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What's wrong with Washington?
2 May 2012
Experienced and esteemed Congressional observers Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein have a short answer: Republicans. (No, really.)
The longer answer, however, is the more interesting one. For instance, how did things get so bad? Mann and Ornstein point the figure at two luminaries of the past few decades. Public enemy number one is Newt Gingrich:
From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.
And number two is Grover Norquist:
Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.
Able was I, ere I saw Delaware
26 April 2012
The dream is over:
Following his five-state shutout this week, Newt Gingrich will suspend his yearlong campaign for president on Tuesday, multiple sources close to the campaign confirmed.
He will return to the Washington area, where he has lived since leaving office, to make the announcement official, they said.
And why?
Gingrich fell short again in a state in which he trained all of his attention leading up to a Tuesday night vote.
This time it was Delaware, a small state with a recent history of bucking the system. Gingrich told NBC that if he didn’t win there, he would seriously reconsider his campaign. Word leaked of his imminent departure on Wednesday morning.
Losing 22 states was one thing. Losing 30 states was another. But losing 35 states, including the Great State of Delaware? That's a burden too great for even a giant like Newton Leroy Gingrich to bear.
Good night, sweet prince. May your dreams consist of a multitude of moon bases, and may you always be unhaunted by ravenous penguins.
The etch-a-sketch, bounce, and Louisiana
23 March 2012
The Republican primary campaign has been over for all real intents and purposes for a while now, and Mitt Romney's convincing win in Illinois this past Tuesday didn't do much more than mark off one more milestone in the former Massachusetts governor's slow, underwhelming march to the nomination.
One decent indication that this race is over is the reaction to the infamous "Etch-a-Sketch" gaffe, in which Romney campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN that the Romney's conservative rhetoric during the primary campaign didn't matter, because when the general election campaign begins, "you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.” Where previous Romney gaffes were pounced on by his Republican opponents, the Etch-a-Sketch comment has been greeted by a flood of anti-Romney commercials produced by Democratic groups and affiliates. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul might not have (publicly) accepted that they've lost, but Democrats do, and they're reacting according. The gaffe might not matter in the fall campaign, but it definitely won't prevent Romney winning the nomination.
So the next vote, on Saturday, is in Louisiana. Rick Santorum will probably win, and it will continue not to be enough to snare him the nomination. So let's not dwell too long on speed bumps, and instead enjoy a song from the Pelican State. After the jump, an artist of whom Santorum would likely not approve.
My song for the Lousiana primary is "Gin in My System" by New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia. It was one of the highlights when I saw her in Sydney last year, and has been adapted and reconfigured into more than a few subsequent tunes by Lousiaian rappers like Lil Wayne or Lil Boosie.
Big Freedia produces a native New Orleans music called bounce, a party genre focused on energetic beats, call and response vocals, and lyrics that are frequently sexually explicit (This song is fairly tame.) The entire genre rests heavily on what is called the Triggaman beat — samples from the song "Drag Rap," by '80s New York rappers the Showboys. Like much New Orleans music, bounce is characterised by a libertine, celebratory spirit. Freedia, who calls herself the "Queen Diva," is sometimes talked about as being at the forefront of a sound called "sissy bounce." Sissy bounce is a real part of New Orleans culture, but I think identifying it as something exceptional misses the point. Although bounce has a notable subset of performers who are trans women, the music they produce isn't understood as anything separate from that produced by other folks. Bounce is the basis of a welcoming and inclusive scene, and represents a side of Louisiana not likely to be extensively represented in the socially conservative Republican electorate that will vote on Saturday.
Gingrichian hypocrisy
16 March 2012
Newt Gingrich has spent the last several months waxing poetic about the fight for conservative principles, the liberal bias of the mainstream media, and the corrosive establishment culture within Washington. At its core though, the Gingrich campaign has been about one thing, Newt Gingrich’s desire to be president, and he’s been willing to do or so whatever he thinks will help him achieve this goal. This is a candidate who defiled Mitt Romney as the Massachusetts’s moderate despite having many a moderate skeleton in his own closet. This is a candidate who gave CNN reporter John King one of the harshest tong lashings in presidential debate history, then made sure to tell him afterwards what a great job he had done. This is a candidate who complained about Washington elites despite receiving 1.6 million dollars from the mortgage lender Freddie Mac. And this is a candidate who proclaimed that a second Obama term would be a “disaster for the US” yet seems unconcerned that his own nomination would certainly hinder Republican chances of capturing the White House in 2012.
The latest sign of Gingrichian hypocrisy is his continued refusal to drop out of the race. In late January, it was Gingrich who was pressuring Santorum to get out, telling him that they could unite conservatives together and defeat Romney.
“The fact is, when you combine the Santorum vote and the Gingrich vote ... the conservative combined would clearly beat Romney."
.......
"My hope is that gradually conservatives will come together and decide that a Newt Gingrich conservatism is dramatically better than Mitt Romney's liberalism."
These quotes weren’t an anomaly. Over and over again, Gingrich stressed that Romney’s establishment ties and lack of conservative credentials left him unfit to be the GOP nominee. Now the shoe is on the other foot; Gingrich has only managed to win one primary since he made these comments and Santorum has re-emerged, transforming the election into a two man race. If Gingrich can’t win in the Deep South, he’s not going to be making any noise in other regions of the country. Going forwards, he will likely play little role in the primaries aside from siphoning votes away from Santorum.
The very same reasons Gingrich gave Santorum for stepping down now apply equally to him. If Romney is actually the anti-conservative Gingrich makes him out to be, than surely the former speaker would want to do all he could to prevent him from getting the nomination? Further, at the same time Gingrich was criticising Romney, he was going out of his way to heap praise on Santorum. So, here’s Newt’s chance to play a key role in rallying the conservative forces in an attempt to defeat “Mitt Romney’s liberalism.”
However, Gingrich has refused to heed his own advice from a month earlier. The truth is, he probably never viewed the campaign as a battle between the real voices of conservatism and a Massachusetts moderate; it was just a narrative that he thought might win him some votes. And even if he does oppose Romney as passionately as he claims, it’s clear that fruitlessly chasing his own glory takes precedence. It’s easy to cite principles when they suit your own campaign, but when the same principles require a personal sacrifice, so much the worse for the principles.
No, really. Say goodnight, Newt
14 March 2012
It seems the polls occasonally do lie: Rick Santorum won both the Mississippi and Alabama primaries today, despite prognostication suggesting Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich respectively would take pole position. It's the triumph of common sense over imperfect science. Rick Santorum, a social conservative, won a pair of socially conservative states. He'll be helped a bit by the perception that he defied expectations, but, in truth, he didn't, and Romney continues his slow trudge to the nomination.
But remember how, a month ago, I said it was time to stop pretending Newt Gingrich was a real contender in this race? With two second place finishes today, Gingrich has won a grand total of two states: South Carolina, and the neighbouring Georgia. He was done already, but let there be no mistake: he's really done now. I won't offer a prediction as to whether he'll drop out or not — his is a vanity campaign, and vanity campaigns don't heed the usual rules of viability — but I have to wonder for how much longer his donors and wealthy backers are prepared to sink money into a lost cause.
Tuning up in Dixie
13 March 2012
Next up on the Republican primary calendar are the votes tomorrow in the deep South states of Mississippi and Alabama. Southerners are apparently too polite to poll reliably, but if you believe the forecasts, Mitt Romney has a slight lead in Mississippi, Newt Gingrich has a slight lead in Alabama, and Rick Santorum is surprisingly unpopular. There isn't too much at stake in these contests, but a good showing from Romney might help convince his rivals that this race is indeed over.
It's become a bit of a tradition on this blog to warm up for each state's primary with a relevant song. In that spirit, here's "Mississippi Girl," Faith Hill's ode to the women of the the Magnolia State:
"A Mississippi girl," the country singer informs us, "don't change her ways just because everybody knows her name." No mention on whether Massachusetts men have a similar aversion to flip-flopping.
After the jump, an Alabama tune. (Though not one by Alabama.)
This is "Let's Roll," by Alabama rapper Yelawolf, with some help from Mitt Romney-supporter Kid Rock. Yela's not your everyday Southern rapper; he's a white boy who looks like a skate rat and spits thick, fast syllables about life in the boondocks of Gadsden, Alabama. His view of Southern life is a melange of Confederate flags, violence, poverty, American cars, methamphetamine abuse, and local pride. It's a place where a black music born in New York City sits comfortably alongside the white tradition of Southern rock, too: "Why's he playing Beanie Sigel?/Cause his daddy was a dope man; Lynyrd Skynyrd didn't talk about moving kis of coke, man," he raps on another song, "I Wish." The modern South is more complex than stereotypes will allow.
Incidentally, I didn't post a tune for Kansas, because its primary was held on a weekend. If I had, it would have been "Campfire Kansas" by revered Lawrence, KS emo group The Get Up Kids.
It's time to call this race
7 March 2012
It's really over now. Mitt Romney is the nominee.
I mean, it was really over after Florida, but now the media will have to stop pretending it's a contest and Republicans will have to start acting like he's the presumptive nominee. Though Gingrich and Santorum may — and Paul will certainly — struggle on for a while, Romney can now pivot to the general.
Romney got Virginia and Vermont by reasonable margins — he got over 50 per cent in Virginia, which is impressive and will net him a lot of delegates, and beat Paul by a 14 per cent margin in Vermont, as well as completely destroying the competition in his home state — 70+ per cent there.
Gingrich got his home state of Georgia, but fell short of the 50 per cent he needed to lock in the delegates, so that won't hurt Romney in the long run. Santorum is continuing to do well in deep red states — they've called Tennessee for him, and he's looking good in Oklahoma too.
The only interesting contest left is in Ohio, where Santorum and Romney are neck-and-neck. Because Ohio borders Pennsylvania, there's something of a home state advantage for Santorum, but because of the importance of Ohio in the general, there could be some questions about Romney's electability if he doesn't manage to win there. But those questions won't actually mean anything, because with the number of delegates he'll net today, Romney's lead is unassailable.
No real results from Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota yet. I suspect Romney will do very, very well in Idaho, but it'll be interesting to see the influence of the libertarian vote in Alaska and Idaho.
In remembrance of Super Tuesdays past
7 March 2012
With the results of the Republican Super Tuesday primary contests set to be announced in mere hours, it's worth keeping in perspective the importance of these results. There's much to be gleaned from some of the immediate details, such as whether Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney will win Ohio, how well Romney can do in Tennessee, or how the delegates will be apportioned in the smaller caucus states. At the same time, however, today is unlikely to radically alter the direction of the race. Mitt Romney remains the front runner; he has the most delegates, endorsements, and campaign funds on hand, and there's a good chance he has, for all intents and purposes, wrapped this race up, and the votes today and over the coming month are just about confirming that.
I'd recommend thinking back to the 2008 campaign, and observing two things. First: although Hillary Clinton looked to have a rather successful Super Tuesday, when observers had enough time to look at the big picture and away from the state-by-state hurly burly, they realised that Barack Obama had done well enough on the day to put himself in an almost unassailable position for the rest of the campaign. It's tempting to look at campaign events on a micro level and disregard larger macro trends, but chances are, day-to-day occurences won't be game changers — even ones on as significant a day as Super Tuesday.
The other lesson from 2008 to keep in mind is that for a long time, Obama had effectively won the contest, but still had to go through the motions of campaigning against Clinton until the last state had voted. Whether you place the point Obama effectively triumphed at Super Tuesday, or the March 4th ballots in Texas and Ohio, or the April 22nd battle in Pennsylvania, it became increasingly apparent that though the primaries were continuing, only Obama could end up the winner. The same thing is likely to happen this year: Romney will move into a position where his victory will be inevitable, even if the opposing campaigns don't yet accept that.
Your official US Studies Centre Super Tuesday mixtape
6 March 2012
Last week, Luke graced you guys with a(n excellent) Sufjan Stevens tune in preparation for the Michigan primaries, so I figured I'd one up him by giving you guys an entire SUPER TUESDAY MIXTAPE! (We have a healthy spirit of competition on the blog, you see.) Get in the mood for tomorrow's ballot with a song from each of the voting states.
And, if you're in Sydney, make your way to Manning Bar at the University of Sydney and watch the returns with us. The Centre is putting on a bit of a do from 10:30am Sydney time — and if you can't make that, at least come along to our Super Tuesday Trivia Contest, starting at 5:30pm.
1. Field Mob ft. Ludacris - Georgia (Light Poles and Pine Trees, 2005)
For the state most likely to vote Newt Gingrich tomorrow, Albany, GA rappers Field Mob hook up with ATL's Ludacris and a Ray Charles-channelling Jamie Foxx. It's an anthem of home-state pride, trumpeting peach cobbler, Atlanta's Georgia Dome, and red clay, but fittingly for the state's dark history, a grim melancholia infuses the track: "When you see them Confederate flags you know what it is/Your folks picked cotton here."
2. Dropkick Murphys - Shipping Up to Boston (The Warrior's Code, 2005)
From Gingrich's Georgia home we journey to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts digs, as represented by rowdy Bay State punk band Dropkick Murphys. (The video comes from Martin Scorcese's Boston gangster flick The Departed.) Nothing says Boston like a band of working class Irishmen, but if the contrast with Romney's more genteel visage troubles you, perhaps substitute Vampire Weekend's blue-blooded "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa."
3. Gowns - Fargo (Red State, 2007)
Named for the largest city in North Dakota, "Fargo" comes from the debut record by Dakotan noise-folk duo Gowns, which has a title fitting today's Super Tuesday contest. I'm not sure how much Gowns approve of being from a Red State (the group's Erika M. Anderson released a solo album last year, and the lead single hinted at a distaste for Great Plains homophobia) but the record is a hazy and fragile delight. "Fargo" itself is an impressionistic portrait of small town patriotism and drug abuse; its first lines hint at the local effects of a distant war: "I can see that blue room in Fargo, North Dakota, with an American flag draped over a basement window/It’s a soldier’s room: got sent away."
4. Liz Phair - Ant in Alaska (Exile in Guyville [Remastered], 2008)
An old demo track that finally found an official release in 2008 when Liz Phair remastered her acclaimed 1993 debut Exile in Guyville. The reference to Alaska is an obtuse metaphor — "I'm just an ant in Alaska to you" — but it will have to do; songs about Alaska are in short supply. My other, meagre, options: "Anchorage" by Surfer Blood; "Stephanie Says" by Velvet Underground, and a suggestion from my colleague Max Halden: "Levi Johnston's Blues," by Ben Folds. Max's pick might be best, actually; what could be more appropriate for a Republican primary than a tune about Sarah and Bristol Palin?
5. R.E.M. - Cuyahoga (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986)
"Let's put our heads together" sings R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe on "Cuyahoga." "And start a new country up." It sounds like the dream of an insurgent political campaign — or, more likely, the founding fathers themselves. The Cuyahoga River runs through Ohio's biggest city, Cleveland, and is famous for having been so polluted that it caught fire in 1969. This song hints at that event, and, as such, probably presents a greater appreciation for the importance of environmental policy than any of this year's Republican candidates.
6. Clipse - Virginia (Lord Willin', 2002)
I'm not sure which of the GOP candidates on the Virginia ballot would prefer this track (Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich failed to collect enough signatures to qualify): Mitt Romney might appreciate Pusha and Malice's evocation of cold-blooded capitalism, but the libertarian Ron Paul could be more likely to accept selling cocaine as a legitimate business strategy.
7. Cursive - Vermont (Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes, 1997)
This conspicuously angsty lament about an existential crisis in the wilds of the Green Mountain State is by Omaha, Nebraska emo act Cursive. I daresay most of the Republican candidates would recoil from a tune that builds to a climactic wailing of "All hail the atheist," but I can't think of any other songs about Vermont, and I sure ain't digging through the Phish catalogue to find an alternative.
8. Built to Spill - Twin Falls (There's Nothing Wrong with Love, 1994)
With a running time under two minutes, "Twin Falls" is a micro-portrait of divergent paths and the mundanity of small town life. "My mom's good she got me out of Twin Falls, Idaho" sings Doug Martsch; his young friend wasn't so lucky: "Last I heard, she had twins, or maybe it was three." As a "fall," motherhood is hardly a tragic one, but it's clear Martsch is thankful that his opportunities expanded when he moved to the big city. (Which is, in this case, the um... not-so-gigantic Idaho capital of Boise.)
9. Miranda Lambert - Oklahoma Sky (Four the Record, 2011)
A hushed ballad that closed out Lambert's 2011 album, "Oklahoma Sky" is a wistful country love song that sounds as big and barren as the vast plains of the Sooner State. "Meet me underneath the Oklahoma sky" is the chorus; perhaps that can be expected state winner Rick Santorum's bid to boost turnout among his supporters there?
10. Dolly Parton - My Tennessee Mountain Home (My Tennessee Mountain Home, 1973)
How are you going to go past Dolly Parton as a standard bearer for the Volunteer State? The battle might be fierce between the four remaining Republicans, but if they want votes in Tennessee, they had all better agree on the worth of Dolly.
Super Tuesday: Keep an eye on Ohio
5 March 2012
Fewer than half the number of states are holding Super Tuesday elections as compared to 2008, but that does not mean that this year’s contest will be small or insignificant. On March 6, ten states will hold primaries or caucuses and "more delegates will be awarded than in in the first two months of the Republican presidential race combined." Here's what to expect on the biggest day of the election so far.
Mitt Romney has now won four states in a row, and is looking to try and carry this momentum into Super Tuesday. Romney will win easily in Massachusetts (where he served as governor) and Virginia (where only he and Ron Paul collected enough valid signatures to even appear on the ballot). Along with these two important prizes, Romney should pick up Vermont as well.
Out west, Romney has a very good chance of winning in North Dakota, Idaho, and Alaska. However, these small caucus states could also be prime Ron Paul territory. Paul may not appeal to a broad segment of the electorate, but he does have a fervent base of supporters. Less than 14,000 Alaskans showed up for the 2008 Republican caucus, and a small but committed group of Paul devotees could flip the state in his favour. Still, the delegate count in these three states is not large enough to substantially affect the outcome of the primary process.
Standing between Romney and a Super Tuesday blowout is the South. Rick Santorum should pick up the most delegates in Oklahoma and probably Tennessee as well. Gingrich (yes, he's still in the race) is the heavy favourite in his home state of Georgia. It's unlikely that Romney will win any of these three states, but keep an eye on the results nonetheless. A narrow win in Tennessee or even a close second place showing in Oklahoma could be evidence that Romney’s re-established himself as the clear frontrunner.
That leaves one final state to discuss: Ohio. Ohio is without a doubt the crown jewel of Super Tuesday. It has the second most delegates of the day after Georgia, but its significance is more intangible. Two very different narratives could emerge out of Super Tuesday depending on who claims the Buckeye State. It's often remarked that the road to the White House runs through the Midwest, and so far Santorum has outperformed Romney in the Midwestern states. A win in Ohio, probably the most important state in the general election, would allow Santorum to reassert his message that he's the candidate best equipped to win in these key swing states.
On the other hand, if Romney wins there on Tuesday, the entire script changes. If he can't carry a state like Ohio, it will become much harder for Santorum to sell himself as the populist alternative to Romney. A Romney victory would be an important first step in repairing his image amongst middle class blue-collar voters.
At this point, the race between Romney and Santorum in Ohio is too close to call. Nate Silver's election model currently gives Santorum a 57 per cent chance of winning. However, as I mentioned the other day, Santorum's polling advantage in the state has been steadily declining over the last several weeks. Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball goes so far as to declare Romney the favourite in Ohio. As they correctly note, the Romney campaign has done very well in the few days before previous primaries by effectively utilising its organisational and monetary advantages. Santorum’s lead looks much more tenuous when you consider the final wave of Romney ads that are hitting the airwaves in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Still, even if Romney performs exceptionally well on Tuesday, the proportional system of delegate allocation makes it all but impossible for him to pull too far away from Santorum. Super Tuesday will greatly influence the trajectory of the race, but it won’t decide it altogether.
Michigan is not all it's cracked up to be
27 February 2012
The media and the pundits are doing all they can to raise the stakes of the February 28th Michigan primary. A Fox News article surmises that the Michigan primary “is threatening to turn [Romney’s] campaign into turmoil” and Aaron Goldstein of the American Spectator speculates that a Santorum victory could "put a dagger through the heart of Romney's campaign.”
I agree that Michigan is quite important. Romney was born and raised there and his father served as governor; losing in a state where he has such a homefield advantage would be a setback for the campaign. Still, I can’t help but feel that people are overstating the importance of the Michigan primary.
A Romney win in Michigan would quiet his sceptics temporarily, but with Super Tuesday right around the corner, the results of February 28th could be forgotten quickly. It looks all but certain that Santorum will win Oklahoma and Ohio on Super Tuesday, and Gingrich could do well in the Southern states of Georgia and Tennessee. Romney winning a state that he was supposed to win probably won’t affect the momentum of the race too much.
Obviously, Santorum winning Michigan would be the more consequential outcome, but it wouldn’t necessarily spell doom for the Romney campaign. Romney’s looking likely to win Arizona on the same night, which would soften the blow somewhat. Additionally, Michigan is a unique case in that Romney was an especially outspoken opponent of the auto bailout; a bailout that affected so many workers within the state of Michigan. As such, the primary is in part a referendum on an issue that doesn’t hold the same importance to national voters.
We keep hearing that each successive primary is going to be the turning point in the race. Gingrich’s win in South Carolina was going to propel him back into contention, that didn’t happen. Romney’s win in Florida was supposed to have all but clinched the nomination; then Santorum won three states in one night. This has been a crazy primary season, and there is good reason to be sceptical of those who believe they know what the next chapter holds in store.
Interview: David Smith on the Arizona debate
23 February 2012
I watched today's Arizona Republican presidential debate with Dr. David Smith, the Centre's Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy. He had some interesting things to say about the proceedings, so after it was all finished, I grabbed him and asked him a few questions about what we'd just seen. Here are his thoughts on the accusations against President Barack Obama of curtailing religious liberty, Mitt Romney's Mormonism, and the state of the race as it heads into the Arizona and Michigan primaries:
Jonathan Bradley: When Mitt Romney said “I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama” you commented “for a Mormon to say that is extraordinary.” Could you explain why?
David Smith: The Mormons have suffered far worse assaults on their freedom of conscience and freedom of religion than the contraception mandate entails. Their founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob assisted by an Illinois state militia in 1844. Prior to that, they had been driven out of New York, Ohio and Missouri at gunpoint; in the case of Missouri there was a full-blown war between Mormons and their anti-Mormon neighbours in the west of the state, culminating in an extraordinary, quasi-genocidal extermination order from Governor Lilburn Boggs. In Utah (where they fled under Brigham Young to escape further persecution), the Federal Government mounted a series of increasingly draconian legislative attempts to stamp out polygamy among the Mormons, which they had been practising openly since the late 1840s. In 1883 the Edmunds Act denied polygamists (which was widely interpreted to mean any Mormon, since they all believed in it though only a few of them practised it) the right to vote, hold office, or serve on juries. The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 allowed the Federal government to seize Mormon Church property. In response to threats to seize temples in Utah, the Mormons officially abandoned the practice of plural marriage in 1890, though they were (in some cases correctly) suspected of continuing to practice it until about 1904. The first Mormon Senator, Reed Smoot, was denied his senate seat for seven years on suspicion that he was a polygamist (he was not).
You also said that the audience was favourably disposed toward Romney. What about this audience made them Mitt-friendly?
A few things contribute to Romney’s relatively high standing in Arizona. Arizona has a large Mormon population — especially in Mesa, where the debate was held (thirty years ago Mesa was 50 per cent Mormon, though that proportion is much lower now due to an overall population explosion which has seen Mesa become the largest suburb in the United States). Also, Romney has for years been positioning himself as tough on illegal immigration, which is the non-economic issue Arizona Republicans care about most. And in general, Romney’s economic message seems to have been playing well in the states hardest hit by foreclosure crises, such as Florida and Nevada, and which also includes Arizona (house prices in Phoenix dropped by around 30 per cent between 2008 and 2009).
Will Republicans outside Arizona react as well to Romney as those inside the hall did? Do you think anything you saw today shifted the dynamics of the race?
Santorum’s accusation that Romney supported the Wall Street bailout but not the Detroit bailout was quite clever and may pick up a few more votes in Michigan. We didn’t see much shift today other than that Romney does seem to have found Santorum’s weak point on earmark spending. The crowd was not buying Santorum’s defense of “good” earmarks, which Ron Paul was able to make a lot more eloquently. We also saw that all candidates are now digging right into each other’s pasts—Romney even indirectly blamed Santorum for Obamacare, because he had supported Arlen Specter, who voted for it! Santorum was visibly shocked that Romney, who implemented the system on which Obamacare was based, had the effrontery to make such an attack.
Did anything else you thought was notable occur?
Nothing else was very notable. Gingrich showed he can still play the demagogue (again accusing the “elite media” of protecting Obama) but he is getting fewer opportunities to do this. The frontrunners are committing deeply to this idea that Obama is attacking religious freedom. So far, this issue has not actually registered much in the polls (even among Catholics), regardless of what the candidates and conservative media are claiming. We will see whether this becomes the major issue they desperately want it to be.
Say goodnight, Newt
8 February 2012
Newt Gingrich (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
UPDATE BELOW
If you're looking for a takeaway from the results of tonight's caucuses — in Minnesota and Colorado, as well as the non-binding "beauty contest" in Missouri — you could do worse than marking this down as the moment the last fantasies of Newt Gingrich's viability vanished.
Mitt Romney performed dismally in Minnesota, and with about 60 per cent of the Colorado results in, he's not far enough ahead of Rick Santorum to avoid the conclusion that he's had a woeful evening — whether he eventually pulls out a victory in the Mountain West or not. But in all likelihood — that is, barring genuine disaster — Mitt Romney will be the Republican Party's nominee. It will just take him longer to end the contest, and it will stoke further worries that he can't win in the Midwest.
Beauty contest or not, Romney's loss in Missouri, coupled with Santorum's victory in Minnesota, and a contest in Iowa that commentators are increasingly forgetting was a draw, is all adding up to the impression that Midwsterners don't like the son of Michigan scion George Romney. And any Republicans looking to feel extra gloomy about Mitt should acquaint themselves with the indicators that Barack Obama is improving his standing with swing voters across the Rust Belt.
But Newt! He finished last in Minnesota, drawing just ten per cent of the vote, and is struggling to take third place from Ron Paul in Colorado. He didn't even get on the ballot in Missouri. None of this means that Gingrich will drop out any time soon — his contestation for the nomination is about his ego before anything else, and that's something tough enough to withstand any number of losses — but it does mean the rest of America can stop pretending he's a going concern in this contest.
Goodnight, Newt. Goodnight to one and all.
UPDATE:
The cable news networks have called Rick Santorum as the winner in Colorado. Like I said, Mitt Romney is still the overwhelming favourite to be the eventual nominee, but he's showing a frustrating inability to wrap this up. They're not going to make this easy for him.
Nevada victory puts Romney one step closer to the nomination
6 February 2012
Romney's victory in the Nevada caucus made official what anyone following the election knew to be inevitable. The Silver State may be a toss up state in the general election, but here in the primaries, it had all the telltale signs of Romney country. Nevada is fairly moderate politically, with a large Mormon population, and the highest unemployment rate in the country — three characteristics that favour Romney. And Romney spent months coordinating his campaign in Nevada, a marked contrast from Gingrich, who only set up a campaign office in the state two weeks ago
In one respect, Romney's win doesn't change much. No one's predictions or long term forecasts for the primaries were drastically altered as a result. Further, the delegates awarded aren't terribly significant, given that they are allotted proportionally.
Still, in an important sense, the results in Nevada are meaningful. In a race where perception and momentum are so critical, voters all across the country are going to see headlines such as "Romney Wins Easily in Nevada." They're going to read about how he won nearly every significant demographic, how he's now the only candidate to win two states in a row, how this only solidifies his status as the frontrunner... well, you get the picture. These things matter in campaigns. It's hard for someone like Gingrich to present himself as a viable nominee when he's coming off a big defeat in which his campaign looked so out of whack. He can still point to his victory in South Carolina as a sign of what he's capable of, but, as that result recedes further into the past, it will be harder and harder for voters to see it as anything but an aberration.
I don't mean to brag, but...
31 January 2012
...we know our stuff here at the US Studies Centre.
This past Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald asked four people whether politics has "finally moved beyond the personal." The evidence of this purported cultural shift? Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina Republican primary, where he won over a socially conservative electorate despite his multiple marriages and reports that he'd asked an ex-wife for an open relationship.
"Politcians tax us too much, spend our money wastefully and regulate our lives," demagogued "The Libertarian," a.k.a. the Instittute of Public Affairs's James Paterson. "So why do we spend so much time worrying about their personal lives instead of the things that really matter?" Gingrich's success, he posited, was "one piece of evidence that American voters have moved beyond the personal." Voters have moved on, even if the media hasn't.
"The Feminist," Kate Gleeson pointed out, not unreasonably, that the public is more forgiving of the male and heterosexual Gingrich's indiscretions than they might be of a woman or gay man. "The Former Politician" Cheryl Kernot used the forum to urge legislators to restrict free speech by enhancing privacy laws, and and applauded one of Gingrich's self-serving attacks on the media.
Fortunately, "The Academic" — also known as the USSC's David Smith — was on hand to straighten things out:
The triumph of Newt Gingrich in South Carolina reminds us that the politics of the personal is as strategic as any other politics.
Moral outrage is not a natural phenomenon that occurs automatically in response to revelations about politicians' personal lives. It is a political weapon to be exploited or neutralised by those who best understand how to use it. No one understands better than Gingrich how outrage works in South Carolina.
America's "Red" states (conservative, Republican-voting) have higher average rates of divorce and birth out of wedlock than the supposedly more permissive "Blue" states. While conservatives insist on strict moral rules, they know they live in a morally complicated world. Everybody knows and loves people who have "fallen" at least once. Gingrich wants to appear as someone who has sinned and repented, and deserves the forgiveness everyone sometimes needs.
Moreover, he has successfully turned himself into a victim. When CNN's John King opened a debate with a question about Marianne Gingrich's claims that Newt had asked for an open marriage, he called the accusations "tawdry" and expressed outrage that the "elite media" would try to protect Barack Obama by attacking a leading Republican this way. This earned him a standing ovation; he had masterfully implied that an attack on him by his ex-wife was an attack on all conservatives by the vindictive liberal media. During the Obama presidency, Republicans have found no emotion more satisfying than victimhood.
Quite. Gingrich is a benefactor of circumstance and cultural affinity. Let us not forget that personal indiscretions recently claimed the careers of Demcoratic Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford, a Republican and the former governor of South Carolina. (Sanford, you may recall, went missing in the middle of 2009 when he was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail. It turns out he had skipped off to Argentina to have an affair. Until then, he was expected to be competitive in this year's presidential primaries.)
After the jump, the rest of David's response.
If conservative Christians understand that moral rules are difficult to follow and transgressions must sometimes be forgiven, they have less tolerance for people who want to overturn the rules. This may make Gingrich a more acceptable candidate than Mitt Romney, who has a spotless family life but signed gay marriage into law as governor of Massachusetts. Brad Atkins, the leader of South Carolina's 700,000 Southern Baptists, has also claimed "Romney's Mormonism will be more of a concern than Gingrich's infidelity'', because Christians can forgive infidelity but Mormonism is a continuing affront to Christianity.
"The personal" is a lot more than sex. Gingrich's well-known past infidelities may have lost the power to hurt him, but that does not mean "character" has ceased to be an issue. Testimony from former colleagues could hurt him more than testimony from ex-wives. Grandiosity might be less forgivable than infidelity.
The end of the road for Gingrich?
30 January 2012
Five days ago Newt Gingrich held a 10 point lead in Florida and looked poised to carry his momentum from South Carolina down into the Sunshine State. Alas, five days is a lifetime when it comes to campaigns. Over the last several days, Mitt Romney has surged back ahead and now is the clear favourite to win the January 31 Florida primary.
This is obviously bad news for Gingrich, but it’s especially damaging given the campaign schedule. The four upcoming states (Nevada, Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota) were all carried by Romney in the 2008 Republican primary. If Gingrich stalls in Florida, it will be exceptionally difficult to regain momentum.
And, as the support dries up, so do the campaign contributions. Money is always important in the primary, but in the earlier, smaller states like Iowa and New Hampshire, a candidate can somewhat compensate for a lack of resources by campaigning aggressively across the state, and holding face to face meetings with voters. However, as the campaign drags on, this becomes an increasingly difficult task. The number of days between each state primary shrinks, and a number of states begin holding their elections on the same day. A candidate simply doesn’t have the time to personally visit all the counties in each state. Under these circumstances, having the resources to blanket the airwaves with advertisements is an enormous advantage.
Of course, if we’ve learned one thing during the campaign, it’s not to count out Gingrich. Every time he’s been left for dead, he’s managed to rise from the ashes in a blaze of populist rhetoric. And the creation of Super PACs means that Gingrich can potentially rely on advertising campaigns financed by wealthy individuals, even if his own direct campaign contributions begin to dry up.
Still, given the unfavourable upcoming primary schedule and increasingly harsh attacks from other Republicans, Gingrich is facing an uphill battle going forward. South Carolina was critical for Gingrich, but it was also essential for him to build from that performance by winning Florida as well. Now, he needs to find a way to recapture momentum — and hold on to it for more than a week — if he wants to stop the Republican primary from becoming a Romney blowout.
The Gingrich face of the Republican Party
24 January 2012
Newt Gingrich accomplished something remarkable on Saturday, not just by winning in South Carolina, but by managing to convince Tea Party Republicans that he exemplifies an authentic brand of anti-elite conservatism.
Gingrich rails against MItt Romney, the so called “Massachusetts moderate” who instituted “Romneycare” while governor, but again and again and again, he has voiced his support for the individual mandate that forms the centrepiece of both Governor Romney and President Obama’s health care plans.
Gingrich criticises the elites in the media and within government, but since leaving Congress in 1997, he’s epitomised the term “Washington insider.” Gingrich has served on numerous government panels and task forces, and most notably received $1.6 million dollars for his work as a strategic advisor/lobbyist for the government backed mortgage lender Freddie Mac. It’s true that he’s not the darling of the Republican establishment; but this is in large part because so many Republican colleagues were unimpressed with his leadership as Speaker of the House. If alienating members of your own party in this manner counts as being anti-elite and anti-establishment, so be it, but I don’t think it’s exactly what the Tea Party had in mind.
One of Gingrich’s selling points has been that he is an intellectual leader of the Republican Party; and a few days ago he described his candidacy as being built around “big ideas and big solutions.” However, as Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein note, he’s offered surprisingly little in the way of substantive policy proposals.
In a broader sense, what’s so frustrating about the Gingrich campaign, is that it seems devoid of the virtues of conservatism (humility, vigilance and a healthy scepticism of grand theory and rapid change) while pandering to the most extreme and superficial fringes of the Republican Party.
For example, in December, Gingrich said that in order to combat “activist judges” he would ignore certain Supreme Court rulings and impeach judges, or potentially eliminate entire courts, if their rulings were deemed too radical or “anti-American.” The impulsiveness and lack of foresight evident in this proposal is remarkable. Still, this seems to be the style of campaign Gingrich is determined to run as he reinvents himself as the conservative alternative to Romney.
Romney is still the clear frontrunner, but if Gingrich somehow wins the nomination, Republicans face a dilemma. Most likely, their candidate would lose handily in the general election. The other unfortunate alternative is that Gingrich becomes the face of the party for the foreseeable future.
More meaningless stats, stat!
22 January 2012
I daresay we'll hear it said a lot over the next few days: No Republican has won his party's nomination without winning South Carolina since 1980. In fact, here's a New York Times report on Saturday's South Carolina contest, won resoundingly by Newt Gingrich, saying exactly that:
And after being so confident just 10 days ago, the Romney campaign is now fighting not only the perception that Mr. Romney cannot consolidate broad support among conservative voters, but also at least one troubling fact: No Republican has gone on to win the party’s nomination without winning South Carolina since before 1980.
Meaningless statistic is meaningless! We're talking about five races in which an incumbent Republican president was not running — hardly a decisive precedent. (Make it six if you consider Pat Buchanan's challenge against President George H.W. Bush in 1992 to have actually stood a chance.) And remember a week ago, when Mitt Romney was thought to have won Iowa and been all but a sure thing for the nomination, how commentators were fond of saying that, in the modern primary era, no Republican challenger had won both Iowa and New Hampshire? It was as if the eight votes by which Romney had been thought to have won by actually indicated some exceptional electoral strength that proved his competitiveness.
South Carolina's track record in picking winners is aptly explained by Jamelle Bouie at The American Prospect:
After defecting from the Democratic Party over civil rights, Senator Strom Thurmond argued that the state’s whites should direct their political activities toward amassing as much influence as possible in the national GOP. “That notion, that you wanted to have maximum influence on what the national Republicans believed, tended to produce a kind of caution in supporting an insurgent nominee for president,” says Lacy Ford Jr., a historian of the South and Southern politics at the University of South Carolina. “A lot of people outside of South Carolina thought that Bob Dole would be vulnerable in 1996 to such a candidate, but that wasn’t the case at all—he took out Pat Buchanan decisively by beating him in South Carolina.”
This year, however, says Bouie, South Carolina Republicans were looking to buck the trend and follow their political instincts to a hard right conservative:
[Tea Party Republicans] see this contest as an opportunity for finding a more ideological nominee. “I go to a lot of party meetings and party functions, and it seems like voters are looking for people who match up with their values first and can win last,” says Edward Cousar, second vice chair to the state GOP and head of the Black Republican PAC, a group devoted to supporting Afri-can American candidates in South Carolina and across the country. Karen Floyd, a former state Republican Party chair, agrees. “I think the grassroots effort is crucial in the state of South Carolina, and I think some consultants can help deliver that, but really, it’s all about message. Most people are looking for the person who is most authentic and can help us get out of the situation we’re in.”
Gingrich had been assidiously courting such voters all week, and his efforts bore fruit today. But not too much has changed. Gingrich is still a severely flawed candidate, and though his rival Mitt Romney might have had a truly awful week, Romney is still better organised, better funded, and, with Florida, Michigan, and Nevada set to vote in coming weeks, looking at a more friendly electoral calendar. South Carolina might well have lengthened the GOP race today, but Romney is still the favourite, and Gingrich is still as non-viable as ever.
Death, taxes, and a Romney victory in New Hampshire
9 January 2012
The results in Iowa were remarkably close but don’t expect the trend to continue in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney currently holds a comfortable 15 per cent lead over Ron Paul in New Hampshire, and Nate Silver’s election model gives Romney a 98 per cent chance of winning the primary on January 10th. The only sure things in life are death, taxes, and a Romney victory in New Hampshire.
Still, there is much at stake for the candidates. New Hampshire is a fairly moderate state with a libertarian bent, characteristics that do not favour the socially conservative Rick Santorum. However, Santorum has surprised some political commentators by continuing to campaign heavily in New Hampshire rather than focus on upcoming states like South Carolina. It’s important for Santorum do well enough to maintain the momentum he built up in Iowa, but, at the same time, he needs to remain modest about his expectations in New Hampshire so that it is not seen as a disappointment when he falls well short of winning. Recent polls show Santorum with 8 per cent of the vote in New Hampshire; if he could end up winning around 15 per cent of the vote and finish in the top three it would be a good showing for him. Ultimately though, it all comes down to South Carolina, where Santorum probably has to win to have a shot at the nomination.
No candidate has focused more of their attention on New Hampshire than Jon Huntsman. The former Utah governor completely passed over Iowa, and now his entire candidacy rests on the results of the primary on January 10th. Huntsman has experienced a bit of upward momentum and currently sits third in the New Hampshire polls. Still, it does not look like he is getting anywhere near the level of support nationally that it would take to make him a serious candidate going forward. Interestingly, Huntsman took a direct shot at his own party on Friday, commenting that the Republican Party is going through an unfortunate phase but that this “cycle [will] ultimately take us to a sane Republican Party based on real ideas.” It seems very likely that Huntsman is already looking beyond the 2012 election, positioning himself to be the face of what he believes will be a new and revitalized Republican Party.
Newt Gingrich has gone on the offensive of late, attacking Romney aggressively in the debates. Further, Gingrich supporters are preparing to release a 27 minute documentary accusing Romney of destroying jobs and communities while CEO of Bain Capital. Gingrich is still far behind in New Hampshire, but it will be interesting to see whether these attacks can help jumpstart his campaign, and what effect they will have on Romney.
A Romney win looks more or less inevitable, but his margin of victory will be informative. Romney’s numbers have slipped a bit in the last several days, so if his competitors can exceed expectations in New Hampshire, it will make things more interesting for the upcoming primaries in South Carolina and Florida. Regardless though, Romney will remain the clear frontrunner coming out of New Hampshire.
Why Iowa was good for Obama
6 January 2012
Iowa caucus winners Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney
He may not have received a single vote in the Republican caucus, but Barack Obama emerged from Iowa as one of the big winners. Obama’s press secretary claims that the President has no interest in the outcome of the Iowa Republican caucus. Don’t believe a word of it. The results on January 3rd were welcome news for the President.
Obama and his staff see Romney as the biggest threat in the general election. He is a savvy politician with strong connections within the party, and most importantly he’s moderate enough to attract support beyond the base of the Republican Party. The close race in Iowa was good for Democrats, not necessarily because it will stop Romney from being the nominee, but because it stops the Republicans from rallying behind Romney so early in the process.
If Romney had won convincingly in Iowa he would have more or less locked up the nomination and could have started healing the divisions within his party and looking ahead to the general election. Instead, he’s about to face another barrage of attacks from his competitors. Santorum will try to outline the choice Republicans face as follows: they can support him, the true conservative, or Romney, the moderate in Republican clothing who is pandering for their vote. The other candidates will likely focus their criticisms on Romney as well, realizing that their only shot of winning is if they can pull the frontrunner back to the pack. This was abundantly clear on election night in Iowa as Gingrich congratulated Santorum on his performance but made no mention of Romney.
The challenge Romney faces is trying to convince voters that he’s not simply the nominee by default, but someone they can get excited about. His task is made much more difficult when he has a host of challengers, most notably Santorum, arguing just the opposite. Team Obama still expects Romney to get the nomination, but they’d rather he come out of the process weary from a difficult primary fight and without the full support of the Republican Party. Further, Romney may need to tack further to the right in the face of Santorum’s criticism. This may prove beneficial in the primaries, but could potentially hurt him in the general election.
Finally, there’s the unlikely (but certainly possible) scenario in which Santorum defies the odds and goes on to claim the nomination. Santorum is no pushover, but the Obama campaign would have to be licking their chops over the prospects of facing him. Santorum’s major selling point is his social conservatism, and it’s hard to imagine the general electorate casting their votes primarily based on social issues, especially with the economy in such dire straits. The last time Santorum ran in a general election he lost by 18 per cent, and it would be difficult for such a rigid conservative to do well enough amongst moderates and independents to win the presidency.
It’s important not to overstate the potential threats to the Romney campaign. With his disciplined demeanour and well organised campaign, Romney has the tools to handle an extended nomination process and negative ads. Remember, he’s been at or near the front of the pack since the beginning of the race, and so far has handled the attacks thrown at him. Still, Romney and his staff can’t be excited at the prospect of Santorum and Gingrich driving a wedge between him and the conservative base. The longer the nominee remains in doubt and the Republican Party remains fractured, the better things look for Obama.
Mr Gingrich goes to Washington
28 December 2011
Bob Woodward has an extensive story in the Washington Post about Newt Gingrich's antagonistic relationship with President George H.W. Bush. It's remarkable how much the former House Speaker remade Washington in his image:
Gingrich had dramatically walked out of the White House and was leading a very public rebellion against a deficit reduction and tax increase deal that Bush and top congressional leaders of both parties — including, they thought, Gingrich — had signed off on after months of tedious negotiations. The House was to vote on the deal the very next day.
“We went over and I said [to Bush], ‘I’m really sorry that this is happening,’ and he said with as much pain as I’ve heard from a politician, ‘You’re killing us, you are just killing us.’ ”
Note that this wasn't a case of a Congressional representative asserting his branch's right against the executive. Gingrich was trying to undermine a compromise between two branches and two parties — the sort of compromise on which American divided government runs — out of ideological rigidity. The former Congressman from Georgia currently running for the Republican nomination might not have invented partisan rancour, but he perfected it so impressively he was able to use it against a president of his own party. The effects are still being felt today.
Here's Woodward again:
Gingrich’s revolt highlighted a rift that persists to this day within the Republican Party, between a pragmatic establishment open to dealmaking and a more rigid conservative base that prefers purity over compromise.
[...]
The party divide also played out on Capitol Hill last week, when a group of conservatives in the House attempted to torpedo a deal struck between Senate Republicans and the White House over payroll taxes. In that case, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) backed down in the face of political pressure. In 1990, Gingrich did not.
Don't expect it to get better in 2012, either. Seasoned Congressional observer Norman Ornstein thinks false memories of Gingrich's showdowns in the '90s are the driving force behind Tea Party stubbornness today:
Ultimately, the root of the problem may lie in the stark lessons that the Republicans elected to Congress in 2010 seem to have drawn from an earlier cohort of conservative Congressmen — those that Newt Gingrich lead into the majority in 1994. Today’s Tea Partiers recognize that they share a similar governing philosophy with their forebears, but they believe almost uniformly that the Gingrichites sold out too quickly, blinking unnecessarily when the political heat got turned up. The conclusion many have drawn is that Gingrich made a huge mistake when he gave in after the disastrous government shutdown at the end of 1995 — if Republicans had held out, lashed themselves to the collective mast and weathered the storm of public disapproval, Clinton would have caved and they would have succeeded at rolling back the welfare state.
There is, of course, zero evidence for this thesis, but that doesn't matter. Some of this group will come back to DC in January believing that Boehner and sellouts like Mitch McConnell and John McCain have just repeated the error of 1995. That will make John Boehner's task even more difficult as he moves to negotiate a new deal on the year-long extension of the payroll tax cut, and will compound his difficulties as he considers other key decisions, including the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. For Boehner, the nightmare will not only continue, but deepen.
Barack Obama failed to usher in the era of post-partisanship he campaigned on, but that doesn't mean American voters have gotten any fonder of ideological rigitidty or Congressional gridlock. Newt Gingrich doesn't have much of a shot at the GOP nomination, but this is one more reason why Democrats would relish the chance to run against him.
Reasons to like Gingrich
16 December 2011
I discussed last week the many flaws Newt Gingrich has as a candidate, but also linked to my USSC colleague Tom Switzer's case in favour of the former House Speaker. Here's another explanation for Ginrich's recent Republican Party re-embrace:
That chart is from Nate Silver, and it's a pretty impressive feather in Gingrich's cap. Silver explains:
The two large red circles in the chart represent the 104th and 105th Congresses, during which Mr. Gingrich was the Speaker of the House. As you can see, they were associated with an extremely large conservative shift. Part of this is because Republicans had gained 53 seats at the preceding midterm elections and so represented the swing votes in the chamber. But the newly elected Republicans also tended to be quite disciplined in their conservative voting even if they came from moderate districts. The typical Republican member of Congress was more conservative in the 104th Congress than in the 103rd Congress, something that traditionally had not happened when a party does well at an election and expands its coalition.
Thanks to Newt Gingrich, in 1994, America elected its most conservative Congress in more than sixty years, and continued electing progressively conservative Congresses for four out of the next five years. No matter Gingrich's many flaws, conservatives have one extraordinarily positive memory they associate with him.
Another note on this graph: Compare the volatility of the post-1994 congresses against the relative ideological stability of those over previous decades. This is the partisanship of American politics in action. The 2004-2010 period is particularly remarkable; in the space of four years, the Congress swung from the most conservative since in 1930 to the most liberal, and then, two years later, swung back to an even more conservative one than before. The moderate has become a distinctly endangered species.
Meanwhile, back on the popularity of Gingrich among conservatives, Jonathan Bernstein has another explanation: short memories.
And that's the story with Newt Gingrich's various and many problems. Sure, the marriages are a big part of the story that people have told about him all year. But the ethics violations and fine? Really — how many times do you think that Fox News or Rush Limbaugh mentioned those things since, say, 1998? I sure wouldn't be surprised if even a hint of ethics problems was never once mentioned on any Fox News program since the turn of the century, at least until this year's presidential campaign.
It's been a long time since Gingrich held office, and a lot of Republicans simply may not remember how disastrous he ended up being for their side. Then again, that may be changing. As Nate Silver reports today, Gingrich's popularity appears to be on the wane.
Gingrich in his first act
13 December 2011
For those of us who were still in primary school in 1994 when current GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich announced the Contract With America and lead the Republican takeover of the House, contemporary articles from that time are always illuminating. In that vein, I strongly recommend checking out the New York Review of Books's March 1995 profile of Gingrich (h/t Longform.org) published less than two months into his Speakership. Some of it is wryly quaint — the horror at Republican partisanship, for instance, or the apparently plentiful Republican moderates. Some of it is just weird — particularly the Tofflers, whom the article refers to as Gingrich's "gurus." Much of it is damning.
The best lines come from Congressman Barney Frank, and though they should be read while keeping in mind that Frank is a political opponent of Gingrich's, the panache with which their delivered is delicious. This bon mot is particularly cutting — and, I suspect, accurate:
Newt does not have ideas, he has ideas about ideas. He keeps saying what a good idea it is to have ideas.
Or this:
“He is the least substantive major political figure I’ve ever seen. When I think of Henry Hyde, I think of abortion. When I think of Jack Kemp, I think of economic opportunity. When I think of most conservatives, something of content comes to mind. Even when I think of wacky Dornan, I think of his military views. But Gingrich in seventeen years has never got into substantive stuff. And, frankly, Democrats are having trouble working with him because he just knows so little about issues. If you do not understand the issues, you can’t predict people’s responses. He made a concession on setting up a commission to oversee enforcement on the Mexican loans, and his own people went berserk. He didn’t realize what it all meant in the context of NAFTA.”
For more on the larger than life curio that is Newt Gingrich, try this 1984 Mother Jones profile.
Newt?
7 December 2011
If you're wondering why I haven't talked much about Newt Gingrich here on this blog, it's because I've been highly skeptical of his candidacy to date. My consistent stance throughout the year has been that though I'm not predicting Mitt Romney will gain the GOP nomination, he's always looked most likely to get it, and few of the other candidates have shown themselves serious challengers to his frontrunner status.
But Gingrich, the House Speaker during the Republican reign of the 1990s, is now leading in one Iowa poll, while another shows he's acceptable to a large portion of the Republican Party. The latter is potentially more significant; as Herman Cain's departure from the race last week shows, the field is still volatile and support is liable to shift rapidly from one candidate to another. For a candidate, being acceptable to your party is as important as being appealing to it.
So I'm taking Gingrich more seriously than most of the Republican field. Still, I struggle to see him doing well. Gingrich is a Southerner, but tempermentally, he's of the Fairfax, Virginia suburbs where he makes his home. He loves Washington, and no matter how much he may try to persuade voters otherwise, he's the consummate insider. The problem is: other insiders don't like him. He warmed Republican hearts with his Contract With America and his party's ensuing victory in the 1994 midterms, but, after that, he blundered by forcing an unpopular government shutdown and impeaching President Bill Clinton. As a candidate he's unstable and unfocused, and his purported intellect more often involves impressive-sounding schemes rather than rigorous, workable proposals.
But the Internet has plenty of discussion of Gingrich's flaws. Instead of me laying them out in further detail, I recommend checking out Tom Switzer's latest column in American Review, which makes the case for why Gingrich might succeed. Gingrich, Tom says, "is the last best hope for conservatives."
It's a smart, well-argued piece as to why Gingrich doubters like me are wrong — and we might be! Check it out.
The 2012 Republican Party in 1984
20 May 2011
In an obscure corner of the internet, you can find one of my more shameful efforts at political analysis. In October 2009, on a little-read blog, I made a rather silly prediction. When the New York Times reported that Republicans were optmistic of gaining 40 seats and taking control of the House in the 2010 midterms, I declared such "wishful thinking" as "utter fantasy."
Republicans ended up gaining 63 seats, and a majority in control of the House. Oops. Mea culpa.
In spite of this success, however, this does not feel like a particularly Republican moment in history. The party's presidential field is weak, and shows few signs of getting stronger. Recent polls show that electors both expect Barack Obama to be re-elected and believe he deserves a second term. The House GOP has won some policy victories, reducing spending, and making it harder for women in the District of Columbia to get abortions, but the big political wins over the past few months have belonged to the president. The Tea Party has lost much of the energy that thrust its acolytes into power, and those representatives are finding it much harder to make significant cuts to spending than they had previously supposed. I have learned my lesson, and I am not about to predict the results for the 2012 presidential contest, but at the moment, the task of making Barack Obama a single-termer is more daunting than an ascendant Republican Party would hope.
One of the Republicans hoping to achieve that goal is Newt Gingrich. He's making a not very credible bid to become the Republican presidential candidate, and to coincide with his entry into the race, Mother Jones has uploaded its seminal profile of the former House Speaker. Originally published in 1984, it is a wide-ranging of the hypocrisies, immoralities, and talents of the then young Congressman from Georgia. It's definitely worth a read. What particularly caught my attention was one of the more complimentary statements about Gingrich:
Gingrich has coined a slogan to communicate his vision: a "conservative opportunity society"—the opposite, at least in language, of the liberal welfare state. Its three pillars are free enterprise, high technology, and traditional values. But unlike the Republicans of the past 50 years, Gingrich is not content simply to object to every liberal spending program; he seeks to develop a new, positive agenda for the nation. He is not antigovernment, but antiliberal. "I believe in a lean bureaucracy, not in no bureaucracy," he said. "You can have an active, aggressive, conservative state which does not in fact have a large centralized bureaucracy...This goes back to Teddy Roosevelt. We have not seen an activist conservative presidency since TR."
And this explains the GOP's problem. The party found success in strenuous opposition to a Democratic Party pushing contentious reforms to health care and governing during a period of high unemployment, but they never really came up with much of an alternative agenda. The best evidence of this lies in the party's distinct failure to even try to enact the "replace" portion of their "repeal-and-replace" promise on health care. Elsewhere, Paul Ryan's highly unpopular Medicare reforms are as unoriginal as they are unworkable. Whatever one might have thought of Republican ideas in the 1980s and '90s, or the way they implemented, there was no doubt that they had them. To improve his party's long term fortunes, 2011 Newt Gingrich might want to look back to 1984 Newt Gingrich for inspiration.
Fast times in dropout politics
18 May 2011
As mentioned by Lesley, Donald Trump has departed from the 2012 presidential race. Mike Huckabee, as well, has dropped out, announcing on Saturday evening that "All the factors say go," but his "heart says no." I hadn't credited either man with much of a chance to win the Republicans nomination. In the case of Trump, to use Seth Meyers's words, he was running as a joke, and Huckabee had a solid constituency but little institutional credibility. Meanwhile, Trump's successor in headline-grabbing, Newt Gingrich, has the opposite problem to Huckabee; D.C. credibility, but little possibility of building a base of support.
There are complex arguments and analyses to be made about the re-shuffle of the Republican field, but I prefer a simpler one: This will benefit the candidates already in the race. A winnowed field means that there is less of a chance some also-ran could find a sudden burst of public support or successfully manage to curry party favour. With Herman Cain and Ron Paul still lacking in credibility, and Tim Pawlenty attracting nothing but yawns, the withdrawal of Huckabee and Trump makes it ever more likely Mitt Romney will gain the Republican nomination.
That may seem bizarre given the amount of time Romney is spending showing his party fellows PowerPoint slides in a bid to distance himself from the Democrats' health care reforms. But as much as the GOP and the Press may wish for a charismatic, popular, and credible movement conservative to step forward and make for an interesting presidential contest, it is more likely that the right will simply have to learn to like the candidate they end up with, flaws and all. That may be Romney — or Mitch Daniels or Rick Perry might step in with a whole new set of reasons to dissatisfy the grassroots, independents, or both. Nonetheless, the result of a smaller field is that each of the candidates still active become more likely to reach the end, no matter their weaknesses now.
Mitt Romney, meanwhile, is topping a not very meaningful Gallup poll.
Tim Pawlenty: Because you don't know who might be able to beat Obama
22 March 2011
Tim Pawlenty announces his exploratory committee. Are you excited yet?
According to Politico, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has announced the formation of his exploratory committee for the Presidency. In the above video launching his bid for the GOP nomination, Pawlenty explains that he wants to "restore America" by limiting government spending and growing jobs. (He does not explain how these he'll reconcile these contradictory goals.) Pawlenty is the first Republican with a shot at seriously competing for the Presidency to take this step, though Newt Gingrich has officially announced that he's sorta kinda thinking about doing it, and long shots Buddy Roemer and Herman Cain already have formed exploratory committees.
Last week I quoted Nate Silver dismissing Pawlenty as unremarkable and unmemorable. I still agree with this description and think Pawlenty's dullness will make it difficult for him to compete. That does not mean, however, that he can't win. There is not, and will not be, a stand out candidate for the GOP this year. Whomever the party decides should compete against Barack Obama in 2012 will have a significant flaw of some kind. But like John McCain, John Kerry, or Bob Dole, Pawlenty could be the staid last man standing after more memorable candidates have flared out. As such, his biggest rival will be the similarly conventional Mitt Romney.
If Romney cannot convince voters he has grown more conservative since the days he put together the Massachusetts health care system that provided the model for the Affordable Care Act, or if he cannot convince the Republican base to disregard his Mormon beliefs, Pawlenty is poised to take his spot as the party's safe patrician. Of course, that will also depend on him outlasting more exciting but more ideologically volatile contenders, such as Mike Huckabee or Haley Barbour. Pawlenty's position will also look better if Mitch Daniels stays out of the race, since the Indiana governor is on most counts simply a more electable version of Pawlenty.
None of this is impossible and Pawlenty could win the nomination. Being the first to formalise his bid will help him slightly. The next thing he must do is win the caucus in Iowa. The state neighbours Minnesota, and if Pawlenty can't get a decent showing there, he might as well pack up and make the short drive home to St. Paul.
Scoping the GOP field
17 March 2011
I enjoyed Lesley's portrayal of the Republican presidential field as a bunch of penguins shivering at the edge of the ice. Republicans confidently predicting that the water's fine and Barack Obama will be an easy beat are a bit harder to find in recent months. Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee are some of the high profile conservatives warning the president's opponents of the steep task before them.
One problem facing the GOP, and this is probably the reason for the reticence of the field, is that there is no obvious challenger for them to either rally behind or oppose. Ross Cameron's op-ed in today's Sydney Morning Herald effectively sketches out the hopefuls, but explains better why some won't win than who will. He correctly dismisses Sarah Palin and Ron Paul from contention, and though I believe he's too hasty in proclaiming Mike Huckabee's comfort in his Fox News role, the outcome will be the same whether Huckabee runs or not: the Arkansan won't win the nomination. Cameron also correctly identifies the flaws with Tim Pawlenty (boring), Mitch Daniels (uncharismatic — and I'd add unpopular among the religious right for the "truce" he called for on social issues) and frontrunner Mitt Romney (insincere). He predicts Newt Gingrich will get the nod, which is audacious, but that's OK. I'm fine with audacious predictions, so long as they're not absurd.
The problem for the Republican party is that it's really easy to come up with reasons why each of their candidates will not win the nomination. Jonathan Bernstein's rebuttal to Gingrich-boosters, for instance, is ferocious:
However, the idea that absent his divorces Newt would be a strong candidate is just silly. First of all, Newt's severe lack of popularity predates his second divorce and remarriage; he was terribly unpopular during most of his years as Speaker. So we're talking about someone who has been out of office for over a decade and wasn't popular nationally when he was in office. Not to mention that capturing a presidential nomination without rising [above] the House hasn't been done in over a century, anyway.
But second, and probably more to the point -- Newt Gingrich is a snake-oil salesman, and he was fully exposed during his run as Speaker. It's possible that Zeleny is correct that "Rival Republicans marvel at his deep well of ideas, his innate intellect and his knowledge of government," but unlikely that those marveling Republicans would include those who served with him in the House in 1995-1998. That's among the reasons they were prepared to toss him out when he saw the jig was up and quit ... As a presidential candidate, Newt is...well, he's less of a joke than Donald Trump, but more of a joke than Sarah Palin has been (unlike Newt, she has a solid, enthusiastic faction devoted to her).
At the end of last year, Bernstein also cautioned against dismissing candidates like Pawlenty. Nate Silver's dismissal of the former Minnesota Governor, however, is convincing:
The other potential flaw is in assuming that name recognition itself is something exogenous from candidate quality. In plain English: the fact that a candidate hasn’t been very successful at getting voters to recognize his name is often a sign that he is an unremarkable candidate.
Mr. Pawlenty has not exactly been invisible. In 2008, he was the governor of the state where Republicans held their convention, and was widely speculated upon as John McCain’s vice presidential nominee — indeed, he was used as something of a decoy, before Mr. McCain picked Ms. Palin. In 2009, he played a key role in the state’s contentious recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. In 2010, he’s gotten a ton of face time on national television because of his interest in the Presidential race. But voters don’t seem much to remember him — or they don’t seem much to care.
You can effectively knock off every contender out there if you continue in this fashion. One smart point Cameron's article makes is his comparison of the GOP field in 2012 to that of the Democrats in 2004. The left was united then in its desire to keep George W. Bush to one term, but it never enthusiastically cohered behind any of the many contenders — all of whom seemed flawed in some vital way. In the end, John Kerry won more or less by outlasting his opponents, and the party eventually tried to warm itself to him. I don't think Gingrich will be 2012's John Kerry, but someone will be. That someone will probably have some significant flaws. But as Donald Rumsfeld might advise his party: You campaign for an election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want.
Why doesn't Australia have a Sarah Palin?
27 July 2010
Hidden in a smart post about Australian politics, Jonathan Holmes makes a smart point about American politics:
In a much smaller way, Canberra shares some of the characteristics of Washington. Both are cities that owe their existence to politics, artificial capitals created to house the government of a federation of states. But whereas Washington has many hubs of power - the Congress on Capitol Hill, the White House and its annexes, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon across the river, K Street with its army of lobbyists - at the heart of Canberra is one world-within-a-world: New Parliament House, encircled by its own little Beltway, State Circle, is the purely political citadel within a city inhabited largely by public servants.
This is a feature of American politics that makes its operation entirely different from what we are used to seeing in Australian government. In Canberra, as Holmes points out, anyone with influence is largely confined to the government itself. For the most part, the important people in Australian politics are the elected Members of Parliament. From time to time a former PM, a well-known media figure, or a member of the public with a heart-tugging special interest story will be able to actively shape the nation's political direction, but most of the time, the federal politicians are firmly in charge.
In D.C., however, nothing is so clear cut. Holmes describes well the lack of a political focal point within D.C.: one week the Supreme Court may find states cannot ban Americans from owning guns, the next Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid may push a piece of legislation designed to reform the financial markets, and after that a member of the Administration might ill-advisedly fire an employee. But the haze extends beyond the separation of powers, and beyond, even, the Beltway bubble.
The best example at the moment is Sarah Palin, a politician who manages to exert sizable political influence in America despite holding no office, and having never held any office higher than governor of a lightly populated, geographically distant state. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich wields a similar power, though his is less characterized by celebrity. It is near unimaginable that an Australian figure could hold a role like that of either Gingrich or Palin.
Chairpeople of party national committees like Howard Dean and Michael Steele aren't strangers to political influence, either, despite being more involved with fundraising than legislating. Single-issue activists like Al Gore put new issues on the agenda, and media figures like Glenn Beck have constituencies unimaginable in the Australian system. Political power in America is far more dissolute than in Australia, particularly for opposition parties, who do not have the advantage of the shadow cabinet structure to attract attention to themselves.
This has both advantages and disadvantages. In America, ideas and influence are not restricted to the halls of Congress or the meeting rooms of the White House. If anyone who can attract a constituency can become a national player, the political culture will be more inclusive and open to unexpected innovations. In Australia, meanwhile, those in charge are there because they've worked their way steadily up through a party system, made connections and insinuated themselves into the workings of existing political apparatus.
The down side? Well, the Australian system might turn out more than a few party hacks, but then again, it hasn't turned out any Sarah Palins, either.
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