Category Archives: n00t

Rabble Rouser

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In the last post I linked to a Steve Koracki article about Newt’s flat performance last night.

The atmosphere for the debate the Peacock network hosted in Florida Monday night was a marked departure from what we saw in South Carolina last week. Whereas Fox and CNN amped their live audiences up beforehand and encouraged boisterous responses during the proceedings, the NBC opening was comparatively sober; this time, it didn’t seem like it had been farmed out to a team of NBA producers. When moderator Brian Williams opened the telecast, the crowd was silent and respectful, and it remained so for virtually all of the next 100 minutes. …

… on Monday, there was no energy in the hall for Gingrich to feed off of, and no one on the media panel willing to step up and play his foil. From the very beginning, his responses were jarringly flat and unfocused. When an unusually sharp and focused Mitt Romney came after him hard in the debate’s early minutes, Gingrich seemed unsure how – or even whether – to engage him. And when Romney dismantled Gingrich’s defense of his lucrative Freddie Mac work like a seasoned prosecutor, the normally loquacious former speaker was literally left speechless.

Newt has been bragging about he’s the best Republican to face Barack Obama in a debate. But what we’re seeing is that Newt really isn’t a very good debater. As Kornacki says, in the South Carolina debates “all he was doing was playing to persecution complex of a fired up, rabidly partisan crowd, whose euphoric response rubbed off on like-minded viewers at home.” It may have been great political theater, but it wasn’t true debating.

Now Newt is saying he won’t allow the television debate hosts to “control” the audiences.

“I wish in retrospect I had protested when Brian Williams took [the crowd] out of it because I think it’s wrong,” he said. “I think he took them out of it because the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate.”

Gingrich’s debate performances are widely viewed as having propelled him to an overwhelming victory at Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

His fiery performances often came at the expense of the debate moderators for questions he deemed inappropriate, and the conservative crowds often rewarded the former House Speaker with applause and even a standing ovation for his attacks against the media.

But NBC asked the crowd to hold their applause until the breaks, and moderator Brian Williams didn’t offer any opportunities for Gingrich to go after him.

As a result, some of Gingrich’s attacks that might have energized his supporters at previous debates seemed to fall flat. At one point Gingrich even seemed flustered, and paused in silence to collect his thoughts.

“We’re going to serve notice on future debates that we won’t tolerate — we’re just not going to allow that to happen,” Gingrich continued. “That’s wrong — the media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be able to applaud if they want to. It was almost silly.”

Does Gingrich think he would ever be allowed to debate Barack Obama in front of a fired-up, hand-picked right-wing audience primed to applaud and hoot and holler? Is he nuts?

When Kennedy and Nixon debated in 1960, they were in a studio with no audience at all.

Imagine President Obama and Newt Gingrich in a studio debate with no audience. Heh.

SOTU Tonight

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I won’t be home tonight to live blog, but y’all can comment away. Credit to the New York Public Library for the image of the fashionable gentleman in the top hat.

Mitch Daniels will be giving the Republican response. Bill Kristol says there is a groundswell of support to nominate Mitch Daniels as president. I haven’t seen such a groundswell myself. But see Mitch Daniels screws middle class working people in his state, before he heads off to give his speech to the pundits:

Indiana under Daniels gave away the store to business interests and they got absolutely nothing in return. Gutted business regulation, gutted environmental regulation, sold state assets, deregulated and privatized public schools, destroyed public sector unions, and the unemployment rate in Indiana is comparable to the midwest states around Indiana, states that didn’t make all the concessions demanded by the “job creators”. The promised jobs never arrived.

When John Boehner speaks of Mitch Daniels he has to claim that Daniels was working on “a climate for job creation.” Not jobs. A “climate” where jobs might blow in like the weather, maybe, sometime, depending. Boehner has to use that odd and abstract language because Boehner knows what the unemployment rate is in Indiana, and he also knows that Daniels is a two-term governor who had a free hand to put in place the whole conservative-libertarian wish list. For years. That’s all in place, but the job creators just keep on demanding more concessions from Indiana, and Mitch Daniels just keeps handing them over.

It’s a sure bet the bobbleheads will gush about how “moderate” Daniels is tonight. He’s not. Well, unless your idea of “moderate” is any white guy dressed in a suit who is not a Democrat.

Charles Pierce:

I think the fact that 10,000 people came out in the middle of the day to protest against Indiana’s egregious attempt to turn itself into Mississippi on behalf of the people who think Mitch Daniels should be president might warrant a little more coverage than it’s getting. After all, every single one of the Republican candidates is in favor of right-to-work laws, including Ron Paul, the last hope for progressive politics. And Mitch Daniels is at the very toppermost of the poppermost of all those holy-Christ-these-guys-are-such-a-sack-of-hair lists of people who might save the Republican brand, if only they’d run. David Brooks, for one, has been spurned and regularly is seen weeping over a picture of Mitch in a heart-shaped frame.

Elsewhere — Newt can’t deliver without a screaming audience.

Is Mittens Toast?

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The latest data at Nate’s place:

Florida VOTE
PROJECTION		 CHANCE
OF WIN
Newt Gingrich 37.6% 66%
Mitt Romney 30.0 32
Ron Paul 15.2 1

All last week, the chart showed Mittens as the overwhelming favorite in Florida, with a 90-something chance to win. Now that’s gone. almost overnight.

The Florida primary is nine days away, and a lot can happen in nine days. But Romney’s strength (again, this is what Nate said awhile back) is that he was positioned to dominate the early primaries, and that’s not happening. And there aren’t that many primaries in February. A bunch of caucuses, yes, including the ever-entertaining Nevada caucus. There’s a primary in Missouri that won’t award actual delegates.

So after Florida the only “real” primaries are in Arizona and Michigan on February 28, and then there’s super Tuesday on March 6. So one could argue that a big win in Florida could give Newt the “big mo” going into Super Tuesday. At the very least, if Newt wins Florida as decisively as he won South Carolina — still an if, with nine days to go — it ought to cement his status as the Favorite Not-Mittens Candidate, and Santorum and Ron Paul likely would fade away.

Democrats are surely giggly with joy at this development. On the other hand, Newt’s blown it before; he can always blow it again.

Update — speaking of Ron Paul — Rand Son of Ron was detained at the Nashville airport for refusing to be patted down after the body scanner showed an “anomaly.” Y’all can go ahead and have fun guessing what the “anomaly” is; the news story doesn’t say.

Update: More news stories say that Rand Son of Ron was not detained at the Nashville airport, but neither was he allowed to board the plane.