“Do You Like Me Now?”: Money Changed Everything For Mitt Romney In Florida Primary
It was money that won the primary for Mitt, but it didn’t make voters like him—and it won’t make the GOP rank and file show up to the polls in November.
Romney and the super PAC supporting him spent more than $15 million on television ads. Team Gingrich spent about $3 million. Both ran almost entirely negative campaigns. One tally estimated that 93 percent of all the ads were negative. The other 7 percent were wasted.
Victory is always sweet, but this one could leave Romney feeling a little sour. Gingrich called Romney’s strategy “carpet-bombing.” Fair enough. But what then do we call Gingrich’s strategy? Kamikaze? Gingrich strapped on his helmet, slugged down some sake, jumped in his Zero, and dive-bombed into the SS Romney. He didn’t sink Romney’s aircraft carrier, but he did some serious damage. Romney is likely to list even farther to starboard, as he is forced to pander even more to the far right.
Gingrich and his allies called Romney “despicable,” “breathlessly dishonest,” and, worst of all, “liberal.” It was not enough to win, or even to make it close, but it was enough to damage Romney in November, should he emerge as the GOP standard bearer. One in four GOP voters in Florida expressed dissatisfaction with the field; a full 53 percent of Gingrich voters said they would not be happy with a Romney-led ticket. To be sure, they’re not going to jump ship and vote for Obama. But they could stay home. They could refuse to give money or make calls or turn out their friends and neighbors. If Romney is the nominee, a lot of Republicans are going to sit on their hands.
As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled across 50 states and seven districts and territories in 2008 there was some bitterness, to be sure. But it was mostly confined to the upper echelons of Hillaryland and Barackistan. At the grassroots you heard time and again, “I’m for Barack, but I’m not against Hillary.” Florida Republicans voted against Newt Gingrich; they did not vote for Mitt Romney.
Money begets money. Romney not only has the greatest personal fortune in the GOP field, he has the most well-funded campaign. And perhaps even more important, the super PAC supporting him dwarfs those of his competitors. An analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project shows outside spending on Campaign 2012 is up 1,600 percent over 2008. Romney’s allies have mastered this new tactic. (Full disclosure: I advise the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action.)
The campaign will now stagger through the February doldrums. Romney is very likely to win the Nevada caucuses, which he dominated in 2008. He will almost certainly continue to carpet-bomb Gingrich over the airwaves. But there’s a difference between persuading voters to hate Newt Gingrich—which, frankly, is pretty easy—and getting them to love Mitt Romney, which appears to be well-nigh impossible.
ByL Paul Begala, The Daily Beast, January 31, 2012
“A Monster Of GOP Creation”: Now Newt May Get Even Nastier
Thirty-four years ago, Newt Gingrich summed it up. In a speech to College Republicans—shortly before he would win his first election to Congress—the future speaker had a piece of fundamental advice for the young and impressionable GOPers: “I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful and all those Boy Scout words.”
Nasty—that was a critical component of Gingrich’s formula for political success. And through the 1980s and 1990s, as Gingrich wielded his nastiness to overturn the Democratic order in Congress and seize the people’s House for the GOP, he was hailed by Republicans. Now, following his 47 to 32 percent loss to Mitt Romney in the Florida presidential primary and Gingrich’s promise—make that, threat—to pursue this nasty nomination contest all the way to the convention in sweltering Tampa in August, the Republican Party has a monster-of-its-own-creation in its china shop. (Imagine a Tasmanian devil in Tiffany & Co.) Despite Romney’s 15-point comeback victory, it seems that the GOP will still be burdened and discombobulated by the Wrath of Gingrich. During his concession speech Tuesday night—which was light on the concession—Gingrich vowed to contest every primary and caucus, as his supporters held up signs that said, “46 STATES TO GO.”
It’s not uncommon for political losers to hang on longer than they should. (See Rick Perry.) So Gingrich’s vow to ignore the play-nice-and-get-out pleas of the Republican establishment and battle all the way to the summer is not surprising. But if he is serious about vengeance, he will have to cling on for longer than a week or two. February’s primaries—Nevada and Maine (February 4); Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri (February 7); and Arizona and Michigan (February 28)—hold few opportunities for the goblin of Georgia. These states are Romney-friendly and not well-suited for Gingrich’s fire-breathing and not-so-coded rants against food stamps and Saul Alinsky. If he wants Romney’s blood, he will have to stay in the hunt until at least Super Tuesday, where he can try to work his dark magic on his home state of Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Idaho. Alabama and Mississippi come a week later.
This means another five or six weeks at least of Gingrich’s not-so-creative destruction, with him hurling his patented nastiness at Romney—and Romney both firing back and, more important, trying to keep up with Gingrich’s extreme anti-Obamaism.
The latter may be more of the problem for Romney than Gingrich’s direct slams on him. Candidates often pound at party comrades during hard-fought nomination contests, and the winner, even though dinged, usually ends up able to compete effectively in the general. (Barack Obama survived Hillary Clinton’s barbs.) But Gingrich is dragging Romney to the right in terms of, yes, nastiness. (During his victory speech in Tampa, Romney declared that Obama represents “the worst of what Europe has become”—of course, without explaining what that meant.)
The GOP primary electorate is in a foul mood. Many of these voters seem to want a candidate who feels their hatred for the president. (See Rick Santorum’s exchange with that lady who maintained Obama is a Muslim.) This whole primary campaign has been a game of revolving Obama-loathers. While Romney has tried to come across as not a hater—he’s disappointed in Obama; he doesn’t despise him—one by one, fire-breathing Obama-bashers who represent the dark and angry mood of their party’s base have risen to be the non-Romney of the GOP race, only to fall down due to their own limitations. And Gingrich is the last of these. (Ron Paul is essentially operating in an alternative universe; Rick Santorum is running on the fumes of Iowa.)
With his mean-spirited and extreme rhetoric, the former House speaker does embody the soul of his party at this point. Though Gingrich is burdened with a ton of baggage that obviously undermines his chances to win a general election—and many Republican voters do care about that—Romney still has to ensure that Gingrich does not run away with the hearts of GOP voters. Consequently, he has to keep the meanness/Obama-hatred gap that exists between him and the former Freddie Mac historian/consultant/strategic adviser from becoming too wide. Yet doing so makes Romney less acceptable to those fickle independent voters who yearn for candidates who can solve problems in Washington without partisan fighting. If Romney has to engage in such Newt-neutralization for weeks, if not months, he will further define himself in a manner likely to alienate independents and middle-of-the-road voters.
There’s an old-saying: Don’t get into a fight with a skunk; you’ll only come out smelling. Romney cannot remain in combat with Gingrich—even if he continues to win delegates—without being tainted by the stench of this skirmish.
Gingrich’s nastiness—now aimed at Romney—is an accurate reflection of the Republican Party. In recent years, Gingrich-style extremism has become its norm. Sarah Palin (who has been egging on Gingrich) claimed during the 2008 race that Obama had been “palling around” with terrorists. When the Democrats were poised to pass a health care reform bill in the House, GOP leaders of that body sponsored a Tea Party rally, where demonstrators chanted “Nazis, Nazis” in reference to the Dems. Donald Trump made GOP voters swoon with his birther talk. Gingrich himself claimed that Obama could only be understood as a fellow who holds a Kenyan, anti-colonialist view of the West. Death panels, a government takeover of the health care system, socialism—it’s been nasty for years in GOPland. Romney’s challenge is to win over these people, without fully endorsing the malice. (Thus, Obama=Europe.)
Now on the receiving end of vicious blasts, Gingrich has taken to whining that he’s the victim of lies and extreme attacks. After all his years of practicing gangster politics, he hardly warrants sympathy. (And many of Romney’s assaults on him have been accurate.) But he also has been trying mightily in recent days to depict himself as the personification of the conservative movement, arguing that an attack on him (by Romney, the Republican establishment, or the media) is an attack on the tea party. (This is a right-wing version of identity politics.) And he’s been saying that the conservative movement simply won’t stand for a “Massachusetts moderate”—or a “liberal” who supports abortion rights and gun control, as he dubbed Romney this week—as the Republican Party nominee.
It’s his last play—to try to ignite a civil war within the GOP. At the moment, with the smell of his Florida defeat still in the air, he seems rather serious about this endeavor. With his own record of flip-flops and his less-than-inspiring personal history, he’s certainly not the perfect leader for such a crusade. But if the dissatisfaction on the right is deep enough, perhaps he can be a sufficient vehicle.
Notwithstanding the loss in Florida—and with only 5 percent of the GOP delegates selected—Gingrich is still positioned to inconvenience, if not undermine, Romney. And he has choices. Will he try to rally conservative foot soldiers and lead a Pickett’s Charge against the front-runner, hoping to do better than Lt. General James Longstreet? Or will he go the way of a suicide bomber and become the doomsday device of the GOP?
With his Florida success, Romney is back on that path to the nomination. But Gingrich is a problem for the front-runner and the entire GOP establishment—and that’s because he’s following the scorched-earth playbook that he long ago developed for the party and that the party has embraced for years.
By: Davis Corn, Washington Bureau Chief, Mother Jones, January 31, 2012
“Empathy Gap”: Mitt Romney Rejects Concern For The “Very Poor”
Just two weeks ago, Mitt Romney told voters in South Carolina, “I’m concerned about the poor in this country.” This morning, Romney reversed course and said the exact opposite.
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90%, 95% of Americans right now who are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation. […]
“You can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.”
The Republican frontrunner added, “We will hear from the Democrat Party, the plight of the poor.”
When Romney’s rivals were hammering him on Bain Capital — and the fact that he got extremely rich by firing American workers and leading a vulture-capitalist firm — he shifted rhetorical gears in order to seem sympathetic towards those struggling most.
With his new “I’m not concerned about the very poor” line, it appears Romney has abandoned this tack altogether.
Regardless, as a matter of substance, Romney’s line this morning is just a mess.
For one thing, it’s tone-deaf to a breathtaking degree. When a hyper-wealthy politician boasts about taking pleasure in firing people, he probably shouldn’t tell national television audiences he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”
For another, Romney’s candid admission underscores a larger policy problem: he’s not only unconcerned with the plight of the very poor, he also pursuing an agenda that would make their lives considerably more difficult. If elected, a Romney administration intends to slash public investments that benefit working families, while raising taxes on those at the bottom of the income scale.
Let’s also not forget that while Romney insisted this morning that he’s “not concerned about the very rich,” either, there’s ample evidence to the contrary. Indeed, the presidential hopeful has already presented a plan to give the very wealthy yet another massive tax break.
And as for Romney’s purported concern for the middle class, what the former governor neglected to mention this morning is that his tax plan largely ignores the middle class. By his own admission, Romney doesn’t plan to do much of anything for middle-income earners.
Taken together, in one interview, Romney managed to sound callous towards those struggling, lie about his agenda’s focus on the wealthy, and ignore the relevant details of his disregard for the middle class.
Not bad for a morning’s work.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February, 1, 2012
“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
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
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
