duty than to once and for all obligate the government to live within its means and spend no more than what it takes in.”
Snowe argued that, among other things, the balanced budget amendment would enforce the mandatory spending cuts that are supposed to take effect in 2013 because of the failure of the super committee to reach agreement on an alternative deficit reduction plan.
“The bottom line is, the real reason many lawmakers don’t want a balanced budget amendment is the exact reason why it’s so essential,” Snowe said. “They don’t want their hands tied; they want to continue to spend without restraint. Their way has been to break budgets and amass more and more debt, all the while promising Congress will one day balance the budget. Well, as we sadly know, the promises were empty, the debt is astronomical and their way hasn’t worked. Now, it’s time for our way.”
Even for Republicans, this is ridiculous.
For one thing, the Balanced Budget Amendment is already dead. The House, dominated by far-right Republicans, brought the proposal to the floor two weeks ago, and it failed miserably. Why on earth would the official GOP response tout an already-defeated measure related to the debt when the focus should be on the economy?
For another, the BBA is a spectacularly bad idea. It would devastate the economy and make responses to future crises effectively impossible. Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush administrations, explained recently that this is a “dreadful” idea and the Republican proposal “is, frankly, nuts.”
And finally, what has gotten into Olympia Snowe? In October, she partnered with a right-wing Alabama senator to push a plan to make the legislative process even more difficult. A week earlier, she demanded the administration act with “urgency” to address the jobs crisis, only to filibuster a popular jobs bill a day later. The week before that, Snowe prioritized tax cuts for millionaires over job creation. Shortly before that, Snowe tried to argue that government spending is “clearly … the problem” when it comes to the nation’s finances, which is a popular line among conservatives, despite being wrong.
It’s tempting to think the fear of a primary challenge is pushing Snowe to the far-right, but the truth is, the senator’s GOP opponents next year are barely even trying. She may fear a replay of the Castle-O’Donnell fight that played out in Delaware, but all indications are that Snowe really doesn’t have anything to worry about.
And yet, she’s become a shell of her former self. It’s rather sad to watch.
There is some prime real estate in the political landscape for genuine GOP moderates who could have a significant impact. Instead, Congress has Olympia Snowe, who now bears no resemblance to the centrist she used to be.
If I had to guess, I’d say most mainstream voters in Maine have no idea of the extent to which Snowe has moved to the right, which is a shame. I wonder how those who supported her in the past would even recognize her anymore.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly, December 4, 2011
GOP Presidential Candidates Totally Cynical Or Totally Clueless?: Herman Cain Was No Accident
There are two crucial things you need to understand about the current state of American politics. First, given the still dire economic situation, 2012 should be a year of Republican triumph. Second, the G.O.P. may nonetheless snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — because Herman Cain was not an accident.
Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year — and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).
And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.
So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.
Mitt Romney embodies the first option. He’s not a stupid man; he knows perfectly well, to take a not incidental example, that the Obama health reform is identical in all important respects to the reform he himself introduced in Massachusetts — but that doesn’t stop him from denouncing the Obama plan as a vast government takeover that is nothing like what he did. He presumably knows how to read a budget, which means that he must know that defense spending has continued to rise under the current administration, but this doesn’t stop him from pledging to reverse Mr. Obama’s “massive defense cuts.”
Mr. Romney’s strategy, in short, is to pretend that he shares the ignorance and misconceptions of the Republican base. He isn’t a stupid man — but he seems to play one on TV.
Unfortunately from his point of view, however, his acting skills leave something to be desired, and his insincerity shines through. So the base still hungers for someone who really, truly believes what every candidate for the party’s nomination must pretend to believe. Yet as I said, the only way to actually believe the modern G.O.P. catechism is to be completely clueless.
And that’s why the Republican primary has taken the form it has, in which a candidate nobody likes and nobody trusts has faced a series of clueless challengers, each of whom has briefly soared before imploding under the pressure of his or her own cluelessness. Think in particular of Rick Perry, a conservative true believer who seemingly had everything it took to clinch the nomination — until he opened his mouth.
So will Newt Gingrich suffer the same fate? Not necessarily.
Many observers seem surprised that Mr. Gingrich’s, well, colorful personal history isn’t causing him more problems, but they shouldn’t be. If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, conservatives often seem inclined to accept that tribute, voting for candidates who publicly espouse conservative moral principles whatever their personal behavior. Did I mention that David Vitter is still in the Senate?
And Mr. Gingrich has some advantages none of the previous challengers had. He is by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be, but he’s a glib speaker, even when he has no idea what he’s talking about. And my sense is that he’s also very good at doublethink — that even when he knows what he’s saying isn’t true, he manages to believe it while he’s saying it. So he may not implode like his predecessors.
The larger point, however, is that whoever finally gets the Republican nomination will be a deeply flawed candidate. And these flaws won’t be an accident, the result of bad luck regarding who chose to make a run this time around; the fact that the party is committed to demonstrably false beliefs means that only fakers or the befuddled can get through the selection process.
Of course, given the terrible economic picture and the tendency of voters to blame whoever holds the White House for bad times, even a deeply flawed G.O.P. nominee might very well win the presidency. But then what?
The Washington Post quotes an unnamed Republican adviser who compared what happened to Mr. Cain, when he suddenly found himself leading in the polls, to the proverbial tale of the dog who had better not catch that car he’s chasing. “Something great and awful happened, the dog caught the car. And of course, dogs don’t know how to drive cars. So he had no idea what to do with it.”
The same metaphor, it seems to me, might apply to the G.O.P. pursuit of the White House next year. If the dog actually catches the car — the actual job of running the U.S. government — it will have no idea what to do, because the realities of government in the 21st century bear no resemblance to the mythology all ambitious Republican politicians must pretend to believe. And what will happen then?
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 4, 2011
A Look Back: Newt Gingrich’s Most Outlandish Policy Positions
Newt Gingrich is up 31 points in Florida, according to one poll, and he is openly predicting that he will be the Republican nominee for president.
We’ll see.
In the meantime, it’s worth revisiting some of the lesser-known areas in Gingrich’s record. In his three-plus decades in public life, the former House speaker has racked up an impressive record not only of flip-flops, but also of policy positions that are profoundly unorthodox, some would say outlandish.
This is by no means a comprehensive list – if I’m missing any Gingrichian gems, email me or leave a comment.
1981: Gingrich co-sponsors a measure in the House “to provide for the therapeutic use of marijuana in situations involving life-threatening or sense-threatening illnesses and to provide adequate supplies of marijuana for such use.”
A year later, he writes a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association reiterating his view: “We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source.” He later disavows the stance.
1994: As part of his push for welfare reform, Gingrich proposes that states end aid to poor single mothers and their children be sent to orphanages that would be built with the saved money. Responding to criticism of the plan by then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Gingrich cites a 1938 Hollywood film.
“I’d ask her to go to Blockbuster and rent the Mickey Rooney movie about ‘Boys Town,’” he says.
1995: Gingrich proposes the death penalty for those involved in the drug trade, drawing a parallel to the draconian policies of Singapore and Malaysia.
“We want to stop all drug traffic. If you bring in a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, we will execute you,” he says during a book tour (via the San Diego Union-Tribune on Nexis).
But Gingrich’s Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 ultimately goes nowhere. Asked by Yahoo News in November if he stands by this position, Gingrich responded, “I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure.”
2005: Gingrich calls for “universal but confidential DNA testing” as part of healthcare reform, according to an account in a South Carolina newspaper. (Via National Review)
2005: During the Ward Churchill affair, Gingrich suggests tenure should be abolished at state universities.
“We ought to say to campuses, it’s over … We should say to state legislatures, why are you making us pay for this? Boards of regents are artificial constructs of state law. Tenure is an artificial social construct,” he says. “Tenure did not exist before the twentieth century, and we had free speech before then. You could introduce a bill that says, proof that you’re anti-American is grounds for dismissal.”
2006: Gingrich suggests the U.S. should pursue a counter-terrorism strategy that would curtail terrorists’ free speech rights, predicting “a serious debate about the First Amendment.”
“My prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us,” he says. (Via NR)
2009: In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) police conference, Gingrich declares an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack to be one of the gravest threats to U.S. national security. He cites a fictional thriller to bolster his case:
“What I’m about to say to you is from my heart, and from everything I’ve learned in almost fifty-one years, we are on the edge of catastrophic problems. If you get a chance, read my friend Bill Forstchen’s novel, One Second After, which describes the fate of a small town, after an electromagnetic pulse attack.”
2010: Gingrich argues that the United States should not allow construction of the “ground zero mosque” because Saudi Arabia does not allow construction of churches or synagogues – effectively endorsing Saudi-style religious discrimination.
“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” he says. “The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”
2011: Angered by the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gingrich says he’d like to empower the president to fire judges.
“I would do no more than eliminate Judge Berry in San Antonio and the Ninth circuit. That’s the most I would go for,” he says. “But let me say this because I think this has to be part of our national debate. That’s not a rhetorical comment. I believe the legislative and executive branches have an obligation to defend the Constitution against judges who are tyrannical and who seek to impose un-American values on the people of the United States.”
2011: In an appearance at Harvard, Gingrich challenges child labor laws, floating the idea of replacing pricey unionized janitors with kids:
“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school,” he says. “The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
By: Justin Elliott, Salon, December 2, 2011
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