Tag Archives: election 2012

by | February 9, 2012 · 7:42 AM

Obama Plays Hardball

By Luke Brinker

When Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, announced this week that the Obama campaign would encourage donors to support Priorities USA, the pro-Obama super PAC, observers couldn’t help noting what a significant U-turn the move signified.

Super PACs, which emerged from the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, can accept unlimited donations from their contributors. While not permitted to coordinate with the candidates they support, the groups are often staffed by former aides to those very candidates. Former Obama spokesman Bill Burton, for instance, now works for Priorities USA. Shortly after the Court’s decision, Obama pronounced super PACs a “threat to democracy.”

After witnessing Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS lavish millions on defeating Democratic candidates in 2010, and faced with a repeat in 2012, Obama decided against unilateral disarmament on super PACs. The president would still prefer to see Citizens United overturned, but as long as it’s on the books, he won’t be content to serve as a pure martyr.

The decision puts the lie to a criticism often lobbed against Obama, from the earliest days of his time on the national stage – that the president is effete, aloof, and looks upon the nitty-gritty of politics with disdain. (Of course, no president afraid of playing political hardball would have persisted in pushing for passage of health care reform long after polls showed the public had soured on it and many Democratic politicians were running scared.) But some members of the Democratic Self-Flagellation Caucus are outraged at Obama’s decision.

“It is a dumb approach. … It will lead to scandal, and there are going to be a lot of people having corrupt conversations about huge amounts of money,” former Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat defeated in 2010, said.

Feingold’s own experience is instructive. For much of 2010, political observers assumed that the liberal three-term senator was a shoo-in for re-election. But when millionaire businessman Ron Johnson, Feingold’s Republican opponent, contributed millions of his own funds to his campaign, the race tightened. (In total, Johnson gave his campaign $8.2 million.) Panicked, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee offered to help Feingold, but the cosponsor of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law maintained his opposition to accepting outside campaign money and advertising. That decision probably played a significant role in Feingold’s narrow loss in November.

Had Obama gone the Feingold route, newspaper editorial boards and good government groups like Democracy 21 and Common Cause would have lauded him for sticking to principle. But he’d have risked an unnecessary defeat in the face of his adversaries’ onslaught. Obama’s super PAC flip-flop may be inconsistent with his earlier stance on the issue, but it’s pure reformist fantasy that campaign finance will significantly influence voters’ decision in the fall. If unemployment continues its downward trend and the economy grows at a healthy clip, few voters will enter the polling booth and say, “I sure do think I’m better off than I was four years ago, but I can’t abide a president who accepts super PAC support.”

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under 2012 Election

Tagged as , , , ,

by | February 6, 2012 · 5:44 PM

Is Obama’s Boost in the Polls Only Temporary?

By Luke Brinker

Two new polls give President Obama healthy leads over likely GOP challenger Mitt Romney. A Washington Post-ABC News poll puts the president at 51 percent against Romney’s 45 percent, while Rasmussen Reports gives Obama a seven point lead over Romney, 49 percent to 42 percent. RealClearPolitics’s poll of polls has put Obama ahead of Romney since the fall, what’s notable is the size of Obama’s lead, which is now outside the margin of error. But will Obama’s advantage fade once Romney wraps up the GOP nomination and the media focuses on the general election, rather than the damaging daily squabbles among the GOP candidates?

Romney strategists would have us believe that the president’s polling lead is merely a function of his not being enmeshed in a drawn-out fight for his party’s nomination. Once Republicans rally behind Romney, their narrative goes, he’ll give Obama a real run for his money. Of course, it’s extremely difficult to predict where the polls will be nine days – let alone nine months – from now, but the argument that Obama is only ahead because of the brutal GOP contest isn’t particularly persuasive. (As is wont to happen in presidential campaigns, however, Obama’s numbers are virtually certain to wax and wane throughout the year.) On this point, a bit of not-so-distant political history is instructive.

Four years ago, Obama, for all intents and purposes, wrapped up the Democratic nomination in February. He and Hillary Clinton essentially split the Super Tuesday contest on February 5, but after that, Obama won a string of primaries and caucuses, leaving Clinton badly damaged and without another win in February. Clinton eked out narrow victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, but the delegate math by that point was decidedly stacked against her. Still, Clinton persisted in her campaign, and as the Jeremiah Wright scandal erupted in mid-March, Obama looked newly vulnerable – if not necessarily to Clinton, then certainly in an election against GOP candidate John McCain. Then came Bittergate and renewed questions about Obama’s ability to relate to blue-collar voters, and Clinton scored a substantial win in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Until Obama nearly beat Clinton in Indiana (where she had been favored) and easily won North Carolina on May 6, the Democratic nomination fight remained spirited. After Clinton’s near-loss in Indiana, key supporters like George McGovern urged her to drop out of the race. Although Clinton didn’t leave the race until June 7, after all states had had their say, she refrained from attacking Obama and looked mostly interested in leaving the race on her own terms.

Of 48 polls taken between the immediate aftermath of Obama’s losses in Ohio and Texas and early June, when Clinton exited the race, Obama either tied or led McCain in all but ten of them. A Pew poll taken after Obama’s ten-point loss in Pennsylvania gave the then-Illinois senator a healthy six-point lead over John McCain, despite Clinton’s pointed questions over whether Obama could “seal the deal” in the general election. Obama didn’t continue to poll well against McCain because, as is often asserted, his hard-fought primary campaign made him a stronger candidate. Instead, Obama polled ahead of McCain because the fundamentals – discontent with the war in Iraq, Bush fatigue, and a plummeting economy –  favored the Democratic Party in 2008. It’s still too early to pronounce definitely on whom the fundamentals will benefit in 2012. As Ezra Klein wrote this morning, it’s conceivable that the European debt crisis could spawn another global downturn and dash Obama’s reelection hopes. But if the nation continues to receive monthly jobs reports like the one last Friday, the fundamentals will favor Obama. The fact that Romney won’t have Newt Gingrich on his hands anymore won’t matter.

Leave a Comment

Filed under 2012 Election

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | February 1, 2012 · 10:28 AM

The Most Important Florida Exit Poll Number

By Luke Brinker

Mitt Romney’s rout of Newt Gingrich in yesterday’s Florida primary dealt a severe blow to Gingrich’s hopes of mounting a strong challenge to Romney’s nomination. A look at the exit poll data shows why. Romney won whites and Hispanics by decisive margins, dominated Gingrich among women, and won every age and income group. Romney even bested Gingrich among Tea Party supporters, upon whom Gingrich is staking the future of his candidacy.

Notable blocs among whom Gingrich beat Romney included voters whose most important issue was abortion, those who described themselves as “very conservative,” and those who thought “true” conservatism was the most important quality in a GOP nominee. But none of those measures were the most interesting aspect of the Florida exit polls. That honor belongs instead to the question of whether voters wanted more candidates to enter the race. Fifty eight percent said they were satisfied with the current field, while a sizable 38 percent said they would like to see someone else enter the race. (To understand why this is no longer realistic, click here.) Romney won 51 percent of those satisfied with the current crop, but he and Gingrich were much closer among voters who want a new candidate to toss his or her hat into the ring. Romney won 38 percent among this group, versus 37 percent for Gingrich.

If a sizable chunk of Romney supporters want a new candidate, doesn’t that portend ill for the putative front-runner? Actually, the numbers are far worse from Gingrich’s perspective. That Gingrich had such large support among voters dissatisfied with the current field suggests that many of those voting for Gingrich are doing so not out of a deep affinity for the former House Speaker, but as a vote of protest against the allegedly moderate Romney. That’s not exactly a recipe for staying power, particularly given Gingrich’s considerable personal and political baggage.

Many Romney supporters wish there were more candidates from which to choose, but this mostly reflects the falling-in-line effect. Few Romney voters love their candidate, but they judge him to be the strongest possible nominee against Barack Obama. Most of them probably realize that it’s logistically impossible for a new candidate to enter the race and secure enough delegates to claim the GOP nod in Tampa this summer. They may wish Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush or Bobby Jindal or who-have-you had opted to run, but they’re mostly resigned to backing Romney, and unlike the fickle hard-right voters who have gone from Palin to Trump to Bachmann to Perry to Cain to Gingrich to Santorum to Gingrich again, they’re not liable to change their votes.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under 2012 Election, Mitt Romney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | January 23, 2012 · 8:33 PM

Why is Bill Kristol Pining for Mitch Daniels?

By Luke Brinker

With Newt Gingrich’s South Carolina comeback upending the GOP presidential contest, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol has penned yet another plea for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to reconsider his decision not to enter the race. It isn’t too late (still!), Kristol writes, as the “Internet age” means that “there are more possible outcomes in today’s politics” than ever before.

We will now pause to contemplate the fact that Kristol has been making some version of his “it isn’t too late” argument for the better part of half a year now. Late last summer, he said there was still time for Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio to save the Republican Party with a conservative (wet) dream ticket. Just after Christmas, Kristol envisioned a late January entry by a new GOP candidate. Now he’s saying it could happen sometime in February. At this rate, long after Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney has wrapped up the nomination, Kristol will be contending that “it isn’t too late” for Daniels, Chris Christie, Ryan, Rubio, Bobby Jindal, or some other savior to make a last-ditch bid at the GOP convention in Tampa. Failing that, after Gingrich or Romney’s coronation ceremony at the convention, Kristol may urge party bigwigs to make a backroom deal bumping Gingrich or Romney from the ticket and installing a Kristol-approved candidate. But I digress.

Since a late entry by Daniels isn’t going to happen, it’s pointless to waste time pondering his prospects in the GOP field. It is worth asking, however, why Kristol, the hardest of hard-liners on Israel, would hope for a candidacy by Daniels, who is of Syrian heritage and has received an award from the pro-Palestinian Arab American Institute. (Can you imagine Kristol’s reaction if a prospective Democratic candidate earned plaudits from such an organization?) Given that Daniels is something of a blank slate on Middle Eastern policy, neoconservatives like Kristol would have two options: either simply ignoring Daniels’s potentially evenhanded view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, or ditching the Indiana governor once his departures from Likudnik orthodoxy became apparent. Many, if not most, neoconservatives would probably choose the latter option, which raises the question of whether there’s any candidate who would satisfy the demands of those calling from more people to jump into the race. Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry were both Republicans who, unlike the other candidates in the field, didn’t start seriously laying the groundwork for 2012 until 2011. (Perry, in fact, entered the race in August, which many pundits considered too late.) Party moderates nudged Huntsman into the race, arguing that sensible solutions would ultimately triumph over Tea Party temper tantrums. Conservatives saw Perry as the “total package,” combining Tea Party credibility, a over a decade of service as Texas governor, and status as a “Washington outsider.” Of course, both Huntsman and Perry are already out of the race, having failed to meet lofty expectations. The grass, it seems, really is greener on the other side.

Leave a Comment

Filed under 2012 Election

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

by | · 1:47 PM

Could Florida Be Mitt Romney’s Waterloo?

By Luke Brinker

Had you told me six months ago that Mitt Romney would lose the pivotal South Carolina primary by a margin of 12 points, I’d have felt safe in pronouncing his prospects for the GOP nomination nil. After all, every GOP winner of South Carolina since 1980 has gone on to claim the party’s nod. If Romney couldn’t eke out a victory in a white, conservative, Southern state, how could he possibly stand a realistic chance of leading a largely white, conservative, Southern party?

But as the GOP primary process has progressed over the last several months, Romney has shown himself to be an incredibly lucky man. Each candidate who appeared to be his chief challenger – Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum – experienced spectacular falls that eclipsed their spectacular rises. For all his flaws, Romney looked like he would be the last man standing. And given the GOP base’s visceral antipathy toward President Barack Obama, the party would surely rally behind Romney as the candidate most likely to defeat the president.

Alas, Romney’s path to the nomination has been diverted, if not necessarily derailed. Capitalizing on his combative debate performances, his questioning of Romney’s conservative credentials, and voter unease with Romney’s massive wealth, Gingrich staged a remarkable comeback in South Carolina. Not only did the former speaker beat Romney there, but he did so by a margin of 40 percent to 28 percent. While I’ve been skeptical of the conservative Stop Romney movement, I can’t simply write off Gingrich’s decisive victory in the Palmetto State as a fluke. The GOP base’s suspicion of Romney appears to be catching up with him, and if conservatives coalesce behind Gingrich, Romney is finished. Whether that happens remains to be seen.

For now, I stand by my prediction that Romney will ultimately pull this thing off. I do so not out of a stubborn refusal to admit I was wrong, but out of a profound skepticism about Gingrich’s staying power. If Romney had to pick a candidate to emerge as his main challenger, why wouldn’t he pick the baggage-laden Gingrich? A candidate with a complicated marital history, a record of policy flip-flops (on health care, climate change, and private equity, for example) almost as egregious as Romney’s, a $1.6 million deal for advising housing giant Freddie Mac, and a controversy-tainted tenure as House Speaker that ended in disgrace and a $300,000 ethics fine does not have the ideal resume for a party standard-bearer. Now that Romney has no choice but to take Gingrich seriously, he’s sure to highlight these stains on Gingrich’s record, and it may be enough to vanquish the Gingrich challenge. (There’s a case to be made, though, that conservative voters have already priced in these risks in their assessment of Gingrich, and that they still support him as the most viable conservative alternative in the race.)

What will it take for Gingrich to overcome his formidable obstacles? If he manages to defeat Romney by a convincing margin in Florida’s winner-take-all primary on January 31, all bets are off. Romney may yet prevail after a Florida loss, but he would certainly lose his status as the favorite, and party elites would begin to wonder how strong a general election candidate Romney would be if he couldn’t fend off as troubled a candidate as Gingrich. Ominously for Romney’s campaign, there’s ample reason to believe he could blow it in Florida. The latest polls in the state have Gingrich leading by a fairly large margin. More fundamentally, Florida could be the state where Romney’s shameless pandering to the far right causes significant political backlash. Hispanics will be a key voting bloc in the state, and even more conservative Hispanics will not appreciate Romney’s hard-line immigration stance. (As Massachusetts governor, Romney sounded a more moderate note on the issue.) Gingrich, on the other hand, has been the most immigrant-friendly candidate in the GOP contest, as evidenced by these remarks in a CNN debate on November 22:

I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century. And I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.

Add in the fact that Gingrich, a Catholic convert, shares the religion of an overwhelming majority of Hispanics, and there’s a very real chance that Gingrich could harness his policy positions and cultural appeal to dominate among Hispanic voters. With Romney poised to enter attack dog mode this week, the next few days will be critical in determining whether Gingrich will be well-positioned in the Sunshine State a week from tomorrow.

Leave a Comment

Filed under 2012 Election, Mitt Romney

Tagged as , , , , , ,