“At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”
The man who ran for the state legislature at age 34, who ran for a seat the U.S. House after four years in the state legislature, ran for the U.S. Senate at age 42, and ran for the presidency after two years in the Senate laments that America would be a better place if we weren’t consumed with personal ambition.
I haven’t choked on irony like this since Madonna complained that “a lot of our values seem to be materially oriented and so superficial.”
“I believe in America”? That’s what you’re going with this cycle, governor? I’m sorry, you don’t get to quote “The Godfather” unless you’ve killed a bunch of your enemies while attending a baptism.
The response to Newt’s second coming in South Carolina was flawlessly orchestrated. Mitt hit hard at Monday’s debate, and did a mop-up operation on Thursday night. He marshaled the help of boosters and aggressive defenders in media and politics. When Tom DeLay emerged from forced retirement and Bob Dole from convalescence to lay waste to Gingrich, you know it was a coordinated hit Godfather fans should recognize. Gingrich was caught in a revolving door, bullets flying, with nowhere to go.
Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conduct the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, were just on with Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown. They noted that in their latest poll, Barack Obama carries rural women — traditionally a Republican-leaning demographic — over Newt Gingrich.
South Carolina Republican women may be comfortable with Gingrich, but women elsewhere are not, it would seem.
“Gingrich is Goldwater,” said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “In the general election, Gingrich not only takes down his ship, he takes down the whole flotilla.”
There’s plenty of bad news for Republicans in the poll, as Romney does better, but not by a ton:
Women say they would vote for Obama over Gingrich by a wide 69-21 percent gap, far wider than the 54-38 percent difference by which Obama beats Romney. With independents, Gingrich gets just 28 percent against Obama, who wins with 52 percent. By contrast, Obama narrowly edges Romney with independents, 44 percent to 36 percent.
They say this is the last debate for a month, but . . . what are the odds we would get to spend an entire month’s worth of evenings with our families or other aspects of our lives that have been neglected the past month?
John Nolte of Big Hollywood feels as exhausted as I: “All right, everyone’s hands together in the middle for a ‘Whoa, Thank Heaven There Are No More Debates For A Month!!’”
From Jonah’s comments, it’s easy to wonder if the night revealed that Rick Santorum might still have a shot to establish himself as the preeminent Anti-Mitt candidate in this race: “Santorum just doesn’t have a lot of room to improve until/if Gingrich is out of the way. Romney desperately needed to keep Newt from surging and show some fire. He did that. It was his first solidly good debate performance in a long while. Meanwhile Newt clearly came in winging it without a plan to turn things around. I think when his attempt to turn the tables on Wolf fizzled it hurt him politically and drained him psychologically. He finished well, but sagged for a long time. I would have bet before the debate that Newt was going to re-energize the race tonight and win the Florida primary. Now, I kind of doubt it.”
Robert George, a former employee of Newt Gingrich’s, now writing editorials at the New York Post, concludes, “Santorum won debate big. Romney won NIGHT big — and probably Florida on Tuesday. Newt’s going-after-media-schtick didn’t work.”
Howard Kurtz describes one of Gingrich’s tougher moments, where he perhaps never expected that Romney would actually know the subject well enough to offer such a pointed rejoinder: “After Romney pounced on the former speaker’s $1.6-million contract with Freddie Mac, Gingrich declared that — ‘to our shock’ — he’d discovered that Romney had owned shares of Freddie and Fannie Mae, the federally subsidized mortgage agencies. What’s more, that rich guy had made more than $1 million on the trading. Oh, and he owned some Goldman Sachs, too. Romney coolly responded that these investments had been made by his blind trust, that these were mutual funds, and by the way, you invested in Fannie and Freddie too. You could hear the air escaping from the Newt balloon.”
Romney had a pretty glaring gaffe, too, when he seemed to suggest he had no idea of a particular charge in one of the ads run by his campaign. Alexander Burns of Politico lays it out:
Mitt Romney said at Thursday night’s debate that he was unaware of any ad his campaign was running, attacking Newt Gingrich for having “said Spanish is the language of the ghetto.”
Gingrich insisted that the ad took his words out of context. Romney said he didn’t think he was running any ad of the kind.
“I haven’t seen the ad,” Romney said. “I doubt that’s my ad, but we’ll take a look and find out.”
I suppose Mitt might have meant, “Soy Mitt Romney. Estoy postulado para presidente y apruebo este mensaje. Pero yo no comprehendo este mensaje.”
(That translates to, “I’m Mitt Romney, I’m running for president, and I approved this message. But I do not understand this message.” I was quite proud of myself for that Tweet, until somebody pointed out I originally had the wrong form of “understand” for the first person. Sigh.)
Gingrich then pivoted to the founding of the colony of Jamestown, “when people who believed their rights came from God first stepped foot on this continent.” They had a “very simple model,” he said: “We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto,” Gingrich said. “Second . . . we should establish that citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English. And if that’s true, we do not have to print ballots in any language except English.”
As with his recommendation to have urban youth working in schools, it seems Newt Gingrich can have the most well-intended and genuinely constructive ideas of how to help those who need it most, and yet somehow he expresses them in the most counterproductive and alienating ways.
Josh Trevino goes all Kyle Reese on us: “Listen, and understand: Mitt is out there. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it will not stop, ever, until it is nominated.”
This morning, Quinnipiac tells us that Newt’s lead in Florida can fall apart as quickly as Mitt Romney’s lead in South Carolina:
Just four days before the nation’s first big-state presidential primary, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney opens up a 38 – 29 percent lead over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich among Republican likely voters in Florida, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Only 6 percent are undecided, but 32 percent say they might change their mind by Tuesday. This compares to results of a January 25 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University, showing Romney with 36 percent of likely primary voters to Gingrich’s 34 percent. Wednesday’s survey showed Gingrich ahead 40 – 34 percent among voters surveyed after the South Carolina primary.
With the Presidential Preference Primary looming on Tuesday, Mitt Romney holds a solid lead over the Republican presidential pack in Florida, according to a Sunshine State News Poll of likely primary voters.
Romney tops the poll, which was conducted by Harrisburg, Pa.-based Voter Survey Service (VSS), with 40 percent. When he ran in the 2008 presidential primary, Romney placed second in Florida, taking 31 percent and winning 18 of the 67 counties in the Sunshine State. Newt Gingrich places second with 31 percent. Rick Santorum takes third with 12 percent followed by Ron Paul with 9 percent. One percent of those surveyed back other candidates while 6 percent remain undecided.
When the poll is recalculated with undecided voters who are leaning toward candidates, Romney takes 42 percent followed by Gingrich with 32 percent, while Santorum stays at 12 percent and Paul retains the backing of 9 percent.
The RNC notices that another one of Obama’s favorite companies, solar-panel manufacturer Amonix, is hitting hard times. The company only officially “opened” its plant in North Las Vegas in May of 2011. The company got a $6 million tax credit to build the facility in 2009, and Obama touted the company in 2010. This week, 200 of the plant’s 300 employees got pink slips.
An Indiana-based energy-storage company that received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department filed for bankruptcy Thursday…
President Obama touted the program in his State of the Union address this year.
“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” he said.
At the time, EnerDel said the grant would help the company double its production capacity and create 1,700 jobs. But the company has faced major financial problems in recent months.
I am told that Jesse Kelly, who lost to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by 1.5 percentage points in 2010, will run in the special election for her seat.
Other names being mentioned in Arizona are Frank Antenori, state senator and retired Green Beret, sportscaster Dave Sitton, retired Air Force officer Benny White, and former 2010 candidate from a neighboring district Ruth McClung.
The bad news for North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidates Pat McCrory and Doug Schell: they won’t get to run against an incumbent with numbers as low as Perdue.
Elsewhere in North Carolina, redistricting put two Tarheel State Democrats up against each other, Reps. Brad Miller and David Price. Miller has decided to retire from Congress.
UPDATE: Come on, governor! I’m sure the Obama wave coming to North Carolina in 2012 can help you over the top!
If you’re one of those voters who thinks I’ve been too cheery about Mitt Romney lately, today’s Morning Jolt is for you!
If It Ain’t Brokered, Don’t Fix It!
Oh, Mitt. Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. What are we going to do with you?
I remember during the height of RatherGate, marveling that folks like Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs (it was a long time ago!) and the Powerline guys and Hugh Hewitt and Glenn Reynolds and myself (my apologies for all the Pajamahadin Vets for Truth who I’ve forgotten for their service against the Sauronic Eye) were beating the bushes on 1970s word processors and laying out the case that CBS News anchorman Dan Rather had tried to kneecap the president’s reelection bid with a laughable hoax. As exhilarating and exciting and thrilling and righteous as those days were, I remember wondering at the time . . . why were we the ones left to fight this fight? Where was the Bush-Cheney campaign? Where was the RNC? Why was it left to “a bunch of guys in pajamas” to make this argument and lay out how the Rather report was a pack of damnable lies?
I’m starting to get that same vibe from Romney. Avik Roy defends the work of Bain ten times better than the candidate himself. Romney’s entire argument against Gingrich’s work at Freddie Mac was based on the work of Tim Carney. Every day, I see better, more compelling arguments for Romney from outside the campaign from within the campaign.
Elliot Abrams’s piece on Newt’s attacks on Reagan is an interesting read. While it does muddy Gingrich’s claims that he was sort of Reagan’s junior partner, I’m not sure everyone will see it as an all-out indictment. As Josh Treviño writes on twitter: “I’ll take ’80s Gingrich attacking Reagan from the right over ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s Romney attacking Reagan from the left.”
But my question is, Why are we hearing this from Elliot Abrams now and not from Mitt Romney weeks ago? Seriously, Romney spends a lot of money on consultants. They couldn’t prep the boss to mention a floor speech by Gingrich excoriating Ronald Reagan?
And when Romney goes off-message, he needs a GPS to find his way back. Charlotte Hays is left slack-jawed:
Who on earth is advising Mitt Romney? Somebody should have stopped this:
“Romney blasts Gingrich over attack on debate moderators, news media”
Yikes!
Note to Mitt advisers: Republicans hate the news media. Got it? And that goes double for debate moderators who try to entrap conservative candidates with trick questions. Indeed, it was partly Newt’s attack on these scoundrels that catapulted him into first place in South Carolina. There’s absolutely no reason for Romney to say this.
We’ve had almost 20 debates, and it feels like a hundred of them, not even counting Romney’s debut on the national stage four years ago. He’s had chance after chance to make his sales pitch and close the deal and he has, so far, largely failed to do so. On paper, this is the best environment for a Republican presidential candidate in decades: “A president who many Republicans see as the breathing embodiment of liberalism sits in the Oval Office; an energetic grassroots movement to fight back spontaneously formed in the tea parties; the 2009 races in New Jersey and Virginia, the special election in Massachusetts, and the 2010 midterms all showed that Republicans can win (and win big) almost anywhere when they tap into that passion; the president’s record consists of enormously unpopular nationalized health care and a stimulus that didn’t make a dent in high unemployment. Throw in scandals such as those involving Solyndra and Fast and Furious, and Obama’s presidency represents the nightmare that every Republican would presumably be highly motivated to end.” If you can’t get people excited in an environment like that, you can’t get them excited.
Part of the problem is that it feels like Romney 2012 is trying to pull off a rerun of the Obama 2008 campaign, running as a largely blank slate, letting voters of diverse ideological stripes project their desires and preferences onto him. The problem is that you can run that when you’re a biracial young man with little or no political record (“Present!”), an exotic personal story (Indonesia! Hawaii! Harvard! The mean streets of Chicago!) and rhetorical skills that are, if overrated, effective at hitting the emotional soft spots of the media and low-information swing voters.
“I believe in America”? That’s what you’re going with this cycle, governor? I’m sorry, you don’t get to quote “The Godfather” unless you’ve killed a bunch of your enemies while attending a baptism. Sure, Romney can have his SuperPAC run some attack ads against Newt, but does anybody think of Mitt Romney as a tough guy? As a fighter? As somebody who you can disagree with, but who wouldn’t want to cross?
I’ve laid out my gripes with Newt. But Romney is making that divided convention, party-elders-look-for-a-unifying-candidate scenario look better and better each day. With Ron Paul playing the delegate game quite smartly, and neither Mitt nor Newt likely to close the deal with unimpressed Republican voters, the deadlocked convention scenario looks a lot more plausible than usual.
At least, let’s put off that final decision as long as possible. As Jordan Gehrke wrote not long ago: “It’s easy to get swept away in the feeling that this nominating process has to end early. But really, why should it? At the end of February, the Republican National Committee will have awarded only 174 RNC delegates out of the 1,143 needed to lock up the nomination. A long primary would allow Republicans to protect their nominee, grow the party, and avoid handing Obama an early target. Let’s hope history repeats itself.”
In Oregon, they vote entirely by mail, and ballots are due Tuesday, January 31, in their special election. Republican Rob Cornilles is on the air with this ad:
Oregon’s 1st congressional district was, until recently, represented by Democrat David Wu. You remember him.
On Twitter today, I’ve noted that Romney’s seeming squeamishness might make him less likely to sell out conservatives as president than Newt Gingrich. It’s far from the most inspiring rallying cry, but I conclude, “Romney’s fear of a revolt on the right will keep him in line in ways that Gingrich’s ego would never allow.”
The perception of Newt Gingrich as much quicker to compromise conservative principles than to ever admit a mistake comes heavily from Sen. Tom Coburn’s 2003 book Breach of Trust, which discusses his years in the House under Gingrich as Speaker, and paints a picture of Gingrich as a raging egomaniac, wildly hypocritical and quick to toss Class of 1994 principles.
Coburn offers this easily forgotten, but quite revealing, anecdote about a fight over increasing funding for House committees. The following is from Breach of Trust, pp. 73–76:
Leadership said the increase was necessary to give Dan Burton (R-Indiana), chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, the extra money he needed to continue his investigation into the White House’s campaign abuses. They also talked about how important oversight is and how the little we spend on oversight saves the taxpayers billions. This argument wasn’t terribly persuasive. First, oversight is a good investment only if the majority party has the political will to cut waste from the budget, which we weren’t doing. Second we knew the real need that triggered this spending binge had more to do with partisan politics than doing the hard work of scouring federal agencies for fraud and waste. Gingrich was convinced he could make political hay out of someone else’s miscues and became focused on Clinton rather than the job we promised the country we would do. Burton’s investigation into the White House campaign abuses was an appropriate, necessary, and essential function of his committee. Yet it was the right policy that was being pursued for the wrong reasons. Leadership was so obsessed with the political dimension of Burton’s investigation they lacked the focus and discipline to make an exception to increase spending for Burton alone while slamming the vault door on other chairmen . . .
The rule failed 210 to 213 . . . A few minutes later, the whip’s office announced a mandatory meeting of the conference at 7 p.m. A few of us met in [Lindsey] Graham’s office before the meeting to prepare ourselves for what we expected to be the ultimate woodshed experience. After a short pep rally, we walked over to HC-5, the room where Republicans and Democrats hold their caucuses.
When we filed in, it was immediately obvious that Newt Gingrich was furious. The meeting began with a roll call, and Gingrich said every Republican would be meeting in HC-5 in the basement of the Capitol even if he had to send the sergeant at arms — the police — to track members down…
When Gingrich said, “The eleven geniuses who thought they knew more than the rest of the Congress are going to come up and explain their votes,” someone leaned over to [then-Rep.] Mark Sanford and said, “I have never heard of anyone having to explain their vote.” Gingrich continued, “Those of you who had planned to go to John Kasich’s wedding on Saturday are not going. No one is going anywhere until we get the votes we need to pass this rule.”
. . . [Steve] Largent, an NFL Hall of Famer, went straight to the podium after [Dick] Armey finished speaking. A surprised Boehner recognized him. “Mr. Speaker,” Largent said calmly and directly to Gingrich who was no more than ten feet away, “I am not intimidated. I have been in rooms much smaller than this one when I was on the opposite side of teammates during a player’s strike against the NFL. The guys in those rooms weighed 280, 320 pounds and not only wanted to kill me, if they had gotten hold of me they probably could have. This isn’t the case here tonight. More seriously, I am not intimidated because I feel good about this vote and the principles behind it . . . if, as a matter of conscience, I believe a vote is in the best interest of the American taxpayer I represent back home, well, then I just have to vote that way.” . . .
“Many of us were elected in 1994, and before that election we signed a document called the Contract with America. One of its pledges was to cut Washington committee funding by one third. We kept our word and did just that. Yet this proposal would reverse that cut. We owe it to those same folks to whom we pledged our word to either keep it, or go back to them and say, we’re new to the business of government. We cut too much and need to change our committee staffing numbers. Whatever we do, we shouldn’t do what was proposed today, which typified the Washington way of doing business so many came here to change — take credit for cutting by a third and then below the radar screen quietly add back the spending.” . . .
Then I got up and said, “I’m just a doctor from Oklahoma. I admit I’m not much of a politician, but I know the difference between right and wrong. When you tell people you’re going to lead by example, then turn around and increase our own budgets, but ask them to make cuts, you lose all credibility. Maybe I don’t belong in the Republican conference, Mr. Speaker.”
Every one of the eleven members who voted against the rule said something and no one backed down or apologized for their vote. We believed we were doing the right thing, leaving no place for apologies. Gingrich’s tactic backfired. He thought he could embarrass and intimidate us, but not one person was intimidated . . .
The event exposed a more disturbing trend that we all understood but weren’t ready to accept: the Republican “team” was no longer being held together by principles but by careerism and the desire for power for its own sake . . . Gingrich’s vitriolic response to us bringing down the rule for the bill confirmed to us he was willing to trade our principles for short term political advantage over the Democrats.
(Missouri’s primary is one of those high-attention, little impact contests, as the state GOP won’t award any delegates based on its Feb. 7 primary. Instead, Missouri Republicans will hold caucuses March 17.)
President Obama praised a well-known Milwaukee company during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. The president cited Master Lock for bringing offshore jobs back to the U.S. “A few weeks ago, the CEO of Master Lock told me that it now makes business sense for him to bring jobs back home,” said Mr. Obama. “Today, for the first time in 15 years, Master Lock’s unionized plant in Milwaukee is running at full capacity.”
One of my readers quips, “Of course Master Lock is doing well. The banks and real-estate industry need all those locks to keep people out of their foreclosed homes.”
The Ted Cruz for Senate campaign has now raised over $4 million, effectively tying the overall fundraising of the sitting Lieutenant Governor. This remarkable fundraising continues the extraordinary momentum of the Ted Cruz for Senate campaign.
In the fourth fundraising quarter of 2011, Cruz raised $1,093,837. He ended the quarter having raised nearly $4 million overall, and with $2,868,822 cash on hand. As of mid-January, the Cruz campaign has now raised substantially more than $4 million.
The really amazing number? “Cruz has had 12,450 donors; Dewhurst has reported 823. Cruz’s average donation is $319; Dewhurst’s is $2,286. And yet their overall total raised is the same.”
A Morning Jolt reader who was a consultant for Freddie Mac offers a bit of perspective on what he saw there:
I worked at Freddie as a consultant during the same timeframe that Newt was there. I can tell you that the place was creepy with consultants of all ilk. The semi-circle drive in front of the main building was logged jammed with Lincoln Towncars come 4:30 pm every day. I’ve stood in line with Paul Begala waiting to get a coffee at the Starbucks in the Freddie lobby. Freddie at its height was a multi-trillion-dollar company that had only about 6,000 employees. Everyone else was a consultant or contractor.
These are the things I can tell you:
1. Raines worked at Fannie not Freddie, Freddie was always the little brother to Fannie. The egregious behavior was common to both, but the highly visible Capitol Hill connections were mostly Fannie based (operative word there is highly visible). Freddie’s connections were of the more discreet variety.
2. A $1 million contract at Freddie was chump change. Almost charity. Our firm, which shall remain nameless but focused on IT development and mortgage policy, ran anywhere from $50 million to $80 million annually during our heyday. If a staffer of mine came to me with a new $1 million dollar add-on, and he or she was young and starting out, then I’d make a medium deal out of it. If it was one of my seasoned managers then I would wonder why he was bugging me with a job that small. And the fact that Newt had it spread over more than one year makes it even smaller.
3. It’s absolutely not inconceivable that they asked him about history. The problem is that no one is asking Newt “what kind of history.” I pretty sure that they weren’t interested in the transition of Old English to Middle English and how that affects one’s interpretation of Canterbury Tales. More likely that asked him to review the historical voting records of specific legislators and provide context on what background conversations were occurring at the time and how one would interpret their votes and seek to influence them in the future. That would be very Freddie.
4. I’ve used lobbyists in my job (BTW, that doesn’t make me a bad person; it’s a form of free speech). The first thing you check out is the credentials of a lobbyist to confirm that everything is on the up and up. Credentials specifically mean “are you registered as a lobbyist?” A “no” answer is very very very problematic as it exposes all parties to potential legal action. Newt was not a registered lobbyist. Period.
5. Newt was my congressman from 1992 (when I moved to GA) to his departure. I’ve met him. The thing that’s fun about Newt is going to listen to him speak. It’s political theatre. You’re in the audience waiting for his next zinger. It’s almost like listening to George Carlin with a conservative political slant. I love Newt. I don’t want George Carlin to be my next President. My wife and I, both lifelong ultra conservatives, are voting for Romney. The primary process is all retail politics at the small meeting level. It is perfect for Newt. That scares me.
6. And last of all, the Dos Equis man doesn’t do a push up, he bench presses the earth . . .
This was in response to a portion of today’s Morning Jolt:
I’m willing to take Gingrich at his word. I think he honestly believes his work had nothing to do with lobbying. I think he could take a lie-detector test and declare that he was hired for his wisdom, public policy and historical knowledge and the needle wouldn’t budge. The biggest problem here isn’t the lie he’s telling to us; it’s the lie he’s telling to himself.
But even aside from that angle, Gingrich isn’t being honest with himself about what he was doing. The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney notes that legally, Gingrich was lobbying.
Specifically, the Freddie Mac executive who hired Gingrich was not the CEO, nor the VP for operations, nor the VP for communications, but Craig Thomas, the VP for Public Policy — that is, the head of Freddie Mac’s lobbying operations. Thomas was a registered lobbyist at the time.
So, Gingrich may or may not have made lobbying contacts on Freddie’s behalf, but it appears he was being paid to aid Freddie Mac’s lobbying agenda. Say Gingrich was providing memos to Thomas on how to lobby (and given Thomas’s job as top lobbyist, what else would he be helping Thomas with?), that counts as “Lobbying Activity” according to the law:
Freddie Mac used Newt Gingrich, telling him what he wanted to hear, that his expertise was so unique and special and valuable that it was worth $300,000 to them. They used him, and Newt appears to have not realized it.
The Romney campaign will argue that Gingrich’s defenses on Freddie Mac are cynical lies, while ignoring the much, much more disturbing and damaging interpretation: Gingrich actually believes them.
UPDATE: My reader offers another eye-popping anecdote of the culture at Freddie Mac:
I was there when the stuff hit the fan and the “unusual accounting practices” came to light. Price Waterhouse got the independent audit job after Arthur Andersen went down the tubes. They took one look at the way that Freddie was recognizing review and forced a re-audit of the last five years of financial statements. All of the paper shredders were collected and locked away, the delete key on their email system was deactivated, and you walked down the hallways past boxes stacked to the ceiling labeled “dispose after re audit”. That was how your trash was collected every day and retained every day. I am not joking. I saw this . . .
In a survey conducted January 18-22, the Washington Post found that Gingrich’s favorable-to-unfavorable rating among all voters is 29-to-51 percent. Romney’s is 31-to-49 percent . . .
Among independents, Romney has a 23-to-51 favorable-to-unfavorable rating. Gingrich’s is 23-to-53.
Among Republicans, Romney has a 58-to-32 favorable-to-unfavorable rating. Gingrich’s is 55-to-34 percent.
The paper says that President Obama’s favorable ratings have increased recently and stand at 53 percent among all Americans, and 51 percent among independents.
A couple of readers have pointed to the example of President Nixon as a figure who was not widely liked but who won national races several times. But it’s not 1972 anymore. Can we argue that any figure since then won a presidential race while being disliked? Did any of our elected presidents win while having low favorables and high unfavorables?
In January 1979, Ronald Reagan’s poll ratings were 38% favorable/39% unfavorable in a Cambridge Reports survey (compared to 46%/43% for Carter) but he ended up sweeping the Electoral College in 1980 as a result of the terrible economy.
What seems rather astounding is that Reagan — sunny, funny, principled, but never harsh Reagan! — could have such a mediocre split in his numbers on favorability.
On the one hand, no criticism of Romney or Gingrich that we’ve heard this primary season was going to go unmentioned in a general-election fight against Obama. But one can’t help but look at the way this primary has developed — with candidates using every resource they have to spotlight the other’s flaws, for weeks on end, to as broad an audience as possible — as a formula to drive down their favorable numbers with the electorate at large.
Today’s Morning Jolt offers a look at a stirring defense of work and what we seem to be losing in America today, a question of whether it’s worse for Newt Gingrich to lie to the public or to himself in discussing why Freddie Mac hired him; and a wrap-up of a debate that makes one wonder if we really need any more debates this primary season.
A Debate So Bad, We Missed Stephanopoulos’ Contraception Questions
If you missed last night’s debate . . . congratulations. Whatever else you did, it was time well spent.
To say the righties I follow on Twitter were unimpressed with the questions, and generally bored as the debate droned on, is to say Rand Paul might have a beef with TSA right now.
Tina Korbe makes my job tougher: “GOOD NIGHT! That was so empty of content I don’t even want to read the recap tweets.”
David Limbaugh: “No one won the debate because there wasn’t a debate. To say someone did win is to accept the false premise that there was one.”
Ed Morrissey: “Romney won the debate by setting Gingrich back on his heels over Freddie Mac, but won’t hurt Newt much in polls.”
A lot of viewers were expecting Gladiator Newt to burst upon the stage, unsheath his sword, behead a moderator or two, hurl the decapitated anchor noggin into the audience and bellow, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?” But this was a comparably subdued Newt.
Real Clear Politics’ Scott Conroy reminds us, “Newt forgot to do the thing where he pretends he’s really mad at the media but he’s actually really happy.”
James Taranto: “I like Mad Newt better. Hope the meds wear off before the next debate.”
Jim Antle: “A Gingrich debate performance without audience participation is like a mildly amusing sitcom without a laugh track.”
If Newt had a tough moment, insisting that his $300,000 worth of work for Freddie Mac wasn’t lobbying, even though his contract was with the organization’s chief lobbyist. (See more below.) But Romney’s lack of appeal to the party’s conservatives was laid bare when Williams asked, in effect, what he had done for the conservative movement. Romney mentioned raising his family, his work in the private sector, and his time as governor of Massachusetts.
“Romney’s got a great family, great business: neither did much for conservatism. That’s fine. But it’s true,” Jonah pointed out.
The Gingrich campaign sent out a blast e-mail titled “Mitt Romney’s Top Conservative Achievements.” The e-mail, of course, was blank.
If you missed tonight’s Republican debate, the 18th of this cycle, and featuring questions on sugar subsidies, the Terri Schiavo decision from 2005, “Why didn’t the Bush tax cuts work?” and what the candidates fear about the presidency . . . you won!
I thought I would give you a little insight into what will happen with the Giffords resignation.
First, it’s a bit of a stroke of good luck for the GOP. The Democrats have not taken a lot of action because they were waiting for Giffords to make a move. Since the district is currently marginally Republican, the GOP has a slight edge, depending on the candidates. That gives us a head start on the special election (in about 5 months) and the general (which will be in a slightly more Democratic district).
Who will be running as a Republican? First will be Frank Antenori, state senator and retired Green Beret. Strong conservative. I think he has the edge since he has had an exploratory committee already going. Also will have a good campaign team and grassroots.
Benny White has expressed interest in the position today. He is a retired Air Force officer and has collected a lot of chits by helping Republicans during the years and probably has an inside edge with establishment GOP money people.
Ruth McClung. I’ve heard talk that she might try to run in this district. She ran against Grijalva in 2010, but she is within walking distance of the congressional border. She might try to take the plunge again.
As mentioned in today’s Three Martini Lunch, the decision by Rep. Giffords to focus on her recovery is probably best for her and for the district. After experiencing such horror and demonstrating such determination during her long recovery, Giffords became a figure of unparalleled sympathy. For this reason, opponents in both parties gingerly tiptoed around discussions of this year’s congressional race, and some Arizona Democrats eagerly hoped she would run for the open U.S. Senate seat. But leaders are not supposed to be selected purely on sympathy.
I receive press releases from Paddy Power, “Ireland’s largest bookmaker and a leading provider of gaming services in the UK, Australia and Ireland.” Most of the releases reflect predictable shifts in odds, but today’s release indicates how suddenly and dramatically the Republican primary changed in South Carolina: “While Romney remains the favourite for the Republican nomination, his odds have taken a significant slide from 1/14 to 2/5, while Gingrich’s odds have been chopped from 6/1 before the South Carolina Primary to 2/1.”
South Carolina gave us a lot to chew over, and Florida will reveal even more. Over on the homepage, five thoughts on the primary we just witnessed and the one to come.
Three: The continuing irrelevance of Iowa. In the Hawkeye State, Rick Santorum pulled off the most unlikely of upsets, presented a feel-good underdog story in the first major contest of the 2012 cycle, and . . . he saw a relatively small impact on his numbers in New Hampshire. (They were raised from about 3 percent to 9 percent.) Perhaps that can be explained historically: Iowa and New Hampshire rarely agree, and Granite State Republicans are usually extremely reluctant to confirm Iowa’s choice. But in South Carolina, Santorum jumped from 3 percent to 20 percent . . . and then slid down to around 12 percent in the final polls, finishing with an acceptable — but uninspiring — 17 percent on Saturday night.
Santorum seems to be repeating the experience of Mike Huckabee, who also couldn’t translate an Iowa win into many significant victories in the subsequent states. This cycle has given critics of Iowa’s prominence a great deal of ammunition, but even if the state’s turnout had been higher and the count had been clear and no ballots had been lost, a definite pattern would remain: The rest of the country just isn’t all that enamored with the candidates Iowa likes best. Perhaps the state’s love of retail politicking and lavish personal attention from candidates is to blame, since candidates obviously can’t duplicate their 99-county tours in subsequent states . . .
Five: South Carolina presented the Republican-turnout surge we’ve been waiting for. At first glance, the stage seems set for a GOP fired up like never before: A president who many Republicans see as the breathing embodiment of liberalism sits in the Oval Office; an energetic grassroots movement to fight back spontaneously formed in the tea parties; the 2009 races in New Jersey and Virginia, the special election in Massachusetts, and the 2010 midterms all showed that Republicans can win (and win big) almost anywhere when they tap into that passion; the president’s record consists of enormously unpopular nationalized health care and a stimulus that didn’t make a dent in high unemployment. Throw in scandals such as those involving Solyndra and Fast and Furious, and Obama’s presidency represents the nightmare that every Republican would presumably be highly motivated to end.
The good news for Republicans is that in 2012 turnout has been modestly higher, but less than one might think in this seeming perfect storm for conservative outrage. In Iowa and New Hampshire, the modest increases over the 2008 records appeared to have been driven mostly by Ron Paul’s not-really-Republican voters.
But in South Carolina, that energized grassroots finally appeared at polling places in big numbers: “With 13 precincts still uncounted Sunday morning, 601,166 votes already were recorded, topping 2000’s record turnout of 537,101 and well ahead of 2008’s 445,499 voters. Earlier in the week, officials had projected a moderate turnout about equivalent to the 2008 primary.” Both Gingrich and Romney won more votes than John McCain did when he won the state in 2008.
Today’s post–South Carolina Morning Jolt offers arguments for (new frontrunner?) Newt from sources I deeply respect; I even call one “Dad.” But I also point out the extraordinarily ominous indicator that most Newt fans are averting their eyes from:
Friday afternoon, the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll offered a data point that every Republican primary voter can and should consider.
Here are the most recent favorability results I could find for Obama, Romney, and Newt.
America does not love Romney, but boy do they hate Newt.
Now, favorability numbers can change. Some flight between South Carolina and Florida could suddenly have all the engines fail, and Newt could race to the cockpit and successfully land the plane on the water the way Captain Sullenberger did for US Airways flight 1549. But barring some dramatic new bit of information, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Newt Gingrich would head into the general election as an extraordinarily disliked man.
Now, Newt fans can argue A) somehow between now and Election Day, the country will look at a guy, who’s been in the national spotlight on and off since 1994, and suddenly find him exponentially more likeable than they do now while the Obama campaign is running an expensive negative campaign against him or B) a majority in enough states to win 270 electoral votes will decide that in light of the state of the country, likeability doesn’t matter all that much, and that they will happily vote for the guy they feel unfavorable towards because he will do a better job as president.
Good luck with either of those scenarios. Some of those folks feeling unfavorably about Newt Gingrich may not like him because of his marital troubles, some may not like him because they bought into the Time magazine cover of him as Ebenezer Scrooge, some simply may not like him because of his appearance or some other fairly shallow reason. But I suspect those views are visceral and deeply felt, and sadly, you cannot logically argue a person out of a position that they did not logically argue themselves into.
On Election Night, Gingrich repeated his pledge that, if nominated, he would propose seven three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with President Obama. If Gingrich and Obama were to debate, I could easily envision Gingrich tearing apart Obama’s tissue-thin record, bringing up a dozen Obama missteps that the incumbent and MSM would prefer to ignore, and the president retreating into ever vaguer platitudes and generalities. And I could also see those same debates ending with Obama leading by an even wider margin because so many non-Republican voters found Gingrich smug, hectoring, condescending, snide, and disrespectful. Style matters, and you don’t go into an election with the electorate you wished you had, you go into an election with the electorate you have.
With Newt as the nominee, the Republican message to swing voters is, “Vote for the guy you detest to replace the president who you still like but who has disappointed you.” That’s not an impossible sales pitch, but it is an extraordinarily difficult one.
Like I said, ominous. You can almost hear the music-box tune in the distance.
Team Newt brags that they have picked up $1 million in donations and 500 new volunteers in Florida since Saturday:
INSIDER ADVANTAGE POLL: The firm’s latest Florida poll shows the race as Newt at 34% and Mitt Romney at 26.
GALLUP NATIONAL POLL: Last week, Gallup’s Frank Newport said that Governor Romney’s national lead was “collapsing.” The latest Gallup tracking data shows that it continues to fall. Now, Romney is at 30%, with Newt at 25%. Romney lost one point and Newt gained two in the latest release.
KNOCKOUT PUNCH MONEYBOMB: In less than 24 hours after the South Carolina victory, Newt 2012 raised more than one million dollars.
VOLUNTEERS: 500 in Florida alone have signed up since Saturday, bringing the total in the Sunshine State to 5,000.
Nationally, thousands of volunteers have joined the campaign the last 24 hours.
