Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has a wake-up call for Dems who hope for Gingrich's nomination by the GOP. Says Reich:

...No responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency...I warn you. It's not worth the risk.

Even if the odds that Gingrich as GOP presidential candidate would win the general election are 10 percent, that's too much of a risk to the nation. No responsible American should accept a 10 percent risk of a President Gingrich.

The why of Reich's warning should already be clear to most politics-watchers. But just in case, Reich explains:

It's not just Newt's weirdness. It's also the stunning hypocrisy. His personal life makes a mockery of his moralistic bromides. He condemns Washington insiders but had a forty-year Washington career that ended with ethic violations. He fulminates against finance yet drew fat checks from Freddie Mac. He poses as a populist but has had a $500,000 revolving charge at Tiffany's.

And it's the flagrant irresponsibility of many of his propositions - for example, that presidents are not bound by Supreme Court rulings, that the liberal Ninth Circuit court of appeals should be abolished, that capital gains should not be taxed, that the First Amendment guarantees freedom "of" religion but not "from" religion.

It's also Gingrich's eagerness to channel the public's frustrations into resentments against immigrants, blacks, the poor, Muslims, "liberal elites," the mainstream media, and any other group that's an easy target of white middle-class and working-class anger.

These are all the hallmarks of a demagogue.

Reich understand the pro-Newt argument of many Dems, including, reportedly, at least some Obama campaign strategists:

Yet Democratic pundits, political advisers, officials and former officials are salivating over the possibility of a Gingrich candidacy. They agree with key Republicans that Newt would dramatically increase the odds of Obama's reelection and would also improve the chances of Democrats taking control over the House and retaining control over the Senate.

Reich doesn't dispute the odds that Obama and Dems would win big against Newt. It's just the disastrous potential of him winning the long shot that is too gruesome to test:

...I'd take a 49 percent odds of a Mitt Romney win - who in my view would make a terrible president - over a 10 percent possibility that Newt Gingrich would become the next president - who would be an unmitigated disaster for America and the world.

It's not hard to imagine the confusion, chaos and uncertainty that would likely come with a Gingrich Administration. Democrats rooting for Newt should give Reich's point due consideration.

Link | Comments ()

This item is crossposted from The New Republic.

Just when hardcore conservatives had seemed prepared to settle for Mitt Romney to avoid further exposure of intraparty divisions, Newt Gingrich's unlikely recovery brought those divisions sharply and publicly into view. As Politico reported yesterday, conservative elites ranging from Tom Delay to Bob Dole have gone to the media en masseto warn voters of the perils of Newt. The Republican Party has rarely seemed more divided, and at the heart of those divisions is a disconnect between Republican elites and the voting base over the crucial issue of electability. Ironically, it is a disconnect that the elites are themselves partly responsible for creating.

Electability, of course, has long been Mitt Romney's trump card, buttressed by a long series of general election polls showing him as the strongest candidate against Barack Obama. Beyond the polls, Romney best fits the entrenched Beltway conventional wisdom that candidates perceived as more moderate do best in close presidential elections. At the same time, most Republican opinion leaders think Gingrich could be a general election disaster, thanks to his long record of erratic public and private behavior and a personality that has often seemed unattractive to everyone other than stone partisans.

National Review's editors tried to make it plain two days ago:

Amid all the tumult of the last 18 years there has been this constant: Gingrich has never been popular. Polls have never shown more than 43 percent of the public viewing him favorably at any point in his career. Gingrich backers say that he is inspiring. What he mostly seems to inspire is opposition.

But actual voters don't seem to have gotten the memo. Exit polls in South Carolina showed that Gingrich beat Romney soundly (by a 51-37 margin) among the 45% of primary voters who said "can defeat Obama" was the candidate quality they valued most. The latest PPP poll of Florida, which gives Gingrich a 38 to 33 lead over Romney, shows the two candidates tied at 37 percent in terms of who has the best chance of beating Obama.

Rank-and-file voters, of course, do not typically spend time pouring over general-election polls, and likely they tend to view their own preferred candidate as most electable without taking polling date into account. (They also may not particularly trust polls, with the wild gyrations of primary polls this year perhaps proving them right.)

So something else may be going on to buttress broad-based assessments of Gingrich's electability among non-elites. One theory, recently aired by Jonathan Chait, is that the regular drumbeat of conservative propaganda treating Obama as a national disaster and an ideological extremist (sort of a combination of Jimmy Carter and George McGovern) has convinced Republican voters that conventional electability is no longer relevant. What's needed isn't a reasoned appeal to undecided voters, but an assault against the forces conspiring to prop up Obama.

Gingrich doesn't only benefit from this conviction--it's at the center of his sales pitch.

A Newt-Obama debate would be a chance to expose the baleful realities of the president's record and his un-American values. And voters would not be the only ones persuaded--one of Gingrich's blogger fans suggested that even Obama himself might succumb to Newt's powerful logic and communications skills:

[W]e need Newt as the nominee [because] he's the candidate who has best been able to articulate just how bad Obama has been for the country. If he spent even an hour debating Obama, Obama would probably be convinced that his tenure has been a disaster.

This argument, unrealistic as it may seem, is in harmony with the conviction of ideologues everywhere that bold, uncompromising candidates have the power to conjure hidden majorities out of the morass of mushy-moderate politics. Indeed, some hard-core supporters of Howard Dean's 2004 candidacy expressed similar views. What's unusual is that such a baldly ideological argument has been wholly absorbed by the rank-and-file of a major political party, as evidenced by their decision to move further right in response to the two straight electoral defeats of 2006 and 2008. Of course, they were encouraged in this process by the explicitly ideological messaging of the conservative establishment, including media outlets like Fox News.

As a result, it is now a matter of fundamental faith among conservatives that the GOP went astray during the Bush years by betraying its conservative principles, competing with Democrats in the center, and blurring the differences between the two parties. The 2010 election results, which followed months of harsh Tea Party rhetoric in which virtually the entire GOP participated, seemed to confirm beyond reasonable doubt that lurching right is the way to win.

On the heels of that electoral success, the GOP rank-and-file is strongly disposed to project the move-righ-to-win doctrine onto 2012. In Gingrich some have seen a candidate who has positioned himself as the heir to movement conservative heroes from Goldwater on, and who has offered a very specific vision of how he will achieve that moment of national satori, when a conservative electorate finds its unapologetic champion. After the two Florida debates, it's possible Gingrich's case for being an invincible debater is now losing credibility; if so, his threat to GOP elites could lose steam as well. If not, the last hope of National Review and its co-conspiratorsis to convince Republican voters--who have spent the past four years hearing that far-right rhetoric--that a moderate Mormon is more electable than a strident ideologue. If they're unsuccessful, they have no one but themselves to blame.

Link | Comments ()

In a New York Times Op-ed piece oday Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut makes a critical distinction between American attitudes toward "income inequality" and "unfairness"

...while Americans are hearing more and more about class conflict, there is little indication that they are increasingly divided along these lines. People don't necessarily want to take money from the wealthy; they just want a better chance to get rich themselves. They care about policies that give everyone a fair shot -- a distinction that candidates in both parties should understand as they head into the 2012 campaigns.

...A Gallup poll last month found 54 percent believing that income inequality was an "acceptable part of our economic system" -- a slight increase, in fact, over the 45 percent that held that view back in 1998....What's different these days is that a despondent public, struggling with difficult times and an uncertain future, is upset over a perceived lack of fairness in public policy. For example, 61 percent of Americans now say the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy.

Although the strong support Occupy Wall Street received might, at first glance, seem to support the view that Americans want income redistribution, it really doesn't. What Occupy was challenging that deeply resonated with many observers was the concentrated economic and political power of the 1% and their ability to use that power to "rig the game" in their favor and against the 99%.

As Kohut notes:

Pew's surveys in recent years present a detailed picture of these frustrations. One major complaint is tax policy: Dissatisfaction with the tax system has grown over the past decade, but the focus is not on how much respondents themselves pay, but rather on the perception that the wealthy are simply not paying their fair share. Just 11 percent of Americans say they are bothered by the amount they pay, while 57 percent of respondents say they are bothered by what they believe are unfairly low amounts paid by the wealthy.

...The issue here is not about class envy. Rather, it's a perception that government policies are skewed toward helping the already wealthy and powerful. While a December Gallup poll found few respondents wanting the government to attempt to reduce the income gap between rich and poor, 70 percent said it was important for the government to increase opportunities for people to get ahead. What the public wants is not a war on the rich but more policies that promote opportunity.

In a related NYT piece Stanley Fish echoes the same point:

The difference between equality and fairness can be illustrated by considering the issue of Mitt Romney's taxes. In the eyes of most Americans, it is O.K. that Mitt Romney makes more money than they do; there's no demand for the equalizing of income so that he can be brought down to their level. But it is not O.K. (or at least the Democrats will argue) for Mitt Romney to be paying a lower tax rate than his housecleaner. It's unfair. So inequalities that arise from the unequal abilities of people and even from the unequal distribution of luck and birth are all right; but the kind of unfairness that occurs when someone plays by different rules than the rules you are held to isn't...

This is a critical distinction for politics and vital for 2012. As Fish correctly notes:

President Obama can take the fairness mantra all the way to the bank -- and to a second term.

Link | Comments ()

Some of you may have noticed that today I took over primary blogging responsibilities (at least during weekdays) at the Washington Monthly's Political Animal site. It was a solid opportunity to have a greater impact on daily political discussions. But I wanted to let you know I will remain as Managing Editor here at TDS, which will continue to pursue its mission of promoting civil, empirically based discussion of strategic issues important to Democrats. We'll have plenty of fresh content, particularly as this election year intensifies.

Link | Comments ()

Being chosen to deliver the opposition party's rebuttal to the President's State of the Union Address is a mixed blessing under the best of circumstances. It's a tip of the hat to the status of the designee, but it's not always so easy to look good when your assignment is to go as relentlessly negative as possible. Despite some of the pundit gush, Gov. Mitch Daniel's speech was one of the most dreary, joyless SOTU rebuttals ever. This is the face of the GOP's future? See Rachel Maddow's hilarious take-down here.

As long as you're noodling about Maddow's website, might as well watch her shred Politifact. Krugman agrees, elaborates.

For more credible fact-checking, Daniels gets a well-deserved spanking from FactCheck.org's Lori Robertson.

Terry Greene Sterling has an excellent report, "Obama and the Dems' Strategy to Win in Arizona: Heavy Courtship of Latinos " at The Daily Beast. Sterling notes "the wildly popular Arizona "citizenship clinics" sponsored by the social-justice nonprofit, Mi Familia Vota, and the Spanish-language television network, Univision" and adds "Latinos make up about 30 percent of Arizona's population though historically have low voter turnout. But the "sleeping giant," galvanized by what it sees as racist legislation and state policy, recently flexed its muscle.Hispanics were a key force behind two recent political coups--the recall-election defeat of immigration law sponsor and Tea Party Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, and a Latino firefighter's trouncing of an established Anglo politico for a Phoenix City Council seat."

Harold Meyerson nails the economic nitty-gritty of Obama's SOTU address.

A new Wall St. Journal/NBC News poll has very good news for President Obama and Democrats: "Some 30% believed the country was headed in the right direction, up eight percentage points from a month ago. Some 60% said the country was on the wrong track, down from 69% in December..." As Sara Murray and Janet Hook report at the WSJ, the poll "raised caution signs for Mr. Romney's strategy of putting the economy at the center of his campaign...Partial results from the poll, released Wednesday, found voters feeling more positively about the economy and of Mr. Obama's handling of it."

The long-range implications of the Citizens United decision are even worse than you thought.

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley discuss "The Republicans' Electoral College Newt-Mare" at Sabato's Crystal Ball. Their article provides color-coded maps demonstrating the disastrous potential of Newt's nomination. Say the authors: "Under this map, all of those states -- Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- would be tough territory for Gingrich. If his candidacy were a disaster, those new Republican gerrymanders could unravel. The close battle for the Senate could also be affected -- Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia all have competitive Senate races this year, and all of those states get bluer on our map under a hypothetical Gingrich candidacy."

Ron Brownstein sorts it all out at National Journal in "Romney's Florida Formula: Return to Divide and Conquer," discusses Mitt's resurgence and argues, "...To overcome Romney in Florida, Gingrich must consolidate the party's populist wing more effectively than he's doing so far. And, especially since Gingrich is being outspent so badly in the state, his best, and perhaps last, opportunity to do that will come when he steps on the stage in Jacksonville Thursday night." Expect mayhem.

Link | Comments ()

Dial testing and follow-up focus groups with 50 swing voters in Denver, Colorado show that President Obama's populist defense of the middle class and their priorities in his State of the Union scored with voters. The President generated strong responses on energy, education and foreign policy, but most important, he made impressive gains on a range of economic measures. These swing voters, even the Republicans, responded enthusiastically to his call for a "Buffet Rule" that would require the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. As one participant put it, "I agree with his tax reform - the 1 percent should shoulder more of the burden than the other 99 percent. He [Obama] talked about being all for one, one for all - that really resonated for me." These dial focus groups make it very clear that defending further tax cuts for those at the top of the economic spectrum puts Republicans in Congress and on the Presidential campaign trail well outside of the American mainstream.

These voters overwhelmingly liked what they heard from Obama-- even those who voted against him in 2008 appreciated the address. But they continued to show deep skepticism that the President would be able to translate these words into actions. The more Democratic participants mostly blamed Republican obstructionism while the more Republican participants insisted that Obama might talk a good game, but his actions in office did not reflect the words in this speech. But participants across the political spectrum all agreed that Washington is broken and that progress on the important issues would be difficult until Congress addresses the corrupting influence of lobbyists and special interests.

This was not the easiest audience for Obama; although slightly more participants voted for him than McCain in 2008, it was a significantly Republican-leaning group (44 percent Republican, 32 percent Democratic). At the outset, these voters were split 50/50 on Obama's job performance and just 50 percent gave him a favorable personal rating. But the President gained ground after the speech; his job rating rose 8 points and his personal standing jumped 16 points, to 66 percent favorable.

Link | Comments ()

(Cross-posted from the Huffington Post)

In his 2012 State of the Union Address, Barack Obama issued a ringing call for government to take the lead in rebuilding an economy that works for all Americans and to revive the promise of a more cooperative politics that carried him to the White House in 2008. While many of the specific measures he urged are likely to resonate with the public, it remains to be seen whether he can persuade the majority of Americans to set aside their long-festering mistrust of government and give him a mandate to pursue an aggressive policy agenda.

What about the specifics? In advance of President Obama's State of the Union address, I laid out five things to listen for. Against that template, let's look more closely at what he said.

#1: For better or worse, an incumbent president's record is at the heart of his reelection prospects. He cannot run away from that record; he must run on it. So what is the narrative that links the crises of 2008-2009 and the disappointments of 2010-2011 to our hopes for a brighter future?

Toward the beginning of his speech, Obama offered his account of our recent economic history. Even before the recession, he said, jobs began going overseas while wages and incomes for most American were stagnating. And then the crisis hit, sparked by mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them and inadequately regulated financial institutions who made bad bets with other people's money. He reminded the country that in the six months before he took office, the economy lost four million jobs, and another four million in the early months of his presidency. Since then, however, the private sector -- led by manufacturing -- has created millions of new jobs. And so, he concluded, "The state of our Union is getting stronger. And we've come too far to turn back now." Rather than changing course, the task before us is to "build on this momentum."

#2: The American people know that the U.S. economy has changed fundamentally and that the "success story" of the future will differ from those in the past. But what is that story?

In broad terms, Obama is betting on the continued revival of U.S. manufacturing, backed by targeted public investments in sectors such as clean energy and infrastructure. As he has before, he called for a major effort in the areas of education and training as well as support for basic research. While globalization is here to stay, he added, we cannot allow our competitors to victimize us with unfair trade practices, and he advocated a new Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating "unfair trade practices in countries like China." And to accelerate domestic job creation, he urged corporate tax reform that ends subsidies for outsourcing while reducing taxes for companies that remain, and hire, in America.

#3: The plight of hard-working Americans -- those struggling to remain in the middle class and those struggling to get there -- must be front and center. How did the president frame his appeal to this bedrock of our economy and society?

As he did in his Kansas speech last month, Obama invoked a country and economy where "everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules." Symbolizing these principles, he called for tax reforms that follow the "Buffett rule" -- namely, "If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes." At the same time, the president virtually dropped the theme of inequality, which had figured centrally in the Kansas speech. This was a wise shift: in America's public culture, the principle of fair opportunity is more powerful than is equality of wealth and income.

#4: Public trust in our governing institutions is at or near all-time lows. To the extent that Obama's agenda revolves around an activist government, how did he seek to persuade Americans that its policies can actually improve their lives?

While acknowledging public cynicism about government and calling for reforms of Congress and the executive branch, the president appeared to be hoping that the content of his economic agenda would trump doubts about the effectiveness of the public sector. He may well be underestimating the intensity of negative public sentiment and overestimating its willingness to accept what many will portray as a new burst of activism.

#5: Barack Obama is not just a candidate; he's the president, and the people expect him to speak as the president. How did he balance his strategy of drawing the line with the Republicans against the imperative of conducting himself as the president of all the people?

For the most part, Obama addressed the country as president rather than party leader. While giving no ground on his key priorities, he spoke of differences between the parties more in sorrow than in anger and tried to identify some common ground, even on the core issue of the role of government. He called on everyone to "lower the temperature in this town" and to "end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction." And he observed that "when we act together, there is nothing the United States of America can't achieve.
Throughout his speech, Obama invoked the principles of fairness, collective action, and common purpose. Conspicuously absent was the theme on which the Republican Party rests its case -- namely, individual liberty -- a contrast that prefigures a 2012 general election waged over clashing partisan orientations as well as competing accounts of the president's record.

Link | Comments ()

In his live blogging of the SOTU, Andrew Sullivan was mostly unimpressed with President Obama's speech, which drew rave reviews elsewhere. While many Obama supporters focus on his formidable public speaking skills, Sullivan sees Obama's great strength more in his 'long game' strategy.

Sullivan's insightful "How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics" featured in a controversial Newsweek cover story, as well as in The Daily Beast, made a compelling case that President Obama is playing a very shrewd hand, much to the dismay of his critics, left and right. As Sullivan says of Obama's critics:

...I don't even recognize their description of Obama's first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren't out of bounds. They're simply--empirically--wrong....given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb. Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama's long game--and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country's future as his original election in 2008.

Sullivan notes his own disappointments with a few of Obama's policies, then recounts the Romney/GOP litany of attacks and responds with a description of the mess Obama inherited from Bush:

...None of this is even faintly connected to reality--and the record proves it. On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt--lagging indicators--were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.

Then Obama's response:

But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion...All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That's not enough, but it's far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama's big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn't.

Despite the failure of Obama's most optimistic recovery projections to materialize as quickly as he had hoped, Sullivan explains that "the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression."

Despite the most treasured of Republican conceits that theirs is the party of tax and spending cuts, Sullivan clarifies Obama's record:

...Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition...

As for spending, Obama again trumps the GOP record:

...His spending record is also far better than his predecessor's. Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama's budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama.

As Sullivan sums up their respective claims to fiscal rectitude:

...You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor...Obama has had to govern under the worst recession since the 1930s, and Bush, after the 2001 downturn, governed in a period of moderate growth. It takes work to increase the debt in times of growth, as Bush did. It takes much more work to constrain the debt in the deep recession Bush bequeathed Obama.

Sullivan also sets the record straight about the economics of 'Obamacare':

Continue reading "Sullivan's 'Obama's Long Game' Article Rattles GOP" »

Link | Comments ()

Just to make it clear what kind of future they envision for America, Republicans have chosen union-busting Governor Mitch Daniels to respond to President Obama's state of the union address. Meanwhile, workers take their protest against Indiana's so-called 'right-to-work' law to the home of the Republican speaker of the Indiana House, Brian Bosma. Video clip here.

Dana Bash, CNN's senior congressional correspondent, reports on "GOP angst: Gingrich's rise could be their downfall." A typical quote unearthed by Bash "If he's the nominee, it's a disaster. There is no way to sugar-coat it," said one GOP congressional strategist describing the tension after Gingrich won South Carolina." At CNN, see also James Carville's memo to the Republican establishment, "You have a disaster on your hands."

If you wondered if there was something a little, well, odd about the over-the-top audience responses to Newt's every comment in recent debates, you are not alone, as Rachel Weiner notes in The Fixx.

Democrats don't have to worry much about losing the Jewish vote, according to Peter Beinhart, writing at The Daily Beast: "Every four years, Republicans vow to use Israel to pry Jews from their nearly century-old allegiance to the Democratic Party. And every four years, they fail. The reason is that only about 10 percent of Jews actually vote on Israel...Most American Jews don't really vote as Jews at all...They vote as secularists...Jews aren't that far left on economics, but on the issues where secular and traditionalist Americans clash--abortion, church and state, gay rights--their secularism pushes them into the Democrats' arms."

New poll has vulture capitalist and bomb-thrower in stat-tie in Sunshine state. Talking Points Memo average of three polls has Newt ahead by 6.2.

Greg Sargent reports on a new WaPo-ABC news poll which indicates that Romney is tanking with blue collar voters."...Among whites with incomes of under $50,000: His negative numbers among them have jumped 20 points, from 29 percent to 49 percent. "

Demos has a new report, updating the status of voter-suppression in Florida and other states, and concluding "Congress, clear-sighted state legislators, the U.S. Department of Justice, election officials, voting rights activists and concerned Americans must continue to fight against vote suppression proposals and for legislation that affirms all citizens' fundamental right to vote and have those votes counted."

Susan Saulny's New York Times article, "As Race Moves to Florida, Facing Political Implications of a Housing Crisis," discusses how the crisis spells trouble for Mitt and Newt, in particular.

If President Obama is looking for a well-stated idea or two for his SOTU, he could do worse than check out Robert Borosage's suggestions at his Campaign for America's Future blog. He should also read Robert Reich's "Jobs Won't Come Back to America Until the Government Pushes Greedy Corporate Executives to Invest at Home" at Alternet.

Link | Comments ()

This item is crossposted from The New Republic.

After Newt Gingrich's smashing victory in South Carolina on Saturday, here's my wagering advice: You can still put your money on Mitt, but don't bet the farm. Not this year.

The results for Mitt Romney weren't pretty. After finishing a poor fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Newt carried all but three SC counties (including Nikki Haley's Lexington County and Jim DeMint's Greenville County), every congressional district, and every region of the state.

But the really bad news for Mitt is in the exit polls, which show that his support resides in precisely that narrow corner of the Republican electorate least in sync with the party's conservative zeitgeist. Romney carried voters with postgraduate educations or incomes over $200,000; self-identified moderates and residents of core urban areas; opponents of the Tea Party and supporters of legalized abortion. And Romney's past pattern of being a solid second-choice option for voters preferring someone else may now be in danger: Only 38% of SC voters said they would "enthusiastically" support him if he is the nominee, a number uncomfortably close to his actual 28% of the vote.

Romney's vote in SC was also alarmingly concentrated among voters who made up their minds in 2011. In other words, he did not campaign very well in the state, despite a lot of advantages in terms of local party endorsements and money. (For all the talk of Gingrich's SuperPAC expenditures in the state, Mitt's SuperPAC at a minimum matched them, and overall pro-Romney spending on television ads probably just about doubled the pro-Newt air war.)

Everything about the dynamics of the South Carolina race suggests that Gingrich's attacks on Romney as an out-of-touch corporate pirate meshed smoothly with weaknesses Romney himself exposed, in his clumsy handling of publicity about his missing tax returns, his offshore wealth, and his vast speaking fees. Meanwhile, the success Mitt had in Iowa (with a major assist from Ron Paul) in encouraging conservative doubts about Gingrich's commitment to The Cause was obliterated by the former Speaker's stunning ability to get conservatives to identify criticism of his record or of his personal life with the hated partisan and ideological enemy--the media elite. Some of this was perhaps fortuitous: Gingrich will probably never again enjoy such useful foils in televised debates as Fox News' Juan Williams or CNN's John King, and we are approaching another phase in the nomination contest with few scheduled candidate debates. But by luck or by design, Newt is beginning to build a Teflon shield around his stormy past, reminiscent of those old-time southern segregationists who were able to discredit questions about corruption or misgovernment by attributing them to the common enemy "up north." Romney is not benefitting from a similar sense of partisan and ideological solidarity.

Yet even if Gingrich can continue to preempt--or as in South Carolina, exploit--criticism of his past, and can also continue to convince primary voters to ignore general election polls and imagine him vanquishing Barack Obama in debates, the landscape is about to get much more difficult. The Florida primary on January 31 offers him a chance to do some more lasting damage to Romney, and all but eliminate talk of Mitt's "inevitability." But it's a very expensive state, and unless Sheldon Adelson can be talked into really loosening the purse strings, Gingrich will have no prayer of remaining competitive financially. Romney's Restore Our Future SuperPAC has already spent $4.8 million in Florida, mostly for anti-Gingrich ads, and Mitt's campaign has probably banked an early lead among the nearly 200,000 Floridians who have already cast absentee or early votes. Moreover, Gingrich will still have to contend with competition from Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, neither of whom are showing signs of getting out of the race (though Paul is likely to concentrate on small-turnout caucus states, and it's hard to imagine Santorum raising the funds to compete seriously in Florida).

Will the surge Gingrich has already exhibited in national polls during the last week carry over to Florida? He better pray it does. Without an upset win in Florida, Gingrich faces a hiatus in the campaign that could prove deadly, as party elites become alarmed about the consequences of an extended contest, and the many skeletons in his closet threaten to burst into view. Newt is already looking at an almost certain loss on February 28 in Romney's native state of Michigan, and is already in the hole for Super Tuesday on March 6, thanks to his failure to get on the ballot in Virginia.

So it's do-or-die for Gingrich in the Sunshine State. And for Mitt Romney, it's time to play error-free ball before the unlikely double-rise-from-the-grave of his unlikely rival begins to convince party leaders that he's no better than zombie bait.

Link | Comments ()