Things have gotten lively in New Hampshire the last couple of days. In the Republican primary there tomorrow Mitt Romney is widely expected to win (see New Hampshire polling info) in a state that borders Massachusetts, where he once was governor. The rest of the field is angling for second place. Still, the unRomneys have taken a break from savaging each other and are now turning their fire on the frontrunner.
Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry have all lashed out at Romney. Word is out that Gingrich's "unaffiliated" Super PAC has received a $5 million gift from Las Vegas tycoon Sheldon Adelson to hit Romney for destroying jobs during his days as CEO of Bain Capital. Romney didn't help himself any on this score by today declaring, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."
The real dynamics of this may play out in South Carolina, where Romney currently polls about 10 points ahead of Santorum and Gingrich. For the conservatives to have a chance, they really need to narrow the field. Huntsman doesn't figure to be much of a factor in South Carolina and it will likely be Perry's last stand. If Romney can hang on there, winning against a crowded field with 30% of the vote, his inevitability campaign may well start to run the table and effectively lock things up in February. On the other hand, if Perry, Huntsman and one of the others drops out after that, the survivor might have a chance to get Romney in a one on one and start to come up with a win here and there.
Either way, it certainly is interesting to see conservative Republican pols smacking a fellow GOPer for being a heartless businessman willing to sacrifice the livelihoods of regular workers to pad his own profits. If this seems a productive line of attack for them to take in a Republican primary campaign, just imagine what nominee Romney would likely face from the Democrats in a national campaign.
Showing posts with label Newt Gingrich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newt Gingrich. Show all posts
Monday, January 9, 2012
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Republican Field: Can Any of Them Win?
Saturday night six Republican hopefuls met in Des Moines for their latest debate. You can read the full transcript here. There will likely be only one more such encounter before the Iowa caucuses, the first official test of strength in the nomination process, are held on January 3, 2012.
Newt Gingrich, as the new front runner in the polls, came under attack from his fellow competitors, as did Mitt Romney. See polling data here. Though he lied several times to obfuscate his former record of support for such measures as climate cap and trade and an individual mandate to buy health care, and drew belly laughs trying to explain his eight-figure K Street lobbying haul as simple "private sector free enterprise," most observers felt Gingrich held his own well enough to retain his late momentum toward victory in Iowa. See the Fact Check report on instances of untruthfulness in the debate here. Suffice it to say this field did not win any awards for accuracy last night.
What stands out more than anything at this time are the glaring deficiencies of all the remaining Republican candidates. One-time front runners Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, along with Rick Santorum, have sought to appeal to the conservative Evangelical Christian vote. Yet Bachmann's and Perry's stumbles have evaporated their following, while Santorum has yet to be able to generate any. None of these three gives evidence of being ready to assume the office they seek.
Jon Huntsman, a fellow who tries to talk sense, suffers the handicap in the Republican electorate of being a former appointee of the Obama Administration as Ambassador to China. Though he is actually quite conservative, the former Utah governor also suffers from sounding far too reasonable when GOP primary voters are howling for red meat rhetoric. Huntsman also gets stuck with being identified as the second-fiddle "other Mormon" in the field behind Mitt Romney.
That leaves the two current leaders, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Romney's Achilles' heel is certainly his reputation as a serial flip-flopper. Gingrich and the others have zeroed in on this, and were he to win the nomination you can rest assured the Obama campaign would have a field day on this score. He is competent to be president, but comes across as rather a patrician wimp, strangely reminiscent of the forty-first president, George H. W. Bush. He might be the most electable general election candidate in the GOP primary field, but he is viewed as too moderate by the typical Republican primary voter.
Newt Gingrich assuredly knows enough to be president, and now has a sizable lead among likely GOP voters in all the national polls. Yet he too has major weaknesses. He has reversed course on the issues perhaps even more than Romney, if that is possible. He is mean and shoots from the hip like a talk radio pundit, making outrageous statements often at odds with reality. His ethics lapses are the stuff of legend. And Gingrich has made over $100 million as a K Street Washington lobbyist for firms the Tea Party excoriates for "crony capitalism." This has all come after he was drummed out of the House Speakership and fined $300,000 by an ethics committee run by his own party in 1998. As Joan Walsh of Salon writes of Newt, "even his baggage has baggage."
Though President Obama should be regarded as vulnerable given the slow recovery of the economy, this field of GOP challengers will be challenged indeed to beat him come next November. And their biggest obstacles might well be themselves.
Newt Gingrich, as the new front runner in the polls, came under attack from his fellow competitors, as did Mitt Romney. See polling data here. Though he lied several times to obfuscate his former record of support for such measures as climate cap and trade and an individual mandate to buy health care, and drew belly laughs trying to explain his eight-figure K Street lobbying haul as simple "private sector free enterprise," most observers felt Gingrich held his own well enough to retain his late momentum toward victory in Iowa. See the Fact Check report on instances of untruthfulness in the debate here. Suffice it to say this field did not win any awards for accuracy last night.
What stands out more than anything at this time are the glaring deficiencies of all the remaining Republican candidates. One-time front runners Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, along with Rick Santorum, have sought to appeal to the conservative Evangelical Christian vote. Yet Bachmann's and Perry's stumbles have evaporated their following, while Santorum has yet to be able to generate any. None of these three gives evidence of being ready to assume the office they seek.
Jon Huntsman, a fellow who tries to talk sense, suffers the handicap in the Republican electorate of being a former appointee of the Obama Administration as Ambassador to China. Though he is actually quite conservative, the former Utah governor also suffers from sounding far too reasonable when GOP primary voters are howling for red meat rhetoric. Huntsman also gets stuck with being identified as the second-fiddle "other Mormon" in the field behind Mitt Romney.
That leaves the two current leaders, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Romney's Achilles' heel is certainly his reputation as a serial flip-flopper. Gingrich and the others have zeroed in on this, and were he to win the nomination you can rest assured the Obama campaign would have a field day on this score. He is competent to be president, but comes across as rather a patrician wimp, strangely reminiscent of the forty-first president, George H. W. Bush. He might be the most electable general election candidate in the GOP primary field, but he is viewed as too moderate by the typical Republican primary voter.
Newt Gingrich assuredly knows enough to be president, and now has a sizable lead among likely GOP voters in all the national polls. Yet he too has major weaknesses. He has reversed course on the issues perhaps even more than Romney, if that is possible. He is mean and shoots from the hip like a talk radio pundit, making outrageous statements often at odds with reality. His ethics lapses are the stuff of legend. And Gingrich has made over $100 million as a K Street Washington lobbyist for firms the Tea Party excoriates for "crony capitalism." This has all come after he was drummed out of the House Speakership and fined $300,000 by an ethics committee run by his own party in 1998. As Joan Walsh of Salon writes of Newt, "even his baggage has baggage."
Though President Obama should be regarded as vulnerable given the slow recovery of the economy, this field of GOP challengers will be challenged indeed to beat him come next November. And their biggest obstacles might well be themselves.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Real Meaning of the Gingrich Flap
There is no doubt the roll out for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is one of the quickest self-immolations in U.S. political history. But what has received little comment is the extent to which the entire episode shows just how strong Barack Obama may be in 2012 and how poorly Republicans are positioning themselves to run against him.
Former Speaker Gingrich led the House from 1995 to 1999 during the Clinton era. He officially announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination for the presidency on May 11. Within four days his campaign was a shambles, reeling from self-inflicted verbal wounds and assailed by his fellow Republicans. Though Gingrich's prospects were already touch and go due to his multiple marriages, ethics lapses and policy flip flops (for instance, he was for the health care mandate before he was against it and supported intervention in Libya until Obama did it, after which he opposed it) his real problems began when he went on NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory on May 15, a scant four days after jumping into the race. You can see the "Meet the Press" interview or read the transcript here.
Speaking of the budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) that defunds much of Medicare and turns it into a voucher program, Gingrich criticized it as "right wing social engineering." He was immediately excoriated by Republican media and candidates for not supporting party orthodoxy. Gingrich took so much heat from them that within days he was completely disavowing his statement, claiming a conspiracy on the part of Gregory, playing up his "great friendship" with Ryan and pledging his absolute fealty to the party line on taking Medicare apart.
The irony, of course, is that Gingrich was right in the first place. Medicare is probably the most popular federal program ever instituted. To put a cap on it and start pricing it out of the means of senior citizens would not only be unconscionable social policy, leading to the inevitable bankruptcy or early deaths of untold numbers of people, it would also make certain an overwhelming GOP defeat at the polls in 2012. If the eventual GOP nominee runs on a platform of gutting Medicare you can expect to see him or her lose by an even greater margin than John McCain did in 2008. One only has to think back to the Tea Party types who flooded town hall meetings in 2009, shouting for their congressperson not to vote for "socialized medicine" but also to "keep your hands off my Medicare."
The brouhaha indicates the extent to which the GOP is overreaching and out of touch with the public. Their only chance with the moderate center of the electorate is to disavow the Ryan budget's slashing of Medicare. Yet all but four Republican House members voted for it. They are already going to have targets on their backs for that. Any presidential nominee who wants to win is going to have to run away from that position. But as the Gingrich flap demonstrates, their base may not permit that to happen. If not, expect easy sailing for Obama's re-election and a very good chance for the Democrats to recapture the House.
Former Speaker Gingrich led the House from 1995 to 1999 during the Clinton era. He officially announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination for the presidency on May 11. Within four days his campaign was a shambles, reeling from self-inflicted verbal wounds and assailed by his fellow Republicans. Though Gingrich's prospects were already touch and go due to his multiple marriages, ethics lapses and policy flip flops (for instance, he was for the health care mandate before he was against it and supported intervention in Libya until Obama did it, after which he opposed it) his real problems began when he went on NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory on May 15, a scant four days after jumping into the race. You can see the "Meet the Press" interview or read the transcript here.
Speaking of the budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) that defunds much of Medicare and turns it into a voucher program, Gingrich criticized it as "right wing social engineering." He was immediately excoriated by Republican media and candidates for not supporting party orthodoxy. Gingrich took so much heat from them that within days he was completely disavowing his statement, claiming a conspiracy on the part of Gregory, playing up his "great friendship" with Ryan and pledging his absolute fealty to the party line on taking Medicare apart.
The irony, of course, is that Gingrich was right in the first place. Medicare is probably the most popular federal program ever instituted. To put a cap on it and start pricing it out of the means of senior citizens would not only be unconscionable social policy, leading to the inevitable bankruptcy or early deaths of untold numbers of people, it would also make certain an overwhelming GOP defeat at the polls in 2012. If the eventual GOP nominee runs on a platform of gutting Medicare you can expect to see him or her lose by an even greater margin than John McCain did in 2008. One only has to think back to the Tea Party types who flooded town hall meetings in 2009, shouting for their congressperson not to vote for "socialized medicine" but also to "keep your hands off my Medicare."
The brouhaha indicates the extent to which the GOP is overreaching and out of touch with the public. Their only chance with the moderate center of the electorate is to disavow the Ryan budget's slashing of Medicare. Yet all but four Republican House members voted for it. They are already going to have targets on their backs for that. Any presidential nominee who wants to win is going to have to run away from that position. But as the Gingrich flap demonstrates, their base may not permit that to happen. If not, expect easy sailing for Obama's re-election and a very good chance for the Democrats to recapture the House.
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