The latest NBC News/ WSJ poll shows my candidate Newt Gingrich leading his opponent from Massachusetts by 40 to 23%. The same poll has half of all Republican voters saying they won’t vote for Newt in the general which is odd, but Newt has surged to a 10% deficit in the theoretical match up with the president. Go Newt! He's got 'em, just where he wants him. Newt did point out that Ronald Reagan- the patron saint of the right who in response to a tripling of the national debt actually raised taxes- did not catch Jimmy Carter until September of that election year. Newt has plenty of time. That’s true. But on the facts that’s actually not true, I checked. Immediately after the primaries Reagan actually led Carter by eight points in the polls, only to find himself trailing at the end of October. It is widely believed that the Carter Reagan debate of Oct-28, 1980 turned the election for Reagan, who came across as positive and optimistic. Reagan trailed by several points until that debate, turned the tide then, and rode to an eight point victory.
But to Newt’s point Reagan did not engender nearly the level of negative sentiment in the electorate before the election. In the NBC News/ WSJ poll among independents the number of voters with a negative view of my candidate, Newt, is 48%. Yesterday el Rushbo suggested that the Republicans would do better focusing on their core. (Of course, el Rushbo also suggested that liberals are on the move to outlaw football, so take it with a grain of salt.) But considering the impact that doubling down with the extreme right would have on Newt’s already sky high negatives with independents that seems a totally winning strategy. So I say go for it!
Newt is vigorously working the anti-elitist campaign trail. According to the New York Post just this week alone, Commander Zany attended a private holiday party for clients of his consulting firm in Washington, DC, while also squeezing in time to join the Kennedy Center Honors. His campaign has had extended periods of time away from both New Hampshire and Iowa. Hard telling there, I assume that is the same for all the candidates. But there is some concern that the arrogant bas*** is going to blow his lead due to his lack of effort, especially in Iowa where they expect you to show up and kiss their religious right tuchas. So that’s a problem.
Newt is running is the most unusual of campaigns. He rails against the Washington elite often in speeches to the elites in in Washington. By all appearances he continues to nurture his consulting business giving him something to fall back on in case he is crushed in the general. This would make him the third Republican candidate—after Palin and Cain—to utilize the presidential campaign primarily as a springboard to wealth which is certainly a bizarre development. During this election season, with the exception of Cain Newt, is clearly of all the candidates the one least focused on retail politics. Soon after his announcement to run Gingrich’s entire campaign staff quit after Newt and the wife headed for a two week cruise to the Greek aisles. What serious candidate does that?
Americans are expected to forget that he was speaker of the House and once famously got it a snit over a seat on Air Force One during the Clinton years. Counter intuitively Republican voters are asked to support Newt because of this lengthy and effective record of battling the evil left. As a campaign posture this is the primary weapon employed by Newt’s campaign to convince the right that he can be trusted.
Unfortunately (for me at least) Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming and one of the co-chairs of Obama’s deficit reduction commission which went nowhere, was no help yesterday. Simpson was quoted yesterday as saying that Newt’s break with his party over the 1990 budget deal with Democrats under Bush ’41 was “the most hurtful and duplicitous thing I have ever seen”. He went on to say that Newt is “for himself before he is for anybody” Just screams independent minded outsider doesn’t it?
The deal Simpson was referring to was agreement for the 1990 Budget, where Bush the elder famously broke his “No New Taxes” pledge. Interestingly, the plan which was pushed in response to skyrocketing deficits started off with budget cuts and tax increases on gas and other increases in fees eventually settled on spending cuts and a surcharge on income taxes for the wealthy. So often “populist” uprisings in America over taxes come down to the wealthy protecting their wealth. One has to wonder if the proposed gasoline and other tax increases in the original 1990 budget plan which Newt torpedoed that would have affected the middle class much more and the wealthy much less would have engendered the anger from the right that income tax surcharge eventually did. It feels much the same way now. It is curious to watch the Republicans see so little merit in the payroll tax cut which would primarily benefit Middle America. Does anyone really believe they would be nearly as fiscally conservative if one of the tax cuts Republicans really want, say allowing corporations to repatriate trillions of overseas profits by lowering the corporate rate from 35% to 10% or 5% was on the table?
Just yesterday more news came of how Newt is polishing his outsider image by repeatedly linking himself to the real everyman in the electorate, Donald Trump. Yesterday the USA Today reported that Gingrich “had made the cut and was now an official member of Trump National in the Washington suburbs of Northern Virginia”. Trump was quoted as saying, “I have a lot of respect for Newt. Newt's a member, so I love my members. I always love my members.” Of all the candidates it is quite clear than when Trump speaks of the candidate he desires, the one what would prevent him from throwing his hair, ah…hat, in the race, it’s Newt.
As much as I want to see Trump flying around one day, speaking to America from his gold gilded New York penthouse throne the next, I guess I have to choose preferences. Newt without Trump or Romney and Trump, but no Newt? I am all in with Newt, but that does make it tough.
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