Republicans’ Reality TV Politics
I guess I was wrong. I thought Republicans surely would have come to their senses by now. Instead, they seem to be rushing deeper into madness.
With less than a month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney, the candidate shown by polls to have the best chance of defeating President Obama, evidently remains unacceptable to most of his party. He has spent the summer and fall playing second fiddle to a series of unconvincing “front-runners” who fade into the shadows once their shortcomings become obvious.
The latest is Newt Gingrich, a man with more baggage than Louis Vuitton — and the taste for fine jewelry of Louis XIV, judging by his Tiffany’s bill. Be honest: Is there anybody out there who believes Gingrich would make it through a general-election campaign against Obama without self-destructing? I didn’t think so.
Far from settling down, the Republican contest keeps getting wackier. I can think of no better illustration than the fact that a Dec. 27 candidates debate — the last before voting begins with the Iowa caucuses — will be moderated by Donald Trump.
Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann have had the dignity and good judgment to decline participation in what is likely to be an embarrassment for all involved, except Trump, who lives in a world beyond shame. Paul’s campaign noted that the planned event would create an “unwanted, circus-like atmosphere” that is “beneath the office of the presidency.”
Gingrich, apparently lacking dignity and good judgment, will eagerly participate. He will be joined by Rick Santorum, who, let’s face it, has nothing to lose.
“I’m surprised that Mitt Romney said no,” Trump told MSNBC. “Frankly, I’m surprised, because he really wants my endorsement. I mean, he wants it very badly.”
Really? Before associating themselves too closely with Trump, I’d suggest all the candidates look at a Fox News poll from September. While 10 percent of Republicans surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate if he or she were endorsed by Trump, nearly twice as many — 18 percent — said Trump’s backing would make them less likely to vote for the candidate.
And that’s nothing compared with the potential impact in the general election against Obama. Among all voters, the Fox News poll found, only 6 percent said a Trump endorsement would make them more likely to vote for the endorsee, while a stunning 31 percent said they would be less likely to do so.
That’s quite an achievement for the helmet-haired host of “The Apprentice.” It’s hard to think of anyone else this side of Guantanamo whose backing could turn off nearly one-third of the U.S. voting population.
Doesn’t bother Gingrich, though. He seems to see participation as a matter of courage. “I think if you’re afraid to debate with Donald Trump,” he said, “people are going to say, ‘So you want me to believe you can debate Barack Obama, but you’re afraid to show up with Donald Trump?’ ”
Gingrich thus casts his lot with the likes of Sarah Palin, who claims that if she were running for president, she’d definitely take part in the Trump debate. She says the encounter will be “a positive thing” because Trump “will be able to attract a diverse demographic that maybe has not been as interested in this horse race thus far.” But since we know from the Fox News poll that much of the audience is likely to find the spectacle repellent, I suspect Palin is just showing solidarity with Trump. Reality-show stars gotta stick together.
Do you suppose Trump will ask Gingrich about the ethics violations he committed while he was speaker of the House, or the $300,000 penalty fine he had to pay? Do you think he’ll press Gingrich on the lucrative lobbying-by-another-name he’s been doing on behalf of clients such as the government-supported mortgage giant Freddie Mac? Do you imagine he’ll read Gingrich his Dickensian quotes about child labor laws and ask him to explain which jobs are suitable for urchins and which are not?
No, no and no. This show can have only one star, and we already know who it is. No matter which candidates show up, Donald Trump’s debate will be about Donald Trump. I’m betting that at some point during the event, Trump will actually utter the phrase “You’re fired.”
And from the direction of the White House, you’ll hear the sound of high-fives.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 9, 2011
“Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011”: Republicans Color The Abortion Debate
Rep. Trent Franks established his credentials as a civil rights leader last year when the Arizona Republican argued that, because of high abortion rates in black communities, African Americans were better off under slavery.
But the congressman doesn’t just talk the talk. On Tuesday, he chaired a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on legislation he is introducing that would protect African American women from themselves — by making it harder for them to have abortions.
“In 1847, Frederick Douglass said, ‘Right is of no sex, truth is of no color, God is the father of us all and all are brethren,’ ” Franks proclaimed as he announced what he calls the “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011.”
Drawing a line from the Civil War to the suffragist movement to defeating Hitler to the civil rights era, Franks determined that “there is one glaring exception” in the march toward equality. “Forty to 50 percent of all African American babies, virtually one in two, are killed before they are born,” he said. “This is the greatest cause of death for the African Americans.” Franks called the anti-abortion fight “the civil rights struggle that will define our generation.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who, unlike Franks, is African American and a veteran of the civil rights movement, took a different historical view. “I’ve studied Frederick Douglass more than you,” said Conyers. “I’ve never heard or read him say anything about prenatal nondiscrimination.”
Orwellian naming aside, the House Republicans’ civil rights gambit (which follows passage of a similar bill in Franks’s Arizona and marks an attempt to get an abortion bill to the House floor before year’s end) points to an interesting tactic among conservatives: They have taken on a new, and somewhat suspect, interest in the poor and in the non-white. To justify their social policies, they have stolen the language of victimization from the left. In other words, they are practicing the same identity politics they have long decried.
Newt Gingrich, now threatening Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination, tried a similar argument when he argued for the elimination of “truly stupid” child labor laws and suggested that students could replace the janitors in their schools. He further explained that he was trying to help children in poor neighborhoods who have “no habits of working.”
Developer Donald Trump, who owns a Virginia country club that counts Gingrich as a member, announced this week that he would join with Gingrich to help “kids in very, very poor schools” — by extending his “Apprentice” TV reality show concept to all of 10 lucky kids. “We’re going to be picking 10 young wonderful children, and we’re going to make them apprenti,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a little fun with it.”
This “fun” might sound less patronizing if these conservatives displayed a similar concern for the well-being of the poor and the non-white during debates over budget cuts. But, whatever the motives, lawmakers and conservative activists were not bashful when they held a pre-hearing news conference Tuesday, standing beside posters directed at Latinos and African Americans (“black children are an endangered species”).
“It is horrific that in America today, babies are being killed based on their race and based on their sex,” protested Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America. Other participants in the news conference suggested that Planned Parenthood is “excited to take money specifically earmarked to kill a black baby” and linked abortion-rights advocates to eugenics, euthanasia and the Holocaust.
These conservatives raise a good point about the troubling implications of abortion based on gender selection — although the problem exists mostly in places such as China, beyond the reach of the House Judiciary Committee. Harder to follow is the logic behind the argument that African American women are racially discriminating against their own unborn children.
“As John Quincy Adams so eloquently stated,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) said, “how can we expect God to keep blessing America when we’re treating brothers and sisters this way simply because of their race?”
“This morning, you can walk into a clinic and get an abortion if you find out your child is African American,” said Patrick Mahoney, a conservative activist.
If you find out your child is African American? So a black woman would have an abortion because she discovers — surprise! — that her fetus is also black?
Before the audience had a chance to digest that, Mahoney began shouting about how abortion is “lynching” — frightening a child in the front row, who cried out and hugged his mother.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 7, 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.
“Divided And Undisciplined”: The GOP Circus Is In Town
Even Republicans have to be laughing at the circus sideshow the GOP presidential candidates are putting on. The Mitt-Rick-Herman act was so comical this week it looks concerted, almost like they collaborated with the Democratic National Committee. Team Obama is grinning so hard its ears are hurting, because 10 weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, the Republican Party is divided, the candidates are undisciplined and the voters don’t love any of them. Just in time for the real ugliness to begin a few weeks from now.
The marquee moment belongs to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, of course, indulging in birtherism on Monday night so that he could step on Tuesday’s rollout of his flat-tax plan. Sure, Perry tried to discount the birth-certificate controversy — sort of — while throwing some greasy scraps to the Trumpsters who still believe a U.S. president has actually released a fake certificate.
“I’m not really worried about the president’s birth certificate,” Perry said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s fun to poke at him a little bit and say, ‘Hey, how about, let’s see your grades and your birth certificate.’ ” Perry made sure to mention that Donald Trump recently said he didn’t think the birth certificate was real. And he said it’s “a good issue to keep alive.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney could have jumped all over that — if he hadn’t been busy shooting himself in the foot in the battleground state of Ohio. Yes, Romney decided a fresh flip-flop was in order, despite the fact that his critics are happy to savor his many others. While at a Republican call center in Ohio, he refused to comment on an Ohio law limiting collective bargaining that he had expressed support for months ago. After being pummeled by conservatives, Romney reiterated his, um, previous support.
Herman Cain, who tops the GOP field in a new CBS/New York Times poll, spent the last few days telling reporters who asked tough policy questions that he needed a little more time to think of an answer. He learned the hard way by saying on CNN that abortion is a family’s choice. Whoops — better to leave details out of this whole thing. Cain still can’t really be found on the campaign trail. No, the motivational speaker was in Texas selling books and giving a speech. And despite Perry’s attempt to beat Cain at his 9-9-9 game with a flat-tax plan, Cain-world still scored much buzz with a weirdo Web ad featuring his campaign manager Mark Block smoking into the camera. It already has more than 387,000 hits on YouTube.
With that kind of juice, who needs to endure the icy winds of the door-to-door campaigning Iowans demand of their caucus winners? If Cain continues to surge without leaving the book tour, then we will know that talking to voters in town-hall meetings and asking for their support is no longer necessary. In fact, perhaps televised debates aren’t, either. Perry told Bill O’Reilly in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that while his debate performances have been disappointing, the debates themselves are a mistake. “If there was a mistake, it was probably ever doing one of the campaign [debates] when all they’re interested in is stirring up between the candidates instead of really talking about the issues that are important to the American people.” His campaign said Perry will attend one more in Michigan, but beyond that he might be a no-show.
That’s understandable. Questions at debates about serious policy matters — like what his response would be to the Taliban gaining control of Pakistani’s nuclear weapons — just aren’t Rick Perry’s idea of “fun.”
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, October 26, 2011
How Fox News Is Really Destroying The Republican Party
Would more House Republicans rather have John Boehner‘s job or Sean Hannity’s? How many Republican presidential candidates would rather be in a Fox News studio than the White House? The wave of stunt candidates so far — Donald Trump, Herman Cain — and those who have opted out of the race to keep their TV gigs — Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin — suggests the answer is a non-zero number. Even seemingly serious establishment candidate Tim Pawlenty has reportedly hit up Roger Ailes for a post-campaign contract (Ailes shot him down.) If the GOP‘s presidential circus this year has taught us anything it’s the allure of conservative media over Republican politics, and media seems to be winning.
Tea Partiers have two career tracks: get elected or become a pundit. And it often seems like they’re using one to audition for the other. Louisiana Rep. Tom Graves, whom his local newspaper describes as a guy with “a far noisier, more peppery style, [who has] proven quite adept at drawing free media attention,” is one of the House freshmen who, as we noted earlier, House Speaker John Boehner is having a hard time controlling, largely because the top Republican on Capitol Hill doesn’t have much to offer him. Graves, of course, is a popular guest on Fox.
Donald Trump scored a regular spot on Fox & Friends by claiming his researchers had found evidence Obama might not have been born in America. He’s not a big fundraiser, he’s not a policy wonk, and the majority of Americans don’t like him, but candidate after candidate has lined up to meet with him in Manhattan, not some farm in Iowa. Sarah Palin, too, pretended to run for president for months, only to opt to keep her day job as paid TV analyst, which she said would leave her “unshackled.” Mike Huckabee, who was in the top two in national polls for the first half of the year, decided to stay on the network having just built a nice mansion for himself in Florida. Fox cancelled Rick Santorum‘s Fox contract when he started running for president, but given that Santorum lost his last election in 2006, it might be nice to get that job back once he loses this one too. Michele Bachmann rose to prominence with her many cable news interviews, but in recent months, she’s been undone by her own unscriptedness, implying vaccines cause mental retardation just because a woman walked up to her and told her so. That might be something a conservative talk show host can get away with, but much harder on the campaign trail.
And then there’s Herman Cain. He’s going through a crisis of seriousness despite ascent in the polls, in no small part because he seems more interested in selling books than building a political organization that can win elections. At least, as he told Businessweek‘s Joshua Green, he’s not being greedy about it. “I’m still doing paid speeches,” Cain told Green, “But I have not raised my prices. This economy’s on life support, so I’m very mindful of those companies that would like to have me come and speak. But I’m not gonna take advantage of my newfound popularity just to put more dollars in my pocket.” Yet!
Is it any wonder why the only guy who seems to want the GOP’s nomination more than he wants a timeslot on Fox News is the one who’s already too rich to care about Roger Ailes’s money?
By: Elspeth Reeve, The Atlantic Wire, October 20, 2011
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