They’re off the blocks in Florida today, for the fourth Republican primary (OK three primaries, one caucus) with a debate tonight in Tampa, and Romney and Gingrich ripping each other new ones.
Today Mitt Romney accused Gingrich of being a “Washington insider”, said that there were questions hanging over his leadership as speaker in the ’90s, and demanded that he return $1.6 million he’d taken in fees from Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage agency that, in Republican mythology, is responsible for the 2008 global crash.
After Gingrich denied being a lobbyist, Romney noted, “Saying that Newt Gingrich is a lobbyist is just a matter of fact … If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck”. He also demanded that Gingrich release records relevant to his work with the body.
By mid-afternoon, Gingrich had responded by saying that Romney was now serving “desperate baloney”, after his stonking and unexpected loss in the South Carolina primary. He accused Romney of hypocritically demanding transparency while offering none.
The accusation prompted Romney to announce that he will release his tax records tomorrow, ahead of the April deadline he had set himself.
Gingrich responded by saying he would release his Freddie Mac records tonight.
The increasingly vicious and desperate encounter comes as new polls show Gingrich surging ahead in Florida, off the back of the South Carolina win.
The conventional wisdom has been that the size of Florida – it will most likely have a primary turnout of 2 million, compared to the total of 800,000 people in all three contests to date – would make a Gingrich surge impossible, given Romney’s cash backing.
Pundits endlessly repeat that the state has “10 television markets” in which ad space must be bought, yada yada.
But if we have learnt anything from these primaries, it’s that their usual unpredictability has been doubled down on this time around.
Why? The answer I think is that we are one click further on from 2008 in terms of media transformation. In 2008 iPhones, Twitter and Facebook and much else were still colonising a space hitherto occupied by TV, etc (08 was the first and last Blackberry election).
Now they’re here, and though sections of the age-shifted Republican base are still relying on three channels of analog, plus Fox (“git that damn communist PBS off my television!”), the new media have upped the general pace.
Things roll over twice as fast as they once did, and that speed causes things to shift at an exponential rate. The process is outpacing the pollsters, even when they poll daily.
All of which means that Romney’s general hopelessness, when contrasted with Newt’s energy, drive, supporter base, and a gradual leaching of support to him from the Perry and Santorum bases, may not be solvable with money alone.
There was a total media buyout in SC — meaning every slot available for political advertising had been sold weeks before they came to town. Most of it was Romney’s. But such saturation is subject to the law of diminishing returns, and even reversal.
Comes a point when you’re sick of the guy’s face, and seeing it again makes you hate him more. When that’s combined with him being a dick, advertising at this level (no Australian election has ever come close — watching an hour of TV, you can see 20 political ads, or four of them repeated four times) can have a powerful reverse effect.
Gingrich’s rise, and his possible triumph in Florida has the Right establishment panicked to the wazoo. Ann Coulter, Mark Steyn … all the death maidens and Eeyores who moan about the death of true conservatism, are now desperately trying to prop Massachusetts Mitt back up, even as he gets worse at this daily.Obama/Romneycare was Hitlerian communofascism or something, but that was then. Another four years out of power, and they worry that the establishment party machine would be taken over by the hillbillies and rapturists in the Tea Party.
Gingrich is 20 times better than Romney at everything that is required of a candidate. And in every poll for the past year, he runs 10 points behind Obama.
Doesn’t shift, no matter what happens. Maybe it would, but if it didn’t, Obama would take 40 states, and the myth of a centre-right America would be blown for ever.
The GOP mainstream worry about Newt not merely because of what might happen in 2012 — they’re already wondering whether he could lose them in 2016.
Now the Tampa debate’s about to start, and Gingrich will tear Romney a fresh one afresh. At this rate Mitt will be all hair product and arseholes, like Chapel Street.
Loving your reports, Guy – my daily treat!
Maybe these guys could work out a way to eliminate each other sooner rather than later.
Taking even a small look at Gingrich’s record would make people think twice about that guy. In the late 1990s Gingrich was the centre of a major FBI investigation that involved a reported attempt to bribe a major arms dealer, who himself was a FBI informant, for at least 10 million dollars. DCBureau.org reported that Gingrich was at the centre of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation in the late 1990s for a scheme to shake down the arms dealer for a $10 million bribe in exchange for Gingrich using his influence as Speaker to get the Iraq arms embargo lifted so Soghanalian (the FBI informant) could collect $54 million from Saddam Hussein’s regime for weapons he had delivered during the Iran-Iraq War. Soghanalian was responsible for launching one of the most sensitive and secret investigations in FBI history involving the former Speaker and his second wife. According to DCBureau.org, Gingrich was on his way to being taken down by the FBI investigation until then head of the FBI Louis Freeh stepped in and killed the case.
Gingrich has also been a strong proponent of geo-engineering i.e. terraforming the planet, essentially giving the green light for mad scientists to play God with the environment. Geoengineering is a product of a “crazy” scientific fringe which posits that using airliners to dump huge amounts of sulphur into the atmosphere, injecting the oceans with nitrogen, and parking giant spaceships above the earth to block out the sun, is necessary to avert global warming.
This wolf in disguise, disconcertingly power hungry, anti freedom career politician has also gone on the record with his belief that certain marijuana “crimes” should carry the death penalty, a fact widely exposed by the popular online news website Raw Story (mid December 2011) after presidential candidate Gary Johnson brought it up to a national audience during an appearance on MSNBC: “Newt Gingrich, in 1997, proposed the death penalty for marijuana — for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana,” Johnson explained. “And yet, he is among 100 million Americans who’ve smoked marijuana.”
Nevertheless, Gingrich continues to bill himself as a freedom minded anti-establishment candidate bouncing off Romney as the insider (he is) while he is always “belted up” by the media.
Less than two weeks ago with campaign going nowhere, his political action committee received a 5 million dollar donation from noted billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This huge donation has increased the spotlight on what had been a struggling Gingrich campaign and provides further proof that the last thing that America needs is Newt Gingrich in charge given his serious obligations to third parties with possible interests in wiping Iran off the face of the earth.
Great last para.
Great report, but …
I think you’re underestimating the reality-proofing around the American right’s mythology. A 40-state landslide would just be further proof that the silent majority of Real Americans are being marginalised by noisy socialist Muslims.
Good stuff Guy. I agree with Paddy, but of course Guy’s talking about the South Yarra end of Chapel St, not East StKilda…