American politics Democracy in America
Gingrich's win
Newt presses those good ol' buttons
Jan 23rd 2012, 13:47 by M.S.
SOMETHING happened over the course of the past week that moved Newt Gingrich from a relevancy-challenged 15 points behind Mitt Romney in South Carolina to a dominant 40-to-28 win. What was it? The New York Times' exit polling doesn't give many answers. More than half of voters made their choice within a few days of the primary, but that was obvious from the swing in the polls. More significantly, "Six in 10 voters said it was important that a candidate shared their religious beliefs, and nearly half of them backed Mr. Gingrich, who has converted to Catholicism; about a fifth went for Mr. Romney, a Mormon." As my colleague writes, it looks like the Mormon factor is important, at least in heavily evangelical states. But that's a static issue; Mitt Romney wasn't any less Mormon a week ago, when he had a dominant lead, than he was on Saturday, when he got crushed. This seems like a better explanation:
For nearly two-thirds of voters, the recent debates were an important factor in their decision; for about 1 in 8 they were the most important factor. Mr. Gingrich was considered by many to have done particularly well in the debates; he received the votes of about half of those for whom the debates were important.
Newt Gingrich did two major things in the past ten days. The first was to launch a blistering attack on Mitt Romney as a greedy "vulture capitalist" who doesn't care about American jobs. The second was to turn in a confident, aggressive performance in two debates. And what was it that so impressed audiences about those debates? Was it Mr Gingrich's big ideas for the future? That seems doubtful, largely because, as Ross Douthat writes, it's not clear what they are.
I have, for my sins, watched Gingrich make his pitch across what feels like seventeen thousand Republican primary debates, and I am at a loss to identify the “big ideas” and “big solutions” that he is supposedly campaigning on. Yes, he has an implausible supply-side tax plan, but you never hear him talk about it. He has technically signed on to some form of entitlement reform, but you never hear him talk about that, either. Instead, so far as I can tell, his “idea-oriented” campaign consists almost entirely of promising to hold Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with President Obama, grandstanding about media bias and moderator stupidity, defending his history of ideological flexibility much more smoothly than Mitt Romney, and then occasionally throwing out a wonky-sounding notion (like, say, outsourcing E-Verify to American Express) that’s more glib than genuinely significant. His last-minute momentum in South Carolina, which last night’s debate did nothing to derail, has been generated almost exclusively by the politics of ressentiment: If he wins the Palmetto State primary, it will be because conservative voters don’t much like the mainstream press, and Gingrich has mastered the art of taking tough questions and turning them into dudgeon-rich denunciations of the liberal media and all its works.
Mr Douthat thinks Mr Gingrich's success here hinges on his denunciation of the liberal media. I think the ressentiment here is actually more specific than that, and it sits significantly deeper. Mr Gingrich scored big on two points. The first was his insistence on terming Barack Obama the "food-stamp president"; my colleague is right to term this "expert racial dog-whistling". The second was the thunderous counter-attack against his disgruntled ex-wife's allegation that before their divorce 13 years ago, he had asked for an open marriage so that he could continue the affair he had begun with his then legislative aide, now his wife.
In the debates, in other words, Newt Gingrich hit two themes hard. The first was to link our black president with food stamps (and against hard work), and to angrily denounce the suggestion by a black media moderator that this could possibly be considered racial exploitation. The second was to blast the media for paying attention to his ex-wife's account of an extramarital affair. How might we characterise these themes? What is it about these two themes that makes them so appealing to the Republican voters who helped Mr Gingrich gain over 25 points on Mr Romney in ten days? I leave this exercise to the reader.
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I'm very impressed with the so-called "evangelicals" who manage to boo a candidate who invokes the golden rule (Matthew 7:13, Luke 6:31) but vote for a warmongering nutjob with a history of financial misconduct and serial matrimonial infidelity. Some Christians!
I don't at all believe the whole racial theme. The food stamp criticism has been leveled against liberals of all colors and creeds, and would probably still be used even if Hillary had won the election. I think it's quite crude of The Economist to fall into unfounded accusations of racism.
Yes, but Newt went out of his way to explicitly tie the food stamp issue to black people. You can't pretend that was some sort of accident in SC.
"What is it about these two themes that makes them so appealing to the Republican voters who helped Mr Gingrich gain over 25 points on Mr Romney in ten days?"
There wasn't anything appealing to Republicans specifically. There was something appealing to South Carolinians, and it isn't pretty. Except for perhaps Mississippi and parts of Alabama, South Carolina is the last vestige of an unreconstructed south. Linking an African-American President to food stamps is exactly the type of race-baiting that appeals to this last remaining bastion of antebellum attitudes.
This is plain wrong. What was striking about Newt in the debates is that he didn't rely on well established talking points nearly as much as his opponents.
I.e. let's consider economy. Santorum, Romney and Paul went on to their usual routine: abstract "deregulation" and "low tax rate" will miraclously create jobs.
Newt's take? Get rid of specific piece of banking regulation, and three very SC-specific proposals: expand a deep water port, speed up the work of US federal engineers and develop shale gas. It's not some baloney; it's pretty real.
Newt is actually a positive forse in these debates, as he turns them a lot more factual.
"I.e. let's consider economy. Santorum, Romney and Paul went on to their usual routine: abstract "deregulation" and "low tax rate" will miraclously create jobs.
Newt's take? Get rid of specific piece of banking regulation, and three very SC-specific proposals: expand a deep water port, speed up the work of US federal engineers and develop shale gas. It's not some baloney; it's pretty real."
That's a good example. However, Newt's overall economic proposal is the same as with the other guys, tax cuts and deregulation, in fact Newt doubles down with the biggest tax cuts of all. There's no way for the numbers to work unless Newt massively cuts Social Security, Medicare, and/or defense.
"What is it about these two themes that makes them so appealing to the Republican voters who helped Mr Gingrich gain over 25 points on Mr Romney in ten days?"
They're both linked to grievances relating back to Fort Sumter -
"Don't tell us what to think, Yankee."
If you are correct (and I agree that you are), then we should see Newt do well in the Deep South (including Florida), and not so much elsewhere. Fortunately for Romney, the Deep South may be the heart of today's Republican Party, but it's not enough to win the nomination.
I could be...
"Ha, ha, ha! I paid a lower tax rate then you voters."
The callous way that Ronmey said his taxes on income, and his speaking fees (total of about 7 average incomes) might have had an effect.
Regards
I think the primary results in Florida may end up being a bit different than what we just saw in S. Carolina, given the differing demographics of Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, etc., vs. South Carolina.
However, I agree that it will be interesting to see whether the vote tallies and outcomes in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia will end up being similar to what we just saw in S. Carolina.
I also agree that Newt may not do nearly as well outside of the South.
For example, where I live at present does not (culturally) typically link food stamps to African Americans. It wasn't until the press brought it up that I had to rethink what Newt was trying to say - perhaps - without actually saying it.
Agree. And, if my premise above is correct, Romney has Yankee written all over him.
Florida is not the Deep South, not even close.
Of course not, it's a suburb of New York and a province of Cuba.
The primaries are best viewed as a spectator sport, and people want to be entertained. Newt and Dr Paul have real entertainment value which the others lack. The prospect of many more months of boring analysis of Romney puts people off. It's not about Newt; it's about show business. (Dr Paul offers clarity which appeals to the young but frightens anyone with experience of the world, so he's basically a non-starter for serious consideration.)
Think back to Obama v. Clinton - great fun. A heavy-weight boxing match with Obama as Mohammed Ali. Think about how Palin resurrected McCain's candidacy just when everyone was going to sleep. Newt offers fireworks; he offers controversy; he offers Hail-Mary passes. Romney offers sobriety and worthiness and ability. Boring!
Italians have some years' experience now with a head of government delivering great fun instead of sobriety and ability.
Newt is expert at channeling the anger of that portion of the predominately white culturally conservative electorate, and it's not just religiously conservative, that sees the country changing in ways that they don't like and don't understand. It's girls with tattoos, exotic looking women wearing head scarves, all those people speaking Spanish at the supermarket, gays demanding rights, people who no longer "know their place." Then there's all the economic and technological change (The graphic in yesterday's New York Times showing how the top 15 employers in the U.S. has changed over the past 50 years speaks volumes.) In other words there is a lot of fear out there among people who do not know how navigate or what their place is in the new global economy. And where there is fear and uncertainty, there will be demagogues.
Who's vote changed?
Perhaps those without a college education see the choice as between
a "Washington insider" and a "Wall Street insider".
Regards
I disagree...
Care to bet $10,000 on that?
Regards
The media, being dominated by white journalists, is totally clueless when it comes to race. Newt has said racist things but "welfare president" isn't one of them. Anyone can easily imagine him say that about a white president. If Obama were Jewish, I'm sure you'd say that Newt's constant reference to him as a "Saul Alinsky radical" is anti-Semitic.
I too have been puzzled by why people call Newt an "ideas man." Apparently, anything outside the status quo is a bold idea. They're a dime a dozen in academic journals and Newt just takes advantage of the fact that nobody reads them. BTW, there's a reason Newt doesn't talk about his tax plan. It's a joke of a plan. It reads like a parody of Perry's plan which received bipartisan ridicule. Which brings me to my other point: What good is a bold idea if it's a bad idea? Newt's one big idea in this campaign is to make poor black kids clean toilets so they can value work and stop being pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers. These are ideas for people who hate political correctness and don't like to think. If you're incapable or unwilling to think of objections, Newt's racist plan sounds great.
One final point. I like big bold ideas. But I recognize that they don't always work as intended. 100 years ago, some politicians were probably claiming that public education will eliminate poverty. 10 years ago, ethanol was the future of energy. Then it was hydrogen. All sorts of proposals to curb health care spending have failed, most recently, eliminating fee-for-service. Newt is just a typical American who's so sure how to fix the world's problems. David Brooks would say that's a philosophically liberal tendency but it's infected the populist right as well.
"Newt has said racist things but "welfare president" isn't one of them. Anyone can easily imagine him say that about a white president."
Of course he would, and the message would be the same, that Newt unlike the current President will put shiftless blacks to work.
Racism is not the theme. Retreat from responsibility is. Newt campaigns on big ideas and not hard positions that can be criticized; he gives people an easy (but disingenuous) way to vilify someone they already dislike because of the color of his skin; he claims divine forgiveness for his actions and shifts blame onto liberal media for making a big deal out of it.
I think Newt's surge is more sign of desperation than anything. S.Carolina republicans were desperate to find an alternative to Mitt Romney, especially after his shifty responses to questions about his wealth and taxes. Newt threw them a few bones, and had a sugar daddy prop up his campaign with $5 million in new money so he could get his advertizing out there as "Hey, I'm still not Mitt Romney".
3 different candidates have won the 3 states so far to hold republican primaries, and now we even have republicans resorting to such tactics as telling the truth about how Mitt Romney earned his money (basically the way anybody who has amassed obscene wealth does it, but juggling little people's lives and not caring when they fall). Barring an implosion of the Euro or other economic armageddon, Obama should have a cakewalk even with his lukewarm first term.
I guess Mr Gingrich makes his voters feel loved and their views respected. Mr Romney just sees them as necessary ticks on forms to get himself elected.
Basically, by coming out fighting, he has shown that he is a hawk. And Republicans like all sorts of hawks. However, as we all know, always playing hawk can get you intro trouble...
MS wants us to work out for ourselves the insufferable racism of the SC Republican electorate. He's right of course, but the smug, finger-wagging manner of this post is a nice encapsulation of why Newt gets so much traction pushing back against Northern Liberal Establishment Media Post-racial Rightthink.
Even in SC, the needle has moved very significantly on the topic of race, but it's human nature to resent people continually rubbing it in, especially when you're on the wrong side of history.
I didn't realise that my rubbing it in today had gone back in time and caused SC voters to choose Gingrich on Saturday. Nor did I realise that when Juan Williams tentatively almost-not-quite-suggested that Gingrich was consciously exploiting racial resentment, which he was, this was the sort of rubbing-it-in that causes people to exploit racial resentment.
The laws of physics remain the same when you run the experiment backwards, but it doesn't work in human social affairs. Besides which I never understood how it squares with entropy even in physics.
You flatter yourself. You're an exemplar, not a proximate cause.
I'm just saying that people get a bunker mentality when they're continually denigrated, and never more so than when the accusation is about 75-80% true. I think the effectiveness of the dog whistle had less to do with race per say, and more to do with Newt purposefully picking a fight with Those People.
I think there's a problem with the primacy of place that that comment received. I've generally found it Newtlike disingenuity and horseleavings all the objections to the "liberal" media calling Newt Gingrich' unabashedly racial nonsense "racial." But should we really be spending all our time on this instead of the tax plan we never hear about and the space mirror plan we never hear about or the entitlement reform we never hear about or the small-government geoengineering plans he mentions and never describes.
I'd rather see the press press him on what these big ideas he keeps talking about might be than follow him down the rabbit hole of vaguely outlined resentments. I think this is the fourth DiA post pointing out that there's a hidden racial agenda in telling black people jobs are better than food stamps. I think most of us caught that the first time and the rest will deny it to their hopefully proximate graves.
So you want us to excuse the racism and hypocrisy because the people don't like what they see in the mirror, their shadow selves. Will it recede into nothing if it is left in the mirror? Will our children unlearn or not learn about racism if we just don't talk about it? The GOP doesn't want to be judged harshly by what they see as a few fringe, but they can only be judged by what is on display continually by their elected representatives, by the actions in Congress, where they put their big money and how they vote. Most of all by how they have rallied around the racism, immorality and corruption of the current front runner.
I can see the value of that approach. But when what we're asking why Newt won the SC primary, we have to take a look at what we think were the reasons why he won the SC primary. It's nice to try to hold yourself to rigorous analysis of policy proposals, but if that's not what's actually moving the needle, then...If I go to a fight and a hockey game breaks out, I'll feel kind of silly as the only guy sitting in the stands calmly analysing whether or not Ovechkin really should have been on the ice during that opposition power play given his inferior defensive stats, while everybody else is yelling "hit him with your helmet!"
Sure, M.S., but you're the referee not the fan. I'm just saying I think we're about as far along in the "Yeah he is" "No, he ain't" conversation as we're going to get. Whatever can be revealed is now good and obvious to everyone.
Why excuse anything? Newt added a dozen or two points in the SC GOP race by a combination of racial implication and yelling at the press. Note it and move on. 24% of SC GOP primary voters might be cads and bad for America. Is that really what you want to talk about?
I think Matt and Doug are both correct.
If we want to know why Gingrich surged at the last minute in South Carolina, his (coded) racist remarks have to be part of the explanation. Yes, Romney led with his chin, and had one of his weaker performances of all the debates. But he hadn't exactly been sparkling all along. So Newt appealing to the Party of Jeff Davis was a big factor.
But Doug is right that what we need going forward is to focus on the specifics (if any) of what Gingrich would actually do as President. It's not enough to say that he is (or at least is appealing to) racists -- the people who would vote for him aren't going to buy that anyway. But pointing out where his rhetoric could take the country, without focusing on his appeals, might change som minds. Maybe not in Romney's direction, but at least away from Newt.
As a tangent, I've recently run in to Germans trying to defend Nazism, almost with the same justification as you just gave.
I think we should also leave room in our analysis of how the voting went for the spectacle of Mitt Romney barking like a hound while twitching like a possum and rolling up into a ball like an Armadillo.
Yes, to some extent I think it needs to be acknowledged over and over. Despite railing against the media Mr. Gingrich is counting on the media to repeat his comments over and over, giving credence to that 24% and encouraging many others that this racism must be the right and just direction to go. You have a good point about his other policies and they do need to be discussed but as long as the divisive tone of his comments are not challenged they will slant and encourage support for possibly the wrong reasons.
True. I guess the other thing is that I'm still almost completely convinced Romney will be the nominee. So if we're looking at policy proposals it still feels like wasted space to me to look at Newt's. But maybe I'm an idiot; Nate Silver is vastly smarter and more knowledgeable than me on these issues and he's not so sure anymore.
I’m reminded of a talk Newt gave a few years ago in which he spoke about how we could bring Iran to its knees by having our special forces destroy Iran’s one and only oil refinery. Is attacking Iran necessary? What are the repercussions? None of those questions matter, the point is The Newt has a sexy idea that lights up a room. Why special forces, wouldn’t it be simpler to just have the air force bomb it? Special forces are much sexier, more personal, more drama.
More recently, I’m reminded of his moon base that he has been talking about in some of the debates (not just once in a moment of thoughtlessness). Newt’s style relies on flashy blinged-out rhetoric that convey huge ambitions and high drama. If Newt were a car he would be a gold and purple Caddy with spinning rims. Newt is bright and shiny and it is easy for people to become entranced by shiny shit.
On the other hand, it is fun to see Newt draw some blood from the media. I guess in that one narrow sense he is using his bling powers for good.
Yes, this is exactly what Newt does - one will also notice that Newt has an incredibly high rate of churn when it comes to these ideas; what he says one month will then need to be 'revolutionised' the next.
Yes, this is exactly what Newt does - one will also notice that Newt has an incredibly high rate of churn when it comes to these ideas; what he says one month will then need to be 'revolutionised' again the next.
I think a lot of voters found it comforting to be told the prejudices they hold are not racist but completely ok, it's just the PC police that are out to make them feel bad who have convinced them it's wrong to link black people and food stamps and black people and laziness. There is a lot of power in convincing people that their failings are not failings but rather the result of their oppression. People love to feel like they're the victim, especially when they aren't.
It's what many Christian preachers do.
IE: It's not your fault that your children became violent insufferable pricks after you've neglected your parental duties and shoved them in front of a TV with a game you bought without paying attention to its rating, it's the media's; it's not your fault that your children are sexually experimenting after you refused to educate them on sex because of your religious beliefs; It's the gays' fault! It's not your fault that you lost your job after your sub-per performance on it, it's dem durn messican imm-e-grintz!
Demagoguery is an ancient tradition, and Newt is good at it, but that doesn't make him a good president. Obama was arguably a better demagogue, and I doubt those effected by Newt's demagoguery would say he's a good president.