Notes from the Political Middle: Newt's in the Lead? What the Heck is Going On?

I’m the first to admit that I’m no fan of Newt Gingrich for a whole host of reasons, which will likely come as no surprise from someone who refers to herself as a “Massachusetts moderate” when Gingrich appears so fond of maligning moderate folks, especially those who hail from the Bay State.

And while I can understand that Republican primary voters are looking for a candidate who exudes strength, conviction and doesn’t seemed easily cowed by others – traits that Gingrich exuded in spades during last week’s CNN debate and in the Fox News debate before that – I can’t believe that voters sincerely believe that the former House speaker could actually lure any undecided/independent voters to his campaign. Even if he successfully won every single conservative vote in the general election, that wouldn’t be sufficient to reserve his spot behind the Oval Office desk. He’s going to need some independents and dissatisfied Democrats to come on board. And he's not the type of candidate who appeals to those folks.

That being said, the double-digit Gingrich win in South Carolina on Saturday was stunning. In the best case scenario, I could interpret the pro-Gingrich sentiment as a rebuke to the national media which Republicans and conservatives believe are out to build up a weak GOP candidate (Mitt Romney, like a moderate John McCain and Bob Dole before him) and then plan to demolish him in the fall in favor of Obama. Given the raucous verve with which the audiences in the Fox News and CNN debates applauded when Gingrich aggressively went after the news media – calling CNN’s John King “despicable” for asking him about allegations that he asked his second wife for an open marriage – that could be plausible.

If, however, that’s not the case, and the vote has nothing to do with Republican voters’ views on the mainstream media's leaning toward Democrats, that means that Gingrich is actually the preferred candidate. That's stunning given how wildly unpopular he is with Republican voters across the nation, according to a Talking Points Memo chart. As the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan pointed out earlier this month, even those who've worked with Gingrich think he's a loose cannon.

A brand new national poll has found that Gingrich has 41 percent support of likely GOP voters, compared to Mitt Romney’s 32 percent in Florida, which has its primary on January 31, according to Rasmussen Reports. “Less than two weeks ago, Mitt Romney had a 22-point lead in Florida.”

As it stands right now, here’s how the delegate count for the Republican nomination breaks down (each primary/caucus has different rules and some are winner-take-all, others proportional):

-- Gingrich: 23
-- Romney: 18
-- Rick Santorum: 11
-- Ron Paul: 6

The winner needs to reach 1,143 delegates to lock up the GOP nomination.

Will tonight’s NBC debate, moderated by my favorite network anchor, Brian Williams, make any change in the trend of Gingrich over Romney? It’s unclear right now if Florida’s primary – open to registered Republicans only – will be winner-take-all or whether the delegates will be apportioned according to Congressional districts, according to ABC News.
As for the incumbent president who’s on the eve of his State of the Union address, things are looking pretty dismal (unless, of course, the Republicans select Gingrich as their nominee).

“President Obama opens his re-election bid facing significant obstacles among independent voters, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with the critical piece of the electorate that cemented his victory four years ago open to denying him a second term,” the Times reported.
“. . . [A] majority of independent voters have soured on his presidency, disapprove of how he has dealt with the economy and do not have a clear idea of what he hopes to accomplish if re-elected,” the paper said, adding that only 31 percent of independent voters have a “favorable opinion” of Obama.

See, it’s the moderates -- of whom those on the either end of the political spectrum aren't particularly fond -- who are the key, hence my incredulity at the state of the current GOP race.

Notes from the Political Middle: Demonizing ‘Moderates’

Image credit: CNN

Winning the presidential nomination of one’s chosen political party is certainly no easy feat. It takes a whole host of things – money, smarts, charisma, organization and sheer dumb luck – to emerge from the primary process as a Republican or Democratic nominee for president.
One of the toughest feats that successful nominees have to master is being an exceedingly limber political gymnast. They have to win over their party’s stalwarts – which comprise roughly a third of the electorate – that they’re the best person to represent them as the party’s standard bearer. Then, in short order, the nominees must transform and twist themselves into a candidate who will appeal to the voters in the political middle – also about a third of the electorate – because you can’t win the U.S. presidency by only garnering the support of those who share your party affiliation.

This is why it’s puzzling to me to see Newt Gingrich calling GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney a “Massachusetts moderate” as though a “moderate” is akin to a socialist hell-bent on transforming America into something more resembling France. After taking out a full-page ad in a New Hampshire newspaper attacking Romney as a “timid Massachusetts moderate,” Gingrich has made the rounds on TV and during voter meet-and-greets warning Republicans that Romney’s really a moderate type of guy, because, you know, them moderates, they’ve been known to take the reins of the nation and sink it like the Titanic. All the political and financial challenges facing America have occurred because of the scourge of“moderates,” right?

Gingrich, who seemed stunned that he came in fourth behind Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul in Iowa, has said that if “Massachusetts moderate” Romney were selected as the GOP nominee, he thinks Romney would “be pretty good at managing the decay” and wouldn’t change the political climate.

This isn’t to say that I’m endorsing Romney, mind you, it’s just that this new trend of attacking people by hurling the word “moderate” at them as though it’s Kryptonite is abundantly silly. Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Amanda Paulson pointed out that Romney is also guilty of using “moderate” as a “dirty word” suggesting that Gingrich is moderate because he’d cooperated with Nancy Pelosi on environmental issues and has made *shudder* compromises.

U.S. Senator Scott Brown, another Republican from Massachusetts where Republicans are about as abundant as four-leaf clovers, gets flak for his moderate tendencies and because he is willing to work with the people who he thinks have the best ideas, regardless of their party affiliation. He’s not following the party leadership and walking in lock-step with his GOP brethren, which is a wise thing given that the Bay State is very blue. If Brown voted straight party line, he’d be shown the door.

Even Rick Santorum, who was only eight votes behind Romney in Iowa and is well known for his social conservatism, was assailed by the son of fellow Republican presidential candidate, the pro-pot Ron Paul, as being a “moderate.” Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky, told an Iowan talk show host that Santorum is “a big government moderate and I think conservatives need to be wary before thinking Santorum can be their champion.” Seriously?

The editor-in-chief of the web site The Moderate Voice has had enough of this idiotic, short-sighted nonsense. “Warning to the GOP: The way rhetoric is being used in the Republican primary campaign, there may come a point where moderates may simply decide they cannot vote for a Republican candidate,” Joe Gandelman wrote on The Moderate Voice. “No, this isn’t just a personal reaction. You can bank on this being a problem if trending continues.”

Alluding to the fact that whoever eventually gets the GOP presidential nomination will have to appeal to independent and moderate voters in the general election in order to win, Gandelman questioned this new anti-moderate trend: “Why would moderates vote for a political party that has increasingly used the word ‘moderate’ as a filthy political word? We’ve now seen a parade of candidates use it. And the phrase ‘going moderate’ has now become a major attack phrase by conservative talkers, some columnists and politicians.”

Why indeed.

Image credit: CNN.

Notes from the Political Middle: Cracker Barrel vs Whole Foods; Protesters of the Year & Newt Leading GOP Pack

Cracker Barrel vs Whole Foods

Quick, which one do you prefer: The restaurant/gift shop chain Cracker Barrel or the supermarket chain Whole Foods?

If you selected Cracker Barrel, you must be a Republican. If you picked Whole Foods, you’re obviously a Democrat. It makes sense that if you buy the $7.39 Chicken n’ Dumplins from Cracker Barrel, where they play country music in the background, you must be a conservative, right? And if you’re in the market for anything organic or for fare like arugula, man, you’re a liberal, just count up them Priuses in the parking lot.

Wait . . . what? Well that’s what the Washington Post asserted in a recent story saying that there’s a cultural divide between the two venues which can serve as easy proxies for patrons’ political choices.

“In 2008, candidate Barack Obama carried 81 percent of counties with a Whole Foods and just 36 percent of counties with a Cracker Barrel – a record 45-point gap,” the Post reported. “. . . This growing divide signals shifts in the electorate. In the 2008 primary, Obama was able to overcome Hillary Rodham Clinton partly because the Democratic Party had become more Whole Foods than Cracker Barrel.” Hillary Clinton is a Cracker Barrel most valuable patron? Since when?

An author/journalist from Texas told the paper: “Politics is aligned with lifestyle right now, not policy. Food used to be political because it represented a class of farmers or workers. Now it represents certain tastes.”

While I’ll concede that there may be some discernible lifestyle correlation between an organic/free-range/Whole Foods-type lifestyle and voting Democratic, this type of false dichotomy makes my hair stand on end. It’s a lazy, simplistic shortcut which ideologically paints folks with one, broad brush. Even here in liberal, blue state Massachusetts, I know folks who defy this simplistic either-or stereotype. I know Republican Whole Foods shoppers and Democratic Cracker Barrel patrons. Scott Brown, in case you’ve forgotten, is from here, and we’ve had many Republican governors who likely never went to a Cracker Barrel but I'd wager they've set foot inside a Whole Foods, or a similar market because they can afford to do so.

Now picture Mitt Romney for a second. Which seems more likely to you, that Romney would be shopping at a Whole Foods or dining at Cracker Barrel? What about Jon Huntsman? Hillary Clinton? Chris Christie? The comparisons don’t always work as cleanly as people would like to make them seem. When you have such a growing body of independents in the electorate who could vote blue or red depending on the candidate – and regardless of where they buy their groceries, which is more related to income than a political culture – it seems more than a little insulting to try to pigeon-hole voters by grocery stores, restaurants or by what sport their kids play, as pundits are wont to do. (I’m a soccer mom AND a hockey mom AND a basketball mom . . . and none of that has anything to do with how I vote, rather it has to do with my kids’ interests.)

Protesters of the Year

Every year Time Magazine’s selection for “Person of the Year” creates controversy. That’s by design. At around Christmas, Time gins up some robust watercooler buzz as people debate their choice.

This year the magazine’s editors went out of their way to make an outside of the box selection by annointing “The Protester” -- whether it’s an Occupy Wall Streeter or an Egyptian woman or Tunisian street vendor, all of those who rose up in protest of their government, their economy, the elite class or all of the above -- was given the props.
“Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history,” explained Time’s managing editor Rick Stengel. “. . . Everywhere, it seems, people said they’d had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change.”

I, for one, think it was an inspired choice. What say you?

Seriously, Newt’s Leading the Pack?

As I noted in this post in September (where I wrote about becoming a voter who’s unaffiliated with a political party), I don’t and never have towed any kind of a party line in the voting booth. I vote the person, not the party. Being of the moderate ilk, I tend to cotton to people who are not fire breathers and are apt to feed big, bloody slabs of red meat to their base. As Pollyanna/Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as it may seem, I like the person who doesn’t demonize his or her competitors and who is willing to work for the compromise that’s best for the most people, and who'll do so by collaborating with politicians with whom you don’t necessarily agree, as opposed to thwarting everything in order to just make a stand or prevent someone’s re-election.

Which brings me to my Newt Gingrich question: How is it possible that the GOP primary voters would think that the voters in what’s called the “mushy middle” (Independents and the like) would ever, in a million years, vote for a President Gingrich? I remain stunned by the phoenix-like rise of the former House Speaker as primary voters are scrambling to try to find anyone other than Romney to be their presidential nominee. Certainly there are more appealing candidates who do not have such steep negative ratings as Gingrich.

As I’ve perused the commentary from various political pundits about Gingrich's sudden surge in the polls, the piece that resonated most with me was from conservative Peggy Noonan who, in a blistering Wall Street Journal op/ed likened Gingrich to “a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, ‘Watch this!’”

“What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don’t,” Noonan wrote, after calling him “ethically dubious,” “erratic and unreliable," "impulsive” and “egomaniacal.” “Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.”

Once we hit 2012, I have to believe that the primary voters will go in a different direction, unless, of course, they’re just looking to cede the election to President Obama.

Image credits: Cracker Barrel, Whole Foods, Peter Hapak/Time, Charlie Neibergall/Christian Science Monitor.

Meet Me in the Political Middle: Commentary on the 2012 Race

When it comes to politics, I can be found all over the map depending on the issue.

On some matters, I lean toward the left, on others toward the right. I’ve voted for Democrats and for Republicans. I vote the person, not the party. I vote on character and policies, not on partisan litmus tests. I don’t believe that one of the two main political parties is entirely evil and hell bent on wrecking the nation while the other has only the noblest, best intentions for the United States in mind. No one party corners the market on the most ethical, intelligent, reasonable and pragmatic solutions to the nation’s problems. They’ve both got gigantic flaws and lunatics in their ranks.

There are some politicians who are Democrats and some who are Republicans whom I admire and have enormous respect. There are crazies on both ends of the political spectrum – on the far left and far right of both parties – who try to push their presidential (gubernatorial) candidates and legislative leaders to the outer wings during primaries, rendering the candidates, in the end, looking like unbalanced hypocrites when they turn around and seek to claim the middle, moderate ground during the general election because that’s where the undecided voters reside. (Those folks on either ends of the extremes are likely going to vote party line in the general election, while those who are more moderate could go either way.)

The tactics of our political parties make our candidates behave worse, not better. The parties pressure well intentioned officials to support bills in which they actually don’t believe, to give lip service to issues with which they don’t agree. If an elected official dares to go rogue on his or her party and defy the demands of the party leaders, the fierce partisans and political establishment mete out punishment in the form of party-funded opponents in the primary, of being stripped of one’s seat on legislative committees and of one’s district suddenly seeing public monies evaporate, all as a penalty for not towing the party line. Politicians in our system have a very difficult time remaining true to themselves because not only are they expected to do what the establishment and the party leaders want them to do, but because there are also powerful, wealthy lobbying groups who wield tremendous influence and power over the process (by not making hefty campaign contributions or by throwing support behind a rival candidate, etc.) if they’re dissatisfied.

This makes those of us who find ourselves in the political middle disillusioned with politics and the political process. Watching the primary candidates reach out to the extremists, moderates frequently feel alienated. It’s only when the general election rolls around and the candidates stop staking out positions on the far left or right and try to say, “Hey, I’m in the middle with you guys too” that people who might be a little liberal and a little conservative depending on the issue feel as though the politicians are finally speaking their language. But once that person is elected, he or she is forced to become partisan again because partisanship seems to be the only way of doing business these days.

A confession: I used to hold pretty partisan positions when I was in college. I did not take the time to listen to the other side. I saw the world as fairly black-and-white and invoked lazy caricatures of those folks who lived on the politically polar opposite plain than I did at the time. Then I gradually started to let go of the angry partisanship which marked my college years and actually began listening to the whole spectrum of ideas. Then, after an incident made me feel as though I’d been sold out by the political party to which I was registered, I angrily switched sides (my husband was stunned). In the last few years, however, I’ve started to realize that maybe I’m not a one side of the aisle type of gal after all. I am, indeed, somewhere in the middle.

Just this week, for the first time since I was 18 years old, I unenrolled from all political parties because I’ve had enough. I’m hardly alone (despite the fact that those who reside on the sanctimonious, narrow-minded edges of both political parties say that being an independent moderate means you’re wishy-washy). Earlier this month, pollsters from Rasmussen Reports found that, “The numbers of Americans who are not affiliated with either major political party has reached the highest level ever, as the number of Democrats has reached an all-time low.” In fact, the American electorate is roughly divided into thirds when it comes to party registration, according to Rasmussen:

• 33.5 percent are Republicans
• 33 percent are Democrats
• 33.5 percent are not enrolled in a political party

But even among those who are registered with a party, which I was until this week, they aren’t necessarily dogmatic about their party affiliation. Why else was the term “Reagan Democrat” invented?

This is why a group like No Labels, which calls upon us to ditch the “hyper-partisanship” which “dominates today’s political debates” and seek out moderate solutions, is so appealing to me. Yes, the organization seems very Mr. Smith Goes to Washington idealistic as it aspires to prompt elected officials to be reasonable, given that reasonableness is anathema to partisans and pols who are posturing themselves for re-election and want to look “tough.” But at least it doesn’t represent unthinking, unbending lockstep partisanship that sacrifices the common good at the altar of party unity.

So for the duration of the 2012 presidential election season, I will be periodically weighing in on events from my new post, smack dab in the unenrolled middle, where at least a third of the rest of you reside. I’ll continue to listen to both conservative and liberal radio shows and watch conservative and liberal TV talk shows. (All the better if they’re combined in one like Morning Joe, which features conservative Joe Scarborough and liberal Mika Brzezinski and doesn’t demonize all Democrats or all Republicans.) I will continue to cast a skeptical eye on all politicians’ assertions and assignments of blame for this crisis or that one. And I’ll do my best to try to look at the issues from here in the political middle. I hope you’ll join me.

Image credit: No Labels.