Where Oh Where Are Gingrich’s Enemies?
For many members of Congress, it must seem truly strange to observe the current Newt Gingrich boomlet. This is, after all, the same Gingrich who was run out of Washington 13 years ago after his party suffered a rare midterm loss that left Republicans barely hanging on to control of the House. Gingrich not only stepped aside as speaker but resigned his congressional seat. He left the chamber with his tail between his legs and did not exactly endear himself to his fellow members on the way out, calling the other congressional Republicans “hateful” and “cannibals” who blackmailed him out of office during a conference call announcing his departure. With his bombastic style, Gingrich was well set for a life of public speaking and book career far away from any other elected office.
That was the mind-set of the political class when Gingrich entered the presidential field earlier this year (especially after his entire staff fled his campaign over the summer), and yet now Gingrich has—at least for the time being—replaced Mitt Romney as the front-runner for 2012. One would expect those representatives who revolted on Gingrich—many of whom are still in Congress—to rush to the press to divert Republican voters from making the same mistake they made in 1994 when they elevated Gingrich to speaker.
Instead, they’re keeping their thoughts largely to themselves, according to Politico. The group of Republicans who ousted Gingrich in ’98 are hesitant to disparage the new Tea Party favorite, and some have even switched sides and are supporting Gingrich. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey corralled support to replace Gingrich back in the day but demurred from offering comment for Politico‘s article. That’s a strikingly different tone than earlier in the year. “It’s typical of Newt to be whimsical,” Armey told Politico in May. “We always say: Newt always has so many great ideas. Well yeah, but then he shifts between them at such a rate it’s pretty hard to track it let alone keep up with it.” Or take former Representative Bob Livingston, the Louisiana congressman whose challenge to then-Speaker Gingrich incited that harsh resignation conference call. Now Livingston has endorsed Gingrich and is raising money for his former foe.
Not all of Gingrich’s former colleagues have held back. On Sunday, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn—a member of the House during Gingrich’s reign—ripped into the presidential candidate on Fox News. “I’m not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich,” Coburn said,
“having served under him for four years and experienced personally his leadership…I just found his leadership lacking and I’m not going to go into greater detail in that. And I think if you were poll the gang—the group of people that came in Congress in 1994, in which he did a wonderful job in organizing that, he’s brilliant, he has a lot of positives. But I still—it would be—I will have difficulty supporting him as president of the United States.”
Coburn isn’t alone in that view; if it becomes clear that Gingrich’s surge is not the short-lived bubble of Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann, his former colleagues will likely start bringing those attacks out in droves to block his accession back to the top of the party.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, December 6, 2011
Mitt vs. Newt Won’t Be Like Hillary vs. Barack
The 2012 Republican primary probably won’t be much like the 2008 Democratic primary, but Mitt Romney’s campaign is organizing just in case the nomination fight against Newt Gingrich lasts all the way into the spring. The New York Times‘ Trip Gabriel and Jeff Zeleny report that if neither Romney or Gingrich have decisive victories in the early voting states, “Gingrich could be faced with the ultimate challenge to his campaign: the need to survive a war of attrition of the sort for which he is unprepared at the moment.” Romney’s organized in Alabama, Indiana, Delaware, and lots of other later-voting states, while Gingrich’s campaign didn’t file the paperwork in time to get on the Missouri caucus ballot. The Washington Post‘s Philip Rucker, too, reports that Gingrich’s campaign is trying to create a huge organization in just a couple weeks, with staffers sending all-caps emergency emails to Republicans in Ohio to get enough signatures to get on that state’s ballot. Ohio votes in March, though, and it doesn’t seem likely that both guys will be around by then. Not only does Gingrich not have the organization of Obama, he doesn’t have the message Republicans want to hear or an army of new voters to help him win in late-voting states.
The establishment candidate is also the organized candidate
Outsider Obama outmaneuvered frontrunner Clinton by organizing in late-voting states, and by having a strong organization in the Iowa caucuses. But this year, the well-organized candidate is also the establishment choice: Romney. Obama’s surprise victory in Iowa was thanks to his organization — really important for Democrats, as Matthew Dowd, who was chief strategist for George W. Bush in 2004, explains at ABC News. But that organization isn’t important for Republicans in the state, he says. The Democratic caucus “involves meeting certain mandated thresholds, convening in groups at each caucus, reconvening, and using various mathematical equations that are instrumental to choosing a winner,” Dowd writes, but Republicans just show up and vote, and then those votes are counted. That means enthusiasm matters as much as organization.
The Post reports that Gingrich has hired Bush veteran Gordon C. James to build his organization, saying, “I’m just banking on 33 years with the Bush family and all those friends I’ve made to help us do that.” But while James might have a lot of friends, Gingrich has a ton of enemies. Sen. Tom Coburn, who was first elected in 1994 — Gingrich’s Republican Revolution — said on Fox News Sunday that he wasn’t “inclined” to support Gingrich. Coburn explained, “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 his leadership lacking.”
Obama’s secret weapon was young people, Gingrich’s is old people
Obama was able to bring in new voters outside of the traditional groups that lined up behind Clinton: young people. But Gingrich’s “secret weapon,” as Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin put it, is old people. Enthusiasm for Gingrich is not among insurgent activists, but seniors.
Gingrich will have a hard time attacking Romney on health care
Another problem Gingrich will have in sustaining the enthusiasm of the piss-off Republican party base is that he’s weak on the issue they care about most. Obama had the advantage of a record of being against the Iraq war early on, which appealed to Democrats frustrated by eight years of the Bush administration, while Clinton had voted to authorize the war in 2002. Clinton was seen as much more hawkish. But Gingrich can’t make a similar contrast Romney, because in the 1990s he endorsed the part of Obama’s health care overhaul — the individual mandate — that Republicans hate the most.
Obama had a disciplined campaign, Gingrich doesn’t
Obama’s campaign valued loyalty — and no leaking to the press. Obama strategist David Axelrod even told Politico, “There are no assholes. There are going to be no assholes on this campaign.” That helped limit stories about internal bickering that plagued Clinton’s campaign. By contrast, Gingrich’s campaign staff quit on him this summer, and then proceeded to talk mad smack about him in the press for days.
A long primary gave Obama a lot of time to introduce himself to people who’d never heard of him, while a long primary gives Gingrich a chance to remind people why he was run out of town in 1998
A four- or five-month long process means there’d be lots of time to rehash the Gingrich years: impeachment, ethics probe, marriages, the government shutdown. And a long nomination fight means Gingrich will have more opportunities to indulge in one of his weaknesses — saying things that make Republicans really mad. Gingrich famously called a Republican plan to overhaul Medicare “right-wing social engineering,” and it nearly killed his campaign. In the last couple weeks, Gingrich has already floated amnesty for some illegal immigrants and ending child labor laws.
By: Elspeth Reeve, The Atlantic Wire, December 5, 2011
“Control, Alt, Delete”: Romney Staff Spent Nearly $100,000 To Hide Records
Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret, Reuters has learned.
The move during the final weeks of Romney’s administration was legal but unusual for a departing governor, Massachusetts officials say.
The effort to purge the records was made a few months before Romney launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He is again competing for the party’s nomination, this time to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012.
Five weeks before the first contests in Iowa, Romney has seen his position as frontrunner among Republican presidential candidates whittled away in the polls as rival Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, has gained ground.
When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers to keep for themselves. Also before he left office, the governor’s staff had emails and other electronic communications by Romney’s administration wiped from state servers, state officials say.
Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney’s four-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely what information was erased is unclear.
Republican and Democratic opponents of Romney say the scrubbing of emails – and a claim by Romney that paper records of his governorship are not subject to public disclosure – hinder efforts to assess his performance as a politician and elected official.
As Massachusetts governor, Romney worked with a Democrat-led state house to close a budget shortfall and signed a healthcare overhaul that required nearly all state residents to buy insurance or face penalties.
Massachusetts’ healthcare law became a model for Obama’s nationwide healthcare program, enacted into law in 2010. As a presidential candidate, however, Romney has criticized Obama’s plan as an overreach by the federal government.
Massachusetts officials say they have no basis to believe that Romney’s staff violated any state laws or policies in removing his administration’s records.
They acknowledge, however, that state law on maintaining and disclosing official records is vague and has not been updated to deal with issues related to digital records and other modern technology.
BUYING UP HARD DRIVES
Romney’s spokesmen emphasize that he followed the law and precedent in deleting the emails, installing new computers in the governor’s office and buying up hard drives.
However, Theresa Dolan, former director of administration for the governor’s office, told Reuters that Romney’s efforts to control or wipe out records from his governorship were unprecedented.
Dolan said that in her 23 years as an aide to successive governors “no one had ever inquired about, or expressed the desire” to purchase their computer hard drives before Romney’s tenure.
The cleanup of records by Romney’s staff before his term ended included spending $205,000 for a three-year lease on new computers for the governor’s office, according to official documents and state officials.
In signing the lease, Romney aides broke an earlier three-year lease that provided the same number of computers for about half the cost – $108,000. Lease documents obtained by Reuters under the state’s freedom of information law indicate that the broken lease still had 18 months to run.
As a result of the change in leases, the cost to the state for computers in the governor’s office was an additional $97,000.
Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney’s presidential campaign, referred questions on the computer leasing deal and records removal to state officials.
Last week, Saul claimed that Deval Patrick, the present Massachusetts governor and a Democrat, was encouraging reports about Romney’s records to cast the former governor as secretive. Patrick’s office has not responded to that allegation.
STATE REVIEWING RECORDS LAW
The removal of digital records by Romney’s staff, first reported by the Boston Globe, has sparked a wave of requests for state officials to release paper records from Romney’s governorship that remain in the state’s archives.
Massachusetts officials are now reviewing state law to determine whether the public should have access to those records.
The issue is clouded by a 1997 state court ruling that could be interpreted to mean that records of the Massachusetts governor are not subject to disclosure. Romney has asserted that his records are exempt from disclosure.
State officials and a longtime Romney adviser have acknowledged that before leaving office, Romney asked state archives officials for permission to destroy certain paper records. It is unclear whether his office notified anyone from the state before destroying electronic records.
Officials have said the details of Romney’s request to remove paper records, such as what specific documents he wanted to destroy, could be made public only in response to a request under the state’s freedom of information law. Reuters has filed such a request.
By: Mark Hosenball, Reuters; Editing, David Lindsey and David Storey, December 5, 2011
Newt Gingrich’s Ideas Aren’t As Creative Or Effective As He Thinks
Years ago, I remember an interview in which former Speaker Newt Gingrich said he read at least one book a week. The trick to doing so for such a busy man?
Always carry what you’re reading, he recommended, even when you’re not traveling; read in doctors’ waiting rooms, in checkout lines—any place where you’d otherwise just be wasting time.
Some time after that—he was out of office by this point—I saw Gingrich in the Tysons Corner (Virginia) mall. He was in the corridor, slowly pacing in a circle … his nose buried in a book.
Impressive, I thought; he reads even while (presumably) his wife shops.
The downside to this kind of bibliophilia, for certain personalities, is that it can lead to faddishness. I’m sure you have a friend who fits the bill: Whatever he’s reading at a given moment is all he can talk about. And then he moves on.
I’ve always had the impression that Newt is a lot like that—and this Washington Post report on Gingrich the “ideas factory” gives me no reason to doubt it.
Brimming with ideas is perhaps a superior condition when compared to, say, the calcified simplicity of George F. Will (“Romney’s economic platform has 59 planks—56 more than necessary if you have low taxes, free trade and fewer regulatory burdens.”) The latter is a time-honored trope for too many conservative pundits: Get government out of the way of the market, ponder no further, and then pat yourself on the back for appreciating “society’s complexities.”
But an overheated motor of idea generation in high office is a recipe for disaster, or at least folly. As Charles Krauthammer observes, Gingrich as president would be “in constant search of the out-of-box experience.”
Then again, Gingrich seems to me to be full of lots of ideas that are not as imaginative as he thinks or, alternatively, just plain dumb. Gingrich wants to be able to fire federal judges, partially privatize Social Security and Medicare, and create a flat-tax alternative to the current code. This is comfortably in line with the positions of his GOP rivals.
Then there’s Gingrich’s now-infamous “child janitor” idea. Kids in the inner-city lack productive role-models, he says; they don’t see what it’s like for an adult to get up in the morning and go to work. This is itself a debatable proposition, but what bothers me most about it is that it’s a solution in search of the wrong problem.
When I think of Gingrich’s hypothetical poor inner-city kid, I see a bunch of problems, short- and long-term. He’s going to a lousy school—and even if he does well there, he faces long odds of a) finishing college and b) doing better than nonpoor kids who didn’t finish college. Set aside the schooling question, there’s the fact of stratospherically high unemployment rates in the inner city, and the broader, abysmal lack of opportunity for low-skilled men.
All of this is to say that cleaning bathrooms as a teenager is probably not going to change outcomes for this kid.
“Paycheck President” Gingrich really has nothing interesting to say about declining social mobility in America, about how to mitigate the ways in which the global economy and low-skilled immigrants are squeezing working- and middle-class Americans from the top and bottom.
All that time reading in malls and doctors’ offices, and he’s still well inside-the-box on the most important questions.
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, December 5, 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
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