State of the Race

Posted by Robert Zimmer on 01.25.2012

Obama strong in SOTU; Romney weak against Gingrich

What an interesting contrast the State of the Union provided. On one hand, President Obama returned to the national spotlight – long focused on the roller-coaster GOP nomination circus – with a smart, centrist, and populist message. On the other hand, the Republican nomination process drives its candidates further and further to the right -- and makes them all less viable in the general election. Indeed, if the election were held today, Obama would defeat either Gingrich or Romney because crucial independent voters instinctively know Romney is a phony (indeed, almost everyone has figured this out), and the bipolar Gingrich's favorability ratings are seriously underwater (60% of Americans disapprove of him according to recent polls).

I have repeatedly written that presumptive front-runner Romney is a far weaker candidate than is generally acknowledged. Despite overwhelming superior resources –financial and organizational – Romney lost a close Iowa contest to Rick Santorum, who spent almost no money there. While Romney won his (second) home state of New Hampshire handily, he was then trounced in South Carolina by Gingrich, whose two stellar debate performances in that state erased Romney's 25-point lead in the polls within a week. The screams of panic you hear from the east are the sounds of the Republican establishment freaking out in Washington, D.C.

Gingrich is an astonishing debater who can both think on his feet and sense the mood of an audience with uncanny, killer acumen. He also appears completely at ease with himself and is unafraid to take tactical risks. The preternaturally awkward Romney's play-it-safe debate approach has been to aggressively dispense generic patriotic platitudes ("I believe in America") while refusing to directly answer most questions about his record.

Romney's relationship with facts is so casual and context-dependent that I have grown to assume whatever he is saying is false, or that he is hiding the ball in some fashion. He is so heavily coached and scripted by his armada of consultants that you can almost literally see in his eyes, like a hard drive scanning for data, a sophisticated algorithm searching for the correct set of talking points Romney is supposed to deliver in response to the question at hand. You can also see, when Romney finishes his responses, a glint of pride at having remembered to say what he's been coached to say, rather than at having offered a substantive response. Romney always caps his answers with a plastic smile or an inexplicable "thank you" to conclude his responses, the latter having little to do with gratitude and more to do with Romney wanting to announce to everyone just how thorough he thinks he is.

He is entirely tone deaf to the mood on stage or that of an audience, and when he departs from talking points – usually on the campaign trail where he can't help himself -- he nearly inevitably puts his foot in his mouth and says something smarmy or condescending that further reinforces his disconnect from the average person. From his insistence that "corporations are people" to his $10,000 wager with Rick Perry; his claim that his $374,000 in speaking fees last year is "not very much" money; his waffling as to whether he would follow in his father's footsteps ("Maybe!") and release a decade of tax returns; to his announced love of firing people; to his 13.9% tax rate on income of $21 million a year, the list of reasons Romney is a creep just keep piling up -- and we're not even through the fourth GOP primary state yet (Florida).

The tone-deafness was further evident by Romney's tactically incompetent choice to release his 2010 and 2011 tax returns the same day Obama delivered a SOTU speech highlighting income inequality. Instead of the SOTU media coverage burying news about Romney's absurdly high income ($42 million in the past two years) and absurdly low tax rate (13.9%), Romney's release of his tax returns made Obama's point for him. Romney fundamentally does not get it. He thinks people hate or are envious of his success, which he will "never apologize for," failing to realize that what people hate is not when others get rich -- what they hate is when people who make $42,000 a year pay a higher tax rate than those who make that much money in a single day. Financial success isn't unfair; tax rates which favor the very wealthy at the expense of everyone else are what's unfair.

Romney also has a telltale personality trait of certain (not all, mind you) Mormons, which is a barely concealed sense of moral superiority over the rest of us. Romney is genuinely convinced he is a saintly person, and also seems genuinely annoyed that we don't all just take this for granted and vote for him. The sense of entitlement – to salvation, to privilege, to money, to the GOP nomination itself – is both a palpable and foul stench. It is not that I think people are voting against Romney because he is a Mormon; it is because he is the condescending, self-absorbed do-gooder we loathe to hear bragging at church socials. And for those who would say that Romney's $4 million in charitable contributions to the Mormon church are ample proof of his good character, I would remind readers that the Mormon church spent over $20 million in 2008 in California to ensure gay people could not get married, and have backed similar anti-gay campaigns in other states. If this is charity, Mitt, spare us your tithes.

In short, Romney is a terrible, maladroit campaigner with a unique skill at turning people off. Gingrich, whatever his problems (and they are numerous) is just the opposite. I would never vote for Gingrich in a thousand years, but I have repeatedly been both charmed and impressed by his debate performances. And he seems to be getting better, while Romney simply seems to be getting worse. Romney may yet be able to buy the nomination, but he faces a serious challenge from Gingrich, who is both smarter than Romney and far more nimble. Like the Rebel Alliance in STAR WARS, Gingrich is outmatched on paper against Romney's Empire, but we all know how that turned out in the movies. The Force is strong in Gingrich currently – whether it is the dark side of the Force is another matter. If the dynamics of the race do not change, and barring another self-immolation of the type that has plagued Gingrich before, Romney will lose. (It is a shame Ron Paul's foreign policy is so naive and contrary to the GOP base's preference for warmongering -- he will never be their nominee, but his warnings about overseas military follies and reckless monetary policy have all been prescient.)

While Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum fall all over themselves in a stampede to the right, repudiating whatever bipartisan credentials they may have accrued (and all three have admirable records in this field, in fact), Obama has very shrewdly positioned himself as a sensible, rational centrist who disdains partisan gridlock. The attacks on Romney's notorious flip-flopping have not even started – he's been given a free pass on this, mostly, by his GOP rivals – yet Romney's weaknesses against Obama in the general election are already obvious. President Obama may be a lot of things, but he is no phony and voters have already made up their mind that Romney undoubtedly is. The authenticity gap with Obama will be sizable and noticeable -- and not just in debates -- if Romney is the nominee.

If Gingrich is the nominee, he will undoubtedly perform better in the debates against the president than would Romney. Indeed, we might actually have a stimulating and ongoing debate on substantive issues, something Romney will never provide. But Gingrich has a terrible weakness that plays into a key strength of Obama. Even people that disagree with the president are still immensely fond of him personally – the same cannot be said for the former Speaker. More importantly, there is Gingrich's tendency to personalize policy differences and hurl corrosive, ugly personal attacks at his opponents. This will work well for the 25% of the population, the GOP base, who hate the president, but for the rest of voters, particularly independents, Gingrich personally attacking the president will totally and completely backfire. Gingrich needs to govern his emotions and stick to being the Good Newt, the agreeable policy-wonk grandfather with grandiose visions and a knack for blue-collar common sense. Bad Newt, who slimes the president with dog-whistle attacks of being a "Saul Alinsky radical" and a "food stamp president", will hand the election to Obama and deliver down-ballot Congressional seats to Democrats. Newt should do what he must to keep his Dark Side out of the campaign. And look for moments in the debate where Obama gets angry, a likely outcome given the ridiculous, fact-challenged attacks he will face. Voters love it when the president gets passionate and dispenses with the annoying Professor Obama persona, which is his default mode. If either Gingrich or Romney provokes the president in this way in a debate, it will be to their detriment.

In sum, conclusions of the president's demise during the past few months are greatly exaggerated, as are conclusions that Romney is the inevitable nominee and that Gingrich is too self-destructive and under-resourced to win the nomination. Contrary to the 2008 Democratic primary, the longer the 2012 GOP primary goes on, the worse it will be for their general election choices for a simple reason: the more people find out about Romney and Gingrich, the less people like him. (In 2008, the more people learned about Obama and Hillary, the more they liked them.) If Romney emerges as the nominee, he will be extremely weak. If Gingrich wins, he faces the daunting task of changing the general public's overwhelmingly negative view of him.

In the meantime, all Obama has to do is sit back, pop some popcorn, and remember the old political maxim that you should never lift a finger to help your opponents destroy themselves when they are already succeeding admirably.

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