Is Newt Gingrich Winning Because He’s Not Mitt Romney?
Are Republicans forgetful or just forgiving?
Looking at the Republican polls, many are shocked to see a name now on top that had been on bottom and nearly forgotten when it came to Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich.
It’s odd how Republicans view former speaker of the House Gingrich as a Washington outsider. This is a guy who was a career politician for over four decades before he fled to the wilderness. This is a man who burned more bridges than most Republicans in my lifetime within his own party; a guy who was asked to step down as speaker and some believe pushed out of the House of Representatives entirely. This is also a man who, against the wishes of many in his party, pushed for the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton for carrying on a sexual tryst in the Oval Office, while he, Newt was committing adultery himself. A man responsible for not one, but two government shutdowns, a man who lost his party seats in Congress. And let us not forget the image of Mr. Gingrich handing his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital being treated for cancer. He’s on marriage number three, divorced two times, and is a born-again Catholic—his words, not mine.
Despite all of this, Newt’s biggest critics in his party are now silent. Those who would not back him have their checkbooks out, because, after all, he is not former Gov. Mitt Romney. Even the evangelicals are buying the fallen man speech Newt’s been giving with respect to his numerous marriages, two of which failed. And how about him being Catholic instead of an evangelical Christian, a Protestant? Well it would seem the evangelicals prefer Catholics to Mormons–again, anyone but Romney.
Some say Newt has changed, that he is a new and improved and more humblefigure. I disagree. I might have bought that when his poll numbers were down; but now that he is ranking in the top two depending on the poll you read and the time of day it is, the old Newt is back and just as bold as before.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Gingrich saying Rep. Michele Bachmann was like a student, he being the teacher, who was “factually challenged”
- He also stated that kids “in poor neighborhoods have no habit of working” (Odd, I don’t consider busting my butt at work a habit! It’s a necessity!)
And I believe as Newt’s numbers grow, so will his ego. As a GOP member stated: “His hand is never that far from the self-destruct button.”
So I’m not sure if Republicans are very forgiving or just forgetful. Did they forget the ethics violations, which resulted in a six digit fine?! Did they forget that Newt encouraged voters to contact their congressional members regarding climate change in a televised ad seated next to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2008 and now he has changed his mind? Come on, this guy taught environmental studies! He knows climate change is real and humans have contributed to it!
The bottom line is, the Republicans have to decide if they want the best candidate, the candidate that represents their people and their party, or anyone but Romney. If the Republicans want Newt, I guess they’re appealing to their non-ethical, adulterating, divorced segment of the population.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, December 7, 2011
“We” Mitt and “Fundamentally” Newt: Romney And Gingrich’s Words Reveal Their True Selves
Politicians reveal themselves by the language they use. Not simply the intricacies of their policy positions or even the quality of their intellects, but something closer to the human core. Today’s lesson in the laws of political grammar involves the indiscriminate employment of adverbs (Newt Gingrich) and the smarmy use of the first-person plural (Mitt Romney).
“In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing,” George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language.” The same is true of political rhetoric.
Indeed, as Orwell noted, “when one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases . . . one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy. . . . The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself.”
Has Orwell been watching the Republican debates?
But, to switch from Orwell to Tolstoy, all bad political rhetoric is bad in its own, telling way.
Let’s take Romney and the first-person plural first, shall we?
The most telling part of Romney’s disastrous interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier involved his bristling response to Baier’s entirely predictable — and entirely fair — questions about the former Massachusetts governor’s shifting policy positions.
“One,” Romney began, in the bulleted manner of a man who loves his PowerPoint — although he never actually made it to two. “We’re going to have to be better informed about my views on issues,” he continued, his face fixed in a tight smile.
We’re going to have to be better informed?
There is, in politics, an appropriate, energizing, even uplifting use of the first-person plural. This is the “we” as in “we Americans,” pulling together, part of a greater whole. That is not Romney’s “we.” Romney’s is not even the royal we, as in “we are not amused,” which would be bad enough.
It is the patronizing, faux “we” of the middle school principal who has just found the boys scribbling graffiti on the wall and wants to know what we are going to do about it — before he calls our parents.
At that moment of the Baier interview, you — is that we? — could see the father, church leader, investment banker, politician unaccustomed to being challenged and none too pleased with it. Indeed, according to Baier, after Romney returned to his holding room, he came back to tell Baier that the questioning was “uncalled for.”
Sorry, Principal Romney. Bret will write on the chalkboard, 100 times, “I will not ask difficult questions.”
If Romney’s “we” illuminates his attitude of unchallengeable authority, Gingrich’s profligacy with adverbs exposes his grandiosity.
The former speaker is the “Truly, Madly, Deeply” of political candidates, except his movie would be titled, “Fundamentally, Profoundly, Deeply.” Dan Amira of New York magazine conducted a heroic Nexis search of Gingrich transcripts back to 2007 and found 418 separate uses of “fundamentally” or its adjective cousin “fundamental,” including 18 in a single 2008 speech to the American Enterprise Institute.
“Most adverbs are unnecessary,” William Zinsser advised in “On Writing Well,” but adverbs are essential to the grand Gingrichian enterprise.
“We need somebody with very substantial big ideas,” Gingrich told Fox News’s Sean Hannity the other day, and you know who that somebody is.
He wants to “fundamentally rethink the federal government,” “fundamentally change unemployment compensation,” “fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America.”
Conversely, in Gingrich’s view, his opponents are equally, fundamentally wrong. President Obama “is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works,” Gingrich said in September 2010, in the course of suggesting that only a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview could explain the president’s behavior.
If the president “gets reelected with this economy, this deficit, these problems,” Gingrich warned Saturday at a candidate forum, “he’s going to think it vindicates his Saul Alinsky radicalism and his commitment to fundamentally change America.”
This adverbial outpouring represents both the allure of Gingrich and his downside. Gingrich is bursting with ideas. Yet his self-regard is similarly immense, and his inclination to rhetorical extremes presents a constant danger of overstepping.
Romney’s language suggests his distaste for being challenged and his barely concealed sense of superiority. Gingrich’s language illustrates his egotism and indiscipline. As Romney and Gingrich might say, we’re going to have to work to fundamentally transform that.
By: Ruth Marcus, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 6, 2011
“Call Me Crazy” Jon Huntsman: What A Primary Can Do To A Candidate
Remember when Jon Huntsman, the so-called moderate of the Republican presidential field, was saying sensible things about climate change? Well, forget it.
Jon Huntsman attended a packed blogger sit down at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro attended, pressing the GOP presidential candidate about his position on climate change.
In August, Huntsman acknowledged the broad body of science pointing to climate change. Seated at an elite conservative think tank, however, Huntsman played a different tune, saying climate scientists “owe us more” information before we can decide if climate change is real.
“I think there’s probably more debate to be played out within the scientific community,” he said.
For those who haven’t been following him closely, it’s important to realize that Huntsman was not only a voice of sanity on climate change; he actually seemed to take some pride in using the issue to differentiate himself from his Republican rivals. The former governor used to even support cap and trade.
Asked about climate change in May, Huntsman said, “All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them.”
Responding to Rick Perry in August, Huntsman said, “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem…. When we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”
Around the same time, Huntsman boasted, “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
What was “crazy” was thinking Huntsman could thrive in national Republican politics saying sane things about science. Now that the pressure’s on, he’s pulling a Romney, abandoning what he knows to be true, and desperately trying to tell his party’s right-wing base what it wants to hear.
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 6, 2011
Human Weather Vane Mitt Romney Shifts On Payroll Tax Cut
The idea of extending the payroll tax cut polls very well. How do I know? Because human weather vane Mitt Romney suddenly vocally supports it.
When he was asked about President Obama’s jobs plan during a GOP presidential debate in October, Romney was dismissive of the idea of extending the payroll tax cut on the grounds that it would do nothing to create jobs. Here’s his answer, in full (emphases mine):
MR. ROMNEY: No one likes to see tax increases, but look, the–the stimulus bills the president comes out with that are supposedly going to create jobs, we’ve now seen this played in the theater several times. And what we’re seeing hasn’t worked. The American people know that when he–when he went into office and borrowed $800 billion for a massive jobs stimulus program, that they didn’t see the jobs. Some of those green jobs we were supposed to get, that’s money down the drain. The right course for America is not to keep spending money on stimulus bills, but instead to make permanent changes to the tax code.
Look, when you give–as the president’s bill does, if you give a temporary change to the payroll tax and you say, we’re going to extend this for a year or two, employers don’t hire people for a year or two. They make an investment in a person that goes over a long period of time. And so if you want to get this economy going again, you have to have people who understand how employers think, what it takes to create jobs. And what it takes to create jobs is more than just a temporary shift in a tax stimulus. It needs instead fundamental restructuring of our economy to make sure that we are the most attractive place in the world for investment, for innovation, for growth and for hiring, and we can do that again.
MS. GOLDMAN: So you would be OK with seeing the payroll tax cuts–
MR. ROMNEY: Look, I don’t like–(inaudible)–little Band- Aids. I want to fundamentally restructure America’s foundation economically.
Romney gives no indication whatsoever of favoring an extension of the payroll tax. If anything he indicates a willingness to see it rise, saying, “No one likes to see tax increase, but …” to start and giving his much ballyhooed “Band-Aids” answer when questioner Julianna Goldman asserts that he’d be OK with the payroll tax cuts expiring.
That was October. Since then the political winds have started blowing strongly in favor of extending the tax cut—so strongly in fact that, Romney told conservative radio show host Michael Medved, “I would like to see the payroll tax cut extended just because I know that working families are really feeling the pinch right now—middle-class Americans are having a hard time.”
Of course Romney’s camp is outraged at the notion that badmouthing an extension in October and supporting it in December constitutes either a flip or a flop from the famously flexible former Massachusetts governor. “Governor Romney has never met a tax cut he didn’t like,” spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement E-mailed to reporters Monday night. “He has made it clear that he does not believe that by itself the payroll tax cut will create the type of permanent long term change that is needed to turn the economy around.”
Let’s give Romney the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that in October he liked the idea of a payroll tax cut extension. The characterization of him as a human weather vane still holds: He kept his support secret in October because he apparently didn’t think a GOP debate audience would cotton to that view; now he’s trumpeting it because the winds have shifted.
Who needs polls when we have Mitt Romney?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, December 6, 2011
Holy Crap, Newt Gingrich Might Actually Be The Republican Nominee
When an election is some time away, pollsters typically ask people, “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?” It often seems like a silly question, because of course the election isn’t today. But eventually, today comes. We imagine that up until the election, people’s beliefs about the candidates are unformed and not held with much conviction. But as Election Day approaches, those beliefs harden, to finally come to fruition in the vote.
And for some people that’s true. But for many others, even the decision they finally make on Election Day could be different if the election were moved back a couple of weeks. Which is why it’s now entirely possible that Newt Gingrich, possibly the most repellent, unelectable political figure America has seen in the last couple of decades, could actually be the Republican nominee for president.
Think of a Republican-base voter—let’s call her Gladys. At first, Gladys had no idea whom she supported. Then Donald Trump played with getting into the race, and though it seemed a little crazy, Gladys thought Trump was a compelling figure. But then Michele Bachmann came along, saying things that just tickled Gladys to death. She was all set to support her. But then Rick Perry got into the race, and now it really seemed like he was Gladys’s choice. He seemed like a true-blue conservative, and someone with a real record of accomplishment. But then he turned out to be kind of a nincompoop, and Herman Cain looked like such a straight-talking breath of fresh air. But then he had his issues, and now Gladys has been convinced that Newt Gingrich is her guy.
The point is that though she never had to, Gladys was willing to vote for each of these candidates at one time or another. It isn’t as though she had a stated preference for Perry, but if you shoved her into a voting booth she’d say, “Oh, if it’s an actual vote, well in that case I’ll pick Romney.”
So in this primary, timing is everything. We’ve all assumed that Newt Gingrich, who is now clearly leading in the polls, would self-destruct before anyone actually had to vote for him. But now all he has to do is hold out for 28 more days, which is when the Iowa caucuses take place. If he wins there, he’ll get a wave of positive news coverage (look for Time and Newsweek covers with headlines like “The Return of Newt”), and he could actually pull out a win in New Hampshire, where like everywhere else, few people feel that strongly about Romney, even when they support him.
Of course, between now and then, Romney will have to unleash some vicious assaults on Gingrich, and there is plenty of material with which to construct them. Gingrich could plummet next week. But Newt becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for president—an utterly absurd notion for every minute since it was first floated back in 1994—could actually happen. Dear god.
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