Thoughts on the Florida debate…

The New Neo Posted on by

…which I didn’t watch. I read some of it, and many comments about it as well, and watched some video excerpts.

The consensus seems to be that for the most part Gingrich looked rattled and off his game, and that Romney was more forceful than usual. Paul was Paul (who else would he be?), and Santorum acquitted himself well but not enough to significantly change anything for him.

So I’ll stick to talking about the two dueling frontrunners.

Gingrich’s supporters are drawn to him for many reasons, but chief among them are his belief in and defense of conservative principles (in the political arena, anyway) and his aggressive and skilled debating. “He’s a fighter,” many say approvingly, and he certainly is that. But it’s not just the fact that he’s not afraid to fight that draw them to him, it’s that they see him as a fluid and skilled thinker on his feet, able to give as good as he gets and to win the battle through smart thinking as much as pugnaciousness.

Romney is disliked by his detractors for many reasons as well, but among them are the perception that he has the opposite traits: no core conservative principles, and wimpy and weak. One big fear is that he would not be able to go on the offensive against President Obama, and that could be fatal to the chances of defeating the president in the 2012 election.

Last night’s debate seemed to upend those assumptions—most particularly the latter, the one about aggressiveness. Romney went after Gingrich effectively, and Gingrich looked angry but unfocused and—well, sort of weak. And it didn’t happen just once, but many times.

As for the conservative principles, Gingrich made what I believe was a tactical blunder when he continued to attack Romney from the left, as he had with his Bain criticisms. This time Gingrich’s point was even weaker: Romney’s investments in Fannie and Freddie. Here’s part of that exchange, in case you missed it [emphasis mine]:

[Gingrich speaking]We began digging in after Monday night because frankly I’d had about enough of this. We discovered to our shock, Governor Romney owns shares of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Governor Romney made a million dollars off of selling some of that. Governor Romney owns share ”” has an investment in Goldman Sachs, which is today foreclosing on Floridians.

So maybe Governor Romney in the spirit of openness should tell us how much money he’s made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments? And let’s be clear about that.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: First of all, my investments are not made by me. My investments for the last 10 years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. Secondly, the investments that they’ve made, we’ve learned about this as we made our financial disclosure, have been in mutual funds and bonds. I don’t own stock in either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. There are bonds that the investor has held through mutual funds. And Mr. Speaker, I know that sounds like an enormous revelation, but have you checked your own investments? You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It goes on, but that moment must have been a rough (and surprising) one for Gingrich, and it was emblematic of what happened during the debate. I monitored the reaction to that remark by looking at comments on some very popular blogs, and one of the things I noticed at that point (and this was among people who are for the most part neither Newt nor Mitt supporters) was that the audience thought that was a moment when Gingrich looked foolish. But that they also thought that his entire “Romney has investments in Fannie and Freddie” approach was stupid. There were a lot of remarks like, “I’ve probably got that stuff in my 401K, too! What are you thinking of, Newt?” (only they said it a bit more colorfully).

Gingrich may think he has a good line of attack on Romney re Fannie and Freddie, as with Bain. He probably thinks he won the Bain battle (although I’m not so sure). But I don’t think he’ll win this one, and not just because he himself is invested in Fannie and Freddie and doesn’t seem aware of it (although that made Romney’s team look sharp and Gingrich look very foolish, and Newt’s only real defense seemed to be that he’s got less money in there than Romney does).

The larger point is that when Newt attacks from the left it undermines his claim to have impeccable conservative credentials, and puts Romney in the position of defending the conservative point of view. It may not hurt Newt with his most fervent supporters, perhaps, who are willing to overlook a few slip-ups in the heat of battle, because they believe they know his heart is in the right—and conservative—place, and has been for a long time. I’m speaking of the other voters who are looking at the candidates and trying to evaluate them in the here and now.

No one knows what really goes on in a marriage…

The New Neo Posted on by

…writes Jessica Grose in response to mega-popular mommy-blogger “Dooce’s” announced separation from her husband of ten years.

And I would add, “including the two spouses.”

It sounds facetious and it is, but underneath it’s really not. I’ve looked at marriage and divorce from so many perspectives and for so many years: as student lawyer for a legal services clinic serving indigent clients (boy, now that was a long time ago), friend and relative (both observer and confidante), student of relationships, couples counselor, couples therapy consumer, divorced woman after 31 years of marriage, dater of divorced men and witness to their stories, blogger writing about it (am I leaving anything out? Don’t think so.) And after all this I can safely say that the more I know the less I know.

So let’s go to poetry—on love, hate, and destruction, read by a man who knew a bit about the aforementioned three things, as well as divorce:

And by the way, for contrast, here’s Frost reading the same poem. Quite different:


Robert Frost – Fire And Ice by poetictouch

Worth getting angry about?

The New Neo Posted on by

In my continuing efforts to combat misleading memes around the blogosphere, I offer the following—the exchange in which Romney is alleged to have said that Obamacare is “not worth getting angry about.”

That’s not what he said. This is:

If you were wondering about Dole’s motivation…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in writing that anti-Gingrich letter that all the fuss was about yesterday, TNR’s Timothy Noah offers further background on some possible reasons behind Dole’s anger (in addition to what I’d already suggested here).

An excerpt summarizing the gist of it:

In 1990, when Dole signed on to the tax increase with which President George H.W. Bush broke his 1988 pledge, “Read my lips: No new taxes,” Gingrich had begun his sweaty climb up the House leadership. In that capacity, Gingrich participated in the deficit-summit meetings and gave every impression that he would loyally support the tax increase (which proved instrumental in gradually lowering the deficit, finally eliminated during Bill Clinton’s presidency, only to be resurrected almost immediately once George W. Bush became president). In the end, though, Gingrich double-crossed Dole, Bush pé¨re, and the other Republican leaders by marching out of the White House and declaring his opposition to the tax hike. In doing so, he helped throw the 1992 election to Democrat Bill Clinton.

Read the whole thing. If true, it certainly sheds more light on why Dole might be a tad perturbed by the prospect of Gingrich’s becoming the 2012 nominee. And if true, this sort of behavior would also go a ways towards explaining why almost no former colleagues of Gingrich’s are endorsing his candidacy (actually, I can’t think of any who are, but you might be able to offer some).

So, what’s your reaction? Do you think it’s all a lie or the truth (after all, it’s TNR, and in the article they get a chance to bash both Dole and Gingrich, a twofer)? Either way, does it just describe business as usual in DC? Is it the kind of clever maneuvering you want to see in a candidate? An example of Newt’s devotion to the principle of no new taxes? Or a case of Gingrich’s enormously self-aggrandizing duplicity? Or some combination of these?

Some further observations from the author of the piece:

These graybeards [the old guard “establishment Republicans”]…I suspect, hate Gingrich more than any Democrat does, because if you’re a Democrat you probably never had the opportunity to be double-crossed by Gingrich.

Taking aim at Newt

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s open season on Newt Gingrich.

More and more “elite Republicans” (love that phrase) are getting into the act: Bob Dole (remember him? I’ve noticed a lot of ire around the blogosphere towards his 1996 candidacy, one of the times the “establishment” picked a “loser” from their team who then went right ahead and lost), Tom DeLay, the Elliot Abrams National Review piece I already linked to in the post below this one, and Ann Coulter of course.

Why now? I think this is a fairly good statement of the reason:

A top conservative media figure said the flood of attacks reflects a “Holy crap, it could happen” moment in the movement, as Republican leaders began to realize after Gingrich’s South Carolina victory that he could become the nominee, the global face and voice of their party and theology.

I wonder who the “top conservative media figure” was. I bet someone whom the Tea Party wing would consider neither “top” nor “conservative.” But I do know that Gingrich is a man about whom few who ever worked with him have anything good to say. To me, that speaks volumes. As the Dole statement says:

Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.”

How you view all of this depends on how you view the Gingrich candidacy and the motives of these players. It’s really similar to the issue we discussed ad nauseum yesterday: do they want to save conservatism and follow William F. Buckley’s rule of nominating “the most conservative candidate who can win?” Or are they just protecting their own sphere of influence against a warrior who would destroy their cozy arrangement?

The two are not mutually exclusive, by the way.

Another day…

The New Neo Posted on by

…another Gingrich lesson in capitalism.

More news here. Note that, in the last Florida senatorial contest, Mitt Romney supported Rubio (and was one of the first to throw his weight behind him). That surprised me, actually.

And let me see if I can get this straight: Gingrich says that the fact that he has sinned and repented makes him more “normal” than “someone wandering around seeming [emphasis mine] perfect.” Gingrich goes for the sinner vote, and leaves the implication that a person who seems squeaky clean may just be a hypocrite whose secret sins haven’t been exposed yet, or is just plain weirdly out of touch with the common run of humanity. Wonder who that “someone” might be? (Bill Clinton must be kicking himself. He never had to lie in the first place! All he had to do was say, “Yeah, I did it and I’m normal. Wanna make something of it?”)

Quote of the day (from—you guessed it—my new buddy, Ann Coulter. Politics does make strange bedfellows.):

Newtons claim Romney is a “moderate,” and Gingrich the true conservative — a feat that can be accomplished only by refusing to believe anything Romney says … and also refusing to believe anything Gingrich says.

While we’re at it, read what Newt said during the late 80s about Reagan’s foreign policy.

I understand that none of this may matter to you if you’re a Newt supporter, because he offers qualities that you think are more important than any of this stuff. As I see it, the major plus Newt brings to the table is his feistiness. That’s not nothing, either; there’s something to be said for it. But in the service of egotism, and in the absence of wisdom and integrity, it’s not a plus.

Tonight’s another debate, if you can believe that. And if we feel weary at the prospect (which I certainly do), imagine how the candidates feel—although, of course, they’re fired up by by other things, including the thrill of battle (and I include all of them in that equation; remember Santorum and Paul?).

And speaking of battle—you can use this thread to discuss the debate tonight.

What do those “Republican elites” want?

The New Neo Posted on by

Lately I’ve been puzzling over a meme that’s permeated the blogosphere in connection with the rise of Newt Gingrich. You know, the one that’s all about the Republican party elites or establishment types, the puppet masters who are controlling the whole campaign (and campaigns in previous years, giving us Dole and McCain) for their own nefarious purposes, which have nothing to do with conservative ideals but are the absolute antithesis of them. And fake conservative Romney is supposedly their new front man.

Exactly how these elites have managed to manipulate the primaries, which feature an awful lot of voter participation instead of the traditional smoke-filled rooms (which really were controlled by establishment elites), has been a bit unclear to me. I realize, of course, that both pundits and established Republican politicians have influence, the former in shaping the information we receive and the latter in passing laws and setting policy. But citizens still have at least somewhat independent minds (particularly conservatives, I would have thought), and they vote as they wish.

I would have thought that Rush Limbaugh was one of these influential Republican elites, but I noticed in a couple of comments around the blogosphere that people were quoting him on the bad faith scheming of the Republican establishment, the ones who wanted Romney and didn’t want Newt. So although I don’t ordinarily listen to Rush Limbaugh (that’s not a case of singling him out for special disapproval; I almost never listen to any radio talk shows, preferring to get my information through reading rather than through any auditory means), I thought it time to visit his website and look at some of the relevant transcripts from his show.

But I couldn’t make sense of his argument. I’m truly puzzled by it. For some examples, take a look at two recent monologues in which he talked about “the GOP establishment” and the “DC Elites.” I could quote at length, but read them yourself. Both advance a similar and somewhat complicated theory that starts with the premise that the Republican leaders already in power have for some reason decided (incorrectly) that Obama is unbeatable. Here’s more about their viewpoints and motivations:

They don’t like conservatives and they’re not really all that concerned about spending. They want to be in charge of it. That’s who they are. And they are not gonna be in charge of it if they don’t hold the House and if they don’t pick up the Senate. And that’s what they really want. They’re not and never have been convinced that Obama can be beat.

So, they don’t like conservatives and above all they want to stay in power and don’t mind spending the taxpayer’s money. I have no trouble getting that so far.

The next step in the theory is that these leaders want to hold onto the legislature and they think that only a loser moderate presidential candidate (like Romney) can accomplish that for them. Here’s where I start scratching my head. Why would a losing but moderate candidate be more likely to help Republicans hold onto the House and win the Senate, while a winning-but-conservative candidate would be more likely to hurt Republicans and cause them to lose the legislature? Sounds like a theory of negative-coattails. If Gingrich (or some other conservative) is more likely to attract votes and win, wouldn’t he also be more likely to assure that Republicans win Congress?

What’s more, why wouldn’t these establishment Republicans, who want so badly for their own selfish reasons to keep control of the House and gain control of the Senate, want to also win the presidency for the party? Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake, consolidating their power? And if Gingrich is really more likely to win than Romney (which Limbaugh certainly appears to sincerely believe), why choose Romney? Limbaugh’s argument (of the elites supporting Romney because he is more likely to lead to Republicans keeping control of Congress) only makes sense if Republican elites really do sincerely believe that Gingrich has a worse chance of winning the presidency than Romney does.

In other words, Romney would have to represent in their minds the best bet for victory on both fronts, legislative and presidential, although the first would be more likely to be successful than the second. They may or not be correct about this, but it’s certainly a less nefarious motivation for them than the one Limbaugh is pushing. And it has the virtue of making more sense.

Limbaugh’s theory would only makes sense if those Republican elites thought that both candidates would lose but that Newt would lose bigger and cause them to lose Congress, or that both candidates would likely win and carry Congress with them but Romney would be the president they could work with better. But neither situation is what he’s positing.

Here’s Limbaugh again:

[The Republican elites are] looking at Romney not because he can beat Obama but because he can limit the damage in the Senate and House races, which is what they really want. I do believe that in some cases — and I’m not prepared to name names right now. I do believe in some cases on our side they would rather Obama win than a full-throated conservative beat him, because they don’t control the conservatives. They don’t control the Tea Party. They don’t control where that victorious conservative cad would coming from.

But would “they” control Obama any better? Now, that’s a very odd thought, if he’s the alternative (remember, Limbaugh says they do not believe Romney could win, either).

And wasn’t Newt long one of “them”—a member of Congress, and Speaker of the House?

Looking at the bigger picture, I understand that it represents people’s distrust of Congress as a whole and frustration with the Republican leadership. Neither feeling is misplaced, and I share them both. But it’s a large step from that to the idea that the situation in this campaign doesn’t just represent a disagreement about the best way Republicans can go about winning both the presidency and Congress, it’s a case of leaders who are bad actors, working against the goal of winning the presidency in order to benefit themselves. It’s us against them, and Newt has in some strange manner morphed into one of “us” and not one of “them.”

[ADDENDUM: I suggest that readers go to the Limbaugh links and read them, because his argument is difficult to understand from my summary here. What he is not saying is that the Republican elites would be more comfortable with a Romney presidency than a Gingrich one and are supporting him for that reason. That would not only be a good argument, it would also be correct, IMHO. And although I think Limbaugh would also agree with it, it’s not the argument he’s making in these monologues. The one he’s making is more complex, and is predicated on the Republicans in power being convinced that neither Romney nor Gingrich can beat Obama. More here and here.]

Intuitive physics?

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people can’t master physics even in high school. Although I got a good grade in it I never felt that it was my strong suit, and I struggled more than I was used to with a lot of its concepts, even though the subject matter interested me.

And I knew better than to even try to take it in college.

But little did I know that babies intuitively understand physics—or at least what these researchers refer to as physics. It’s pretty fascinating, whatever you want to call it:

In a review of related scientific literature from the past 30 years, vanMarle and Susan Hespos of Northwestern University found that the evidence for intuitive physics occurs in infants as young as two months ”“ the earliest age at which testing can occur. At that age, infants show an understanding that unsupported objects will fall and that hidden objects do not cease to exist. Scientific testing also has shown that by five months, infants have an expectation that non-cohesive substances like sand or water are not solid. In a previous publication, vanMarle found that children as young as 10 months consistently choose larger amounts when presented with two different amounts of food substance.

“We believe that infants are born with the ability to form expectations and they use these expectations basically to predict the future,” vanMarle said. “Intuitive physics include skills that adults use all the time. For example, when a glass of milk falls off the table, a person might try to catch the cup, but they are not likely to try to catch the milk that spills out. The person doesn’t have to consciously think about what to do because the brain processes the information and the person simply reacts. The majority of an adult’s everyday interactions with the world are automatic, and we believe infants have the same ability to form expectations, predicting the behavior of objects and substances with which they interact.”

Well, I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising. It makes sense that our brains can process feedback about the world of objects from the start, despite the fact that our early and almost complete dependence on parents means that we can have the luxury of developing our skills over time. I wonder whether the great apes have similar “physics” abilities, or whether they’re limited to humans.

Dueling individual mandates: Newt and Mitt

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m curious to hear from the Newt-supporters on this one.

Ace’s post today reminded me of something I’d mentioned a while back in this comment of mine: that Gingrich is on record as supporting an individual mandate or the posting of a bond for health insurance—at the federal level. Not only that, but he said so as recently as May of 2011.

We all know, of course, that so-called Romneycare involved an individual mandate on the state level, and that it was passed in 2006 when Romney was governor of Massachusetts. Romney has also said that he is against such a mandate at the federal level, and that each state should be allowed to decide for itself.

But did you also know this?:

Romney…hated the employer mandate and vetoed the provision that employers of 11 or more offer coverage or face a penalty of $295 per employee. This veto, and seven others aimed at less controversial aspects of the law, were easily overridden by the Democratic Legislature.

Romney considers the Massachusetts plan needlessly gold-plated; he would have pushed for a much cheaper version that allowed minimal coverage options.

He believes the Massachusetts health connector, the insurance exchange which the Obama plan would emulate, has created an excessive regulatory burden, imposing too many requirements on what commercial insurers must offer for a policy to qualify as “minimum creditable coverage’’ under the law. His proposal, to require only a bare-bones policy that covered hospitalization and catastrophic illness, was rejected by the Legislature…

Romney also wanted a way for those of means to opt out of the mandate by posting a bond ”” essentially a promise to pay for future uninsured health care costs. Critics called it a “fig leaf’’ and Romney concedes that few would have taken advantage ”” just as only a handful choose a similar option to post a $10,000 bond rather than buy compulsory auto insurance in Massachusetts.

But the principle mattered to him, and the failure of the Legislature to agree still rankles…

That appeared in the Boston Globe in June of 2011.

I point it out not necessarily because I think it will change your mind (I don’t), but because it illustrates how much confusion and misinformation gets stirred up during the fog of campaigns. Nothing is quite what we think it is, is it? Is Romneycare really something Romney designed (and yes, I know he defends it for Massachusetts), and what would Gingrich have done were he somehow to find himself in a similar position? And does this at all change your notion of how conservative Romney “really” is?

[ADDENDUM: I left out some relevant parts of that Romney quote from the Globe. Here’s the rest:

And as for those on the economic margin, Romney thought that no one, however poor, should get insurance for no cost at all. He advocated a small premium, even a few dollars a month, for the neediest, but the Legislature balked.

Today, under the Commonwealth Care program, about half of the 160,000 receiving subsidized coverage pay no premium because their incomes fall below certain federal poverty level guidelines.

“When you give something away that is entirely free, people don’t value it as much as they should,’’ Romney said.]

Thoughts on the campaign so far

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been interesting—as in, “may you live in interesting times.”

It seems long already. And although previous presidential election years have featured heated battles, this one seems even more heated.

Maybe I’m just not remembering correctly. But there’s an element abroad in the Republican land that seems more vicious and more sparked by anger than ever before. And that’s not an indictment of any particular candidate, although I think that at the moment Gingrich is riding that anger and Romney is more the recipient of it. But the anger preceded both of them.

For me as a blogger, this campaign represents a dilemma. Not the dilemma you might think I mean; I’m not torn about who to support. I’ll do what I always do there: observe, think, and call it as I see it. If I change my mind at some point—well then, that’s something that’s happened before, isn’t it?

No, the problem is that this campaign season has raised enough issues to keep me writing in all my free time and then some. I’ve got notes for about twenty in-depth, magazine-article-long pieces, each of which would take me about fifty hours to research and write with any sort of adequacy.

I won’t be getting to most of them, but they’re about larger issues than this campaign: the place of anger in American politics, the class war that’s fomenting and being fomented by both sides (a rather unique moment in history, I believe), attitudes towards capitalism and its morality, the popular notion that there are “elites” on either side who are the puppeteers in the process that selects the eventual nominee, “establishment” Republicans vs. supposedly non-establishment ones, how the term “flip-flop” is used as a pejorative and whether it means more than to change one’s mind, the extremes of right and left and what they want to happen in America (and how they resemble each other and how they differ).

That’s just a few. You can see my dilemma.

For me, the unease of the campaign season began as the first candidates I would have liked to have seen enter the race refused to do so. Oh, I thought, if that one says no, it’s okay because surely that one will say yes.

But it was not to be, and I think that’s at least part of what’s driving the general anger here: who among us still has a candidate in the race that he/she would have chosen at the outset? Or forget that dream: who among us has a candidate in the race that he/she still considers to be a good one?

Some of you may think there is; I don’t. I just don’t. And that’s not whining and wanting the moon; I’ve never felt so negative about a slate in all the years I’ve been observing these things (although I have to say that the 2008 Republicans were a close second).

I also think the extraordinary number of debates has been a big mistake. I’ve never liked debates (or even speeches, for that matter) to begin with. I think that debates give the press too much power to shape the event, and emphasize superficial characteristics and mostly lead to sound bites and ways to discredit perfectly reasonable candidates. Debates with a lot of characters (as these earlier debates featured) especially favor the short punchy and nearly meaningless statement.

The result that I sense from all of this (and apparently the editors of the WSJ agree with me, although they’re a bit nastier about it) is that the Republican candidate will lose. That was always a concern for me, although at first I thought Obama especially ripe for the picking. But the whole crew is so tarnished now that Obama will start looking a lot better to more and more of the American public—or at least, to enough of them for him to squeak out a win.

That thought troubles me greatly. Should I be philosophical and say, as the WSJ seems to be saying: then Republicans deserve it? Maybe, but I don’t think the country deserves it.

Those who champion this candidate or that one with more enthusiasm than I seem to think victory’s in the bag. That we could nominate anyone who can speak and breathe and the country will vote for him/her in a wild spasm of rage against Obama. I say no; won’t happen—just cause you’re that angry at Obama doesn’t mean most people are, nor does it mean that the majority of voters wouldn’t be even more repulsed by the Republican candidate du jour.