“To Know Mitt Romney Is To Dislike Him”: Those Who Saw Romney’s Leadership Up Close
There’s a traditional model for presidential candidates when it comes to their pre-announcement career trajectory. It’s pretty straightforward: an official gets elected to a prominent office, he/she does well, his/her constituents are impressed, and the official parlays that success into a national campaign.
In recent decades, this is the path Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Reagan all took from statewide office to the White House. It’s always fascinated me how poorly Mitt Romney fits this model.
He was governor from 2003 to 2007, and as Edward Mason and Tom Mashberg explained the other day, Romney failed to impress much of anyone.
“His favorability was basically a straight line down from his honeymoon,” said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Center and a longtime Massachusetts pollster. “Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt.” […]
Romney entered the Massachusetts State House in January 2003 with a flashy favorability rating of 61 percent…. By November 2004, voters were souring, and a Suffolk poll found his favorable rating had dropped to 47 percent.
A year later, that rating sank another 14 points. Just 33 percent of Bay State voters had a favorable opinion of Romney in 2005, according to Suffolk, while 49 percent were unfavorable.
Things did not improve in 2006, when Suffolk found that his unfavorable rating had risen to 55 percent while his favorable remained stagnant.
By November 2006, as he closed out his increasingly absentee term, his overall job approval rating had cratered to 36 percent.
Thomas Whalen, a Boston University political science professor, put it this way: “To know Mitt Romney is to dislike him. That is the moral of the story.”
Maybe he looks better in hindsight? No, Romney’s former constituents still don’t like him and still don’t want him to be president.
Maybe it’s because he was a GOP governor in a reliably “blue” state? No, Massachusetts has had plenty of modern Republican governors — Weld, Cellucci, Swift — and all were more popular with their Bay State constituents than Romney.
This is all generally overlooked, which is a shame because it seems pretty important. We’re talking about a politician who’s held public office just once, for a grand total of four years. During that one term, his constituents got a good look at his leadership, and came to actively dislike him.
Romney looked at this and thought, “Hey, now I’m ready for a promotion to the White House!”
This really ought to come up on the campaign trail more often. Here’s the sample question reporters can ask Romney: why were you so woefully unpopular with your own constituents when voters gave you a chance to lead?
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 11, 2011
Gingrich: Great Debater, Greatly Flawed Candidate
Was that a wink?
Looked like it to me: As Rep. Ron Paul accused Newt Gingrich of flip-flopping, lobbying and putting taxpayers’ money in his pockets, the former House speaker looked into the audience and winked. As if to say: “I got this.”
And, for the most part, he did. The latest GOP front-runner showed Saturday night why many Republican voters suddenly believe he is the best candidate to challenge President Obama. For all his flaws — and those who worked with Gingrich say he has many of them, probably too many to be president — the former House speaker is a brilliant debater:
— He took a punch as well as he threw them.
— He defended his checkered record, even if that meant steamrolling the truth (Gingrich claimed he never lobbied or backed cap-and-trade legislation).
— He kept his ego and temper in check. Barely.
Yes, Gingrich is a great debater. But he’s not a great candidate and, if you watched closely enough, you could almost see his heavy baggage littering the debate stage.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry alluded to Gingrich’s marital difficulties: “I’ve always been of the opinion that if you cheat on your wife,” Perry said, “you’ll cheat on your business partner.”
Gingrich kept his cool. “I’ve made mistakes at times,” he replied. “I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness.”
Early in the debate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took dead aim at Gingrich’s record and rhetoric on climate change, lunar landings and child labor laws. He also accused Gingrich of being a career politician.
Gingrich seized the moment. “Let’s be candid,” he said, “The only reason you didn’t become a career politician is you lost to Teddy Kennedy in ’94.”
Killer line.
Yet in the next breath, Gingrich showed why he would be a vulnerable candidate against Obama. Defending his proposal to put poor kids to work in school cafeterias, the former House speaker said, “I’ll stand by the idea: Young people ought to learn how to work. Middle kids do work routinely. We need to give poor kids the same opportunity.”
What? Poor kids don’t work? Spoken by a Washington insider, a callous and cold politician who is out of touch with the rest of America.
His churlish side showed when Rep. Michele Bachmann accused the two leading candidates of being “Newt Romney” clones. Gingrich struck back with a disconnected answer that misled the audience about the extent of his lobbying and took a detour so he could brag about his best-selling books. “I know that doesn’t happen to fit your model,” Gingrich snapped at Bachmann, “but it happens to be true.”
Viewers were left to wonder whether Gingrich’s response was more arrogant, inaccurate or irrelevant.
But, hey, he’s a great debater.
By: Ron Fournier, The Atlantic, December 10, 2011
Romney Doubles Down On Medicare Privatization
Mitt Romney clearly didn’t want to endorse Paul Ryan’s radical budget plan, which includes a measure to end Medicare. But now that he’s losing, Romney apparently feels as if he doesn’t have any choice.
After months of avoiding taking a firm stand on Ryan’s privatization scheme — Medicare’s guaranteed benefit would be scrapped, replaced with vouchers — Romney is suddenly on board with the far-right agenda without leaving himself much in the way of wiggle room. This began in earnest yesterday, when the Romney campaign boasted, “Mitt Romney supports what Paul Ryan did. He endorsed what Paul Ryan did.”
The Romney camp then further embraced the Ryan plan overnight, unveiling a new video attacking Newt Gingrich for having criticized Medicare privatization. Today, Romney was even more explicit at an event in Iowa, responding to a voter’s question.
“I spent a good deal of time with Congressman Ryan. When his plan came out, I applauded it, as an important step,” he said. “We’re going to have to make changes like the ones Paul Ryan proposed.”
Romney added that by using “vouchers,” he intends to help “protect” Medicare.
Right about now, I suspect there are a lot of folks at the DNC and at Obama for America HQ who are smiling.
Remember, Romney didn’t want to go to this point. He’s been entirely aware of how radioactive Ryan’s Medicare scheme was — polls showed the American mainstream hates it — and the fact that it cost Republicans at least one congressional special election this year, and will be a major issue in 2012. When Romney was confident that he’d be the nominee, he was comfortable avoiding this issue.
But now he’s stuck. Romney apparently intends to use his support for the Ryan plan to get ahead in the GOP nominating race, despite the general-election risks, working under the assumption that there won’t be a general-election for him unless he goes to the hard-right now.
I made the case yesterday that this is a major campaign development. Jonathan Cohn goes a little further today, explaining why this “may prove to be a critical moment.”
All of this frames a pretty stark choice for the next election…. [A] vote for President Obama will be a vote to implement Obamacare and keep Medicare, while a vote for the Republican nominee, assuming it’s Gingrich or Romney, will be a vote to eliminate the former and at least begin dismantling the latter (along with Medicaid, most likely).
Or to put it a bit more simply, the choice in the next election will be for universal health care for people of all ages or universal health care for nobody.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 9, 2011
“Newtonian Self-Aggrandizement”: Newt’s Nastiness Comes Back To Haunt Him
The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Rip van Winkle of presidential politics, finally awakenedthis week with a savage counterattack against Newt Gingrich, the man who against all odds is threatening to wrest the Republican nomination from Romney.
In a conference call Thursday sponsored by Romney’s campaign, two surrogates of the former Massachusetts governor let fly with a barrage against Gingrich that was shockingly harsh even by today’s caustic standards.
“For Newt Gingrich, in an effort of self-aggrandizement, to come out and throw a clever phrase that has no other purpose than to make him sound a little smarter than the conservative Republican leadership,” said former White House chief of staff John Sununu, “is the most self-serving, anti-conservative thing one can imagine happening . . . just the latest in a pattern of anti-principled actions that really irritated his own leadership and produced 88 percent of the Republicans in Congress voting for his reprimand.”
“He’s not a reliable or trustworthy leader,” former Missouri senator Jim Talent said of Gingrich’s labeling the House Republican budget a “radical” proposition. He “says and does those kinds of things because he’s not reliable as a leader.”
Self-serving. Self-aggrandizing. Anti-conservative. Anti-principled. Hints of corruption, hypocrisy and bizarre and destructive behavior. These were brutal descriptions, and yet there was something poetic about the belated Romney assault on Gingrich. The attacks were terms were popularized by Gingrich himself in his rise to power.
Nearly two decades ago, Gingrich’s political action committee, with the help of GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, issued a now-famous memo telling Republican candidates which words they should use to describe their opponents. Among them: “anti,” “betray,” “bizarre,” “corrupt,” “destructive,” “disgrace,” “shame,” “lie,” “pathetic,” “radical,” “self-serving,” “selfish,” “shallow,” “shame,” “sick,” “traitors.”
“These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast,” this Gingrich-endorsed memo explained. “Remember that creating a difference helps you. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.”
With that memo, and with the slashing style of politics that brought Republicans to power in the House for the first time in generations, Gingrich did more than anybody else to set the tone in Washington. Now, in a form of rough justice, the savagery has come full circle and is being used against its sponsor.
Romney and his surrogates — many of whom served under Gingrich in the House — are portraying Gingrich as erratic, unreliable, hypocritical and a betrayer of friends and principles. They are contrasting that with Romney, a “leader” and champion of “reform” — terms that Gingrich’s memo, based on focus-group research, coached Republicans to use to define themselves.
Gingrich has followed his own philosophy over the years, making an art of name-calling. He once said that Democrats created a “sick society” and were the “enemy of normal Americans.” Democratic congressional leaders were “sick” and had a “Mussolini-like ego” that led them “to run over normal human beings and to destroy honest institutions.”
He called the Clintons “counterculture McGovernicks.” More recently, he accused President Obama of having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview and called him “the most serious, radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House.” Gingrich said schools should use children as laborers instead of “unionized” janitors — all phrases rich in the “contrasts” that Gingrich’s team advocated in the 1990s.
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently dug up a 1978 Gingrich quotation lamenting that “one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”
Thanks to Gingrich, this is no longer a problem, in either party. Embracing Newtonian Nastiness, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich “too erratic,” “too self-centered” and lacking “the capacity to control himself.” Former congressman Guy Molinari (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich “evil” and the prospect of him becoming president “appalling.”
Then came the Romney-hosted teleconference.
Gingrich “says outrageous things that come from nowhere, and he has a tendency to say them at exactly the time when they most undermine the conservative agenda,” Talent reported.
Gingrich “is more concerned about Newt Gingrich than he is about conservative principle,” Sununu contributed. The “off-the-cuff thinking . . . is not what you want in the commander in chief.”
Now, Gingrich said he doesn’t want to be “the attack dog in the Republican Party.” But it’s a bit late for purity. He’s Newt Gingrich, and he approved this message.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 9, 2011
Romney Acknowledges ‘Exaggeration’ On Health Care
Before this year, Mitt Romney was only too pleased to tout his health care reform law in Massachusetts as the basis for a national plan. He said he thinks his measure is “a good model for the nation”; he argued “we’ll end up with a nation that’s taken a mandate approach”; and he boasted that his plan “allows every citizen in America to get health insurance.”
All of this, however, was before 2011. Yesterday, in an interview with the editorial board of the Washington Examiner, Byron York pressed the former governor on this point.
YORK: But you wouldn’t recommend that any state adopt the plan that was adopted in Massachusetts in its entirety?
ROMNEY: In its entirety, no. But there are principles that I think that are helpful and instructive for the states to learn from and I think that there are other states that have picked up some portion of what we did. [emphasis added]
So we’ve gone from a Republican who believes his own plan is a good model for the nation to a Republican who wouldn’t even recommend other states follow his lead.
But in 2007, when Tim Russert asked about this specific point, Romney said, “I happen to like what we did. I think it’s a good model for other states. Maybe not every state but most.”
He was reminded of this yesterday.
YORK: Governor, on health care, you’ve often said that the health care plan that you’ve created in Massachusetts would be a good model for some other states. You said, “Maybe not every state, but most.”
ROMNEY: I don’t think I said “most,” but —
YORK: On “Meet the Press” in 2007.
ROMNEY: Oh did I? Did I make that exaggeration? [Laughs]
As Greg Sargent responded, “I get that Romney was joking, but still: He just described his own past assertion about the success of his signature accomplishment — one that’s now politically inconvenient for him — as an ‘exaggeration.’”
Imagine what the political world — specifically, campaign reporters — would do if John Kerry or Al Gore called their own rhetoric about their key policy priority an “exaggeration.” Voters would never hear the end of it.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 8, 2011
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