As you’ve probably heard by now, MSNBC pundit and Time Magazine columnist Mark Halperin got himself suspended by the cable network for saying on Morning Joe that the president had acted like “a dick” at his press conference yesterday. And as you probably know, Halperin thought his sophomoric little quip would be deleted by tape-delay before anyone other than his studio colleagues heard it.
With respect to Halperin’s incivility towards the president, I would surely be more tolerant of it coming from anyone other than a guy whose ultra-insider reporting over the years (as readers of The Note in its heyday will probably remember) was built on a foundation of endless flattery of politicians, campaign flacks, and other reporters. You’d figure someone who appears to genuinely like Karl Rove could avoid insults aimed at Barack Obama.
But in any event, what annoyed me most about Halperin’s “gaffe” isn’t the term he used so much as the underlying “analysis” of the president’s press conference appearance, in which he took the very rare occasion to fire back at Republicans who have been savaging him for refusing to surrender to their agenda from practically the moment of his inauguration.
You need to understand, though, that Halperin comes from a journalistic point of view wherein “objectivity” is defined as keeping an equal distance from both parties. If one party chooses to move the goal posts, then the fifty-yard-line, where the “objective journalist” lives, has to move, too. So of course Obama was being unreasonable by trying to implement his 2008 campaign promises once Republicans decided to oppose them all, and of course, today, he’s being unreasonable by refusing to offer at least half of the spending cuts Republicans are proposing with no enhanced revenues whatsoever. Obama talked about restoring bipartisanship during his presidential campaign, so if bipartisanship has failed, he’s at least half–or maybe more than half–to blame.
The good news is that Halperin is vastly less influential than he used to be. Back in the day, before the development of much of the blogosphere, much less the huge aggregation and one-stop-political-shopping sites so prevalent today, The Note was a really big deal, consumed (with all its annoying stylistic trimmings) by political junkies everywhere. Nowadays, Halperin has become the symbol–almost a parody, really–of what some folk call “The Village,” an insulated coterie of Beltway cognoscenti with a fetish for “bipartisan” issues like deficit reduction, and a conviction that the unwashed masses need their enlightened leadership. They seem to mainly talk to each other, and to that extent, their impact is limited.
But all in all, Halperin still has a pretty choice perch in American political journalism. And his continued prominence is problematic from a perspective than transcends party and ideology.
After all, he’s a “reporter,” adept at getting quotes and interviews and with a rolodex full of insider “sources.” And this appeals to the prejudices of many progressive journalists who don’t have much use for him personally or professionally, but still find an affinity with him as a “pro,” as opposed to us “opinion journalists” or “bloggers” who don’t know how to dress up our own opinions with well-selected quotes or describe real-life events with the appropriate degree of color.
Still, Halperin may serve as an example of a journalist whose analytical blindness overwhelms whatever value his “reporting” can supply. Who cares if you can get “insiders” to give you rich quotes about the events of the day if you haven’t a clue of what any of it actually means? And why is there still so lucrative a market (if smaller than it used to be) for this kind of “reporting” at a time when smart journalists all over the country are leaving the profession or living on food stamps?
Beats me.

At TNR yesterday, the ever-estimable Jonathan Bernstein published a spirited challenge to an earlier TNR piece by Abby Rapoport (and more indirectly, to one of my columns) suggesting that Rick Perry’s record in Texas could become a problem for him in a presidential run. Here’s his basic argument:

There’s nothing Rapoport or Kilgore mention that should slow Perrymentum in the nomination process. But let me make the argument broader: It’s not at all clear to me that prior accomplishments in office are particularly important for any candidate seeking the presidential nomination.

Jonathan goes on to make a persuasive case that the governing records of presidential nomination candidates matter in setting down ideological markers for important interest groups, but their actual success or failure doesn’t matter much at all. In Perry’s case, some of his more dubious policies checked the right boxes for conservative elites and activists, so who cares if they didn’t actually work or displeased many Texans?

[N]either Rapoport nor Kilgore has, at least as far I can see, unearthed any issues with Perry’s record that will cause any trouble with important organized groups within the GOP.

Fair enough. But now comes some evidence for the relevance of Perry’s record that’s not so easy to brush off: a new PPP poll showing that Perry would currently lose to Barack Obama (by a 47-45 margin) in Texas. The same poll shows Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann leading Obama in Texas, and Herman Cain tied with the president. By a robust 59-33 margin, Texans say Perry should not even run.
Keep in mind that Perry has been governor of Texas since 2001. It’s not like he suffers from low name recognition. And this is a state that no winning Republican presidential candidate can afford to lose or even run closely in, given its history and partisan complexion, much less a favorite (or in this case, not-so-favorite) son.
Now I’m the first to argue that “electability” is an overrated factor in presidential nomination contests, and that could be particularly true in 2012, with most conservatives convinced that Barack Obama is the most self-evidently bad president since James Buchanan. But it’s a factor nonetheless. And if you are Rick Perry, contemplating a late entry into the contest as the party savior against a weak field, looking exceptionally weak in your own conservative state could be a real problem. I also think Jonathan may underestimate the extent to which Perry’s alleged “economic miracle” in Texas, which was the main subject of Rapoport’s piece, is a significant part of his appeal to GOP elites looking for the perfect contrast to Obama. That the alleged beneficiaries of Perry’s stewardship of Texas’ economy aren’t that jazzed about him could call that narrative into question in a serious way.
It’s always possible the PPP poll is an outlier, or that Texans will warm to their governor’s presidential aspirations if he runs, but it’s hardly good news for Perry as he gets ready to decide whether to take the plunge. If nothing else, the home folks are stubbornly refusing to polish his halo.

One of those memes that pops up regularly in American political journalism is the suggestion that Jewish voters, who have been extraordinarily loyal to the Democratic Party over the years, are about to defect to the GOP in significant numbers. Here it is again, in a Politico piece by Ben Smith, mostly based on interviews of unnamed Jewish donors and opinion-leaders who are reportedly upset by the president’s tense relationship with Bibi Netanyahu.
I don’t doubt the integrity of Smith’s reporting, and the nervousness of some Jews about U.S. relations with Israel is unsurprising, since it’s been a regular feature of political life for decades, no matter who happened to be president. But that’s sort of the point: the case that this particular president’s Middle East policies are going to override the heavy preference of American Jews for the more progressive of the two major parties is noticeably short on non-anecdotal evidence. Here’s how Paul Waldman assesses the claim at TAPPED:

We’ve been hearing this ever since Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008. Jews don’t trust him! He had Palestinian friends! There’s that Reverend Wright! Here’s an article from May 2008: “As Obama Heads to Florida, Many of Its Jews Have Doubts.” And guess what: Obama won 78 percent of Jewish votes anyway. John Kerry got 74 percent in 2004, and Al Gore got 79 percent in 2000. In other words, Obama did pretty much exactly as well as other Democrats.
It’s never hard to write this article. Just ask around, and you can find Jews to grumble about this or that. You don’t exactly have to be Nellie Bly to get Jews to complain. It’s kind of what we do.

Moreover, the long history of erroneous predictions that a sizeable percentage of Jewish voters are about to defect to the GOP does not inspire confidence in those making similar predictions today. The National Jewish Democratic Council has released an amusing and enlightening summary of such false prophecies, made metronomically every election cycle since the early 1990s. And that only scratches the surface: for all his anti-antisemitic impulses, Richard Nixon was very interested in “wedging” Jewish votes for his 1972 re-election campaign, alongside his other coalition-building projects.
Perhaps one reason for the renewal of this meme is that Republican candidates for president seem to be spending a lot of time attacking Obama for failing to become Bibi’s best friend (most recently T-Paw, who made it a major theme of his Great Big Foreign Policy Speech last week). But these candidates obviously have much bigger fish to fry than any appeal to Jewish voters. Does anyone fail to understand that maximum solidarity with hard-line Israeli policies is of great interest to conservative evangelical activists, who have a somewhat more important presence than Jews in the Republican presidential nominating contest?
Ultimately, there are a host of factors that inhibit Jews from entertaining the idea of a vote for today’s GOP. As Waldman tartly concludes:

[I]n the end, Obama will have no trouble raising money, and getting votes, from Jews. It’s mostly ideological (most Jews are very progressive), but perhaps just as important, it’s cultural. All the time Republicans spend talking about who’s “one of us” resonates strongly with Jews. When they talk about how small towns are superior to cities, and the “heartland” is the “real” America while the coasts are fake, and how book learnin’ is for elitists, and how important it is that politicians be religious (read: Christian), Jews hear it loud and clear. That message of cultural affinity with a certain kind of person sends a simultaneous message to Jews: This party is not for you and your kind. Sarah Palin can put on a Star of David necklace, but that’s never going to convince Jews that they’re part of the Republican family. GOP candidates can talk about their love of Israel all they want, but it won’t be enough.

Until real evidence to the contrary emerges, that strikes me as the final word on the subject.

For those of you who, like me, have been watching the endless fiscal saga in California with a growing sense that it could foreshadow the kind of gricklocked insanity we may soon see in Washington, I have some potentially promising news. By that I do not refer to the fact that Democratic legislators and Gov. Jerry Brown have managed to enact a budget without any help from Republicans. Underneath the surface, there’s a growing possibility that progressive forces in the state may have found a will and a way to convince Californians that their cherished Proposition 13 property-tax limitation law has been playing them for suckers, and needs to be changed by ballot initiative.
Brown himself alluded to this possibility in his public pleas to Republicans to go along with his efforts to put revenue extenders on the ballot.
The underlying issue, as examined in a major 2010 study of the state’s tax structure, is that loopholes in Prop 13 have produced a steady shift in the tax burden from nonresidential to residential properties over the years. That’s partly because corporations–and notably banks–have found ways to buy and sell property without triggering the reassessments that are supposed to occur upon changes of ownership.
So despite the iconography surrounding Prop 13, there’s actually a good political case to be made for a ballot initiative focused on redressing a tax-shift from corporations to the middle class, as noted by Calbuzz:

It’s a safe bet that most voters don’t truly understand, or even know about, the full extent to which corporations and other commercial property owners for three decades have systematically shifted California’s property tax burden onto residential homeowners – and away from themselves.
What regular folks do know, however, is that they don’t like the idea when they learn a little about it: while 55 percent of Californians still say Prop. 13 is a good thing, 58 percent in a 2009 PPIC poll said they would favor taxing commercial property at current market rate by using a split roll assessment system.
Just think what they’d say if they knew how outrageous the current scheme actually is.

The broader implications are that Republican anti-tax rhetoric often disguises similar tax shifts from the middle class to corporations and the wealthy. Sometimes the diguise is thin, as evidenced by the enthusiasm of many conservatives for tax systems aimed at consumption rather than wealth. Sometimes it involves a shell game, as tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals inevitably push up public costs borne by everyone else.
In any event, in California and nationally, Democrats need not run in terror whenever taxes are discussed. Big majorities of Americans consistently support progressive taxation, and will vote for it when it can be shown that “anti-tax” initiatives are really aimed at shifting the tax burden to those who can least afford it.

After the online political explosion of 2008, it’s natural to assume the 2012 presidential cycle will be strongly affected by use of social media like Facebook and Twitter.
But as Ken Thomas of AP explains in an early analysis of 2012 campaign technology usages, it may be new and functionally useful apps rather than social media that will make the key difference:

While social media may generate new interest in 2012, technology could play an important role in the more mundane, shoe-leather work of registering new voters and turning them out.
In 2008, campaign supporters who knocked on doors of potential voters largely used paper “walk sheets” that were printed out at local headquarters. The results of the door-to-door meetings were keyed into databases to guide the campaign’s work to persuade voters on Obama’s behalf.
This time, the campaign is exploring ways of streamlining the process, from bringing more uniformity to how the information is taken down and entered into a database to using mobile devices, tablet computers or improvements to the website to help volunteers find key households or input data gathered at doorsteps. The approach could save time and help the campaign be more strategic about the households it targets.
The Democratic National Committee, for example, experimented with an app in 2010 that used global positioning systems to help canvassers find targeted households in certain neighborhoods, something that could be used more broadly in the presidential campaign.

New tools for old school tasks may be the wave of the immediate future.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
If you had to sum up the favorable impression Representative Michele Bachmann has made thus far on the 2012 campaign trail, it might be with the words: “She doesn’t seem crazy at all!” Expectations surrounding Bachmann, based on her well-earned reputation as a fringe character in the House Republican Caucus, have made it easy for her to make a positive impression. Reading the reviews of her performance at the June 13 presidential candidates’ debate in New Hampshire, sprinkled with words like “articulate” and “polished” and “disciplined,” it’s very clear she’s had a low threshold to cross.
But this week, with the impeccably timed formal launch of her presidential campaign, Bachmann is about to enter a period of enormous peril in which her background, ideology, and rhetorical habits are about to get the kind of exposure only a Kardashian could enjoy. Can she possibly survive as a viable contender?
The hard-core Christian Right/Tea Party folk who are Bachmann’s base in Iowa and elsewhere, of course, don’t need any introduction to her. She’s been on the television and radio shows they patronize, and many have undoubtedly contributed to her vastly expensive congressional campaigns. They’re fine with the more outlandish things she’s said over the years, but also understand it may be necessary to bring Americans along slowly to the recognition of the high-stakes holy war that Bachmann is waging on their behalf as a self-described “constitutional conservative” (a heavily loaded term connoting a belief that liberalism–fiscal, economic, or cultural–is literally un-American and needs to be permanently vanquished) in the field.
For the rest of the GOP, however, attitudes towards Bachmann may depend on what tack her critics choose. The clear template available is the sort of questioning and mockery faced by Sarah Palin, with whom the media inevitably identify Bachmann for all sorts of good and bad reasons. You could call it the “civics test” approach, where the candidate is directly questioned about her knowledge of American history and world events, and “gotcha’d” for unforced errors (e.g., Palin’s recent revisionist account of Paul Revere’s ride, and Bachmann’s relocation of Lexington and Concord from Massachusetts to New Hampshire). As Palin’s experience shows, this sort of scrutiny can be devastating over time, particularly if the target reinforces it by constantly complaining about the treatment. But what if Bachmann, unlike Palin, keeps on proving she’s not “a flake” and doesn’t do the sort of thing that makes it hard to take her seriously–e.g., resigning her office?
Indeed, unlike Palin, the scrutiny to which Bachmann is most vulnerable is not about what she does or doesn’t know, but about what she believes. As Michelle Goldberg, an expert on “Christian nationalism,” recently explained, Bachmann’s worldview has marinated in many years of extremist training and advocacy:

Bachmann honed her view of the world after college, when she enrolled at the Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University, an “interdenominational, Bible-based, and Holy Spirit-led” school in Oklahoma. “My goal there was to learn the law both from a professional but also from a biblical worldview,” she said in an April speech.
At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as “one of the professors who had a great influence on me.” Bachmann served as his research assistant on the 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again. “The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God,” Eidsmoe wrote. “In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy.”

Bachmann’s long history of identification with truly hard-core Christian Right causes, from religiously oriented charter schools and home-schooling, to the picketing of abortion clinics, to her singular hostility to gays and lesbians, would surely trouble more than a few voters if fully exposed. The big question is who, specifically, will raise them, and how much credibility will the person have?
It’s doubtful, for instance, that Republican caucus-goers or primary voters will be upset by the sort of insult-laden outrage expressed recently by Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi in his review of Bachmann’s ideological history. But you have to assume that more than a few Republican elites are worried about her recent ascendency, and the possibility that she could quickly eliminate the inoffensive conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, in Iowa, creating a divisive slugfest down the road.
On the other hand, Republican elites have long had to learn not to snicker out loud at some of the religious views of their Christian Right allies. This is probably why they chose to attack Mike Huckabee in 2008 on the basis of his heterodox economic policy sentiments rather than his theocratic leanings. Perhaps, then, they will find another angle to go after Bachmann, such as her occasionally isolationist-sounding foreign policy views. But the bottom line is that Bachmann’s moment in the sun makes her vulnerable to attacks that are being formulated as we speak, and we’ll know soon enough who takes the lead in cutting her down to size, and whether it actually works.

Veteran political observer Mike Tomasky, from his new digs at Newsweek, does a good job of putting together the factors–demographic, geographic and psychological–that will dominate Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. He looks at three counties in swing states–Colorado’s Arapohoe, North Carolina’s Wake, and Ohio’s Franklin–that Obama won by surprising margins in 2008, and weighs some of the pros and cons about whether they can be won again next year.

The base vote can still emerge in large numbers, but the dominant factor this time won’t be hope and change. Instead, the factors will be fear of the other side, state and local political conditions (think of how motivated Democrats are to regain control of their politics in Wisconsin), and demographic changes that are still redounding to the Democrats’ benefit. And because we elect presidents by states, the place to assess Obama’s prospects is on the ground.

Arapohoe’s challenge is all about taking advantage of demographics:

In the last decade, the Latino population of Arapahoe County has more than doubled, to 105,249. If the Democratic Party can register and mobilize this key Obama constituency–Latinos gave him 67 percent of their votes nationally last time–the president would likely carry Arapahoe by a far larger margin than he did in ’08. But Olivia Mendoza, executive director of the nonpartisan Colorado Latino Forum, says the community’s temperature about Obama is awfully lukewarm. “This is very anecdotal,” Mendoza ventures, “but overall, in my experience? General dissatisfaction.”
Todd Mata, the county Democratic chairman, acknowledges that “a lot of people are a little disillusioned, rightly or wrongly,” with Obama, but he says that on the ground, the party structure is working much more closely than last time with Organizing for America (OFA), the Obama get-out-the-vote vehicle.

The “enthusiasm” factor is unavoidable, and it may simply be naive to think Team Obama can ever come close to recapitulating the atmospherics of the 2008 campaign. But fear of Republican rule–in some cases, as in Ohio, refreshed by recent state-level experience–can have almost as strong an effect.
And then there are campaign mechanics, and we are only beginning to be able to assess the extent to which Obama ’12 is or isn’t based on the appropriate lessons from the last two election cycles.

The ever-fickle political news media is seizing on a new poll in Iowa to further inflate the expectations surrounding Michele Bachmann’s formal campaign launch today, and to all but bury Tim Pawlenty’s chances.
The first Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican Caucus-goers came out yesterday, and the major buzz involved Bachmann’s amazingly good showing–22 percent, and just a point behind Mitt Romney–and Pawlenty’s pallid 6 percent.
The punditocracy’s reaction to Pawlenty’s poor performance in the poll was to take another step towards the conclusion that the man just lacks the positive appeal to get people who like him to actually vote for him.
Meanwhile, the hey-she’s-not-all-that-crazy response to Bachmann’s performance in the first New Hampshire candidates’ debate was intensified by her Iowa poll numbers. She is clearly benefitting from Newt Gingrich’s implosion, Herman Cain’s predictable fade, and whatever it is that is keeping conservative evangelicals from taking the practical route to Pawlenty-land.
Nate Silver suggested that this poll, and T-Paw’s struggles generally, could create enormous impetus for a late entry by Rick Perry. I dunno. Sure, the overall dynamics of the contest continue to favor someone who is not named either Mitt Romney nor Michele Bachmann. It’s not clear, however, that Perry has enough time to put together a competent Iowa effort, and moreover, the Texas has a history of crazy utterances that easily rivals Bachmann’s.
It’s important to remember that the Register poll is of likely caucus-goers, not of likely straw poll attendees. T-Paw still has a clear chance to get back on track through sheer organization muscle at the August 13 straw poll event. That’s what Mike Huckabee did in 2008 after coming it at 4% in the first Register poll of likely caucus-goers.
Here’s The Iowa Republican‘s Craig Robinson offering an interesting take on Pawlenty’s problem and a possible solution:

Bob Haus, a multi-cycle caucus veteran, best described the Pawlenty campaign’s mentality when he told the Huffington Post that he’s taking a “Field of Dreams’ approach, if you build it, they will come.” The only problem is the people are not coming. What Pawlenty has built here in Iowa is impressive, but paying certain consultants and hiring a certain amount of staff has never been the key to building a winning caucus campaign. While his team has studied the campaigns of caucuses past, it seems they forgot to factor in the recent mood of the electorate.
The non-aggression pact that Pawlenty seems to be operating under is a recipe for failure. Maybe instead of trying to prove to he’s tough by telling Iowans that he opposes ethanol subsidies, he should get tough with the people he’s actually competing against for the Republican nomination.

This item is crossposted from The New Republic.
As the 2012 Republican presidential field began to take shape earlier this year, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty looked like the perfect on-paper candidate: a former blue-state, blue-collar governor from the Midwest who was cozy with both social conservatives and Tea Party folk, and who didn’t have Mitt Romney’s problem of heretical past positions. Nobody, to be sure, was going to confuse him with the fire-breathing orators whose rhetoric he purloined, but at a time when a generic Republican was consistently running more strongly against Barack Obama than any actual candidate, he was, as David Frum noted, the most “generic” of those available, and virtually everyone’s second choice.
But in the months that have transpired, T-Paw-mania has stubbornly failed to develop. Pawlenty remains mired in the single digits in both national polls and most surveys of early primary states, now routinely trailing the previously obscure and entirely untested pizza magnate, Herman Cain. His stump style continues to provoke mockery and yawns. His big policy announcement, an “economic plan” that proposed gigantic new upper-end tax cuts and relied on hallucinatory levels of economic growth, was trashed by experts, including some Republicans. And when he finally produced some campaign trail heat by taunting Mitt Romney with a description of the Affordable Care Act as “ObamneyCare,” Pawlenty immediately invited bipartisan catcalls for refusing to defend the label in the first major Republican candidates’ debate. So is T-Paw just another overreaching politician who looked in the funhouse mirror of ego and flattery and saw a boring nebbish transformed into a putative leader of the free world? Were the initial hopes inspired by his candidacy as overblown as his bombastic video ads?
Perhaps. But the available evidence suggests that he is simply playing a different game than his critics imagine: a small-ball strategy focused not on gaining national media attention, or destroying Mitt Romney, or gaining millions of Facebook or YouTube followers. Instead, his campaign is all about doggedly pursuing a path to victory that begins in Ames, Iowa, on August 13.
To many national political observers, the Iowa GOP Straw Poll in Ames is just a bit of meaningless pageantry that typifies Iowa’s excessive role in the presidential nominating process. But it serves the objective function of winnowing the field, particularly among candidates with similar constituencies. In 2008, for instance, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback was considered a viable contender until Mike Huckabee beat him for second place in Ames, establishing himself as the preferred candidate of conservative evangelicals and other social conservatives in the state. Huckabee, of course, went on to upset Mitt Romney in the actual Caucuses five months later.
T-Paw’s strategy is to do to his social conservative opponents–Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann–what Huckabee did to Brownback. And he’s poured everything he has into putting together the most impressive organization of any candidate in Iowa, including a large field staff, Huckabee’s 2008 campaign manager, Romney’s 2008 straw poll coordinator, and a host of local luminaries. He’s also become the first candidate to buy TV ads in Iowa. He’s poor-mouthed his prospects, saying that he only needs to gain “one of the top few spots” in Ames. But as The Iowa Republican‘s Craig Robinson observed:

Tim Pawlenty isn’t trying to sneak up on anyone in Iowa. When you look at the size of team that he has assembled, it is clear that he intends to do more than just compete here in Iowa. He intends to win it.

Pawlenty will be aided, as well, by the fact that Mitt Romney has announced he’s skipping the Straw Poll he won in 2008, and that Jon Huntsman is skipping Iowa altogether. And even if Texas’s Rick Perry, who has theoretical appeal to the Tea Party and social conservative activists in Iowa, jumps into the race in a few weeks, he’s not going to have time to assemble the kind of labor-intensive bus caravan effort necessary to show well in Ames. A decisive win over Bachmann and Cain in the Straw Poll–a real possibility since Bachmann is 18 Iowa visits behind Pawlenty in her native state, while Cain has shown signs of organizational weakness–could help Pawlenty begin consolidating social conservative support to win the Caucuses, and go a long way towards his ultimate goal of becoming the “true conservative” alternative to Mitt Romney.
At that point, all sorts of horizons could open up for the Minnesotan. While he’s shown very little strength in New Hampshire, Romney’s long-standing front-runner status in that state makes him vulnerable to the kind of less-than-expected, Pyrrhic victory that unraveled the campaign of Democrat Ed Muskie (another New Hampshire neighbor) back in 1972. Indeed, if Jon Huntsman somehow gets traction among independents in the Granite State, the state primary could begin to resemble its 2010 Republican Senate primary, when long-time frontrunner Kelly Ayotte nearly succumbed to a left-right squeeze from wealthy centrist Bill Binnie and social conservative Ovide Lamontagne.
And even if Romney wins New Hampshire decisively, T-Paw has some hidden strengths when the contest moves south. Pawlenty has slavishly pandered to the litmus-test demands of Palmetto State kingpin Jim DeMint and celebrity governor Nikki Haley, who shares a pollster with Pawlenty and is rumored to be in his camp. (Celebrity congressman Joe “You Lie!” Wilson, for his part, has already endorsed him). His campaign manager, wunderkind Nick Ayers, got his start in Georgia politics, which helps explain why Newt Gingrich’s national co-chair, former Governor Sonny Perdue, endorsed Pawlenty the moment Newt’s campaign imploded. And while Rick Perry could make a regional appeal in the South, that’s a long way off, and southern conservatives have long shown a willingness to back conservative Yankees against regional favorites (e.g., Bob Dole over Lamar Alexander in 1996).
In any event, this scenario helps to explain why Pawlenty’s doing what he’s doing: obsessively campaigning in Iowa and not worrying much about his national standing. Even his infamous wimp out on “ObamneyCare” makes sense given Iowans’ well-known antipathy for intraparty negative campaigning, and the more obvious fact that Romney is not his target in that state. The fact that Pawlenty has a clear strategy with a plausible path to victory does not, of course, mean it will work. In a year when Republicans seem to want an ideological crusader as much as a conventional candidate, T-Paw’s lack of charisma–which once led a Minnesota magazine to entitle a sympathetic profile of the governor, “The Cipher”–could be the political death of him. But if he fails, it will be because he couldn’t overcome who he is, not because he’s running a bad campaign for president.