After Florida

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s plenty of post-Florida-primary musing around the MSM and the blogosphere today. This piece by Byron York has a lot to recommend it, especially this observation:

Gingrich did not learn the lesson of Romney’s first wave of attacks against him. At that time, Gingrich reacted angrily and publicly, complaining constantly and accusing Romney of lying. Voters in New Hampshire who were once open to Gingrich’s candidacy turned away from him, saying his hot-tempered response to the ads — rather than the ads themselves — just turned them off…In Florida, Romney’s answer was a second, even bigger, wave of attacks. And Gingrich reacted in the same complaining, self-defeating way he did the first time, only more so…

Every time Gingrich, provoked by a Romney ad, made an angry speech, as he did in Mount Dora, the answer he gave showed voters exactly where Angry Newt was. Romney, in the persona he presents to voters, doesn’t have that subtext of anger.

I’m an issues person, and I spend a lot of time here talking about just that: issues. But I can’t help but notice that in all campaigns, spectators aren’t exactly the Jack Webbs of the voting process: just the issues, Mister, just the issues. There’s a lot of emotional reaction involved too, including the evaluation of the affective qualities of the candidates themselves. That may sound irrational (and some of it is) but it’s really not. Temperament matters, especially in a president.

I think a big part of Gingrich’s problem is temperament, and the problem is real. As far as Newt’s supporters are concerned, his anger is one of his strengths and not a problem at all. When it’s directed at the media it seems to work for him, although that may be getting a bit old. When it’s directed at Mitt Romney it has been working less effectively, especially when it features attacks that are from the left and/or hyperbole.

Gingrich is already a “hot” candidate rather than a cool one, and he runs the risk of seeming intemperate and out-of-control when he goes off like that. I submit that his decision to go angry in Florida was not just a tactical one; it was dictated by his personality itself. Voters in Florida decided that was not the sort of man they wanted facing Obama, or in the Oval Office.

Remember back in the fall of 2008, when the financial crisis happened and Obama seemed so cool and collected while John McCain seemed like an impulsive hothead running around in circles? Remember that McCain had been ahead up to the time of the meltdown (the financial one, and his own) and then he fell behind? There were many reasons it happened—one was that McCain was not perceived as being knowledgeable about the economy, as he himself had previously admitted. But the other (and I submit that it was a major factor) was that people felt uneasy about his temperament and soothed by Obama’s.

Romney is much more like Obama in that regard: he has a calm demeanor. Some say too calm; he needs more pizazz. His problem (at least, one of them) is that he’s considered fake and inauthentic. So a little righteous anger does nothing to hurt him; it actually reassures people that he’s human.

[ADDENDUM: Rusty Shackleford says much the same thing, just in a different way. We disagree on one thing, though: he thinks it’s stupid to judge candidates on things like personality rather than issues. As I wrote above, I don’t think it’s all that stupid at all.]

Florida primary today

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a thread to discuss it.

If you dare.

[ROLLING UPDATES: Romney is projected the winner. As things look now, he may even get a total percentage similar to the combined totals of Gingrich and Santorum.

In Romney’s acceptance speech (going on right now), I noticed one smart thing at the outset: he warned Democrats that a tough fight like this won’t help the winner: it will prepare him. Then he’s gone on to talk only about Obama, and to repeat the magic pledge to repeal Obamacare.

More reflections: Florida is a primary in which Independents can’t vote, so the results there represent Republicans only.

Apparently, the polls were correct.

Quite a few of Gingrich’s recent attacks on Romney have been attacks from the left: he’s a Bain vulture, he invested in funds that included Fannie/Freddie, and he’s a cost-cutting meanie who nixed kosher meals. I’m trying to think of any time that Romney attacked Gingrich from the left, but I can’t come up with anything. I think that’s telling. It undercuts Gingrich’s claim to be the real conservative.

Listening to Santorum’s speech, it occurs to me (and not for the first time, either) that he may be positioning himself for the VP spot.

Oops, in Gingrich’s speech, he isn’t being kind to Santorum. He says the race is a 2-person one between him, the “conservative leader,” and the moderate Romney. Gingrich goes on to cast himself a populist (it’ll be a “people’s campaign”) and predicts he’ll be the new comeback kid (no, he doesn’t actually call himself that, but that’s the idea).]

Gingrich won’t debate Obama if the media sets the terms

The New Neo Posted on by

I think this is another bad tactical move of Gingrich’s:

…Newt Gingrich returned Monday to his tried-and-true offensive against the media, declaring that if he’s the Republican nominee, he will not debate President Obama if a reporter serves as moderator.

“…[A]s your nominee, I will not accept debates in the fall in which the reporters are the moderators because you don’t need to have a second Obama person on the debate.”

…The former House speaker has said that as nominee he would challenge the president to seven, three-hour Lincoln-Douglas style debates, despite the fact that the debate schedule has already been set by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

He may think it makes him look as thought he’s a tough alpha-guy taking on everybody’s favorite nemesis, the media. But I think it makes him look whiny, inflexible, and afraid of facing Obama in a debate unless it’s on Gingrich’s terms. Since that isn’t going to happen—does anyone really think Obama or the media would take him up on his “offer”?—it makes him look as though he’s refusing to debate Obama at all.

And, since one of his strengths as perceived by his supporters is that Gingrich could best Obama in a debate, this weakens his cause still further.

I just don’t get it.

[NOTE: I wonder what Gingrich-supporters think of this approach of Newt’s. Is it just political business as usual?

As for me, I agree with this comment at Ace’s:

The worst and most revoltingly hypocritical aspect of the “ZOMG ROMNEY HATES THE JEWS!” argument coming from Gingrich now, in his final despair, is that he is criticizing Romney for attempting to cut wasteful government spending. That’s right: Newt Gingrich, True Conservative Tea Party Hero, is attacking supposed Big Government Spending RINO Mitt Romney for trying to slash government subsidies and spending”¦and attacking him as a crypto-anti-Semitic religious bigot, no less.
Newt just can’t help attacking from the Left.]

[ADDENDUM: And this comment from that same thread at Ace’s is priceless:

Newt just gave a speech to a retirement community in Pembroke Pines, FL and he converted to Judaism in the middle of the speech.]

[ADDENDUM II: Here’s an interesting video in which Romney employs the fist-in-the-velvet-glove approach on Gingrich:

It really has been very sad and painfully revealing about the speaker to see him railing on like this. I think in some respects this helps us understand why it is that out of the hundreds who he worked with as speaker, only a handful are willing to support him.

]

Blog comments are good for your mental health

The New Neo Posted on by

So says this study.

At least for teenagers. Who write blogs about their personal problems. And whose blogs are not especially popular:

In all the groups, the greatest improvement in mood occurred among those bloggers who wrote about their problems and allowed commenters to respond.

Interestingly, the commenters on the blogs were overwhelmingly supportive. “The only kind of surprise we had was that almost all comments made by readers were very positive and constructive in trying to offer support for distressed bloggers,” Dr. [Azy] Barak wrote in an e-mail…

The trolls, the bullies, they go where they can be seen. Some of the most well-trafficked sites on the Internet have the worst commenters. In general, smaller blogs with dedicated readers — whether personal journals or niche-interest publications — have lively, thoughtful, and smart conversations in their comments sections.

The site has had its share of trolls and bullies, although I have ways of blocking them and keeping it to a minimum so far. But I love the comments section here, and probably wouldn’t continue to write this blog if I didn’t have a fairly lively one. The article didn’t define a “smaller” blog—mine would probably be called medium-sized—and this ain’t no support group.

But still, there are elements in the comments section here that give it something in common with the helpful ones in the study. Mainly, it acts as a community—one that sometimes challenges and even enrages, but always engages and sometimes supports—but a community nonetheless.

Meanwhile, in the wider the world…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Syria is in an uproar. Sound familiar?

As with similar situations before, the rebels can easily be overpowered by the government, if their numbers don’t reach a critical mass, and if the army and police stay loyal to ruler Assad. Otherwise, all bets are off; there’s probably a limit to how far Russia will go to protect the rulers there.

Unlike Egypt, Syria is not an ally of ours; that may even be an understatement. So it’s easier to say that in the event of an overthrow in Syria, the replacement government probably won’t be much worse.

Boy, I can’t wait…

The New Neo Posted on by

…till tomorrow’s over and Florida is done. In fact, I can’t wait till the nominee is in the bag. And then the election can’t come soon enough.

Maybe I’ve just gotten wimpier as I’ve gotten older, but this really did seem like one of the more depressing campaigns right from the start, when the field was first set and the most promising candidates (IMHO) weren’t in it. Now it’s gone from merely depressing to viciously depressing. Even on this blog, the comments section has never seemed so full of anguish and rage, and a more-than-usual dose of misinformation and misunderstanding. I think it’s just a symptom of the difficult situation the nation is in.

And yet, compared to so many earlier troubled times, this is a piece of cake. The ones that come to mind right off the bat are—oh, little things like the Civil War, the Great Depression, and WWII—especially its early days. Even in my own lifetime the 60s were pretty bad: riots, assassinations, generational conflict of a fairly intense kind.

Come to think of it, maybe I really have turned into a wimp. Because we’ve weathered much worse storms, haven’t we?

The character issue and the fighters

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know about you, but to me, this doesn’t seem like the best approach for Newt.

And Ed Morrissey agrees:

…[I]t seems unwise for Gingrich to play the character card. Throughout his campaign, the subtext of Gingrich’s pitch is that his personal baggage ”” all of which redounds to character ”” is irrelevant in a campaign where ideology and fighting temperament matter most. As the Rasmussen polls showed the last couple of weeks, Gingrich scores very low on the character questions even among the Republican base. Even in a poll where Gingrich led nationally, he came in dead last in the current roster of four contenders for the Republican nomination on character ”” even below “Not Sure.”

Why would Gingrich pick a fight on the issue of character? Granted, he’s not talking about things like faithfulness to a wife vs. philandering, but even on the issue of campaign “lies” his own are pretty glaring.

Gingrich should play to his own strengths, not his weaknesses. He seemed to understand that at the beginning, but now he’s lost all focus in his rage.

The general perception has been that Gingrich’s major strength is as a fighter. And to give him his props, there’s no question that he has been, both in the sense of general pugnaciousness and of specific battles he fought when Speaker. He stood up not only to Democrats in the House and to President Clinton, but sometimes to those in his own party—although in the end they prevailed and successfully pressured him to resign.

And yet it’s a paradox that, as a campaigner, Gingrich actually didn’t have to use those combat skills very often. He ran in a conservative district in which the only real question at the outset (1974) was whether the public would choose a conservative Democrat (20-year incumbent Jack Flynt) or a conservative Republican (Gingrich). They chose the Democrat, and then they chose him again in 1976 by an even greater margin, although compared to his scarce Republican predecessors (Flynt had often run unopposed) Gingrich did pretty well.

But in 1978 Gingrich got lucky; Flynt finally retired and Newt won. After that, Gingrich was an incumbent member of the House from a South that was increasingly Republican, and from a district that was Republican as well. He seems to have never faced an election challenge worth mentioning after that except in 1990, when he almost lost again (although I can’t find any background on why that one was more difficult). So, although Gingrich was elected eleven straight times after those first two losses, he may be quite untested in the sense of being unused to tough campaigns. One thing for sure: were he to be nominated, he would be very unused to fighting for a win in a campaign against a liberal incumbent such as Obama, in a national election in which he would have to appeal to someone other than conservatives.

Now you might say Romney is quite untested, too, although to win as a Republican in Massachusetts is always somewhat of a test. But “tough and combative candidate” is not the way Romney has been billed in the first place. The fact that Gingrich is now reduced to sputtering rage at how tough and mean Romney is being to him is just as likely to help Romney as Gingrich right now—perhaps more so. It makes Romney seem to be more of an alpha-male and Gingrich less of one.

Those who criticize Romney often like to say that Romney could never be tough enough to fight Obama. But Romney seems to be standing up to Gingrich rather well and keeping his cool. Gingrich to Romney, not so much. And if Gingrich can’t stand up to Romney, how in the world will he ever stand up to Obama?

[NOTE: More here.]

Bumper sticker for 2012

The New Neo Posted on by

Tired of Obama, Gingrich, and Romney? I certainly am.

Here’s bumper sticker that offers an interesting alternative candidate for this election year. At least you can’t accuse him of lying:

[NOTE: If you don’t know who “Cthulhu” is, see this.]

[UPDATE: Bumped up.]

Gingrich and Romney—and Tsongas

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Please make sure you watch the video at the end of the post.]

It’s reported that Newt Gingrich is preparing a new and “brutal” anti-Romney ad. Part of it is alleged to go something like this:

“Romney said he has always voted Republican when he had the opportunity.”

“But in the 1992 Massachusetts Primary Romney had the chance to vote for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan, but he voted for a liberal Democrat instead.”

Actually, Romney didn’t say that. What he said was this:

ROMNEY: Just a — just a short clarification. I — I’ve never voted for a Democrat when there was a Republican on the ballot. And — and in my state of Massachusetts, you could register as an independent and go vote in which — either primary happens to be very interesting. And any chance I got to vote against Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, I took. And so I — I’m…[APPLAUSE}…I have voted — I have always voted for a Republican any time there was a Republican on the ballot.

What’s more, if we want to get really really technical about it (and hey, why not?), there’s this:

When Romney walked into the polling place and was handed a Democratic ballot, it’s true that there was no Republican on it. The Republican ballot was separate. So, by this interpretation, Romney is correct that there was no “Republican on the ballot” that day.

That “liberal Democrat” that Gingrich is talking about was Paul Tsongas, by the way. But more about that later.

As you political junkies probably already know, it’s a not uncommon practice in states with open primaries (where Independents can vote for either party), for fairly partisan people to still register as Independents in order to be able to vote in one primary or another for strategic reasons. By the time the 1992 Massachusetts primary rolled around (it’s usually some time in March), George H.W. Bush was almost undoubtedly going to be the Republican nominee, despite some early challenges from Buchanan. Incumbent President Bush won every single primary handily that year: “Buchanan’s campaign never attracted serious opposition to President Bush” after the very first primary in NH, which was a distant memory by the time Massachusetts had its turn. Although it is technically correct that Romney could have voted for Bush, such a vote would have been essentially meaningless.

So if Romney voted for Tsongas, as he himself has long admitted, could the meaning of his remark during the debate not just be that he voted for a Republican whenever one was on the ballot versus a Democrat? Otherwise, it’s really a tiny and almost meaningless point; for example, I doubt that Romney meant to say he voted in every Republican primary even if the Republican was running completely uncontested!

Romney offered more on the subject in an interview back in 2007:

When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I’d vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for Republican. In the general election…I don’t recall ever once voting for anyone other than a Republican. So, yeah, as an independent, I’ll go in and play in their primary, but I’m a Republican and have been through my life. I was with Young Republicans when I was in college back at Stanford. But a registered independent, so I could vote in either primary.

This whole discussion is kind of like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, isn’t it? So you might ask, why do I (neo-neocon, that is) care about such minutiae? Well, I’m always interested in fact-checking and the history behind the sound bite. But in this case I have an extra interest because the topic is Paul Tsongas, a politician I deeply admired, and whose failure to win the Democratic nomination in 1992 was a bitter disappointment to me.

So, as Lloyd Bentson might say, I remember Paul Tsongas, and if Gingrich does run an ad saying that Tsongas was a “liberal Democrat,” that is in itself a misrepresentation. The nicest thing you could possibly call it would be to characterize it as a purposely misleading half-truth.

Whether or not Gingrich ends up running the ad, he’s said as much already anyway:

…[Romney] voted in the Democratic primary for [Massachusetts’] Paul Tsongas, who was the most liberal person…

If I were given to hyperbole, I’d even say that Gingrich was lying there. But let’s just say that he’s quite mistaken about Paul Tsongas because Paul Tsongas was more conservative than Bill Clinton, the eventual winner. Another person who appeared to have been on that Massachusetts ballot in 1992 was Jerry Brown, certainly not more conservative than Paul Tsongas. In fact, Tsongas was probably the most conservative person in the race that year, at least fiscally.

And I must submit that if I know this about Tsongas, we can safely assume that Newt Gingrich the historian (and political figure in 1992) ought to know it too. While it’s certainly true that Tsongas was a Democrat, and socially liberal (at least by today’s standards), he ran as a pro-business fiscal conservative in 1992 and had long been known for that stance. But don’t take my word for it; read this:

Tsongas was criticized on occasion by opponents as a Reaganomics-style politician, and as being closer to Republicans with regard to such issues.

In a tribute I wrote to Paul Tsongas last summer, I ended with this sentence, “But if [Tsongas] were around today, he’s probably the only Democrat I’d consider voting for again””although I’m not so sure he’d be allowed in the Democratic Party any more.” That’s how conservative the guy was.

So, who’s the greater liar here? You be the judge.

In closing, I’m going to post a video of a talk that that flaming liberal Paul Tsongas gave in 1993, after he lost the 1992 primary race to Clinton, and after Clinton had won the presidency. The election he refers to is the presidential contest of 1992. I don’t know about you, but by the end of this clip I had tears in my eyes:

RIP, Paul Tsongas.