Category Archives: Republican Party

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.

All Bets Are Off

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There are all kinds of commentaries today about how the contest for the GOP nomination refuses to follow any known pattern. Nate Silver says that it hasn’t broken all known patterns just yet, but if Florida breaks for Gingrich next week, “all bets are off.”

Josh Marshall says pretty much the same thing —

My best guess is that Gingrich will come on strong or even win Florida. And it’ll be bad for Mitt for a while. But eventually Mitt and really the GOP establishment will just grind him down. Do I know that? Not at all. Unless Mitt can totally shut Gingrich down in Florida, it’s really all bets are off territory.

Conventional wisdom on the Left is that the GOP establishment won’t let Newt win, in fear that he will be a drag on congressional tickets as well as lose to Obama. But if Romney can’t close the deal, who is going to stop him?

Truly, about the only chance the Right has of winning the White House in November is if in July they pick someone entirely off the radar (Jeb! Jeb! Jeb!) and then keep that guy hidden in a box so the voters can’t get a good look at him before November.

Steve Benen:

Newt Gingrich didn’t just beat Romney in South Carolina, he crushed him. Even among those predicting a win for the disgraced former House Speaker, few saw a 12.6-point victory coming. South Carolina has 46 counties, and Gingrich won 44 of them. After losing every congressional district in the state, Romney emerges from this contest with exactly zero delegates.*

Put it this way: in less than a week, Romney managed to turn a double-digit lead into a double-digit defeat, despite an aggressive effort and nearly $5 million in investments. That’s not an easy feat to pull off.

Indeed.

Ross Douthat:

What’s remarkable is how often this seems to happen. As weak as this year’s Republican field has proved, it’s not that much weaker than a number of recent presidential vintages, from the Democrats’ lineups in 1988 and 2004 to the Republican field in 1996. In presidential politics, the great talents (a Clinton, a Reagan) seem to be the exception; a march of Dole-Dukakis-Mondale mediocrity is closer to the rule.

However, I well remember in 1992 that the pundit commentary on the Democratic field was all about whether Mario Cuomo would run. The lot of the television bobbleheads didn’t seem to think the other Democrats running were worthy of their attention. Oh, but if only Mario Cuomo would run, it would be a real race!

Of course Cuomo didn’t run, and Bill Clinton won instead, and now in retrospect Clinton is seen as a political powerhouse. But that’s not what the pundits saw in 1992. And also in retrospect, the Democratic field in 1992 (which included Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey, Douglas Wilder, Eugene McCarthy, and Tom Harkin) looks pretty respectable to me. Nowhere near the walking freak show we’re getting now from the GOP.

The truth is, the last several presidential elections cycles have seen the Republicans scramble for someone they could clean up and present as a credible candidate. Remember who ran in 2000? The only reason Dubya came across as electable is that the entire GOP and right-run media packaged him to look like something he never was, an intelligent adult.

There’s not enough lipstick in the world to make any of the current contenders presentable in a general election, IMO, and it’s too late for the GOP establishment to re-package any of them. They need to find a whole new product.

Good Analysis

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Dennis G.:

The first real primary where all the participants are members of the Republican Party base is done. Newt wins and the Mittens coronation tour is over. Trench warfare now begins.

Iowa and New Hampshire will let anybody in to play Republican-for-a-day and influence the results, but South Carolina is different and only the true faithful participate. South Carolina is to Wingnutopia what Mecca is to Islam. In this primary, the 27 percenters are a majority. South Carolina is a center of neo-Confederate thought and conspiracy theories about white victimhood at the hands of the Federal Government The Union are fed to the base from childhood.

Yeah, pretty much.

Newt Wins SC

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Rachel Maddow is saying this is the first time in history that three different candidates have won Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Anyway, I don’t yet know how big Newt won.

Update: It says on the teevee that people who voted for Newt say they think he is more electable in the general election than Romney. Unreal.

Today in South Carolina

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© Karen Roach | Dreamstime.com

Nate is giving Newt an 82 percent chance to win today’s primary. Newt also has sewn up the coveted Chuck Norris endorsement. And it appears the Faux News crew has been ordered to put lipstick on the pig.

(Regarding the lipstick, if you’re in the mood for some undiluted and unmitigated crap, check this out. It’s such self-evident moonshine I’m not even going to waste bandwidth commenting on it, although others have. See Steve M, Zack Ford, and Charles Johnson.)

See also how Newt seems to need wives as emotional and political props, and also that America really hates him.

It Just Keeps Getting Better

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Justin Elliot:

A significant portion of the seed money that created Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, was provided by wealthy oligarchs from El Salvador, including members of a family with a relative who allegedly financed rightist groups that used death squads during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s

But, y’know, the world turns round and round. Once upon a time money went from U.S. taxpayers to the Reagan Administration, which sent it to the right-wing government in El Salvador, which used it to form death squads, which terrorized the country, so the wealthy oligarchs had to find a safe place to dump their money. So they unloaded several million into Bain capital, and Mittens made several fortunes, and now he’s tapping on some of that wealth to run for President. Ain’t capitalism grand?

Also — in the New York Times, Michael Shear writes that Romney’s wealth was not an issue in 2008. Now it is. The times, are they a-changin’?

South Carolina Primary Eve

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Nate Silver’s most recent data:

South Carolina VOTE
PROJECTION		 CHANCE
OF WIN
Newt Gingrich 35.4% 62%
Mitt Romney 32.7 38
Ron Paul 16.0 0

Obviously Newt’s recent racist tirade won over much of the Confederate vote in SC. But there’s also this, Nate says:

Some of this, I suspect, is because voters in both parties seem to have developed a resistance to falling in line when the news media expects them to. There were numerous reversals of momentum in the 2008 Democratic primaries, some of which seemed to represent an open rebellion by voters against the news media’s expectations of how they might behave. Even candidates as strong as George W. Bush in 2000 — who may have been the best non-incumbent primary candidate ever, with exceptionally strong fund-raising totals and polling numbers — have encountered a few bumps along the road.

Personally, I think seeing a bunch of smug, overpaid “pundits” on television schmooze about how Candidate X is “inevitable” before votes are cast does pre-dispose some of us to support Anybody But X. The only thing that’s saved Mitt’s ass so far is that the “Anybodies” are such nobodies.

From what I’ve read, Mitt had a really bad debate last night. He got booed for his tax return evasion. Richard Adams says Romney as much as admitted that his tax returns are a political liability. He also actually referred to his own Massachusetts health reform plan as “Romneycare.”

On top of that, the Romney campaign is circulating a video that shows Mittens being insufferably 1 percentish toward a heckler. Someone off camera asks Romney what he plans to do for the 99 percent, and Romney replies —

Let me tell you something. America is a great nation, because we’re a united nation. And those who are trying to divide the nation, as you’re trying to do here, and as our president is doing, are hurting this country seriously. The right course for America is not to try to divide America, and try and divide us between one and another. it’s to come together as a nation.

And if you’ve got a better model — if you think China’s better, or Russia’s better, or Cuba’s better, or North Korea’s better — I’m glad to hear all about it.

But you know what? America’s right, and you’re wrong.

This is what they think is a “good” answer? Someone said Romney might as well start wearing a top hat and a monocle.

The Campaign We’d Like to See

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The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC Ad – Double Negative
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Rick Perry is out, and Huntsman dropped out a couple of days ago. So we’re down to four — Newt, Santorum, Ron Paul, and Mittens. There’s another debate tonight; I suggest following it on the Richard Adams blog.

Elsewhere — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has turned down $37 million from the federal government intended to set up the health insurance exchanges mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. 1% Pays 15%

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The big news this afternoon is that Mittens admitted his effective tax rate is only about 15 percent, This is not a big surprise to those who’ve been paying attention. And that clacking sound you hear is coming from the rightie blogosphere furiously defending the right of the obscenely wealthy to hang on to their dough while benefiting from the taxes paid by the rest of us. Still, I doubt it will help Romney much.