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
More Damaged Than All Other Candidates Combined, Newt Is A Risky Bet
Despite frenzied prognostications from the political commentariat about Newt Gingrich’s inadequate war chest, lack of an actual campaign operation in the early voting states, potential absence from key ballots and even burdensome debt, they matter little as long as the former House Speaker continues to snooker GOP voters into thinking he can beat President Obama.
New polls showing Gingrich at the top of the field in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida explain why his sudden vault to front-runner status is genuine and durable; how (at least for now) Gingrich has surmounted the insurmountable and convinced voters who know him well that he is viable in a general election.
In focus groups Democratic pollster Peter Hart conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center last week, respondents characterized Gingrich as “grandfatherly.” In some polls voters have called him “authentic,” and a new New York Times/CBS News poll found that Iowa voters think Gingrich has the best chance of defeating President Obama, is most empathetic, the strongest commander in chief and best prepared for the job of president. Evangelical Christians, who don’t trust Mormons like Mitt Romney, are throwing their support by 3-to-1 behind the twice-divorced Gingrich, also an admitted adulterer.
Although Gingrich would conclude that his new popularity is a testament to his brilliance or at least to his powers of persuasion, it actually reflects an unrelenting resistance to Romney that has caused GOP voters to swerve chaotically from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain. Gingrich was always a choice, but never a palatable one until the circus had finally folded tents and left town. Unlike the favorites before him, in Gingrich voters have someone steeped in critical policy matters, deeply interested in the problems the nation faces and effective at debating. But as a general-election candidate he is far more damaged than all of the other candidates combined.
Most who know him expect Gingrich to soon perform a campaign-ending act of self-destruction, with his trademark recklessness. No one will be surprised by new reports in The Washington Post that Gingrich has spent $3 for every $2 he raised in his campaign and that he paid himself back $42,000 for a mailing list his business gave the campaign, before paying back other vendors.
He sure doesn’t plan to stop running his mouth — just capturing the lead in polling last week led him to boast he would be the nominee, take credit for defeating communism in Congress and then suggest that poor people don’t work and are raising their children to be criminals. Indeed, Gingrich is just getting warmed up, and feels free to say almost anything at this point. After all, he practically embraced amnesty for illegal immigrants and didn’t see even a slight dent in his support. The voters have decided to overlook his personal failings, policy flip-flops, questionable ethics and even his attempts to explain that making more than $100 million representing interests like Freddie Mac in Washington wasn’t lobbying because he never needed the money because he makes $60,000 every time he gives a speech.
Unless they change their minds, Tea-infused Republican voters are opting for everything they have criticized: Gingrich is a controversial insider their party already turned away once because of his failed leadership and who has enriched himself with his access ever since. He isn’t a pure conservative, he isn’t fresh and he has no credibility as someone prepared to cut off the stranglehold of special interests.
Republican primary voters might be comfortable gambling on Gingrich, but it’s not a gamble independent voters are likely to feel comfortable with next year.
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, December 7, 2011
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
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