This is it. The final debate before Florida will be tonight from Jacksonville, FL on CNN. It may be the final debate of the primary season. If it becomes just Mitt, Newt, and Ron, there is no way that MItt Romney will want to share the stage with them after tonight. I’ll be on CNN for post debate coverage, though I’ll be in Atlanta tonight. All you need to know is that the latest CNN poll has something like a 22 point swing toward Newt Gingrich, but a lot of post South Carolina polling settled back down from irrational exuberance to Romney still ahead. Tonight, expect a concerted Romney effort to bring out the really angry Newt. Expect Gingrich to try to throw off Romney. In fact, we may not hear from Santorum and Paul unless they get called on. This is all the Mitt and Newt show. They don’t like each other and both have a lot on the line. One wild card factor — does Rick Santorum stay in? There are rumors circulating he may drop out before Florida because he is out of money. His campaign says no. But we’ll see. If he leaves, polls show most of his voters go to Gingrich, but I’m not sure that’s actually right. We’ll get into it all below the fold. Newt Gingrich Gingrich must perform well tonight in the debate. Debates help Gingrich with momentum and the NBC debate has not fully been factored into polling. He did not do well in that debate. He must shine tonight and he’ll have an audience to help him along. But it is not just polling and I think a lot of people have been complicit in saying “debates won it” when there is more to the story. I’ve talked to a number of people in South Carolina and they are all stunned at how the press has missed the story about the Newt v. Romney ground game in South Carolina. According to a number of people I and others have talked to, Newt relied on the traditional grassroots network in South Carolina, outsourcing it to the Speaker, various sheriffs, etc. Romney’s campaign bussed in volunteers from out of state including a heavy contingent from Brigham Young and they were sign holders and phone bankers, but they didn’t do traditional GOTV operations. I think the polling bears out this reality. In my experience from running campaigns, a well run campaign can match its polling. A well run campaign with well run GOTV can exceed its polling. A well run campaign with a poorly run GOTV operation will never reach its polling. This bears out time and time again in campaigns. If we look at South Carolina, the final RCP Average was Newt at 33.5% and Romney at 28.5%. The final results were Newt at 40.4% and Romney at 27.8%. Debate performance cannot explain Newt topping the polling average by 6.9%. The only thing that really explains it is ground game getting the people wowed by the debate performance to the polls. In Florida, Newt needs a good ground game, not just good debate performances. His related Super PAC has some heavy lifting to do. Ron Paul Ron Paul will not be the nominee and does not expect to be the nominee. But he is going to do better than many have expected and he’ll get a prime spot at the Republican National Convention to bore us all with Austrian economics. Mitt Romney It is his race to lose. If he wins in Florida, the conventional wisdom will be that he is the nominee. The races after Florida up to Super Tuesday favor Mitt Romney, including Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan. But Gingrich will have Georgia on Super Tuesday and they’ll be able to fight over the rest. Romney is on all the ballots, has the most money, and has the best organization. But the Republican base continues to bristle. If he cannot win Florida, he cannot win the nomination. There is much at stake in tonight’s CNN debate and there is much at stake for Romney on Tuesday. He’s the favorite to win, but Newt can draw it close. One good thing for Romney — he is better at throwing Newt off his game in a debate than Newt is at throwing Mitt off his game. Rick Santorum He will not be the nominee. He is out of money. He cannot put in the time in Florida or elsewhere that he put in in all 99 counties in Iowa. There are rumors he may drop out. Santorum’s support, polls suggest, would go to Newt. I think it would probably be a wash, which is an advantage to Romney. There’d be one less guy fighting him and when forced to confront Newt Gingrich’s personal issues, a lot of Santorum’s support would slowly shift to Mitt Romney or stay home. That’s all Romney needs. There is an effort to keep Santorum in the race out of Washington on the theory that he keeps Gingrich from consolidating conservatives. That is the most likely scenario. The question for Santorum is who does he want as his nominee. If we wants MItt, he stays in. If he wants Newt, he gets out. Ultimately though, I still think his supporters trickle to Mitt. Maybe not in Florida, but I think it happens even with Gingrich still in the race.
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The Horserace for January 26, 2012
Following my essay on the nature of the Establishment vs Tea Party or Outsider divide on the Right as driven primarily by a divide over whether and how we can roll back the seemingly endless growth of spending and the size of government , a number of people offered criticisms. Some noted that there are longstanding divides between the DC-based professional class (officeholders, staffers, pundits and journalists who have a direct stake in particular people having political power) and those outside. Which is true and a contributing factor (as any student of public choice theory could tell you), but not new, and in any event self-defeating definition: if the people in power are definitionally opposed to those without, then new elections are purposeless exercises. History tells us otherwise: the professional class may restrain and co-opt, but there are always those officeholders (new and experienced) who are willing to stick their necks out for genuine changes in the long-term trajectory of public policy. Others pointed to the cultural divide such as the one that Angelo Codevilla identified in his 2010 essay distinguishing between a Ruling Class and a Country Party . Codevilla’s analysis is certainly a useful part of the debate, and is another longstanding fault line that laid the groundwork for the current schism. But it doesn’t really reflect why now , at this time, conservatives are willing to lock horns with the organs of Republican and conservative leadership that, in the Bush years, commanded a good deal of loyalty from the rank and file – willing enough to line up cheering throngs of responsible citizens behind the most unlikely of 21st century populist champions, Newt Gingrich. The most sustained critique comes from sometime National Review contributor Avik Roy, writing in Forbes . Roy calls Redstate a “bastion of populist conservatism,” which is true even if I’m not exactly anybody’s idea of a populist. He says that Ben Domenech is “one of the best conservative writers on health care issues,” which is certainly true, and faults the rest of us at RedState for not developing “serious proposals for entitlement reform,” in contrast to NR’s columnists – which should be unsurprising to Roy if he thinks about the fact that most of us have day jobs, to say nothing of the fact that RedState’s principal role is activism rather than think-tankery. Roy seems most upset at my references to National Review, which is a shame, because as I said I have nothing against NR, and I agree with Roy that NR as a whole still provides an awful lot of good punditry, analysis and advocacy (and I remain a big fan of many of its long-time writers); I was just trying to explain precisely why so many people on the Right were agitated at it. In any event, Roy misses some crucially important points that undermine his entire argument. To begin with, Roy completely ignores everything that has happened on Capitol Hill since, well, ever. There’s a reason I started by citing the Boehner-McConnell divide as the front lines of the current schism, yet Roy doesn’t even bother to discuss the current dynamics in Congress, let alone the long and dolorous history of efforts to get Congress to restrain the growth of spending, entitlements and the size of government. This is related to the larger failing in Roy’s analysis, which is to equate having position papers with being serious about reform: National Review has been the leading source of detailed conservative proposals and thoughtful conservative opinion on entitlement reform. People like Yuval Levin and Jim Capretta, who write regularly for NR, have effectively dedicated their careers to the cause of entitlement reform. – The rhetoric of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum may be less inflammatory, but it is backed up with real proposals that stand a chance of getting passed by an actual Congress. As anyone with a passing familiarity with Republican politics over the past four or five decades knows, conservative magazines and think tanks have been making detailed entitlement reform proposals for most of those years, and Republicans running for offices high and low have been running on platforms of reducing the size and cost of government for just as long. And then nothing happens . That’s why Congress’ battles over the debt ceiling and related issues provide such a potent example. Basically all Republican Senators profess to be in favor of smaller government, and yet so few are willing to go to the barricades to make it a reality. Now, I’m a realist – there are limits to how much we could expect even a completely united GOP to bring home as long as Obama is the President and Harry Reid the Senate Majority Leader. But the repeated spectacle of leading pundits and Beltway Republicans tut-tutting Boehner and company for even trying to use their leverage to exact real concessions is a sign that the message Republican voters have been sending is not getting through to everyone. (I will leave aside for the moment the detailed arguments over policy alternatives, except to make the obvious point that, to the extent Roy is framing of the debate as one about deficits and how to “fix Medicare” and “compromise with the dastardly forces of statism” with plans like Ryan-Wyden rather than how to reduce the overall footprint of public spending in relation to the private sector economy, he is illustrating rather than responding to my argument.) The related point here – and one that says much about why RedState has put so much energy into intra-party primary battles rather than the production of white papers – is that personnel is policy . The ideas are already there; what is lacking is the necessary corps of people with the will to fight for them. As the other presidential contenders have faded by now, in the case of the presidential race I’ll focus at this point on Romney (the candidate who unquestionably has drawn the most loyal support from elected officials, NR editorials and other spots on the commanding heights of Republican politics) and Gingrich, who I previously identified as a sort-of-Outsider (albeit not as fundamentally as Rick Perry) and who has (like Perry) drawn a disproportionate amount of scorn from people who you might think of as allies to his cause. It’s true that if you plow through Romney’s gazillion-point plans you will find things worth fighting for. The problem is convincing anybody that Mitt Romney, of all people, would actually go to the mattresses to get them done. Besides noting that “Romney is saddled, as we know, with Romneycare,” Roy gives the element of leadership short shrift, yet it is at the center of the disquiet with Romney and his actual record in office. It’s why it is troubling to see talk from Romney backers about replacing rather than repealing Obamacare , and positively alarming to see senior Romney advisor Norm Coleman say “We’re not going to do repeal. You’re not going to repeal Obamacare… It’s not a total repeal… You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president… You can’t whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what’s been done.” Gingrich, as I have noted before , is an odd fit with the anti-Establishment movement he now finds himself leading, not only because he is so long inside the Beltway and so steeped in its ways (albeit with a nearly endless list of enemies there) but because he’s not fundamentally a small-government guy. But the anti-Establishment, Outsider, Tea Party movement appears to be rapidly consolidating behind him as a vessel to stop Romney for reasons that are hardly irrational: Newt is a fighter and an iconoclast by temperament and a powerful spokesman for conservative ideas, but he’s also a guy with an actual record. As Newt loves to note, the 1996 welfare reform is the closest we’ve come to actual government-shrinking entitlement reform in living memory. Newt spearheaded a national reform that took millions of Americans off the welfare rolls, cutting caseloads in half by 2000 ; Romney created an entitlement to add about 400,000 people to the taxpayer-subsidized pool in Massachusetts alone . And, as Josh Kraushaar notes , Newt on the stump is a good deal more substantive in his presentation than Romney. (This is one reason why Newt won out over Rick Perry, an experienced and knowledgeable governor who was never able to communicate his accomplishments and understanding of public policy to voters). Voters may be looking skeptically at campaign promises as opposed to records in office, but they very rationally view a candidate’s willingness to verbalize strong positions as a necessary predicate to carrying them out. Roy goes on to say: Conservatives have a well-earned suspicion of anything that comes out of the Northeast, and of Ivy League-educated coastal elites in general. The thinking goes that, since most Northeasterners and Ivy Leaguers are liberals, the so-called conservatives who come out of these places must be liberals also. Conversely, conservatives who come out of red states must be true conservatives. As a lifelong New Yorker and Wall Street lawyer with an Ivy League law degree, I may not be the best target for Roy’s caricature, but even aside from that, it’s pretty clear that most Tea Partiers understand perfectly that the ability to fight for real change is not about what state you come from but what you do to move the needle in the place you serve. Chris Christie, though basically a moderate Republican, has become a cult hero for his willingness to play hardball with public employee unions; ditto Scott Walker in the Land of LaFollette. I’m hardly alone among current Newt supporters in having once backed Rudy Giuliani for President , because Rudy made major, lasting changes in New York City’s liberal governance that made the city a better place to live – Rudy may have unraveled as the 2008 campaign wore on, but his status for much of 2007 as the national polling frontrunner based on his actual accomplishments in office implies a more nuanced view of the movement that has now swung, at least for the moment, behind a Ph.D. historian. The point of my essay was not to denounce anyone, but to explain the history and depth of the current popular distrust on the Right of leaders who seem unwilling to lead. The battle to restrain runaway government spending is so much smoke and mirrors unless the people who profess to support it in word are dedicated to it in deed. No wealth of position papers, endorsements and Power Point presentations can demonstrate that. Voters and activists who have figured this out are rightly skeptical of those who don’t seem to “get it”. And they are more than willing to embrace flawed champions – even such a creature of the Beltway as Newt Gingrich – if they demonstrate the willingness to actually do something to stop the runaway train of federal spending. Every time some Beltway figure calls Newt or some Tea Party candidate crazy, voters think again, “he might actually be crazy enough to upset some applecarts to get things done.” The world of the Right is not divided into pure heroes and villains on this issue, and more than a few people and institutions with as many or more accomplishments in the movement as Newt Gingrich have fallen out of favor (as Newt himself did more than a decade ago), for growing too comfortable with an overgrown Washington – they’ve lived long enough to see themselves become the villain , and the voters have moved on. Because it’s not about heroes and villains. This is democratic self-government, not theater. It’s about results.
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Establishments and Our Money: A Response To Avik Roy
Supposedly Obama’s STOU tonight will focus on “economic fairness.” WASHINGTON — President Obama, confronting a Congress in which Republicans have been determined to stymie him, will use his last State of the Union address before he faces the voters to offer a populist pitch for greater economic fairness. Mr. Obama will assert that government should
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STOU Open Line
I am a firm believer that primaries make stronger candidates. But at some point you just have to stand back, take a sip of bourbon, and sigh “Damn” under your breath as you behold the carnage being wrought within the Republican Party. The fight has gotten so bitter and acrimonious with only three states chosen because neither side thinks the other side can win. Gingrich supporters understand that the secularists in the media — not the Democrats, but the media to the extent it can be separated from the Obama Machine — will spend six months creeping out independent suburban voters about Mormons, holy underwear, Kolob, postmortem baptism, and views on black people and then, as the coup de grace, Barack Obama will fire up millions of dollars of ads on Bain Capital raiding pension funds forcing the government to cover the debt so Mitt Romney could make millions whether he won or lost a deal. Romney supporters understand Newt Gingrich will open his mouth. Mitt Romney will find it very hard to beat Barack Obama because of what Barack Obama will do to him. Newt Gingrich will find it very hard to beat Barack Obama because of what Newt Gingrich will do to himself. That’s the simple truth. Both men will have amazingly difficult times beating Barack Obama. It is possible, but probability never favors picking off an incumbent just for starters. About the only real difference between the Gingrich and Romney camps is that the Gingrich camp intuitive understands this and is happy to go down with a fighter. The Romney camp is still deluded into thinking a milquetoast moderate from Massachusetts who can’t win Iowa twice in a primary is somehow electable. In the past the Republican Party has had “party elders” who could help the “electable” candidate get to the general election — Ford in 1976 (loser), Dole in 1996 (loser), McCain in 2008 (loser) and the general contempt these “elders” have shown the tea party give the core of Republican voters no faith in their “elders” or leaders any more. In other words, the nomination process has gone off the rails. It has become extremely unpredictable because the base wants to beat its party leaders on the more likely than not correct assumption that it must do that in order to beat Barack Obama. In short, this election is more volatile than any we have seen in a very long time because the party leaders, after years of learning to corral its base activists have now lost control and lost the respect of the base. The deadly consequence is a cage match between the base and the establishment both of whom are backing two deeply, deeply flawed candidates with the odds heavily against them in a general election. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time for both sides to let the scales fall from their eyes and in a bit of sanity rethink this thing. Time is short, but there is still time. Surely there is someone out there that both the Romney supporters and Newt supporters can agree on who is not named either Romney or Newt. I am part of the base that will do everything I can to defeat Mitt Romney because I believe he will be a disastrous nominee who will cost us the House, the Senate, the White House, and consequently the Supreme Court. There are Mitt supporters who feel the same about Newt, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. So maybe we ought to all find someone who we all kind of like instead of heading to Tampa in August all licking wounds and pretending to rally to the man the voters chose between the evils of two real lessers.
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We’re Fighting Over Two Guys and Neither Side Thinks the Other Can Win
With Speaker Gingrich having won South Carolina, and now polling ahead of Gov. Romney in Florida and nationally, there is one question that keeps popping up. What is it about Newt Gingrich that conservatives voters find appealing? Rush Limbaugh has at least part of the answer : To those of you in the Republican base, this isn’t complicated. Newt is winning. He is on a momentum roll here because he can articulate conservatism, that and he’s willing to take it to Obama. I have said for the longest time that whoever does that, whoever articulates conservatism with passion, with love, cause that’s love of country, with good cheer. Conservatism is inclusive. Somebody who can articulate it happily, proudly, with good cheer cannot be beat. Rush is right, Newt articulates conservatism. He does it very well and he rarely misses an opportunity to do so in grandiose fashion. This in and of itself isn’t that big of a deal. In all honesty, articulating conservatism isn’t all that hard, especially when our focus is leaning more and more towards conservative populism. What makes this interesting is that Newt has managed to win by articulating conservatism while having a considerable record of apostasies. Newt isn’t an empty vessel as Rush suggests. No, he is a vessel filled to the brim with ex-wives and mistresses. Newt is a man who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi, who favored an individual mandate, who, for all intents and purposes, lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So what is it about Newt that allows the conservative voter to so easily look beyond these betrayals? I attempted to answer this question in a series of tweets last night. To my surprise, Ben Domenech gathered up my tweets and put them in this morning’s Transom. To even greater surprise, Peter Robinson then quoted me in a post at Ricochet . In “ The Transom ” this morning, Ben Domenech quotes Aaron Gardner , providing a big part of the answer: From @Aaron_RS: “I think much of Newt’s appeal is that he is on a journey of redemption, and the people want to believe they are as well. His conversion, and the broader idea of Americans being able to bounce back. His story fits the mood. You add the redemption theme to Newt being able to appear confident and communicate ideas to people, and you have a result like SC. Mitt, on the other hand, has no redemption story because to repudiate any past position is to admit he was wrong. In the end, Newt is more optimistic while being honest and that goes a long way in building trust. Mitt isn’t getting that benefit.” Romney, in other words, is the diligent older brother, the one who has behaved himself all his life and just can’t understand why he doesn’t get more credit. Newt? Newt’s the prodigal son–a sinner like everyone else. The idea of redemption being a compelling force in this cycle isn’t really all that far fetched. The last decade has left many people wanting redemption. Whether it is because of the war taking its toll, the economy tanking, or the less than subtle feeling that Orwell’s boot is stomping on our human faces forever; the reality is that a lot of people in America are looking for some sort of redemption, political, economic, and even spiritual. And they are getting it vicariously through Newt’s candidacy. To be clear, Gingrich is not the redeemer, he is but one of the many seeking redemption. And that, when looked at in the right light, is humanizing and, as odd as this may sound, akin to humility. His candidacy revolves around a symbiotic relationship with the angst the voters are expressing. This was made clear last night when the audience was disallowed the opportunity to provide instantaneous feedback. Newt was thrown off his game by not being able to interact with the audience. Add to this the fact that Newt isn’t simply seeking redemption, he is willing to fight for it by articulating conservatism, and you start to see why his likability is increasing and his negatives are dropping. We won’t know until later whether this story ends with actual redemption, both personal and national, or if it ends with another betrayal. That said, the circumstances that exist today have made people less apprehensive towards taking this leap of faith. As for myself, I haven’t decided whether I can support Newt, or that I could defend him for four years. But like Rush said in the transcript I linked at the beginning: I trust the Republican base. That’s who I trust. I trust the Republican voters. I’m totally confident with them. They are the people in this audience. Why wouldn’t I trust them? They’ll figure this out. They’re not a bunch of brain-dead, mind-numbed robots. This is how democracy works. It’s how representative Republicanism works. It’s what we’re trying to hold onto, for crying out loud. Aaron B. Gardner
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Conservatives, Gingrich, and Grace
