The South Is Allergic To Mitt Romney
For most of the year, Mitt Romney has had a serious problem that’s mostly been obscured by the absurd volatility of the GOP race: He’s a very tough sell in the South.
Politico touches on this today in a story that acknowledges the unique obstacles Romney seems to face in the region while ultimately concluding that “the contest for the allegiance of Southern conservatives in the 2012 race is as wide open as ever.” That’s one way of looking at it, but there’s a more disheartening possibility for Romney as well: that with the rise of Newt Gingrich, Mitt-phobic Southerners finally have a consensus alternative with some staying power.
First, consider Romney’s plight in Dixie.
South Carolina, which holds the historically pivotal first-in-the-South primary, has long been a problem for him. In 2008, when he pitched himself as the kind of true believer conservative that Southerners tend to find attractive, Romney finished fourth in the state, with just 15 percent of the vote — half of what Mike Huckabee, who nearly knocked off John McCain in the state, received. And in polling throughout 2011, South Carolina Republicans have made their yearning for a non-Romney candidate clear. Both Rick Perry and Herman Cain opened up double-digit leads over Romney when they were seen as his main foe earlier in the fall.
Polling has been less intense elsewhere in Dixie, since the other states don’t vote as early as South Carolina, but the signs are just as ominous. A Gallup poll released last week showed Romney getting just 15 percent of the vote across the region. That’s about where he’s been stuck all year; Gallup’s survey over the summer had him at 12 percent. This broad resistance in what for the GOP is a voter-rich region is dragging down Romney’s overall support, a major reason he’s failed to push past 30 percent in national polling.
Now factor in Gingrich’s potential impact. He’s not a native-born Southerner and doesn’t speak with a Southern accent, but the region is responding to his presidential candidacy with more enthusiasm than any other. South Carolina is a perfect example of this. The two most recent polls there show Gingrich mauling Romney by 23 and 19 points. So is North Carolina, where a new PPP poll puts Gingrich 37 points ahead of Romney, 51 to 14 percent. Or take Mississippi. The last poll conducted there was in early November, when Cain was still the hot commodity on the right and Gingrich was still barely cracking double-digits nationally. And yet a PPP survey of Mississippi Republicans still showed Gingrich in first place with 28 percent, followed by Cain and Perry. Romney was all the way back in fourth place with 12 percent.
For Romney, the implications of this are worrisome. If Gingrich manages to “win” Iowa (that is, he’s declared the big winner by the press), it will probably be the death knell for Perry, who is trying to make a campaign-saving stand in the state. And without Perry, a Texan with natural Dixie appeal, Gingrich will be well-positioned to capitalize on the potential that clearly exists for him in the South — starting with South Carolina and potentially carrying over to Super Tuesday on March 6, when five states from the old Confederacy will vote.
In his ’08 campaign, Romney fared respectably in the South, finishing near the top in a handful of states. But that might have been deceptive, with Huckabee and John McCain generally gobbling up about two-thirds of the vote, making Romney seem more competitive than he actually was. This time there’s a chance Romney will only have one main opponent in the South.
The region’s apparent hostility toward him could come from several places. Maybe it’s a reflection of his supposed “Mormon problem” that’s been so widely discussed. Or it could just be his Northern roots. Or maybe it’s ideological. In the Obama-era, the South has been particularly kind to Tea Party Republicanism, which has meant new scrutiny of Romney’s moderate-to-liberal Massachusetts past. It’s also unclear what’s driving Gingrich’s Dixie appeal. His ties to Georgia, which he represented in the House for 20 years, surely help. But it may just be that the region is looking for someone, anyone who’s (a) viable; and (b) not named Mitt.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon War Room, December 13, 2011
The Establishment Vs. Newt: A Long List Of Republicans Who Want Anybody But Gingrich
As a former Republican House speaker and veteran of the culture wars of the 1990s, Newt Gingrich understandably earned his share of liberal detractors. But who knew how many enemies he’d made among the Republican political elite? As Gingrich’s recent surge in the polls moves ever closer to bearing electoral fruit in the Iowa Caucuses, it’s fair to say that the GOP political establishment is freaking out. Here’s just a sampling of the nice things Newt’s Washington colleagues have had to say about him lately.
George Will: “Gingrich … embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. … There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich’s unrepented role as a hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as ethanol and cheap mortgages. … His temperament—intellectual hubris distilled—makes him blown about by gusts of enthusiasm for intellectual fads, from 1990s futurism to ‘Lean Six Sigma’ today.”
Wall Street Journal Editorial Page: “In Mr. Gingrich’s telling, his ideas are bold and even radical, but the irony is that they’re often much less revolutionary than his rhetoric suggests. … Take Mr. Gingrich’s 49-page manifesto on entitlement reform, which his campaign rolled out shortly before Thanksgiving. It is a fundamentally Newtonian document, both in its ambition—it promises to ‘reduce federal spending by half or more’—and in its lack of discipline.”
Gene Healy, Cato Institute vice president: “[Gingrich is] Mitt Romney with more baggage and bolder hand gestures. … It seems that, if you clamor long enough about “big ideas,” people become convinced you actually have them. But most of Gingrich’s policy ideas over the last decade have been tepidly conventional and consistent with the Big Government, Beltway Consensus. … There’s no denying that Newt is smart, but there’s a zany, Cliff Clavin aspect to his intellect. At times, Gingrich, who’s written more than 150 book reviews on Amazon.com, sounds like a guy who read way too much during a long prison stretch.”
Karl Rove: “He is the only candidate who didn’t qualify for the Missouri primary, and on Wednesday he failed to present enough signatures to get on the ballot in Ohio. … [It’s] embarrassing to be so poorly organized.”
Ramesh Ponnuru: “Conservatives who dislike George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism have Gingrich to thank for it. After Gingrich lost the budget battles with President Bill Clinton, it took 15 years for any politician to take up the cause of limited-government conservatism that he had discredited. Although Gingrich isn’t solely responsible for the Republican policy defeats of those years, his erratic behavior, lack of discipline and self-absorption had a lot to do with them.”
Charles Krauthammer: “Gingrich has his own vulnerabilities. The first is often overlooked because it is characterological rather than ideological: his own unreliability. Gingrich has a self-regard so immense that it rivals Obama’s—but, unlike Obama’s, is untamed by self-discipline.
Representative Peter King: “He’s too self-centered. He does not have the discipline, does not have the capacity to control himself.” If Newt were elected president, “The country and congress would be going through one crisis after another, and these would be self-inflicted crises.”
Christopher Barron, head of GOProud: “Newt is the establishment. He’s antithetical to what the Tea Party is talking about.”
Senator Tom Coburn: “There’s all types of leaders. Leaders that instill confidence, leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk. Leaders that have one standard for the people that they’re leading and a different standard for themselves. I just found [Gingrich’s] leadership lacking.”
Jennifer Rubin: “[W]hen he does think big, it is often in clichés. … When not predictable, Gingrich’s ideas can range from irresponsible (go see his website for the list of tax cuts, but no talk of spending cuts) to the crazed.”
Ross Douthat: “[Gingrich’s] candidacy isn’t a test of religious conservatives’ willingness to be good, forgiving Christians. It’s a test of their ability to see their cause through outsiders’ eyes, and to recognize what anointing a thrice-married adulterer as the champion of “family values” would say to the skeptical, the unconverted and above all to the young.”
Joe Scarborough: “When [Gingrich] puts on his political helmet he is a terrible person. … Let me tell you something: the Republican establishment will never make peace with Newt Gingrich. They just won’t! They won’t. This is an important point. Because the Republicans I talk to say he cannot win the nomination at any cost. He will destroy the party. He will re-elect Barack Obama and we’ll be ruined. That’s going to happen. I mean Newt Gingrich would possibly win 100 electoral votes.”
By: The New Republic, Staff, December 9, 2011
GOP Still Clueless About Resentment Of Inequality
In his New York Times opinion piece, “Let’s Not Talk About Inequality,” Thomas B. Edsall does a good job of tracing the change in public attitudes toward Republican economic policies in the wake of the 2008 meltdown.
Edsall quotes Gingrich’s and Romney’s pious pronouncements about workers needing to “become more employable” (Newt) and achieving “success and rewards through hard work” (Mitch), which is a little hard to digest, coming from a guy who gets six figures for a speech and another who made his fortune in hedge funds. This in “an American economy sharply skewed towards the affluent, with rising inequality, a dwindling middle class and the persistence of long-term unemployment.”
Not all Republicans are quite so clueless. Edsall quotes GOP framing guru Frank Luntz, “I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort” because “they’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” Edsalll also quotes Democratic strategist Geoff Garin, who explains “…The Republican/Tea Party narrative about the economy has been superseded by a different narrative – one that emphasizes the need to address the growing gap between those at the very top of the economic ladder and the rest of the country.”
Garin cites poll data indicating stronger support for “a set of policies generally favored by Democrats calling for the elimination of tax breaks for the rich and tougher regulation of major banks and corporations” and that the public believes the federal government should “pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans.” He also cites polling data spelling big trouble for the GOP:
The job ratings of Republicans in Congress have tanked at 74 percent negative to 19 percent favorable, dropping more steeply than Obama’s, which are 51 negative-44 positive. But the Post survey also found that congressional Republicans run neck and neck with the president when respondents are asked “who would you trust to do a better job” on handling the economy (42-42) and creating jobs (40-40). On an issue on which the public traditionally favors Democrats by wide margins, “protecting the middle class,” Obama held only a 45-41 advantage over congressional Republicans.
Republicans are scrambling to figure out how to blame Democrats for worsening inequality, explains Edsall. But “The issue of inequality is inherently dangerous for Republicans who are viewed by many as the party of the upper class.” Further,
An Oct. 19-24 CBS/New York Times poll asked respondents whether the policies of the Obama administration and the policies of Republicans in Congress favor the rich, the middle class, the poor or treat everyone equally. Just 12 percent said Obama favors the rich, while 69 percent said Republicans in Congress favor the rich.
And when Ryan’s budget scheme is explained to voters, they “are horrified by it,” according to Garin. Edsall marvels at the GOP’s blindness in making it possible for their two front runners to get bogged down in arguments about how much more to give the wealthy while weakening Medicare benefits for the middle class — “in a climate of stark economic adversity for millions of unemployed Americans.”
Edsall is right. Democrats could not have hoped for a more self-destructive scenario in the Republican camp. If Democrats can project a credible message that offers hope for a better future for middle class voters in the months ahead, the optimism that has begun to emerge in Democratic circles will be justified.
By: J. P. Green, The Democratic Strategist, December 13, 2011