The Third way has a provocative memo addressed to “interested parties” making a poll-driven case that the tea party has become like kryptonite to the GOP’s superman pretensions. The memo opens with a Karl Rove quote that puts things in perspective: “The GOP is better off if it forgoes any attempt to merge with the Tea Party movement…[it] will hurt Republicans if the party is formally associated with Tea Party groups.” The memo continues:

A September Gallup poll gave the Republican Party a 43-53% favorability rating, or minus ten percent. Not terrific, but not awful. But an August AP poll gave the Tea Party a minus18% rating, and a New York Times poll of the same month pegged Tea Party favorability slightly worse at 20-40%. And in a recent Third Way survey of swing voters, we found the Tea Party to be strikingly unpopular with this key demographic…We agree with Karl Rove and argue that the most effective Democratic message against Republicans is to tie the GOP to the Tea Party.

The memo uses a continuum analysis to explain the Lincoln Park Strategies/Third Way survey to show how swing voters relate to the two parties, and the numbers indicate they are closer to Republicans. However, the survey also indicated that the same poll, swing voters by 56% to19% said that the Tea Party “is going too far in jeopardizing important safety net programs.” Further,

In the space of four months, the Tea Party’s popularity dropped 17 points, plunging from a net minus 3 points to a net minus 20 points, according to the New York Times. In April 2011, a poll by the outlet placed Tea Party favorability at 26%. By August, the same poll had Tea Party favorability down to 20%, with its unfavorables up to 40%.
The Associated Press found the same trend in their polling: Tea Party favorability
declined from 33% in June 2010 to 28% in August 2011; unfavorability spiked from
30% in June 2010 to 46% in August 2011. One-third of voters had “very unfavorable”
views of the Tea Party in the August AP poll.

Noting that “the Republicans are now taking direction in almost every meaningful way from the Tea Party, the memo explains:

The public is beginning to catch on to this connection, and there is a growing concern that Republicans and the Tea Party are becoming one and the same. In February 2010, only 14% of voters felt that the Tea Party had too much influence on the Republican Party.
By August, 43% of voters felt that the Tea Party had too much influence. This trend is helpful, but it is not sufficient. The full magnitude of Tea Party control over the GOP has not yet penetrated voter consciousness. Democrats must ensure that the public knows that Speaker Boehner, candidate Romney and others embrace these positions in obeisance to the Tea Party.

Then the memo makes a bold recommendation:

Voters see the Tea Party as something to fear. That should signal to Democrats that Republicans should not be characterized as “Wall Street Republicans,” “Corporatist Republicans,” “Extremist Republicans,” or “in-the-pocket of millionaires and billionaires Republicans.” They are “Tea Party Republicans.”
Democrats must show that the Tea Party and the Republican Party are joined at the hip and that Republicans are both in league with the Tea Party and beholden to them. Democrats must use every opportunity to define radical Republican ideas and the legion of Republican candidate flip-flops as the consequences of strict adherence to Tea Party dogma.

The memo concludes, “Next November, as voters head into the voting booth, the question that must go through their minds is this: Do I really want to put the Tea Party in charge of everything–Congress and the White House? If that is the question they ask, it could be a long night for Republicans.”

On the roller-coaster ride to next year’s elections, Carl Hulse’s “House Democrats Bullish on 2012 Prospects” at the New York Times Caucus should lift a few spirits. According to Hulse, Dems have done better than expected in terms of redistricting, retiring the Party’s debt and how Dems are viewed in comparison to the opposition — adding up to a “real shot’ at winning the 25 seats needed to retake the House. Says Steve Israel, head of the DCCC:

“I cannot guarantee anybody that we are going to win 25 or more seats at this point,” Mr. Israel said in an interview with New York Times reporters and editors. “I will sign an affidavit that it is going to be razor close – razor close. And the razor is going to be sharpened or dulled based on the resources, the recruits and the message we have. The House is absolutely, clearly, unequivocally in play, which is a quantum leap from where we were a year ago.”
Mr. Israel and other Democrats say they have benefitted less from anything Democrats have done and more from Republican stewardship of the House in the ongoing conflict with the Democratic Senate and President Obama. He believes that the fight that almost led to a government shutdown in the spring, the extended debt limit standoff and now the payroll tax dispute have produced buyer’s remorse among independent voters and caused Republican poll numbers to plummet.

Further, according to Hulse,

Like the Democrats in 2010 after knocking off so many Republicans in the previous election, Mr. Israel said, Republicans are too deep in Democratic territory and are going to give back many of those seats in a presidential year, when the electorate is much different from the midterm voters who handed Republicans the majority.
He counts nearly 20 districts held by Republicans that were won by John Kerry in the 2004 elections and slightly more than 40 that were won by President Obama in 2008. Mr. Israel said he doesn’t expect to take all of those back. But even winning a substantial number of them would put Democrats within reach of the majority given the likelihood that some current Democratic incumbents will fall.

The clincher for Dems, writes Hulse, may be the Republicans’ support of Rep. Paul Ryan’s highly unpopular plans to “reform” Medicare. The “buyer’s remorse” Republicans rode to victory in 2010 now defines their biggest problem — apart from the likelihood of a “tough sell” presidential nominee.

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has an interesting post on the politics of the payroll tax cut up at the Center for American Progress web pages. In “Earth to Conservatives: Don’t Raise Taxes on the Poor and Middle Class,” Teixeira notes the “blase attitude” of conservatives toward the approaching tax hike for workers, absent an extension of the payroll tax cut in stark contrast with conservatives’ “fanatic concern that taxes for the rich must never, ever go up in any circumstances.” Teixeira adds:

The public is unlikely to be pleased by conservatives’ lack of interest in their economic welfare. A just-released United Technologies/National Journal poll finds that 58 percent of the public thinks Congress should act now to extend the payroll tax cut, compared to just 32 percent who think Congress should not.
But the public does believe taxes should be raised on the rich. The latest example of this sentiment comes from a CNN/ORC poll on the super committee’s plans for reducing the deficit. The survey found by 2-to-1 (67-32) that the public approved of increases in taxes on “businesses and higher-income Americans” to help bring down the deficit.

As Teixeira concludes: “…Conservatives cannot–or just don’t want to–understand the public’s crystal-clear views in this area…Hard-pressed voters do not think their taxes should be raised but do think the affluent can afford to lend their country a helping hand.”

The latest Democracy Corps survey of the Republican House battleground shows the incumbents out of touch with their districts, a climate less favorable to Republicans, weakening support and vulnerability to attack. With numbers virtually identical to those of Democratic incumbents leading into the 2010 disaster, the House is surely in play in 2012.[1] The president is now dead even in these districts, while the image of everything Republican has fallen, above all, ‘the Republican Congress.’ These ‘no-tax’ Republicans are out of touch with their districts, polling below 50 percent, and losing ground, particularly with independents where Democrats trail by only 6 points.
This is a unique survey conducted in the battleground of the most competitive House seats for 2012: 48 of the 60 were carried by Obama in 2008. These are swing districts and are where control of Congress will likely be decided in 2012.
Key Findings:
These Republicans are weakening. They have lost half of their vote margin since September, falling to 47 percent, well below their vote in 2010 election. Just 37 percent believe they deserve re-election and their approval hovers around 40 percent. Their lead evaporates after hearing balanced attacks, falling to 44 percent.
These incumbents are crashing with independents. Since September, incumbents have lost 13 points from their margin here, and Democrats trail among independents by only 6 points.
These incumbents are weakened by a Republican Party and Republican Congress that are intensely unpopular. Only 31 percent now give the Republican Party a warm rating; more than half (52 percent) give the Republican Congress a cool rating – leading the brand crash for the party. And very important, President Obama is now running even with both potential challengers – a marked improvement since September. As he improves, the Democratic challengers in these districts have an opportunity to gain among the new progressive base that elected Obama in 2008.
These incumbents are profoundly out of touch with voters’ budget priorities, particularly on taxes and entitlements.
A press briefing will be held on Monday, December 12th at 11am EST. Join Stanley Greenberg, co-founder, along with James Carville, of Democracy Corps and CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Page Gardner, Founder and President of the Voter Participation Center and Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund to discuss the results of this poll. Please call 800.672.3665 and visit our WebEx presentation. Due to anticipated high call volume, please call in 10-15 minutes before the start time to ensure you are placed on the call promptly.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’ TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira takes a look at the monthly Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, and finds that, “despite Americans’ contradictory feelings about the Affordable Care Act, conservative attempts to repeal it are likely to be met with resistance from the public.” Teixeira adds:

On the one hand, more Americans are not in favor (44 percent) than in favor (37 percent) of the new law. But on the other, by majorities ranging from 57 percent to 84 percent, they are approve of almost all provisions included in the law. The sole exception is the individual mandate to purchase insurance, where just 35 percent are in favor.

As far as the GOP campaign to repeal the legislation, Teixeira explains:

….50 percent of respondents in the same poll say they would like Congress to either expand the Affordable Care Act or keep it as-is rather than repeal or replace it with a Republican-sponsored alternative (39 percent). It is also worth noting that since February, the number wanting to keep or expand the law has never dropped below 50 percent, while the number wanting to repeal or replace has never exceeded 39 percent.

The Supreme Court will have its say about the ACA, but the majority’s preference is clear.

This item, written by Ed Kilgore, is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In the lead up to voting in the presidential nominating contest, the only thing that reliably rivals the scrutiny received by Iowa is the disparagement expressed against the tyranny of the Great Corn Idol. With its unrepresentative electorate, its peculiar demands on candidates, and its odd procedures for making its preferences manifest, the Iowa caucuses have been singled out by many as an ill-conceived ritual whose time is long past. Back in June, Daily Beast columnist Peter Beinart celebrated Mitt Romney’s apparent decision (apparently now reversed) to shirk the state, arguing “the Iowa caucuses bear only a faint resemblance to democracy.”
And beyond Romney’s initial strategy of making only minimal effort in the state, there have been other cheerful signs for Iowa-haters that the first-in-the-nation caucus was losing its storied influence. The candidates most married to a slavish Iowa-first approach–Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum–have not fared well, even in Iowa itself, with local polls instead closely mirroring the rapid attention swings in the national media. The quadrennial ritual of candidates violating their principles to embrace ethanol subsidies has all but expired. And the wacky band of Christian Right activists who draw their oxygen from an outsized role in the caucuses is now in danger of irrelevance due to an inability to agree on a presidential vehicle.
But ironically, the very volatility of the GOP race that has threatened Iowa’s power could revive it in a big way once the caucuses actually happen. In an election cycle where Republican voters everywhere seem to shift their shallow allegiances every time a candidate shines or stumbles in any of an endless parade of debates, the massive hype and media attention that will shower the eventual Iowa winner could prove decisive in the other early states.
Lost in the confusion of wildly oscillating polling numbers among Republicans during 2011 has been the fact that, with the arguable exception of New Hampshire, all the states have been oscillating in synch. When Michelle Bachmann narrowly won the arcane Iowa GOP Straw Poll in August (helped by a good debate performance in New Hampshire), she got a strong bounce everywhere and moved into double-digits nationally. Rick Perry’s big surge after entering the race happened everywhere, as have the Cain and Gingrich surges since then. And while southern states have shown something of a bias for the more conservative candidates, a comparison of polling trends for all the candidates in Iowa and South Carolina (two states with a lot of available polls) shows extraordinary similarity over time.
Perhaps the apparent lack of significant regional variations signifies the conquest of the GOP everywhere by the conservative movement. But the alternative explanation is that Republican voters this year are so irresolute about their presidential field–aside from the negative judgments they’ve made about Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, and, most recently, Herman Cain–that the last impression they take into the voting booth could be decisive. If that’s the case, the prospect of a candidate getting on a roll after Iowa is especially strong.
Moreover, the idea that Iowa will provide one lucky candidate with a big boost is all the more probable now that nearly all of them are staking just about everything on a good performance in the caucuses. Bachmann and Santorum have been in that position all along, focusing almost entirely on Iowa. Perry will inevitably be depicted as the successor to Texas’ long line of lavishly funded but feckless presidential candidates (John Connolly, Lloyd Bentsen, and Phil Gramm) if he can’t do well in the caucuses. And if Romney is indeed “all in” for Iowa, a loss could have the very 2008-style deflationary impact his campaign has long feared. Indeed, the only outcome that might vindicate the hopes of Iowa-haters would be a Ron Paul win. But now that Paul has done the other candidates the supreme favor of throwing the first boulder at Newt Gingrich, he is in serious danger of suffering from Iowans’ famous antipathy to negative campaigning.
Of course, thanks to changes in the nominating calendar, there will be a significant lull in contests after Florida votes on January 31, so a candidacy like Romney’s with strong financial and organizational advantages could well survive early setbacks in Iowa and elsewhere and still go on to ultimate victory, particularly since all his rivals have weaknesses in their backgrounds or a tendency to commit gaffes that could produce yet another self-destruction in a cycle littered with them. But make no mistake: When Iowans trudge through the frigid night to their caucus sites on January 3, the odds are high their decision will have the kind of powerful impact on the race that Peter Beinart fears.

Rave reviews of President Obama’s Osawatomie speech are still rolling in. Writing at The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky had this to say:

…This was Obama’s best speech in a very, very long time, and it showed that he and his political people have finally figured out how to express the new, quasi-populist mood in this country in a way that sounds utterly majoritarian and unthreatening–and that backs the GOP into the corner of defending things that most Americans find indefensible. The tide is turning, and while it wasn’t the president who turned it, at least it’s clear that he understands the moment and seizing it.

Tomasky was impressed with the President’s grasp of the reality of class conflict in this political moment — and the way the middle class majority perceives it going into 2012:

…I counted 25 mentions of “middle class” in the speech. Finally–maybe, if he keeps it up–the Democrats have a broad and coherent response to trickle-down economics: middle-class economics. It’s ridiculously simple. It’s like a melody in a new pop song that you hear, and it’s so catchy and instantly memorable that you can’t believe that no one has written it until now….A strong majority of Americans is fed up with stagnation, with inequality, with the unfairness of the economic system.

Tomasky credits the President with a breakthrough realization, one that should serve him well in the campaign ahead:

…what was important here was the big picture. This is the first speech of Obama’s career, at least his career as a presidential candidate or president, where I felt he achieved a comfortable marriage of his own civic-republican beliefs about national community and principles of political economy that are plainly but not off-puttingly progressive. That he invoked the ghost of a Republican president to do it is so much the better. TR wouldn’t want much to do with Paul Ryan, and most Americans don’t either.

The President is on the right track, Tomasky feels. And if he can keep it rolling, the tide will turn in Democrats’ favor. “…If, 11 months from now, people are talking with their neighbors about how, for all his faults, Obama is the guy who’s on the side of the middle class and who has made it patriotic to say so, then the Republican candidate will be in a heap of trouble.”

WaPo columnist Greg Sargent takes a look at President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie Kansas, and finds it to be a critical point of departure, “a moral and philosophical framework within which literally all of the political and policy battles of the next year will unfold, including the biggest one of all: The presidential campaign itself.” Citing Obama’s emphasis on “inequality itself as a moral scourge and as a threat to the country’s future,” Sargent continues:

Obama’s speech in Kansas, which just concluded, was the most direct condemnation of wealth and income inequality, and the most expansive moral defense of the need for government activism to combat it, that Obama has delivered in his career…
The clash of visions Obama tried to set the stage for today — a philosophical and moral argument over government’s proper role in regulating the economy and restoring our future — is seen by Dems as more favorable to them than the GOP’s preferred frame for Campaign 2012, i.e., a referendum on the current state of the economy and on Obama’s efforts to fix it. Hence his constant references to the morality of “fairness.”
“We simply cannot return to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country,” Obama said, in what will probably be the most enduring line of the speech. A number of people on Twitter immediately suggested a new shorthand: “YoYo Economics.”
That line is key in another way. Dems believe inequality will be central in 2012 because they think there’s been a fundamental shift in how Americans view the economy, one rooted in the plight of the middle class and in the trauma created by the financial crisis.

A New York Times editorial affirms Sargent’s evaluation of the President’s speech:

The speech felt an awfully long time in coming, but it was the most potent blow the president has struck against the economic theory at the core of every Republican presidential candidacy and dear to the party’s leaders in Congress. The notion that the market will take care of all problems if taxes are kept low and regulations are minimized may look great on a bumper sticker, but, he said: “It doesn’t work. It has never worked.” Not before the Great Depression, not in the ’80s, and not in the last decade.
The president repeated his calls for the rich to pay higher taxes, for financial institutions to be more closely regulated and for education to become a national mission. What set this speech apart was the newly forceful explanation of why those policies are necessary. Incomes of the top 1 percent, he noted, have more than doubled in the last decade while the average income has fallen by 6 percent.
Mr. Obama was late to Roosevelt’s level of passion and action on behalf of the middle class and the poor, having missed several opportunities to make the tax burden more fair and demand real action on the housing crisis from the big banks that he excoriated so effectively in his speech.
But he has fought energetically for a realistic plan to put Americans back to work and has been stymied at every step by Republicans. That seems to have burned away his old urge to conciliate and compromise, and he is now fully engaged against the philosophy of his opponents.
Tuesday’s speech, in fact, seemed expressly designed to counter Mitt Romney’s argument that business, unfettered, will easily restore American jobs and prosperity. Teddy Roosevelt knew better 101 years ago, and it was gratifying to hear his fire reflected by President Obama.

Perhaps it’s not just Teddy Roosevelt the white house is channeling. The growing popularity of Elizabeth Warren in the MA Senate race, along with the Occupy demonstrations serve as potent indicators that a focused populist message may well be the Democrats’ best hope for exciting the base, winning swing voters and holding the white house and Senate in 2012.
From here on in, Dems will have no quarter for economic injustice in the 2012 campaign. As Sargent concludes, “…We’ll be hearing these themes countless times between now and election day. And those who had hoped that Obama and Dems would make an unapologetically populist and moral case against inequality and economic injustice central to Campaign 2012 should be pretty pleased with what they heard today.”

If you have any friends or acquaintances you would like to educate about the importance of labor unions in creating a decent society, refer them to Robert Kuttner’s excellent article, “A More Perfect Union” at The American Prospect. Subtitled “New York’s Local 6 shows how organized labor can survive and thrive in the service economy,’ Kuttner’s piece spotlights an important local union of New York City’s hotel and restaurant workers and shows how it serves both members and political progress. Some excerpts:

…The Local 6 story suggests that in the enduring struggle of ordinary workers for fair treatment and a fair share of the national product, unions are not only more necessary than ever but still possible…At Local 6, three generations of union leaders have continued to build on the power bequeathed to them by their predecessors, not for their own personal gain but for their membership. Union leaders do not double dip by collecting extra pay as pension- or health-fund trustees; union officers and delegates are democratically elected, and the delegates work as volunteers for no fees. Local 6 also has been corruption-free…The union keeps finding new ways to mobilize the membership, and success builds on success. The union’s members have friends and relatives working in nonunion establishments and know the value of what they’ve got.

It’s a stark contrast from the workplace environment of nonunion shops in the industry.

Absent a union, the boss can fire for any reason or no reason at all. Management can be as arbitrary as it likes in assigning shifts, defining jobs, deciding whom to lay off and whom to call back. No formal process is required, and no explanation need be given. In a city with a large immigrant population at a time of high unemployment, there is a seemingly endless supply of workers willing to do casual jobs at low wages and fearful of being fired. All of which raises the $25-an-hour question. At a time when the strength of unions is dwindling, how does Local 6 do it?

Kuttner sketches the grievance process.

…Effective unions have long used shop stewards–regular workers who are available to listen to grievances and press complaints with managers. Local 6 takes the concept to a new level of sophistication and engagement. In New York’s union hotels, shop stewards are called delegates. They and assistant delegates are elected directly by the membership at each hotel. Every job category has one or several delegates depending on the hotel’s size.
…If a delegate cannot settle a dispute, it goes to the union business agent, a paid staffer who is responsible for several hotels. If there are still differences, the contract provides for binding arbitration. The union also has a tradition that it reserves for special occasions when it needs to make a point–the lobby meeting.
…Because of the union’s institutional power, however, the choreography of resolving disputes is mostly ritualized and peaceful. The contract spells out rights and responsibilities in detail, and the ultimate recourse to binding arbitration gives management an incentive to settle minor issues before they become major ones….The heavily immigrant union–67 languages are spoken among the membership–runs continuing–education programs that range from English as a second language to culinary school.

Unions deliver in terms of politics, notes Kuttner, locally, as well as nationally:

…One of the union’s newer innovations is the Hotel Employees Action Teams, or HEAT. Through HEAT, the union’s members become more involved in local politics, working to elect supportive public officials. At a time when political campaigning is often reduced to writing checks, HEAT is one of the remaining sources of on-the-ground campaigners knocking on their neighbors’ doors. “They punch above their weight,” says Dan Cantor, executive director of New York’s Working Families Party. “Every mayoral candidate is seeking their support.”
…The union’s political alliances pay dividends. A union with well placed friends sends a signal to developers that it’s better to work with the union than against it. A developer seeking to open a new hotel may not want to bargain with the union, but the project must run a gauntlet of zoning approvals, permits, community-planning meetings–all of which can make the developer’s life easy or miserable. The REIT that holds the real estate may be partly owned by another union’s pension fund, which can also encourage the owner to agree to card check.

Kuttner’s piece clarifies, without saying it, why the public workers of Wisconsin and Ohio have fought so hard to protect their collective bargaining rights. As Kuttner explains, “In the end, this story is all about power, and power used responsibly.”

The following article by Democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo

Last week, after yet another episode of bizarre behavior on the Republican campaign trial, one of my partners — political consultant John Hennelly — came into my office and asked, “Next, will all eight of these guys ride into the arena piled into a VW Beetle and pile out with big red noses?”
Over the many decades I have observed or participated in presidential primary contests, I don’t think we have ever been treated to such a clown show.
Recall that the show began with a boomlet for Donald Trump who pretended to run for president to promote his TV show. On December 27th the pre-Iowa debate circus will reach its apogee when Trump chairs the last Republican debate of the year.
And the show would not have been the same without former Godfather Pizza czar Herman Cain. Though Cain has now “suspended” his campaign, who can forget the painful video of his attempts to remember which war was the one in Libya, or his absurd “999” tax plan, or the graphic descriptions from the charges of sexual harassment against him? And who didn’t wonder at his seeming surprise when a recent thirteen-year-long affair somehow managed to find its way into the news when he decided to subject himself to the intense scrutiny of a candidate for President of the United States?
The New York Times reported that the announcement that his campaign had been “suspended” had a “circus-like” atmosphere — “complete with numerous postponements, barbecue, a blues band and supporters in colonial-era dress.”
Of course, when the race began most observers thought that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann might take the prize for least-ready-to-lead the free world. After all, she was prone to off-the-wall statements, offered radical right-wing solutions, and she and her husband owned a business that specialized in “fixing” gay people. But the Tea Party faithful’s short infatuation with Bachmann came to a screeching halt the moment Rick Perry entered the race.
Perry launched his campaign at a “prayer rally,” but it turned out he was better at being the “yell leader” at Texas A&M as an undergraduate than in explaining his positions in debates. His minutes-long attempt to remember the third Federal agency he would eliminate if elected president made everybody watching feel almost as uncomfortable as he appears to be exploring virtually any subject with more depth than a sound-bite. And his seemingly inebriated, giggling New Hampshire speech that ended in a near-swooning hug of a bottle of maple syrup was just downright weird.
Last week we were all reminded once again why Rick Perry has some distance to go convincing voters he is, shall we say, “in command of the facts” — when he indicated that he thought that the voting age in the United States was 21 and he didn’t know the date of the General Election to which he is supposedly devoting his life.
It’s no wonder that on Sunday, Congressman Barney Frank said that in his casting of the Republican campaign as the “Wizard of Oz,” Rick Perry would be the Scarecrow — the one who desperately wanted a brain.
That’s not Ron Paul’s problem. Paul has to be regarded as a serious, knowledgeable legislator. His major limitation is that his well-articulated views are somewhere on the other side of the former planet Pluto when it comes to the American mainstream. Paul not only wants to abolish Medicare, like most of the rest of the Republican field. He also thinks both Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional. He twice introduced legislation to abolish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that protects workers on the job. He opposes the minimum wage, the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve.
To his credit, Paul doesn’t try to sugarcoat or nuance these proposals. He overtly and articulately champions pure social Darwinism. Problem is that most Americans — including most Republicans — don’t. It sounds fine to many Republican primary voters for a candidate to talk about unfettered individual freedom — but when that translates into eliminating their Social Security check it’s a different matter.
Then there is Rick Santorum, defeated Pennsylvania senator, whose answer to just about any world problem is to ban abortion. So far, at least, Rick hasn’t had a turn at the front of the GOP pack — but it’s never too late.
And poor Jon Huntsman — the Rodney Dangerfield of the show, who just can’t get no respect. Seemingly the most qualified, eloquent, knowledgeable and presentable candidate, Huntsman forgot one thing: there is no way for a moderate to be elected dog catcher by a Republican primary electorate that has cascaded to the right — far, far from the American mainstream.
Huntsman is simply the skunk at the Tea Party.
That leaves us with the two apparent “contenders.” Newt Gingrich — the former House Speaker with a seemingly endless supply of far out “big ideas” — and robot-Romney — whose campaign was, up until recently, based mainly on the “inevitability” of his nomination.
From the beginning of the Republican nominating show the story line has been dominated by one central fact — notwithstanding his reputed “inevitability” — three-fourths of the Republican primary electorate simply doesn’t like Mitt Romney. They don’t like him — and perhaps more important — they don’t trust him.
Romney suffers from two overriding problems.
First, he has no core values beyond his own personal ambition. And that is the dictionary definition of what most Americans think of as a “typical politician.”
If he were performing in a side-show at a carnival, the barker might yell out:
“Step right up, see the amazing Mitt Romney — he looks like one man, but he’s really two candidates in one! Vote for Mitt and you get a pro-choice president and an anti-abortion president. You get a pro-health care reform president and an anti-health care reform president. You get a man who four years ago said he would ‘fight for every job in the auto industry,’ and two years later said that Detroit should be allowed to go bankrupt. Watch Mitt Romney perform amazing acts of political contortion to please any audience! Watch the man change colors to blend into his political environment the way a lizard changes color to make himself look like a leaf!”
Turns out that voters don’t think they get added value from a candidate that is actually “two candidates in one.” Republican voters, Independent voters, Democratic voters — all have one thing in common. They all want candidates with core values. That is an independent variable in politics. And that is what Mitt Romney isn’t.
John Kerry has a decades-long history of demonstrating his core values, yet in 2004, Karl Rove managed to convince many swing voters that he did not. Think how much easier it will be for Democrats — and for that matter his Republican primary rivals — to convince voters that a guy like Mitt Romney has no core.
That’s why in his version of the “Wizard of Oz,” Barney Frank casts Romney as the Tin Man — the one without a heart.
Romney’s second big problem is that pretty much everyone thinks of him as the poster boy for the one percent. He’s the guy who fired your sister — the cold, calculating numbers guy who clinically evaluates what is best for his bottom line and bloodlessly sends you off a pink slip. No empathy, no human concern. Romney is the fellow at Bain Capital that dismantled companies — and sent some into bankruptcy — all to make him and his deal-making buddies a pile of money.
He’s the guy who posed at the center of his Bain Capital crew with money coming out of their pockets, mouths, sleeves and ears.
You might think that Republican primary voters would think that those qualifications made Romney a capitalist hero. Trouble is, only a very limited number of Republican primary voters actually are the one percent that is the party’s financial base. Many Tea Party voters have some very unfortunate positions on all sorts of subjects — but the polling shows they care about their jobs, their Social Security, their Medicare. As much as they dislike “big government”, they don’t like Wall Street deal makers, either.
The Romney campaign narrative portrays him as problem-solving, effective businessman. Average voters would always prefer to have a president that effectively deals with their problems all right — but they don’t focus entirely on effectiveness. They want to know “effective for whom”?
The threshold question of politics is whether a candidate is “on my side.”
Voters would much rather vote for a candidate who they believe is on their side but ineffective, than one who is very effective advocating against their interests.
In 1988, Mike Dukakis premised his entire campaign on his managerial skill and technocratic effectiveness. After the Democratic Convention he led George H. W. Bush by 17%. Then the Bush campaign savaged Dukakis with a series of advertisements that effectively argued that Dukakis was “not on their side” — that he didn’t “share their values.” Dukakis stuck to his “effectiveness” argument, refusing to take on Bush’s values — the question of who is “on your side.” Ultimately, Bush beat Dukakis nationwide by 7.7% and four to one in the electoral vote.
Romney’s two fundamental problems are complicated by a third. Mitt has a hard time making an emotional connection with the voters. Ask Al Gore if this could be a political problem. And for Romney, the emotional connection issue is even more critical than it was for Gore because those traits tend to amplify people’s views that he has no core values and is a poster boy for the uncaring one percent. Romney seems wooden, scripted — phony and aloof.
In last week’s rare one-on-one interview with Fox News, Romney was brittle. He seemed offended that the interviewer would actually press him on the flip-flops in his record. He appeared to have a sense of entitlement, of aloof superiority that chafes at being questioned.
Romney is a caricature of a guy who was raised in a wealthy, privileged button-down environment.
These are the reasons that, no matter what happens in the rest of the Republican field, Romney never gets beyond about 25% of the primary vote in a poll. And that’s why Newt Gingrich has supplanted Romney as the new “top banana” in the Republican road show.
Conservatives know Gingrich. He may have done some serious flip-flops of his own, but most Conservative voters start with the presumption that Gingrich has been fighting for one version or the other of right wing values his entire career — and they like that. They also like the idea that Gingrich has always been an unapologetic Conservative, come what may, whereas Romney is a political chameleon that changes his spots to please whatever electorate he plans to court. Gingrich may sometimes veer out of control, but he is authentic — and quite a contrast to Romney’s robot-like-scripted phoniness.
The 75% of Republican primary voters have been screen testing all of the remaining candidates for the role of “alternative to Romney” for months. Romney is hoping that they never find a clear, suitable alternative, and his quarter of the vote, coupled with his “inevitability” and the argument that he would have the best chance against Obama, will be enough to power him to the nomination.
But it increasingly looks like that strategy is in serious trouble.
Voters and political operatives have begun to realize that his lack of core values and position as “poster boy” for the one percent will not just hurt him in the primaries — they will be toxic in the General Election as well. In fact recent polls have begun to show that it is now Gingrich that Republican primary voters think will have the best chance against Obama.
And as for “inevitability”? In Iowa, Romney is now third in the latest polls behind Gingrich and Ron Paul. If Gingrich wins Iowa he will consolidate his position as the “anti-Romney,” do well in New Hampshire — rout Romney in South Carolina and likely win Florida. After that you have to bet the “Big-Mo” will be with Gingrich.
But who knows? The clowns in circuses surprise us all the time with pratfalls and other bizarre acts. Like any good circus, the battle for the Republican nomination may leave us in suspense for some time to come.