Prairie Weather

Romney apparently slipping

At the New York Times' Caucus blog, Michael Shear finds that, in spite of his probable win in Florida, Mitt Romney is facing trouble.  Independents, in particular, are walking away in droves.

Mr. Romney’s campaign, which had been carefully calibrated for months in 2011 to set up a general-election contest with President Obama, ran into a conservative buzz saw in the first month of 2012 that exposed a series of potential threats to Mr. Romney’s long-term success.

The monthlong feud with Newt Gingrich has identified clear vulnerabilities for Mr. Romney on issues like his wealth, his work for Bain Capital, a private equity firm, the taxes he pays and his positions on immigration, Medicare and health care.

It also has cost Mr. Romney — at least for now — the generally likable image that he has nurtured for years. In polls during the last several weeks, the number of people who view him favorably has plunged, especially among independent voters who will likely decide the general election later this year.

In a Washington Post/ABC News poll last week, 49 percent of the respondents nationwide held an unfavorable view of Mr. Romney, while only 31 percent had a favorable one. That is a reversal from last September, when more people held a favorable view of Mr. Romney than an unfavorable one.

Independents, in particular, now have a less favorable opinion of Mr. Romney, with favorable opinions dropping from a high in the mid-40s in late November to a low of 23 percent last week, according to the Post/ABC News poll. ...NYT

The battle with Newt Gingrich is helping to erode support for Romney.   If his win comes early, he may be able to pull his ratings up in time for the election.  If.  Maybe.

Still watching 1950's TV

40 million American still see an episode of I Love Lucy each year. ...Atlantic

Also unnerving to this voter:  how much Mitt Romney looks as though he thinks we're still living in the '50's. 

Most politicians tend to be ordinary-looking people who spend their time convincing voters they're office-quality material. Romney is rushing the other way: he's the politician from central casting who is stumbling through an audition for a role of regular human. ...Atlantic

Tea party shoved aside; the Obama factor

For the past two years, a battle has been raging for control of the Republican Party. On one side: the Tea Party insurgents of 2010, led by Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and the like, whose stated goal is to slash the size of the federal government, roll back the welfare state, and remake the nation’s capital. On the other side: the Washington-based Party hierarchy, consisting of the congressional leadership and the Republican National Committee, plus a permanent establishment of political consultants, K Street lobbyists, think-tank wonks, and media types. Now we know where the real power lies, and—no surprise, really—it isn’t on the side of the flag-waving teabaggers. ...John Cassidy, New Yorker

Cassidy also notes that big, big, big money has everything to do with who gets the power.  It's not just that Citizens United has blessed the Republican party with a distinct advantage.  That is now accepted as amply demonstrated during the first phase of the primaries.

Whether we're in an election year or not, the Republican party remains closely tied to and acting in the interests of corporate America and transnational corporations.  Nothing new there.  No one -- so far -- has managed to destroy that equation.  Not the tea party, no matter what its best intentions are. 

As for activists on the other side, we just have to think for a few seconds about Occupy Wall Street -- the closest thing the left has to an active reform movement -- and concede that if the tea party is so easily shoved aside we should be asking ourselves what hope a movement can possibly have that declares its antipathy to Wall Street right up front.

Whether Mitt Romney defeats Newt Gingrich by five, ten, or twenty points today won’t alter the essential narrative of the past week. Faced with the prospect of Gingrich taking a second successive primary and emerging as a legitimate frontrunner for the nomination, the Party elders and their media allies staged a rebellion that appears to have succeeded. With the first wave of primaries drawing to a close, the Party fixers look well placed to get what they wanted all along: a bland center-right candidate who can appeal to moderates and independents. The Tea Party, despite its energy and bluster, has so far got very little. ...John Cassidy, New Yorker

So how is it that the Republican party can hold onto any votes from the beleaguered middle class American? 

There are various theories, one of which is that the Party leadership cleverly exploits conservative cultural values to persuade the boobs to vote against their own interests. (cf. Thomas Frank’s 2005 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”) However they do it, the Lee Atwaters and the Karl Roves manage to keep things together. And when the Presidential campaign season begins, they run over everything in their way, including, if necessary, members of their own party. ...John Cassidy, New Yorker

It's that simple.  Until we change it.  Is that something for which we can expect Obama's help and encouragement?

Every time I ask myself that question, I go back to Ken Silverstein's eye-opening description of Obama's first days and weeks as a new senator.  From earliest days in his new office, Obama went to work at forming power/money relationships with Wall Street and corporate Washington. The title of Silverstein's piece in Harper's is "Barack Obama Inc.: The birth of a Washington machine." 

Since coming to Washington, Obama has advocated for the poor, most notably in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and has emerged as a champion of clean government. He has fought for restrictions on lobbying, even as most of his fellow Democrats postured on the issue while quietly seeking to gut real reform initiatives. ...

... Yet it is also startling to see how quickly Obama’s senatorship has been woven into the web of institutionalized influence-trading that afflicts official Washington. He quickly established a political machine funded and run by a standard Beltway group of lobbyists, P.R. consultants, and hangers-on. For the staff post of policy director he hired Karen Kornbluh, a senior aide to Robert Rubin when the latter, as head of the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, was a chief advocate for NAFTA and other free-trade policies that decimated the nation’s manufacturing sector (and the organized labor wing of the Democratic Party). Obama’s top contributors are corporate law and lobbying firms (Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, Arps, where four attorneys are fund-raisers for Obama as well as donors), Wall Street financial houses (Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase), and big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense). Obama immediately established a “leadership PAC,” a vehicle through which a member of Congress can contribute to other politicians’ campaigns—and one that political reform groups generally view as a slush fund through which congressional leaders can evade campaign-finance rules while raising their own political profiles. ...Harper's, 11/06  

How well has Obama used his corporate ties to further his often-progressive agenda?  During his first term, pretty well -- even amazing if you take Congressional obstruction into consideration.  But still...

But still, it becomes clearer and clearer that unless the left organizes effectively, we're nowhere.  I mean organizes, among other things, large-scale consumer boycotts of major corporations and banks, we remain powerless.  We remain dependent on the right's own tendency to fragment and screw up to give us the necessary bounce that will help us reclaim leadership as well as a Congress and Supreme Court respected by the people and the world.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the dirtiest of them all?

When it comes to corruption in Congress, Republicans are well ahead.  Think Progress reports this morning that "Despite a promise of 'zero-tolerance' for unethical behavior, House Republicans are facing increasing number of ethics probes. As the 2012 session begins, almost a dozen GOP lawmakers face questions about their financial dealings and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) “has not publicly admonished them."

So this comes as no surprise:

House Republicans have seen their unfavorable rating skyrocket to 64 percent, as the public lays blame for ugly partisan battles over the debt ceiling and payroll tax holiday, among other things, at their feet. Republicans started 2011 with a 43 percent favorable rating and 46 percent unfavorable rating. The precipitous drop was a subject at a recent House GOP retreat in Baltimore earlier this month.

Premature news of the death of Gingrich campaign

It was approaching 11 p.m. at the Hyatt hotel bar here on Sunday, and reporters covering Newt Gingrich’s campaign were enjoying a few drinks when a familiar figure approached.

Gingrich put a hand on the shoulders of two women at the table and imparted a big scoop. “There’s a new poll coming out,” he announced. “I’m within five points of Romney. . . . I’ve got all the momentum.”

It’s hard to know what the most pitiful part was: That a presidential candidate was whiling away the night at a hotel bar (it was his second visit to the journalists’ table that evening)? That he felt the need to do his own spinning? That the survey he was spinning was a “robo-poll” done by machines? Or that the pollster who did it used to work for Gingrich?

In fact, real polls were showing the opposite — a new Quinnipiac poll had Mitt Romney with a 14-point lead over Gingrich in Florida. If such a drubbing occurs in the state’s primary on Tuesday, that would, for all intents and purposes, end Gingrich’s campaign. But Gingrich is going down in his own style, leaving fabrications, insults and scorched earth all the way from Miami to Pensacola. ...Dana Milbank, WaPo

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I think it was Rachel Maddow who talked about how many delegates, so far, have been accumulated by Gingrich and Romney.  The bottom line is that both have very few, given the number they need to achieve nomination.  Maddow went after the actual delegate count, deflating the notion that the Florida outcome is somehow decisive.

That doesn't mean Romney can't surge and Gingrich's campaign will be the final loser.  But it could go either way.  We tend to fall for what appears to be a collective decision, made well in advance, about who gets to win and who gets to lose.  But there is another determinant:  money.  If there's any one thread in the fabric of contemporary campaigns that should give us a sense of the inevitable, it's money.

Update:  Damn!  I missed something good on the Maddow show.

In a conversation with Rachel Maddow on The Rachel Maddow Show Monday night, New York writer-at-large Frank Rich says that to Mitt Romney's own detriment, he's holding back on something that he's most passionate about: his ... more here

No, it's not the dog on the car roof.

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Meanwhile we are entertained by Gingrich as a dancing puppet, a fool, a mad man while Romney is a steady, surefire winner over both the Newt and the incumbent.  To get a sense of how they're going down with primary voters, we're dependent on the narrative of well-paid entertainalists and/or the wishful thinking of campaign staff who issue their optimistic assessments just about daily, maybe hourly. And constant polls.  Oh, and reality -- evident in of those helpful graphics at the New York Times.

Total delegates:  2224.  Delegates needed to win:  1144.  Gingrich, so far:  23.  Romney, so far: 21.  At stake in Florida:  50.

Gingrich's campaign argues that even after Florida's 50 convention delegates get claimed in the winner-take-all primary, neither candidate will have more than 10% of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination at the August convention in Tampa. ...CNN

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Nate Silver notes that none of the candidates are getting expected "bounces," at least not so far.

So far in 2012, ... the bounces that candidates have received from primary and caucus wins have been minimal or have faded much too quickly to help the candidate in the next state.

Let’s first look at the trajectory of Mitt Romney’s polling in New Hampshire. Mr. Romney, it turns out, did not win the Iowa caucuses, but he was declared the winner by most news organizations and by the Iowa Republican party on caucus night, and the outcome was not reversed until after New Hampshire voted.

Mr. Romney did not receive any sort of bounce at all in New Hampshire after his apparent Iowa win. Instead, his polling was in a slow but steady decline between Iowa and New Hampshire.  ...Nate Silver, NYT

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At this writing, Floridians are just starting to go to the polls and we're "looking beyond Florida."  The Hill asks whether Romney can be "derailed."  The answer really does come back to money.  Romney has reportedly outspent Gingrich 5 to 1 in the state.

Big questions remain: Newt Gingrich, for instance, claimed to have raised $9 million in the fourth quarter, but admitted that costly advertisements and campaigning in early states loaded the campaign with debt. The level of that debt will make clearer whether the former Speaker has the ability to follow through on his pledge to campaign until the convention.

For Gingrich and the remainder of the Republican field, the challenge will be to remain relevant — and funded — until the Super Tuesday contests on March 6, where the calendar becomes more favorable. Among the 10 primary states voting that day are Gingrich's home state of Georgia and states like Ohio and Tennessee, which provide the opportunity for huge delegate pick-ups. Whichever campaign can endure through the month of February could have the opportunity to capitalize if Romney stumbles. ...The Hill

An Obama mistake

Maybe it's a mistake; maybe not.  But I believe EJ Dionne (an Obama supporter, in general) makes a point here that should be considered.  For a start, he understands what being a liberal is, and how liberalism is a key element in the foundation of American morality and law.

Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.

And it was offered a compromise idea to do just that by Melissa Rogers, the former chair of Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. (Rogers and I have worked together on religion and public life issues over the years, though I played no role in formulating her proposal.) In The Washington Post’s “On Faith” forum in October, she pointed to a Hawaii law under which “religious employers that decline to cover contraceptives must provide written notification to enrollees disclosing that fact and describing alternate ways for enrollees to access coverage for contraceptive services.” The Hawaii law effectively required insurers to allow uncovered individuals to secure this coverage on their own at modest cost.

Unfortunately, the administration decided it lacked authority to implement a Hawaii-style solution. The Obama team should not have given up so easily, especially after it floated a version of this compromise with some Catholic service providers who thought it workable. Obama would do well to revisit his decision on the Hawaii compromise. ...EJ Dionne, WaPo

Some time ago, I lived in a mid-size American city with a hospital system that was becoming over-burdened by an increasing homeless population.  Though it's impossible to remember now the details of the situation, but it was something like this:  a pregnant homeless woman was taken to a Catholic hospital in a situation where assisting in an early-stage miscarriage would have saved her life. You can imagine the rest.  If only she could have been taken to ....

It's that kind of situation that makes flexibility* on both sides of the issue essential.

“The tensions and the suspicions on each side of the religious divide will have to be squarely addressed,” Obama said back in 2006. “And each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.” I wish the president had tried harder to find such rules here. ...EJ Dionne,WaPo

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*Using the word "flexible" in connection with "liberal" reminds me of what I most dislike about contemporary (Birch) conservatism, and that's intransigence and arrogance.  "Immobilism," says Merriam.  Reminds me of "lie back and think of Britain." Liberals have more fun.