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“Moses, Moses”: Behold The Power of Newt

Newt Gingrich has publicly pledged to have the single most productive day in presidential history. Gingrich has taken to listing his first-day proposals during recent stump speeches, but he promised to take it a step further when he spoke last night. He promised to release a new Contract With America during his non-concession speech— “a personal one between me and you”—that would detail his plans once he enters office. “We’re going to put this together in a way that you will be able to see in writing with my signature, and you’ll be able to hold me accountable,” Gingrich said.

For Gingrich, it’s not enough to promise voters that you’ll bring change to Washington—you have to bring about that change in the span of a few hours. By my assessment, it seemed like far too ambitious of a plan, just given the taxing schedule of inauguration, what with changing tuxedos between each ball and whatnot. But Gingrich offered a rebuke to my timekeeper’s cynicism last night. “All of this is going to happen about two hours after the inaugural address,” Gingrich said.

Having knocked aside that pesky problem of feasibility, Gingrich added another pledge, “I will sign that day an executive order reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy, no U.S. money will go anywhere in the world to pay for abortions, period.”

These first day pledges have an almost mystical power in Gingrich’s worldview. It’s not enough to encourage Congress to deconstruct all of the accomplishments of the Obama presidency in a matter of weeks; he’ll also implement every conservative pipe dream with a stroke of his pen. Since the world will be aware of his arrival in the Oval Office, Gingrich thinks the economy will change on a dime. “People say to me ‘how quickly will things turnaround?'” Gingrich told a large rally in The Villages on Sunday. “Let’s talk about jobs. Late on election night when we defeat Barack Obama people will start making decisions to create new jobs.”

With everything planned for that first day, Gingrich will quickly run out of plans to enact. My guess: should Gingrich’s presidency become a reality (a dwindling proposition after last night) he’ll roll out a mission accomplished banner by the start of the second week and send himself on a congratulatory tour of the country—likely hawking a book collecting all of his grand accomplishments.

 

By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, February 1, 2012

February 2, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mitt Romney Isn’t Too Perfect—He’s Too Phony

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker has a theory: Former Gov. Mitt Romney doesn’t have a problem connecting with people; rather, people have trouble connecting with him.

Why? Because he’s too perfect:

[H]andsome, rich and successful, he is happily married to  a beautiful wife, father to five strapping sons and grandfather to  many. At the end of a long day of campaigning, his hair hasn’t moved.  His shirt is still unwrinkled and neatly tucked into pressed jeans. He  goes to bed the same way he woke up—sober, uncaffeinated, seamless and  smiling in spite of the invectives hurled in his direction.

What’s wrong with this guy? Nada. Which is precisely the problem. …

For most everyday Americans, life is less tidy. Half have been or  will be divorced. Someone in the family is an alcoholic or a drug user.  Most can barely pay their bills, and there’s not much to look forward  to. When most Americans of Romney’s vintage look in the mirror, they see  an overweight person they don’t recognize.

Great Odin’s raven, I thought I’d heard it all!

I’m not omniscient enough to plumb the psyches of millions of  “everyday Americans” and imagine what they see in the mirror. I’ll take  my cues from the diverse handful of men who’ve seen up Romney up close.  Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani  and former Sen. Fred Thompson campaigned against him in 2008. To varying  degrees, each of these men quickly learned to despise Romney.

It’s clear that former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry (and  probably Herman Cain) also despise Romney. In the latter pair’s case,  one could argue it’s sour grapes. But not in ’08, when Romney flopped  badly.

My question to Parker and Jennifer Rubin and David Frum and all the  others who are elbowing for room inside the Romney Tank is this: Why do  these men fundamentally dislike Mitt Romney?  Isn’t it because, on the matter of intellectual honesty, they find  Romney all too human? According to John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s Game Change,  an insider’s chronicle of the ’08 campaign, McCain said at one point  that he preferred former Rep. Tom Tancredo—”because at least he believes  the things he says.”

Sure, McCain, Giuliani and Huckabee (as well as former Gov. Tim  Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann) have come out in favor of Romney in  this campaign, but they’re doing so out of partisan unity or  professional positioning.

Lack of charisma or relatability is not an insurmountable obstacle in  American politics. Even former Vice President Al Gore managed to win  the popular vote, after all. Romney’s principal problem isn’t a lack of  personal connection with people. It’s that he irritates people. He’s a  transparent phony who, unlike President Bill Clinton, isn’t even  particularly good at being phony.

I’d have far more respect for Mitt Romney if he had the guts to say what he really thinks, which is this.

According to Frum, this is akin to asking Romney to be a political martyr.

That’s silly.

Romney had two options besides committing harakiri.

He could’ve stayed in the private sector (where I hear that created  thousands of jobs!), or if his thirst for power and influence could not  be denied, he could’ve run as a moderate Democrat.

But Romney chose door. No. 3—to run as a belief-beggaring conservative Republican.

Sorry, Kathleen; I’m pretty happy when I look in the mirror and at my  beautiful wife and children. And I still think Mitt Romney is a rancid  impostor.

 

By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, February 1, 2012

February 2, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012, GOP Presidential Candidates | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Tea Party Plan To Save Scott Walker

Tea partiers are gung-ho to help the Wisconsin governor fend off a recall vote—and their fate may well be tied to his.

As soon as April, millions of Wisconsinites will vote on whether to oust Gov. Scott Walker—a rising Republican star and arguably the most polarizing governor in politics today—just two years into his first term in office. Walker’s recall election is a referendum on his hardline conservative agenda, including curbing collective bargaining rights for state workers and slashing education funding. For Walker himself it’s a pivotal moment in his young political career.

The recall fight is also a crucial test for the tea party, the populist movement that helped elect Walker in 2010, vigorously defended him during last winter’s protests over his anti-union “budget repair” bill, and has been organizing to prevent his ouster. The movement’s support is flagging, its clout dwindling, its buzz mostly gone. But now, tea partiers at the state and national levels are rallying around Walker’s recall defense, hoping a victory could bolster the movement in a critical election year. A defeat, on the other hand, would give ammo to liberals and conservatives alike who say the tea party is all but dead.

In recent months, the Tea Party Express, a national organization, and the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, a tea party-linked political action committee, have waded into the recall fight, blasting out more than a dozen emails to supporters and launching a $100,000 “money bomb” fundraiser to help defend Walker. They argue that the outcome has national implications for the 2012 presidential election; a Tea Party Express email to supporters in January announced that Wisconsin is “Ground Zero for the Battle Against Obama’s Liberal Agenda.”

The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama says it has raked in small  donations from supporters throughout the country, from Napa, California, to  Nashua, New Hampshire. The group’s director of grassroots outreach, Donald La  Combe, wrote in an email to supporters that funds would go toward TV and  radio ad campaigns as well as “war rooms” throughout Wisconsin to  bolster Walker’s support among voters. “We’re going to win this fight,  we’re going to DEFEAT the RECALL, and we’re going to stop Barack Obama  from getting Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral Votes,” La Combe wrote. (Neither  of the above groups responded to requests for comment.)

Two Wisconsin tea party groups, We the People of the Republic and the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, claim to have signed up  11,000 volunteers and trained 4,000 of them to scrutinize the estimated 1  million signatures gathered by Walker foes. That signature total was  nearly two times the 540,208 needed to launch the recall process;  nonetheless, the two groups’ vetting operation, VerifyTheRecall.com,  was created to root out duplicate signatures and “downright fraud”  found in recall petitions for Walker and Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch,  their website says. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin branch of Americans for  Prosperity, the Koch-funded group that helped train and grow the tea party, held a town hall earlier this month touting the budget reforms enacted by Walker and state Republicans.

It’s not hard to see why the tea partiers would go all-in to defend Walker. There is no clear tea party favorite left to rally behind in the 2012 GOP presidential nomination fight with Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain  all out of the race. Walker, on the other hand, is right in the tea  party’s sweet spot: He battles unions, axes state spending, rejects federal funding, and is rigidly pro-life and pro-gun rights.

The tea party also has a lot of political capital invested in Walker.  When intense anger over Walker’s anti-union “budget repair” bill  spilled into the streets of the state capital of Madison last February,  Americans for Prosperity swooped in to hold a counter-protest defending Walker. Other tea party groups also rushed to the aid of Walker and ripped his critics.

“Walker is a central figure to them, their Sir Galahad battling the  evil unions,” says Theda Skocpol, a Harvard sociology professor and coauthor of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Walker ultimately signed the bill into law in March, and it later survived multiple legal challenges.

Last summer, Tea Party Express and Tea Party Nation, two national  groups, launched a four-day bus tour across Wisconsin defending six  Republicans facing recall elections for their roles in the battle over  Walker’s anti-union bill. (Republicans lost two recall races, but clung  to a narrow, one-seat majority in the state Senate—a “victory” the tea  party claimed credit for.) Tea Party Express also ran TV ads defending Walker’s agenda on the economy.

How much influence does the tea party have at this point? An analysis  last July by the liberal blog Think Progress found that the number of  events held each month by the Tea Party Patriots, a national group, had  dropped by half in the first seven months of 2011 compared with the  same period in 2010. Harvard’s Skocpol affirms that tea party events  “are falling off some, but there is not a collapse.”

A Pew Research Center analysis published in November  found that 23 percent of people in the 60 districts represented nationwide by  House Tea Party Caucus members disagreed with the tea party, up from 18  percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, 25 percent of respondents in those  districts agreed with the tea party, an 8 percent drop. And a Rasmussen poll  this month reported that dislike of the tea party was at an all-time  high—and that 46 percent of respondents said the tea party would hurt  the GOP in the 2012 elections.

A recent Marquette University poll  (PDF) found similarly lackluster support for the tea party in  Wisconsin. Forty one percent of respondents thought poorly of the tea  party while 33 percent viewed it favorably.

Still, even if the tea party suffers a major defeat with Walker’s  recall, their influence will be felt for years to come given the  hardline agendas promoted by state and federal lawmakers swept into  office in 2010. And Skocpol says the recall election could be a  galvanizing event for the movement. “Because all of the tea party forces  have not been able to unite on a GOP candidate for president, they’re  going to redouble on things like the Wisconsin crusade,” she says.  “Grassroots tea partiers everywhere will be be following and  contributing to the Walker campaign.”

February 1, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“The Art Of Insincerity”: Mitt Romney, Like Father, Like Son?

In conservative political folklore, the 1964 election was a crushing defeat that laid the philosophical groundwork that ultimately led to Ronald Reagan’s triumph.

No one likes to talk as proudly about 1968’s razor-thin election of  Richard Nixon. It’s much more sanitary to take Sen. Barry Goldwater and  skip straight to Reagan. But ’68 was at least as important as ’64, and  maybe more so; it was that campaign that yielded the potent Southern strategy;  the counter-counterculture; the full-throated resentment toward coastal  elites. If ’64 was aimed at the conservative mind, ’68 was aimed at the  conservative viscera.

The late Gov. George Romney, of course, was a minor figure in the  drama of ’68. A moderate Rockefeller Republican, he would lose soundly  to Nixon, the former vice president and California senator.

With all this in mind, I looked up one of my favorite modern political histories, Garry Wills’s Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man.

Here’s what Wills had to say about that era’s candidate Romney:

Romney built up a belief in his “nonpolitical”  background: here was a man (men thought) who worked his way up in the  business world and then—sincere novice amid deal-fettered pros—entered  politics with the innocence of an outsider. The truth is that Romney  began his career in politics, after three unsuccessful attempts (at  three different schools) to get a college education. He went to  Washington, in pursuit of his childhood sweetheart, the intense Lenore,  and got a job as an aide to Senator David Walsh of Massachusetts. He did  work on tariff bills that equipped him for a new career—a lobbyist for  Alcoa, he spent nine years as a Washington glad-hander around Burning  Tree Country Club and the National Press Club. Then he became an  automobile lobbyist (on the carmakers’ Trade Advisory Commission),  dealing with the National Recovery Administration. From this post he  rose to become manager of the AMA (American Manufacturers  Association)—an office that made him, in wartime, managing director of  the Automotive Council for War Production. He had now spent nineteen  years fronting for big business among politicians.

Hmph. This sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it? To be fair, former  Gov. Mitt Romney succeeded in business before failing at politics, and  he never was a lobbyist. But there’s still the same “pious baloney” about a private-sector white knight riding in to save government.

Yet here are a couple of key differences between Romney pere and  fils. According to Wills, George Romney wasn’t known for smarts: “Robert  McNamara, who urged Romney to get into politics when they were both  auto men around Detroit, later came to know him better: Romney’s  trouble, he concluded, is that the man ‘has no brains.’ ”

Even more interesting, there’s this. Romney’s presidential ambitions  were significantly thwarted by his change of heart over the Vietnam  War. He’d gone from supporting it as “morally right and necessary” to  calling for peace “at an early time.” He compared a briefing he’d  received in November 1965 to “brainwashing.”

This was no convenient flip-flop, however. Wills notes:

His greatest gift had been mesmeric power to convince  others because he so convinced himself. The blue eyes burn toward you  under that low white cap of hair; the block of athletic face is rigid  with fresh seizures of sincerity. He has a fanatic’s belief in  everything he says or does, and a prophet’s fierce anger if anyone  questions him. A desire to keep his burning conviction unsullied by  earthly ties explains his later aloofness from politics and politicians.  … He went down, thrashing ridiculously, in 1968; yet he maintained to  the end that it was a public service for him to call his briefing a  case of successful brainwashing.

In this, the son is strikingly unlike the father. It’s clear that,  whatever else Mitt Romney gleaned from the experience of ’68, he learned  about the sometimes necessary art of insincerity. Everything about  Mitt’s political career to this point suggests that he’s not content to  go down in honorable defeat, as Goldwater did. He will not be undone by  “seizures of sincerity” or a “prophet’s anger.” He is smarter, more  devious, and more contemptuous than his father.

If he could speak to his father on the other side, he might say, “You  tried your way, Dad. Now I’m trying mine. This is how a Rockefeller  Republican overcomes the ‘muttonheads’ who fell for Goldwater and  Nixon.”

 

By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, January 31, 2012

February 1, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012, GOP Presidential Candidates | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Has Mitt Romney’s Hit Job On Newt Gingrich Gone Too Far?

After South Carolina, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign decided it was time to change their strategy toward former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It was time to take him out, similar to what they did in Iowa. Take no prisoners, forget Obama for the moment, and direct their fire at Gingrich. Smart strategy? Of course. The only strategy, really, since back-to-back victories in South Carolina and Florida would have been devastating to Romney, certainly in the short term.

But has the Romney camp gone too far?

Now, I am not going to defend Newt Gingrich in the slightest—I am talking tactics here.

Let me first make the argument for the strategy they have adopted. Gingrich is like the Jason character from the Friday the 13th horror movies. He keeps coming back!

He grabs the attention of Tea Party voters and hard-core  conservatives and he has shown he can mobilize them. He is colorful and a  press magnet. Left unchecked, he has shown that he can move poll  numbers in his favor with his debate appearances. Also, he has raised  serious money after his victories and rising poll blips, and he has the  Adelsons—casino moguls from Nevada—who have put  over $10 million  into his campaign and can give more out of their petty cash fund. He  even eclipsed Romney in national polls.

In short, you ignore Newt at your peril. A failure to engage would have been a disastrous strategy.

Nevertheless, Romney and his Super-PACs have spent $15 million and  counting to tear into Gingrich like a pit bull on steroids. They have  decided that they will not let up until he is crushed in Florida. This  all-or-nothing strategy has a few problems. First, Romney’s negative  poll numbers have skyrocketed to very damaging levels. He may take Newt  out in Florida, but it is costing him big time. Only Sen. John Kerry had  net negative numbers at this point in the race and it certainly  affected his candidacy. Second, Gingrich is furious and is pulling out  all the stops to take on Romney. He has nothing to lose. This is his  last campaign and he is all in. It seems Newt wants  Mitt’s hide almost  as much as Obama’s.

Finally, though no debates are scheduled until late February, these  are moneymakers for the networks, and my guess is someone will attempt  to pull several together next month. Gingrich will go back to his plan  of fighting Romney with the press and appearances. He has been enraged  by Romney’s surrogates tailing him and engaging reporters, and he is  very likely to adopt the same tactic(as he promised to do against  Obama).

Newt sees this as a long slog and he wants to grab as many delegates  as he can in these non winner-take-all states, challenge Romney  everywhere he is able, and hope that he can secure the nomination in the  end. Through all this, former Sen. Rick Santorum hangs in and hopes  that he can somehow come up the side, as these two engage in  hand-to-hand combat.

The question really is not whether Romney should have taken on  Gingrich. He had to, of course. But, given Gingrich’s personality and  where he is as a candidate, should he have pulled some of the ads and  mixed more positive spots in this last week in Florida?  Would it have  made any difference?  Has he bought himself a drubbing of Gingrich and  will this either force Newt out or embolden him to fight on? That’s hard  to know. But my guess is that the over-the-top negative strategy may  well come back to haunt Romney. It certainly provides plenty of material  for the Obama campaign to use leading up to November.

 

By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, January 30, 2012

January 31, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012, GOP Presidential Candidates | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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