Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

A Populist Demagogue Is Born

The Republican party is in crisis, as has been evident for the bulk of this nomination race, but now its chickens have come home to roost.  The Tea Party experiment, already causing second thoughts and ruction among establishment and legislative Republicans, and their sponsors, was being assiduously ignored as the well-oiled Romney coronation rolled ever on while a clown-car of unlikely aspirants came and went, to the mortification of the electorate and the evident relief of party elders.  

However one rarely sees such a lengthy, cautious, well-funded campaign collapse in a single evening as Romney’s did at Thursday’s debate; a performance undermining with prevarication and dissembling the narrative his handlers had so carefully crafted for him over previous months.  

It was clearly his worst performance in several seasons of campaigning and at that moment it proved catastrophic.  Every pre-existing doubt about his candidacy was exacerbated by his weaselling over his tax returns; he plainly can’t be trusted, the gold standard of a presidential candidacy in either party.  And it changed the course of the campaign going forward.  He seemed damaged goods even before Gingrich cleaned his clock tonight.

So Newton Leroy Gingrich, the “bad boy” of Nineties conservatism, swoops in, channelling working-class, Right-wing angst, to deliver a crushing blow to the only credible argument Romney had; the slender one of electability from the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama.

Clearly the “base” would prefer going down in flames with Gingrich than slitting their wrists in a warm bath with Romney.

Gingrich has nothing whatsoever to lose and owes little to the Republican establishment except tangible ill-will and a thorough lesson in the perils of underestimating his brilliance.  He has conjured a campaign lacking coherent policy or resources but with apparently impeccable timing, probably more by accident than design, and a finely tuned sense of when to go for the jugular.  One could be forgiven for assuming he makes up much of his campaign as he goes.

But in the context of the post-Obama GOP he has discerned something that the establishment chose to ignore; the Republican heartland, especially in the South, is thoroughly primed for a modern incarnation of George Wallace, this time from the Right.  Gingrich has seized this opportunity; realising that insular paranoia of the “left-wing media,” for example, trumps family values in this cycle, and not by just a little.  There is a rich store of this kind of prejudice, misinformation and discontent to draw on and Gingrich seems poised to make the most of it; whether it takes him to the nomination or not is another matter.  It will vindicate him to his long-standing detractors and for Newt personally that is motivation enough.  This will get as ugly as it takes; the marginalised Tea Party conservatives are mad as hell about something and in Newt they have found a willing champion.

South Carolina is a special case, to be sure, but the handwriting is still on the wall:


It was always going to happen this way – Newt was going to go back into his wheelhouse, ripping the media and spouting in the general direction of the White House whatever pile of pejorative adjectives popped into his head at the moment. He tried, lamely, to be a statesman, and the party faithful ignored him. Once he became the vandal he was born to be, the political arsonist among the abandoned tenements of Republican thought, he was bound to take off again. The base doesn’t want someone whose ideas on job creation will triumph because they are superior to the president’s. They want somebody who can beat him bloody, vicariously, on their behalf, somebody who can “put him in his place.” They want someone who will kill the administration just for the sheer fun of watching it die.

Charles P Pierce – In Newt’s South Carolina, Blood for Bloodsport’s Sake Esquire 21 Jan 12

Just when even Roger Ailes of Fox had concurred that whipping up the disaffection of Nixon’s Southern Strategy constituencies had achieved about as much as it could without threatening the corporate allegiances of the party Gingrich enlists this torch and pitchfork cohort in his insurgent march to the White House.  Gosh, as Willard might say, who saw that coming?  And with the taste of blood in the water earned media will be readily available and the punditry secretly barracking for a real dogfight.

Florida is a rich delegate prize and surprisingly fluid.  Gingrich was leading in the polls there not so long ago and Romney’s recent performance, not to mention the profound unlikelihood of him credibly going toe-to-toe with Newt, suggests the outcome is impossible to predict.  Romney can bomb Gingrich with just about any amount of negative television he likes, as he did in Iowa, but he is burning through resources at an alarming rate and Florida is an expensive market.  All someone needs to do is back a Brinks truck up to the office of Gingrich’s SuperPAC and it is game on; as already happened to the tune of five million or so in recent weeks.  

Considering that Gingrich has a high-voltage, if jury-rigged, campaign well under way while Romney’s badly needs a reboot and faces tax returns and two debates in a brief ten days one imagines that prudence and sober strategy might be confounded with panic among Romney’s inner circle; noting, for example, the briefly but widely touted Jeb Bush endorsement failed to actually materialise.  We’ll see.  A day is a long time in politics but you can almost smell the fear.

The Republicans are split; over at Red State it is engaging to see the arguments pro and con for the, now, two leading candidates.  Romney inspires no loyalty; it is just a matter of whether Gingrich will utterly destroy the party or not if nominated.  Frankly, and in sympathy with our fellow bloggers there, it is a tough call.  With Newt anything is possible.

But there’s one tactic we have seen a sign of already which may transform, and potentially weaponise, Newt’s candidacy; he is squaring off against the Washington “elites” and if that means he has to come at Romney, or Wall Street, with the populist, working-class sozialismus of the trucknutzlumpen, in the style of Wallace, William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long, one suspects he won’t hesitate or apologise if it suits his purpose; he aptly referred to Ryan’s Medicare plan as “Right-wing social engineering” before his campaign ever fairly started.

One notes that his attacks on Bain Capital and “vulture capitalism” haven’t seemed to have done him any harm so far among the constituency he has appropriated.  If the strategy Romney has decided to use to fend off such attacks from Gingrich, and it seemed the major thrust of his concession speech, is suggesting “his opponent was joining in a frontal assault on free enterprise” he, and his somewhat desperate staff, may be more out of touch with the electorate than we had already assumed.  


129 comments

  1. This is something like the final expression of the Southern Strategy.

    Initially devised to get white working class Southern votes to counter the growth of northern urban democrats, the post Nixon Republican party was a massive compromise between two forces: the rich, cosmopolitan Neoliberals, who wanted lower taxes, cheaper non unionised labour, and global fluidity in capital markets. But the beneficiaries of Reaganomics relied on appealing to victims of Reaganomics: i.e. the cheap non-unionised labour which suffered from the outsourcing.

    The way they did this was through the culture wars, fixating on classic wedge issues around religion, abortion, guns, states rights and (though in a coded way) race.

    This worked brilliantly for three decades, until the inequalities grew greater. The bailout crystallised the Tea Party, which almost mixed its anti Obama rhetoric with an anti Wall Street origin.

    Three years down the line, the split in the Republican soul is complete. Mitt has come to represent all the wealth, cultural remoteness and managerial acumen of the monied classes. Newt the anger and abrasiveness of the outsiders and excluded, complaining about ‘crony capitalism’ – with shades of Nixon’s Chequers speech.

    Question is then – since Newt’s religious irreverence and chaotic sexual life is not a vote loser – are the culture wars finally over? In this prolonged crisis, has economics and wildly divergent interests of the Republican party, finally come to the fore?

    (PS so great to have you back)

  2. Rashaverak

    Q: In what respect do the 2012 Republican Presidential candidates resemble out-of-Code electrical wiring?

    A. Newt is hot, Mittens is neutral, and none of the rest is well grounded.

    Chickens comin’ home to roost, indeed.

  3. Rashaverak

    a modern incarnation of George Wallace, this time from the Right.

    Great essay, but I have one question: Are you suggesting that George Wallace was a leftist… the guy who picked Curtis Bomb-‘Em-Back-to-the Stone Age LeMay as his running mate?

  4. Shaun Appleby

    Didn’t take long for the Republican establishment to start flapping around like a decapitated fowl:


    “Believe me, Republicans in Congress will be terrified to run with this man for fear they will lose the House and Senate,” Hume said. “They will begin to do what they can to try to defeat him because they fear he can’t win the election and, moreover, he may drag many of them down to defeat with him. He has a lot of work to do to change their minds. I’m not sure he can.”

    Jeff Poor – Hume: Republicans in Congress will be ‘terrified to run’ with Gingrich Daily Caller 22 Jan 12

    Do you imagine that Newt cares a tinker’s damn?  Beyond throwing an elbow their way if they get within range?

  5. The Bat Signal worked.

    My liberal neighbor is donating to Newt. I might just do the same.

    We used to laugh about a Palin-Obama contest in 2012, but we didn’t really expect it. I had planned on Mitt Romney being the candidate since the last election.

    But, no, they are going to give us Newt. I mean, that is as close to Palin as you can get along the Cartoonishly Unelectable lines.

    But what choice is there? Mitt Gore, the Wooden Apostate? John “I meant 2016” Huntsman? After those two you end up in Pizza Guy and Crazy Eyes (sounds like a 70s cop show) land, and it goes straight from there to Bunker Hill (not that one, the one hill the survivalists live under).

    Unless they run Paul. That would make all the other desperate options look like cool calculations, but when the ship is sinking anything is possible.

    I love winning. It takes some of the fun out of it when the opposition is incompetent, though.

  6. spacemanspiff

    … is the title of David Atkin’s post over at Digby.

    http://digbysblog.blogspot.com

    Pundits across the land have pointed out the obvious racism of Gingrich’s appeal to food stamps, culture of dependency and what not. Most progressives have called it a racist “dog-whistle” to his base. Peter Beinart believes that Newt doesn’t understand how racist he sounds, while Frum figures that Newt just doesn’t understand the universal necessity of the food stamp program.

    None of these things are true. Newt Gingrich knows very well what he is doing and what he is saying, nor is it a dog-whistle. It’s the open declaration of an alternate reality that used to be present only within the confines of the conservative mythos, but is now taking front and center position on the national stage.

    Far from being an appeal to racism overt or covert, it taps into a delusion central to modern conservatism: that the only reason minorities hate Conservatives and Conservatism is not because of any racist tendencies or faults endemic to conservatives themselves, but rather to liberals tying down minority communities in a “culture of dependency.” In this view it is rather conservatives who are the true egalitarians, rescuing minorities from the racist slavery of the welfare state.

    It is this delusion that lies at the heart of attacks on the liberal welfare state as a form of neofeudalism: the Southern agrarian slave system was similar to feudalism in many ways, and by associating liberalism with feudalism, they also make an implicit association with Confederate slavery.

    It is this argument, so preposterous to Americans outside the conservative bubble, that allows Glenn Beck to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King, Jr.

    I hate this guy.

  7. fogiv

    but here’s my first thought based on the title:

    If Newt wins Florida, the GOP (as a National Party) is officially dead meat.  Insider establishmentarians will freak entirely the fuck out.  More pain than a giraffe with a sore throat.

  8. fogiv

    In a sign of renewed confidence, just minutes after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich romped to victory in the South Carolina primary he changed his Facebook status to “In an Open Relationship.”

    Mr. Gingrich made no reference to his new Facebook status during his victory speech, in which he made an emotional appeal to the American people: “I say to each and every one of you: Join me.  Join me in my marriage.”

    The former House Speaker used the speech to highlight the differences between himself and the current resident of the White House: “The American people have a choice: do they want a President who issues food stamps, or one who runs up a $500,000 tab at Tiffany?”

    Mr. Gingrich drew cheers and a standing ovation as he concluded his remarks, saying, “In closing, I am staying at the Marriott, Rm. 205. Ladies?”

    http://www.borowitzreport.com/

  9. left rev

    conservative, bible-belt, almost exclusively republican voting relatives struggle as this circus of a primary has banged on.

    Yes they are fairly racist, mostly blue collar, and evangelical to the core. Yes, they listen to their pastor and watch Fox news religiously. The ones that do anything on the internet besides Facebook do frequent right wing sites.

    They do not like Newt. They don’t think he’s qualified to be the town drunk, and several of them have suggested that he is an utterly foul creature. They didn’t think much of him in the 90s either, don’t trust him, and figure he’s just as likely to spit hard and sloppy on them as is Rmoney.

    Who they also don’t like. Because he’s not folks. And he’s slimy. And he’s (whispers-a damn MORMON).

    Many of them laid lip service to Santorum, but their hearts weren’t in it. Too much papistry, perhaps. Curiously, they didn’t pay much attention to Perry. Cain was a joke, and not a politically correct one either.

    They want someone to believe in. And they haven’t found it. Will they pull for the Republican candidate? Probably, if they can be arsed to go vote. But they’d like a Savior, and Newt just isn’t it. They feel abandoned.

    To be sure, not a one of them would ever vote for President Obama. But they’ve got nothing right now, and they seem to be wandering around, avoiding talking about politics, especially with me, and just sort of wishing the Tribulation would start already.

  10. fogiv

    what are the odds of a brokered convention?  The establishment (such as it is) favors Mitt, but if primary voters fatalistically embrace the Newt Chute in FL and moving forward, don’t they have to try to ‘Goldwater’ him?  Not that they aren’t lobbing bombs already.

    MR. GREGORY: You’ve been more pointed when you talk about in favor of Governor Romney. You say he will never embarrass you. Do you think Newt Gingrich will embarrass the party?

    GOV. CHRISTIE: I think Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party over time. Whether he’ll do it again in the future, I don’t know. But Governor Romney never has.

    MR. GREGORY: You say he’s embarrassed the party. How and where do you worry he might do it again that makes him unelectable?

    GOV. CHRISTIE: Well, listen, David, we all know the record. I mean, he was run out of the speakership by his own party. He was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. This is a guy who’s had a very difficult political career at times and has been an embarrassment for the party. You remember these times, you were here. So the fact of the matter is, I don’t need to regale the country with that entire list again except to say this. I’m not saying he will do it again in the future, but sometimes past is prologue.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46

  11. Shaun Appleby

    It’s official, Gingrich is now a William Jennings Bryan populist in his own mind:


    Gingrich tailored his anti-establishment rhetoric to a Florida audience, providing a preview of what issues he will be hitting over the next ten days leading up to the Florida primary on Jan. 31. One key issue that is likely to dominate – and which Gingrich raised several times on Sunday – is the housing crisis and the high foreclosure rate in Florida in particular. Calling himself a “Reagan populist,” Gingrich noted on that Florida has endured “one of the most painful periods with housing mortgages and the price of housing and the difficulties in the housing area.

    Drawing an implicit line from Romney to the housing crisis, Gingirch said, “As they look at the big boys on Wall Street they look at the guys in Washington, they know none of that help got down to average everyday Floridians. And I think that gap creates a real anger against the national establishment.”

    Eric Kleefeld and Pema Levy – Gingrich Anoints Himself The Anti-Establishment Candidate TPM 22 Jan 11

    Cue the “crucify mankind upon a cross of gold” rhetoric and a chicken in every pot.  He’s also deftly lifted Paul’s anti-Fed monetary policies recently, as evidenced in his victory speech in South Carolina.  This is all as deadly as kryptonite for Willard.

  12. HappyinVT

    I’m not sure if I’m concerned about Gingrich possibly getting the nomination or not.  I am worried about the rhetoric on one hand.  The longer the process goes on,  and he gets the results, Newt will continue to dog whistle his way through various states (except VA ’cause you know he isn’t on the ballot).  His worry, though, should how much this galvanizes PoC much like Palin’s community organizer diss gave Obama one of his biggest donation hauls in ’08.

    I’ve read that if Obama holds his % of non-white voters from the last election the GOPer will need at least 65% of the white vote.  That includes gays, atheists, Jewish, unions, youth … in other words that’s not an easy task.

    And Newt’s unfavorables are already sky-high.  Will his populist message counter his nasty anti everybody but Christian white low info probably not a fan of Obama voter anyway?  Would Gingrich look even more bombastic against that oh so cool WTF? look of POTUS during a debate?

    And, let’s face it, looks count for something.  Put Obama and Gingrich side by side.  Hell, put Michelle and Callista next to each other.

    I’m certainly not taking anything for granted but we’ve been told to fear Bachmann’s fundraising abilities, Perry’s campaigning/fundraising, Romney’s stoicism, and now Newt’s “toughness.” I guess right now the only thing I’m fearing is how high my blood pressure will get before November.

  13. Shaun Appleby

    The punditocracy is merciless:


    Romney’s resistance to releasing his tax returns made it look like he had something to hide. Now, he needs to prove that he doesn’t. And to prove that, one year is not enough. After all, one year could just be a fluke, perhaps done for show.

    Ezra Klein – Mitt Romney to release one year of tax returns Washington Post 23 Jan 12

    The poor guy is twisting in the wind over an issue that delivers a victory to Newt, exacerbates every negative narrative of his candidacy and promises to provide several news cycles, a least, of unwanted analysis of his wealth, career, entitlement and regressive tax policy and they are already giving the whole lame effort a thumbs down.  Honestly I think Romney just blundered into the equivalent of the La Brea tar pits.  Nothing he does now will relieve the downside of this and it strikes at the core issues of his candidacy.  What could they have been thinking?

    It seems to me the whole Republican establishment completely misread the terrain in this primary campaign from the beginning.

  14. Shaun Appleby

    Makes strange bedfellows. A few days ago:

    The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the giant public employees’ union, will begin airing a 30-second video ad in Florida on Saturday attacking Mitt Romney for making what it said was a $473,000 profit from his firm’s investments in a medical company that admitted engaging in Medicare fraud.

    The ad, to be aired in Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach, states that Mr. Romney was a board member of the company, Damon Clinical Laboratories, which later admitted to defrauding Medicare of millions of dollars by billing for unneeded blood tests. The ad quotes the United States attorney at the time calling it “corporate greed run amok.”

    The ad, showing grim, gray pictures of Mr. Romney, asks, “What kind of businessman is Mitt Romney?”

    According to The Boston Globe, financial documents showed that Mr. Romney made $473,000 when Corning Inc. purchased Damon in 1993. Mr. Romney had served on Damon’s board from 1990 to 1993.

    Mr. Romney’s investment firm, Bain Capital, made $7.4 million from the sale, after having tripled its original investment in Damon. Three years after the sale, Damon pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government of $25 million by billing for unnecessary blood tests between 1988 and 1993. Damon paid a $119 million fine.

    Larry Scanlon, the union’s political director, said this was the first time that his union, which overwhelmingly backs Democrats, was running an ad in a Republican primary fight. He said the union was spending nearly $1 million to run the ad on broadcast and cable television as well as the Internet.

    Steven Greenhouse – Union Goes Up With Anti-Romney Ad in Florida NYT 20 Jan 12

    Today:


    The Gingrich super PAC is expected to once again attack Romney’s work for venture capital firm Bain Capital, this time focusing on its takeover of Damon Clinical Laboratories, a company that was fined nearly $120 million amid accusations of Medicare fraud.

    Philip Rucker and Amy Gardner – In Florida, Romney takes aim at resurgent Gingrich Washington Post 23 Jan 12

    So Gingrich’s limited ad hoc Florida attack strategy just happens to align with the first union buy of negative flights in a Republican primary?  Interesting.

  15. bubbanomics

    Can’t help thinking something like this:

    Clearly the “base” would prefer going down in flames with Kucinich than slitting their wrists in a warm bath with Obama.

    Having endured a lot of libangst and prograge at another widely-read progressive site, I am relishing this GOP infighting as if it were a 30 yr old Laphroaig.

  16. creamer

    The totally greedy ultra capitalist and the prototypical angry white man.

       Watching and listening to Romneys inability to answer questions, not to mention his total tone deafness in regards to his wealth, leaves me wondering why anyone would vote for him, even if they agreed with him.

      Newt is just a pig. Some intellect, the ability to attack and argue, possibly a brilliant politician, with no leadership attributes at all. Totally self-serving meglomainiac.

     How can any thinking Republican not be embarassed. I’m embarassed for them. Its hard to believe that I live in a country where 45 % of the country will vote for one of theese clowns.  

  17. Shaun Appleby

    Which I missed, sadly, was apparently a low-key but brutal affair which served to further demoralise the Right on their presidential prospectus:


    The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move on to the rest of the debate, where little further damage was done.

    My conclusion: If Mitch Daniels’s effective tax rate is 30 percent rather than 15 percent, and if he was never paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, he can be the next president.

    William Kristol – Debate Winner: Mitch Daniels Weekly Standard 23 Jan 12

    Oh, the humanity…

  18. Shaun Appleby

    All this wasn’t enough to unsettle the composure of Republicans, the punching bag of this cycle, community organiser Saul Alinsky, turns out to have been on George Romney’s Rolodex:


    When slum organizer Saul Alinsky, with the West Side Organization’s militant Negroes and clerics, wanted to meet with the white Detroit rulers, Romney indirectly arranged the meeting, and attended. Democratic Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh avoided the rough company.

    “I think you ought to listen to Alinsky,” Romney told his reluctant white friends. ‘It seems to me that we are always talking to the same people. Maybe the time has come to hear new voices.” Said an Episcopal bishop, ‘He made Alinsky sound like a Republican.”

    Mitt Romney’s Father Palled Around With Saul Alinsky BuzzFeed 23 Jan 12

    Sigh:


    Just wanted to point out that Willard’s having another tough 48 hours. It’s like Fate is taking great joy in pantsing the man.

    Charled P Pierce – Ruh-Roh: George Romney and Saul Alinsky Esquire 24 Jan 12

    Well, nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

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