Nocturnal Observations

Posted by BooMan | Jan 21, 2012 | 22 |

In some respects there’s nothing too surprising about the results of the Republican caucuses and primaries so far. A religious conservative won in Iowa, a Massachusetts moderate won in New Hampshire, and a Georgian demagogue carried his neighboring state of South Carolina. That’s basically what we all would have expected twenty years ago. Candidates used to have a lot more regional appeal, and perhaps the pundits are discounting how persistent that trend really is. I think Romney got too much credit for winning New Hampshire, and it’s completely possible that Gingrich is going to get too much credit for winning South Carolina. Maybe we need a more neutral site, and Florida also borders Georgia and has some natural advantages for Gingrich.

Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan are coming up after Florida, and they all present favorable terrain for Romney. Arizona and Nevada have significant Mormon populations, and Michigan is where Romney grew up and where his father served as governor. So, while I think Romney’s candidacy is on the rocks, I can see a path for him to bounce back.

What’s different about this cycle is that Gingrich would have been wiped out without his Super PAC money. Romney could have wrapped this election up in much the same way that Al Gore used Iowa and New Hampshire to crush a formidable challenge from Bill Bradley. But Gingrich is still standing. Even Rick Santorum is still standing. They would have been finished in any other cycle. As for Ron Paul, he’s more of a grassroots candidate, but his campaign probably wouldn’t be possible without the internet as an organizational and fundraising aid.

People assume that Romney will prevail because he has advantages in every traditional metric. Ordinarily, that would be enough, especially against opponents as deeply flawed as Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul. But it may not be enough for two reasons. First, rich assholes who are not under the control of the GOP power apparatus are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Romney’s opponents. Second, Mitt Romney is a terrible politician.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

22 Comments

seabe on January 21, 2012 at 11:17 pm

Word on street from GOP operatives is that Florida doesn’t require much of a ground game. Sounds like Newt could nab it from Romney.
- BooMan on January 21, 2012 at 11:20 pm
  
  I’ll be surprised if Romney wins Florida. The question is if he can win Nevada and then maybe the Maine caucuses to set himself up to hold the line in Michigan and Arizona.
  - Phil Perspective on January 22, 2012 at 12:44 am
    
    Truth be told, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mittens lost Michigan. He basically told the state to go f–k itself, remember. We’ll see if Newt is at least smart enough to exploit that.
    - Brendan Skwire on January 22, 2012 at 9:36 am
      
      Let Detroit Go Bankrupt:
      
      IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
      
      Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
      
      I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.
      
      First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.
      
      That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
      
      Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.
      
      The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”
      
      You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.
      
      The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.
      
      Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.
      
      Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.
      
      It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.
      
      But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.
      
      The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.
      
      In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.
      
      Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was a candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination.
- IL JimP on January 22, 2012 at 12:17 pm
  
  the only issue with that is haven’t they been voting in FL for awhile now and Romney could have been banking a lot of votes
pillsy on January 21, 2012 at 11:44 pm

I’m having trouble seeing how Mitt could lose either Nevada or Maine, I think we’re in for a long haul.
priscianus jr on January 22, 2012 at 12:51 am

The funny thing about Gingrich getting too much credit for winning South Carolina is that, IIRC, before Iowa and NH, the idea that Gingrich would win in SC was pretty much the received wisdom. The real unfounded hypothesis was that the results in those two completely different states would change anything for South Carolina. If anything, the barely credible narrative of Romney’s unstoppability on the heels of the first two primaries probably helped INCREASE Gingrich’s margin of victory in SC.
hz on January 22, 2012 at 4:01 am

What’s different about this cycle is that Gingrich would have been wiped out without his Super PAC money.

Yes, but Newt also had a lead in Iowa before Mitt’s superPAC money wiped him out there. It’s hard to say if Newt wouldn’t have imploded on his own anyway, but it’s also just possible that he might have won IA had it not been for all the oppo money.
- joe from Lowell on January 22, 2012 at 9:43 am
  
  Without SuperPACs, Romney would have wiped out Gingrich in Iowa with his campaign’s money.
  
  SuperPACs allow Romney to put some distance between himself and negative attack ads, which is significant.
  
  But without SuperPACs, Gingrich is broke and can’t run a credible campaign. The SuperPAC is lot more important to him.
bento on January 22, 2012 at 4:58 am

which I don’t think the pundits have caught on to yet, because they are blinded by their own view of the issue, is that he endorses Ron Paul’s position on the Fed and return to the gold standard (he praised and endorsed Paul’s advocacy of “sound money”, which means the gold standard). The ecomonic powers that be do not what the Fed challenged, so he just made some more really powerful enemies. This is a radical position for a possible nominee (which Paul is not) to take. He noticed that attacks on the Fed were Paul’s biggest applause line. And I take it we all now realize Gingrich is a possible nominee.

Santorum is angling to be Gingrich’s Veep. You notice how warmly they praised each other. Right now, of course, Santorum is hurting Gingrich. He probably still has hope of being top banana. And Gingrich probably hasn’t offered him Veep yet.
- hz on January 22, 2012 at 5:13 am
  
  Santorum all but called Newt a coward in the last debate for not taking action on the congressional check-kiting issue in the 90s. I don’t think Newt’s gonna forgive and forget that easily.
  - bento on January 22, 2012 at 3:36 pm
    
    Newt’s a bstid too, more of one actually. He understands that sort of thing. His hatred for Romney is because Romney actually cost him. Blows that don’t wound he will forget about. This is a man who makes enemies everywhere, he can’t hold every grudge.
- baudelairien on January 22, 2012 at 2:15 pm
  
  I would be surprised if influential people interpreted Newt’s nod in the direction of the gold standard as anything but a calculated pander. In a contest where polling 30-40% is enough to win, Paul’s fraction of the electorate is an appealing target. And think about the timing: Paul is skipping Florida.
  - bento on January 22, 2012 at 3:33 pm
    
    We could be headed to a brokered convention, in which case Paul will probably try to get this into the platform. If Gingrich has committed to it, he cannot overtly oppose at the convention. If he (God forbid) became President, there wouldn’t be much Gingrich could do without Congress anyway. Even board appointments move very slowly because of long terms, and the regional Feds represent banking interests. But the rhetoric alone could upset jittery investors, and putting it in the platform even more so.
    
    Opposition to the Fed is now respectable on the right. This can have longterm consequences. It is becoming respectable on the left and should be. Paul’s solution is wrong, but the independence of the Fed is just leaving it free, here as in Europe, to pursue banking industry interests at the expense of the public interest.
MassCommons on January 22, 2012 at 8:02 am

Good post, Booman. Between Sheldon Adelson and Steven Colbert, it’s slowly becoming clearer what a potential game-changer the Citizens United decision is.

One small dissent: I think Ron Paul’s campaign would have been roughly as viable in a pre-internet world as it is today. The reason I think that is I saw what the Rev. Jesse Jackson was able to do in the Democratic primaries of the 1980s. An experienced candidate who has a key faction of the party’s base loyal to him/her can go a long way.
- Davis X Machina on January 22, 2012 at 9:50 am
  
  In 1992, Jerry Brown’s 1-800 phone contribution innovation — on his podium, on his bus, etc — kept him snapping at the front-runner’s heels deep into the spring.
  - joe from Lowell on January 22, 2012 at 10:11 am
    
    Props for this comment. Excellent political memory.
    
    I wonder, have any of the internet-politics pioneers, especially the internet-fundraising pioneers, cited Brown’s campaign as an inspiration?
    
    You always hear about Richard Viguerie’s direct mail breakthrough.
    - Davis X Machina on January 22, 2012 at 11:22 am
      
      I know some people (Northern New England Democratic circles are quite small — ME, VT, NH total about what Brooklyn does) from Dean’s early campaign, before the national bigfeet came on board, who were close students and in some cases veterans of Brown’s ’92 campaign. Brown did well in the ME caucuses that year, and won in VT.
joe from Lowell on January 22, 2012 at 9:44 am

Without the internet, there would still be a whole lot of black people, and they would still be easy to reach and organize through churches and civic/political groups.

Without the internet, there are a lot fewer libertarians, and they’re sitting alone in their Unibomber cabins.
TarheelDem on January 22, 2012 at 9:45 am

I would be curious as to what percentage of Republican voters turned out in South Carolina. The totals looked to me like a relatively light turnout for GOP.

As for Newt’s appeal to racism, we now know that in my home county Anderson (pop. 187,126), there are still 11,924 Newt-minded racists. And that that was 40% of Republican votes yesterday. Santorum got 4500, Bachmann 9. And Mitt 598.

And in my native county Marlboro (pop. 28,933), there are 627 Newt-minded racists. That was 47% of the Republican vote. Santorum got 245 votes. Romney 308. Bachmann 9.

For comparison Cain(Colbert?) got 178 votes in Anderson and 10 votes in Marlboro. SuperPAC bounce?

Lesson. Operating only in percentages is deceiving.
- Oui on January 22, 2012 at 10:54 am
  
  .
  
  Republican primary South Carolina 2008 versus 2012.
  McCain 147,686 33% Thompson 69,654 16% Romney 68,142 15% Paul 16,154 4%
  
  In map results per county.
  
  "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
  - TarheelDem on January 22, 2012 at 11:37 pm
    
    Looks like approx 500,000 GOP primary votes out of a population of 4 million in both 2008 and 2012.
    
    In 2008, it went 54%-45% for McCain. Obama got 862,000 votes; McCain 1,034,000.

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