Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
January 23, 2012
In This Issue . . . 1. It's a Whole Newt Ballgame! 2. The Latest Crop of Arguments for Newt 3. The Latest Crop of Arguments for Mitt 4. Addendum Here's your Monday Morning Jolt!
Enjoy.
Jim
1. It's a Whole Newt Ballgame!
In the closing days of last week, the political world began to realize Newt Gingrich had an excellent shot of winning South Carolina. But I'm not sure how many observers figured the bottom would fall out -- so far and so fast -- for Mitt Romney.
The great Sean Trende puts it in stark terms:
This is worse than George W. Bush's loss to John McCain in New Hampshire. John McCain caught Bush off-guard in 2000, but Bush was given an opportunity to regroup. He hadn't fired any major shots at McCain at that point, and was able to bury McCain beneath a torrent of attacks in South Carolina.
Romney has already been put on notice that Gingrich is a threat, and has already launched his assaults on him once. What does Romney have left? I assume that there are still bombs left to drop on the former speaker, and that the pre-Christmas attacks in Iowa were only a preview. But let's also note that, two days before the primary, Gingrich's ex-wife accused him of seeking an open marriage. We have to at least consider the possibility that voters may have already priced in Newt's baggage, and just decided that they don't care. If that's the case, then Romney's problems go even deeper than I suspect.
2. The Latest Crop of Arguments for Newt
Liz Mair has been skeptical of Romney for a long time, and she thinks that the nomination may actually be slipping through his fingers at this moment. She lays out an argument that Romney's criticism of Newt on ethics is unlikely to do any more damage than it already has:
I suspect that few voters consider Romney to be the kind of highly principled political figure you generally prefer to make an ethics (or really any other) attack, if it is to stick. This is a guy generally perceived as having an unmatched, Olympic gold-caliber degree of philosophical flexibility, a guy who will literally say anything to get elected. His ethics as a businessman have also been called into question (including on the air by AFSCME), undercutting both of his arguments for nomination, but most potently, in my view, the electability one, which was his strongest card to play (even if yours truly has always considered it an incredibly weak and unsubstantiated card).
Add to this the perception mentioned above that Romney is the candidate of the inherently untrustworthy (in the mind of your average GOP base voter) Washington establishment, and you have another Romney attribute that is likely to make a decent chunk of voters unsympathetic to hearing any of his anti-Gingrich arguments, right from the get-go. At the end of the day, there's a perception that the powers-that-be keep pushing Romney; the base doesn't like this and many base voters are more inclined to instinctively respond like this.
Advantage: Neither.
The bottom line here: I still think Romney holds advantages heading into Florida, but I think the much discussed Newt-mentum, combined with some of the other above-mentioned factors, means he doesn't have a lock on the state, as it stands today. It will be interesting to have a look at those first Florida polls, post-South Carolina. They will give us a good indicator of just how hard Romney is likely to need to fight over the next week to prevail in the biggest and most diverse state yet.
I turn over this portion of the Morning Jolt to the former Campaign Spot Hilton Head bureau chief who is now president of the Hilton Head Republican Club, the man I call "Dad."
Having worked from 6:00 a.m. to close to 8:00 p.m. was exhausting, all for $60.
In response to the question raised on Fox last night, South Carolina is not a "bellwether" state. The state, with a few county exceptions (including my own Beaufort County), is too conservative compared to rest of the country.
Biggest Winner: the voters of South Carolina. The more you tell us how to vote, the less likely we will do it.
Biggest loser: Governor Nikki Haley. Next biggest loser, those "inside-the-beltway types who predicted Romney would win because he had the 'Republican establishment' behind him." Those beltway types have to get out more and learn what really is going on. Speak to the actual voter.
The future: It's all in Newt's hands. He will do well in Florida. He has to modify his rhetoric for independents. Lose the "crabby old man" and get to being the "wise senior statesman who tells it like it is."
A guarantee: Whoever wins the Republican nomination will have the complete enthusiastic support of all Republican and Tea Party types in South Carolina.
Guarantee #2: Congressman Tim Scott will become one of the best known black politicians in America.
3. The New Crop of Arguments for Romney
Sunday night, the Ace of Spades concluded:
Romney was never my guy, but since the party has refused to back any plausible candidate, it's Romney by default. . . . Newt's selling spleen. Trouble is, I have plenty of spleen already. What I need is a guy who can follow-through and do things. What does Gingrich have apart from not being Romney? He has all of the ideological deviancy without any of the financial skill and drive.
Later, he twists the knife a bit: "For all of the new Newt Recruits: There was a reason you considered him unelectable for the first eight months of his campaign."
On 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.
Fox News, 1/12-1/14:
Obama, fav/unfav, 51%/46%, +5
Romney, fav/unfav, 45%/38%, +7
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 27%/56%, -29
CBS/NYT, 1/12-1/17:
Obama, fav/unfav, 38%/45%, -7
Romney, fav/unfav, 21%/35%, -14
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 17%/49%, -32
PPP, 1/13-1/17:
Obama, app/dis, 47%/50%, -3
Romney, fav/unfav, 35%/53%, -18
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 26%/60%, -34
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 U.S. 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 dislike 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 he did not logically argue himself 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 whom you still like but who has disappointed you." That's not an impossible sales pitch, but it is an extraordinarily difficult one.
4. Addendum
Godspeed to her and to the new chapter in her life: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a gunshot wound to the head a year ago, said Sunday she would step down from Congress this week, setting off a political scramble in Arizona to fill her seat."
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