“Deep Doo-Doo”: Newt Gingrich’s Surprise Win In South Carolina Panics Republicans
Reactions to Newt Gingrich’s stunning and impressive victory in the South Carolina primary form a symphony. First, of course, we hear the cheers of South Carolina Republicans who have chosen their champion. From Ronald Reagan in 1980 through John McCain in 2008, the winner of this primary has always gone on to be the Republican nominee.
Then, of course, we can hear the buttons popping from Newt Gingrich’s shirt as his ego swells to Macy’s parade size. If you listen carefully, you can hear the soft sobs of Mitt Romney and his consultants, crying in their chocolate milk.
But above it all we can hear the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth of the Republican establishment as Gingrich’s victory sends them into full-blown panic. I’m not talking about mere fear, nor normal nervousness. Not even the feeling you get when the captain says, “We’ve lost power in one of our four engines.” No, this is worse. Worse even than when your doctor says, “I don’t like the looks of that shadow on the X-ray.”
This is terror. Chest-clutching, breath-sucking, soul-shaking panic. This is your teenage daughter telling you, “I think I’m in trouble.” This is a Turkish border guard pulling you into a holding room when you’ve got a baggie of coke in your pocket. This is what George H.W. Bush famously called “deep doo-doo.”
The Republican Party has never seen anything like it. Republicans are hierarchical, orderly, disciplined—everything the Democrats are not. They nearly always nominate the guy who was runner-up last time: Ford beat Reagan, and Reagan got the next nod. Reagan beat George H.W. Bush, so Bush Sr. got the next turn. And then Bush beat Dole, who in turn was rewarded with the 1996 GOP nod. Then they got all wild and crazy and nominated the son of a former president, but then quickly reverted to form and nominated the guy he defeated, John McCain. And who did McCain beat? Mitt Romney.
As the anointed one, Romney had all the advantages, especially the most important: money. But as the Beatles taught us, money can’t buy you love. Romney and the super PAC that supports him outspent Gingrich and the pro-Gingrich super PAC in South Carolina by a 2–1 margin ($4 million to $2.16 million.)
Gingrich won the South Carolina primary not because of advertising, but rather because of his debate performances. Eighty-eight percent of South Carolina Republicans said the debates were important to making up their minds, and in the two key debates, Gingrich hit every GOP erogenous zone. He scolded Fox News’s Juan Williams when Williams asked him about the dog-whistle language Gingrich uses to stir up racial stereotypes. Williams, the author of Eyes on the Prize, a respected history of the civil-rights movement, knows of what he speaks. But Gingrich knows his party’s base, and the base loves both the coded language and attacking anyone who calls them on it.
But it was Thursday night’s CNN debate that sealed the deal. Going into the debate, Gingrich and Romney were tied in the polls. And each had an important and obvious question they were going to be asked: for Gingrich, it was his ex-wife’s explosive allegation that he had asked for an “open marriage.” For Romney, it was whether he would release his tax returns. Think about it: which question would you rather answer? Mitt had the easier challenge by a mile. Yet Gingrich got a standing ovation by bitterly denouncing moderator John King in particular and the media in general. Romney got booed for his weak, waffling non-answer.
Between now and the Jan. 31 Florida primary, we will hear a furious, frenzied response from the Republican establishment. Team Romney has already spent $7 million on TV ads there—Team Gingrich just $800. Not $800,000. Just 800 bucks. Look for popular former governor Jeb Bush to endorse Romney in the Sunshine State, leading a parade of establishmentarians.
Will Romney’s money and endorsements be able to overwhelm Gingrich’s electrifying debate performances? They weren’t in South Carolina. But Romney has an ace in the hole. The one person who has consistently derailed Newt Gingrich’s political career is Newt Gingrich.
By: Paul Begala, The Daily Beast, January 21, 2012
Newt Gingrich Exploits Politics Of Class And Culture
Conservatives may denounce class warfare, yet by shrewdly combining the politics of class with the politics of culture, Newt Gingrich won his first election in 14 years, humbled Mitt Romney and upended the Republican Party.
He also exposed profound frailties in Romney as a candidate, throwing him badly off-balance on questions related to his personal wealth, business career and income taxes. Unless Romney finds a comfortable and genuine way of talking about his money, he will present President Obama’s team a weakness that they’ll exploit mercilessly. The country is thinking more skeptically about wealth and privilege in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Romney has not adjusted.
Gingrich skillfully set up his opponent to step on the landmine of class by transforming Romney from his self-cast role as a successful businessman into a heartless financier more interested in profits than in job creation.
The conventional view is that Gingrich’s critique of Bain Capital, Romney’s old company, didn’t work because Republicans dislike assaults on “free enterprise,” a phrase Romney still hopes to use as a self-protective mantra. But while Gingrich softened his attacks on Bain, he did so only after creating the context in which Romney was forced to answer query after query about his financial status, and he repeatedly fumbled questions about releasing his tax returns. Romney finally announced Sunday he’d make public his 2010 return and a 2011 estimate this week.
All this allowed Gingrich to draw a class line across South Carolina. Exit polls showed Romney carrying only one income group, voters earning more than $200,000 a year. Voters earning less than $100,000 a year went strongly for Gingrich.
Yet conservative class politics is always inflected by culture and ideology, the potent mix that Pat Buchanan brought to Richard Nixon’s attention four decades ago. South Carolina’s two debates offered Gingrich a showcase for his war on those elites whom the conservative rank-and-file despise.
There was also the matter of race. Gingrich is no racist, but neither is he naive about the meaning of words. When Fox News’ Juan Williams, an African-American journalist, directly challenged Gingrich about the racial overtones of Gingrich’s staple reference to Obama as “the food-stamp president,” the former House speaker verbally pummeled him, to raucous cheers. As if to remind everyone of the power of coded language, a supporter later praised Gingrich for putting Williams “in his place.”
Then came the rebuke to CNN’s John King, who asked about the claim from Gingrich’s second wife that her former husband had requested an “open marriage.” By exploding at King and the contemporary journalism, Gingrich turned a dangerous allegation into a rallying point. Past sexual conduct mattered far less to conservatives than a chance to admonish the supposedly liberal media. Gingrich won evangelicals by 2-1, suggesting, perhaps, a rather elastic definition of “family values” — or a touching faith in Gingrich’s repentance.
With unremitting attacks on Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate,” Gingrich created yet another link between his opponent and elite Yankees loathed by the Southern right. He reaped landslide margins among conservative groups, marginalizing the buttoned-down, less electric Rick Santorum.
There were also hints in exit polling that hostility to Romney’s Mormon’s faith may have added to his troubles, without help from Gingrich. About a quarter of South Carolina’s voters said a candidate’s religious beliefs mattered a “great deal” to them, and Romney secured a scant 10 percent of their ballots.
If there is solace for Romney, it is in the experience of an earlier front-runner. In late March 1992, the day before the Connecticut primary, I found myself standing with a colleague next to Bill Clinton in a coffee shop in Groton. Clinton surprised us by suggesting he would lose the next day to Jerry Brown, now California’s governor. Voters were in an ornery mood, he said, and many of them wanted to declare: “I don’t want this to be over.”
Clinton was right. He lost Connecticut. Yet two weeks later, he swept a series of primaries, including a decisive contest in New York.
Florida, which votes next on Jan. 31, is Romney’s New York. But there is a difference. Clinton was a master campaigner with what has quaintly been called the common touch. Romney has so far proved himself to be more a master of discomfort and unease, especially with his own wealth. Unless he learns how to navigate the country’s new etiquette about financial privilege, Romney will continue to be plagued by the now twice-resurrected Gingrich — and, if he survives Gingrich’s challenge, by a freshly minted populist named Barack Obama.
By: E. J. Dionne, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 22, 2012
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