Indecision 2012: In Iowa And The GOP
Just a few hours before the Iowa caucuses opened, Don Acheson, a general contractor from West Des Moines, remained as he had been for months: wracked by indecision.
First, he had been for Rick Perry, then Newt Gingrich. When I caught up with him, he was preparing to give Rick Santorum a hard look, but Mitt Romney was “not far behind” in Acheson’s esteem.
“This late in the game I’ve never been undecided before,” he lamented. “A lot of people are going to walk into the caucus and say, ‘I’m not sure’ and just pick one. This probably is the most bizarre caucus I’ve been to.”
His drift is typical, and revealing. In a Des Moines Register poll published three days before the vote, fully 49 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers said they had not firmly made up their minds. This is what caused the extraordinary volatility in the polls and a parade of seven different front-runners, culminating in Tuesday’s virtual tie between Santorum and Romney, with Ron Paul just behind them.
Much of the political world has come to regard Iowans as a bit flaky. The prospect that the indecisiveness could allow a gadfly such as Paul to win prompted many commentators to write Iowa obituaries: It could “do irreparable harm” (Politico), “discredit the Iowa caucuses” (Fox’s Chris Wallace) and perhaps bring about “the demise of Iowa” (handicapper Stuart Rothenberg).
I disagree: The Iowa Republicans’ indecision captures perfectly the existential struggle within the GOP nationally and within conservatism. They don’t know what they want — or even who they are. Are they Tea Partyers? Isolationists? Pro-business? Populists? Moralists? Worried workers? Do they want the corporate caretaker (Romney), the oddball isolationist (Paul) or the cultural warrior (Santorum)?
Tuesday night’s returns indicated that Iowans never did make up their mind, as the three men carved up the vote almost evenly. A poll of voters entering the caucuses found that nearly one in five said they hadn’t chosen a candidate until Tuesday.
In their internal conflicts, Iowans fulfilled perfectly their first-in-the-nation status, by faithfully acting out the Republican fissures. “The jumble at the top is very reflective of the Republican Party nationally,” argued David Yepsen, the longtime Register political writer now with Southern Illinois University. “It’s activists here reflecting activists all over the country: Who are we? What are we for?”
“This is a fight for the soul of the party,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele told me this week.
The final events before the caucuses convened neatly demonstrated this. Romney, suffering from chronic awkwardness known as Al Gore’s disease, took the stage in jeans and penny loafers, with a phalanx of lawmakers behind him to show support. He spoke as if lecturing (“output per person is the highest in the world”), which induced audience members — even the officeholders onstage — to scan their smartphones.
To affect passion, Romney read a few lines from “America the Beautiful.” To affect jocularity, he said his kids refer to his wife as “The Mitt Stabilizer.” This produced laughter — from members of the press corps, who couldn’t picture Romney requiring extra stability.
Like their candidate, Romney supporters are a pragmatic if uninspired bunch. There were only about 100 of them on hand for the final rally in Des Moines, leaving many seats empty at the event’s start time. Those who applauded their man did so for a grand total of six seconds. The one passionate Romney supporter I found (“I love Mitt!”) was a London School of Economics student who admired Romney’s electability.
The Paul supporters, by contrast, were all heart. Not allowed inside to see the candidate’s final speech (to a group of students), they stood in the cold for hours, waving signs and waiting for a glimpse of their man. They shouted: “We love you, Ron!” And: “Forty-fifth president!” When Santorum left the same event, they heckled him.
“I took the day off work for this,” said insurance salesman Justin Yourison, a Paul precinct captain. “If he doesn’t get the nomination, I’m not voting for anyone else. . . . If the GOP doesn’t let us in, they can do without us.”
If the Romney supporters were cerebral and the Paul supporters passionate, the Santorum supporters didn’t know quite what they were. At one of Santorum’s final appearances, he buttonholed one undecided voter, Sue Koch, and asked her, repeatedly, to caucus for him. She finally told him she would.
When the candidate walked away, Koch gave a shrug. “I had to say something,” she said.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 3, 2012
“Racist Undertone”: Nobody Likes To Talk About It, But It’s There
Talking about race in American politics is uncomfortable and awkward. But it has to be said: There has been a racist undertone to many of the Republican attacks leveled against President Obama for the last three years, and in this dawning presidential campaign.
You can detect this undertone in the level of disrespect for this president that would be unthinkable were he not an African-American. Some earlier examples include: Rep. Joe Wilson shouting “you lie” at one of Mr. Obama’s first appearances before Congress, and House Speaker John Boehner rejecting Mr. Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress—the first such denial in the history of our republic.
More recently, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, in a conversation overheard at Reagan National Airport in Washington, said of Michelle Obama: “She lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.” He offered a lame apology, but as Mary C. Curtis put it on the Washington Post’s new blog She the People: “Can you imagine how the incident would play out if an African American congressman made a crude remark about First Lady Laura Bush’s body? It certainly would have taken more than an insincere apology to wash that sin away.” This ugly strain was crudely evident in the “birthers” and their ridiculous demands that Mr. Obama produce his birth certificate to prove that he was American, and not secretly an African Muslim.
Just the other day here in Iowa, Mitt Romney’s son, Matt, said his father might release his tax returns “as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things.” The younger Mr. Romney later backtracked, either because he was sincerely chagrined, or, perhaps more likely, because he recognized that it could hurt his father.
Sometimes the racism is more oblique. Newt Gingrich was prattling on the other day about giving “poor children” in “housing projects” jobs cleaning toilets in public schools to teach them there is an alternative to becoming a pimp or a drug dealer. These children, he said, have no work ethic. If there’s anyone out there who doesn’t get that poor kids in housing projects is code for minorities, he or she hasn’t been paying attention to American politics for the last 50 years. Mr. Gingrich is also fond of calling Mr. Obama “the greatest food stamp President in American history.”
Is Mr. Romney playing the same chords when he talks about how Mr. Obama wants to create an “entitlement society?” The president has said nothing of the sort, and the accusation seems of a piece with the old Republican saw that blacks collect the greatest share of welfare dollars.
Mr. Obama’s election in 2008 was a triumph of American democracy and tolerance. He overcame incredible odds to become the first president of mixed race, the first brown-skinned president. It’s pathetic that some Republicans are choosing to toss that milestone into the garbage in their blind drive to destroy Mr. Obama’s presidency.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, The Loyal Opposition-The New York Times, January 3, 2011
What Newt Gingrich And The History Channel Have In Common
The Republican candidate Newt Gingrich and the cable channel History have both followed the same formula for success, by elevating fantasy over actual history. The difference, however, is that Newt wants to carry his sensational vision of a bygone age into office.
Newt is the most prominent self-described “historian” in the United States. If he were elected in 2012, he would be only the second president after Woodrow Wilson to hold a PhD. Indeed, according to Newt, his gifts at decoding the past are so illustrious that Freddie Mac paid him $1.6 million, not for lobbying, but for his historical skills. Meanwhile, over on cable, the History Channel is rising in popularity with the mission statement, “History: Made Every Day.” With practitioners and purveyors of the past soaring so high, these might seem like giddy times for the historical profession.
But neither Newt nor History shows much interest in the serious study of human experience. Newt has never published any scholarly history at all. And the lack of real analysis on History has become so absurd it was skewered by “South Park” in the episode, “A History Channel Thanksgiving”.
What motivates these peddlers of yesteryear is not history but fantasy. Newt’s staple is the alternate history or the counterfactual. What if Robert E. Lee had won at Gettysburg in 1863? What if Hitler had not declared war on the United States in 1941? His other books include historical novels, as well as prophetic visions like “Winning the Future,” which opens with the line, “In the twenty-first century, America could be destroyed.”
On cable, History has followed in Newt’s footsteps with a cocktail of conspiracy theories, counterfactuals, religious hokum, and science fiction. Many of its shows are entirely fictional, like “Ancient Aliens” and “The Bible Code,” or summon future possibilities like “Armageddon” and “Life After People.” The channel has a particular fascination with fortune telling, including “Seven Signs of the Apocalypse” and “Nostradamus 2012.”
What History adds to the mix that Newt has resisted, so far at least, is reality television, with hit show like “Pawn Stars” and “Ice Road Truckers.”
For both the candidate and the cable channel, what actually did happen seems less interesting than what might have happened, or what could still happen — with History throwing in some ice trucks for good measure.
Focusing on alternatives to history has proved to be a recipe for success. Newt’s eight counterfactuals and historical novels are bestsellers. By avoiding the actual past, History has become the fifth most popular cable channel.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing, or reading, fantastical stories. And Newt and History could be the gateway drug that lures people into a more substantive engagement with the past. Alternatively, their rise may reflect, and reinforce, a national dumbing down of history.
In any case, the real problem is that Newt is unwilling to keep the fantasy and reality separate. For the candidate, the past is a succession of sensational moments where civilization is at risk, until one man steps forth to hold the barbarians from the gates, whether it’s Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, Thatcher, Reagan, or Newt himself. “I have an enormous personal ambition”, said Newt back in 1985, “I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it.”
The historical parallels that Newt draws are telling. When he failed to collect 10,000 signatures required to qualify for the Republican primary ballot in Virginia, he reached into the grab bag of history and pulled out Pearl Harbor. “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941,” scribbled campaign director Michael Krull on the Gingrich Facebook page. Here was an alternative universe, where the deaths of 2,400 Americans in a Japanese sneak attack were comparable to routine signature collection in Virginia. As Krull put it: “We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.” As a candidate, this kind of fantastical thinking is absurd, but as president it would be hazardous.
Newt and History are on the same page. If the Republican primary doesn’t pan out for Newt, he can always work for the cable channel. One of their upcoming shows is “Full Metal Jousting,” about a bunch of guys on horses smashing into each other. The problem with the show, of course, will be clearing all of the muck from the stables. It’s here that a solutions guy like Newt can think outside of the box — by employing poor kids as janitors.
By: Dominic Tierney, The Atlantic, January 3, 2011
Rick Santorum Has the “Heart and Faith” Necessary For Imperialism
Despite sponsoring foreign-policy legislation while in the United States Senate and preparing to run for the presidency, Rick Santorum has embarrassed himself time and again during the GOP primary when making statements about the rest of the world. The most recent example is his cartoonishly simplistic understanding of the British Empire’s decline from its 20th-century peak.
Here’s what he told a crowd Monday in Iowa, as reported by The Huffington Post’sElise Foley:
“If you look at every European country that has had world domination, a world presence, from the French to the British — 100 years ago, the sun didn’t set on the British Empire,” Santorum said at an appearance in Sioux City, Iowa. “If you look at that empire today — why? Because they lost heart and faith in their heart in themselves and in their mission, who they were and what values they wanted to spread around the world. Not just for the betterment of the world, but safety and security and the benefit of their country.” “We have taken up that cause,” Santorum added. But now, he said, “We have a president who doesn’t believe in America.”
This proved too much for Daniel Larison:
Yes, it couldn’t have had anything to do with two exhausting global conflicts that cost the lives of millions of British subjects, or the financial ruin of Britain that followed these conflicts. The British just “lost heart and faith in their heart in themselves and in their mission.” Obviously, the only thing needed to maintain “world domination” is self-confidence and resolve.
The mockery is deserved, and piling on is necessary, for it’s getting wearisome to take seriously someone who claims to venerate America’s founding values, bristles at the notion that foreign occupations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan suggest an imperial mindset, and yet asserts that Great Britain failed the world when it stopped trying to rule a fifth of its inhabitants. One wonders how long he thinks the British should’ve asserted their will in India, Ireland, and its North African colonies, among other places, and why he thinks maintenance of these colonies always enhanced rather than detracted from the safety and prosperity of the home islands.
“Believing in America” should entail an embrace of the values on which it was founded: the idea that all humans are endowed with self-evident, inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But in Santorum’s twisted formulation, belief in America requires an embrace of its military footprint in multiple foreign nations, something he apparently regards as our “cause.” In other words, the problem isn’t just that Santorum has a naive, simplistic and woefully inadequate understanding of how empires rise and fall, it’s that he regards global domination as this nation’s proper object — as if we’re called to be a hegemon on a hill rather than a city.
By: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, January 3, 2012
Can Mitt Romney Ever Flip Back Again?
The deflating open secret of the Iowa caucuses is that they don’t matter. Mitt Romney has won the Republican nomination by default. He was, and remains, wildly vulnerable to a conservative challenger. But the challenger needed to clear a modest threshold: having a national organization, enough money to engage in advertising wars, and the ability to recite standard party dogma in the form of complete sentences. Rick Perry had the first two but fell woefully short of the third. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum could pass the third but not the first two.
Remarkably, the many Republicans who could have beaten Romney all decided not to enter the race or, in the case of Tim Pawlenty, dropped out prematurely. The challengers to Romney devoted all their energies to attacking each other – not a single attack ad against Romney even aired in Iowa. None of his many, enormous vulnerabilities has been exploited. The profusely bleeding, one-armed man managed to swim through shark-infested waters because most of the sharks drowned or decided either to eat each other instead of him.
But what kind of president would Romney be?
George Packer, in a terrific column about the casual acceptance of hysterical charges in the GOP, argues that Romney has crossed a threshold of wingnuttery from which he can never return:
It would be a mistake, though, to believe that, long after Iowa, once the horse race is over, and if he’s elected, Romney could suddenly flip a switch, clear the air of the toxicity left behind by the Republican field, and return to being a cautious centrist whose most reassuring quality is his lack of principles. His party wouldn’t let him; and, after all, how a candidate runs shapes how a President governs. In politics, once a sellout, always a sellout; once a thug, always a thug.
I agree with Packer’s conclusion but not his reasoning. There is actually a pretty close analogue to Romney: George H.W. Bush. The scion of a moderate, Establishment Republican, Bush abandoned his views on abortion and supply-side economics in order to curry favor with a party moving right, and was elected president by running a dishonest and viciously demagogic campaign. Once in office, Bush fulfilled the fears of his conservative critics by governing as a real moderate. The campaign did not shape the presidency.
The difference is that Bush faced a Democratic Congress. If faced with similar circumstances, we would probably see the old Massachusetts Romney reemerge. But, if elected, he is far more likely to enjoy a Republican Congress. An interesting theme in the conservative commentary today is that Republicans, while not thrilled about Romney, truly seem to believe that he will serve as a faithful vessel for the Party’s agenda. Here is Republican member of Congress Tom Cole:
“The real division in the GOP these days is not between moderates and conservatives. It is between pragmatists and ideologues. That same division plays itself out almost every day in the House and Senate GOP Conferences,” Cole continued. “The next GOP president will be forced to govern as a conservative to maintain the support of the GOP rank and file and its caucuses in both the House and Senate. Anyone who thinks we are going to nominate an Eisenhower, Nixon or Ford is out of touch with the GOP electorate. And any GOP politician who believes he can govern from the White House as anything other than a conservative is delusional.”
This is almost surely correct. A President Romney would have little leeway to push a GOP Congress to the center, and he has pledged himself to fulfill the agenda that the Party has already determined. Former Bush administration Minister of Propaganda Pete Wehner echoes, “This year, it seems to me, the party is the sun and the candidates are the planets … They are trying to prove to primary voters that they are reliable and trustworthy when it comes to the basic platform of the GOP.”
It is surely clear that Romney’s apparent victory was obtained by erasing every last vestige of his old and (I believe, though I can’t be sure) authentic self. At this moment hardly anybody believes that his conversion was actually authentic. The support for him, such as it is, is simply a combination of disqualifying rivals and the assumption that the Party will continue to own him in office.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, January 3, 2012
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