What Does Nancy Know About Newt?

It was during an interview with CNN’s John King in which former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dropped the tease that has electrified political junkies. When King -- who verbally tousled with former House Speaker/current GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich during a recent debate -- asked Pelosi her thoughts about the possibility of Gingrich becoming commander in chief, Pelosi responded, “That will never happen . . . He’s not going to be president of the United States.”

King pressed her. How could she be so sure that he'll never become president? “There’s something I know,” she said. "The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him, that’s their prerogative. I don’t even think that’s going to happen.”

This, as you might expect, has led to wild speculation about whether Pelosi has some juicy, scandalous information that she plans to unload if Gingrich gets the nomination. On Twitter, people have turned it into a #WhatNancyKnows parlor game.

We already do know quite a bit about Gingrich, or we’ve heard stories . . . the infidelities, the alleged request for the open marriage, the hypocrisy over lecturing about family values, the ethics scandal, the Tiffany's line of credit, yet this tantalizing nugget from Pelosi is driving everybody crazy. It has even compelled Mitt Romney’s campaign to create a new ad to scare Republican voters into not voting for Gingrich lest Pelosi sabotage the GOP by detonating Gingrich's campaign in the general election with some new dirt.

Even though Pelosi has tried to tamp down all the excitement her statement caused -- saying that she was simply referring to what’s already in the public record, specifically the House Ethics report on Gingrich from the 1990s -- I’m not buying it. That’s not what it seemed like she was saying to John King, at all.

Making things more interesting is the fact that in December Pelosi reportedly told a reporter for the Talking Points Memo: “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

How bad could what she knows really be? Seriously, look at what’s happened over the past few years, zany tales that seem as though they were ripped off from a bad, improbable TV drama. Politicians, high profile ones at that, have made some really stupid decisions:

A no nonsense, tough New York governor  was shamed out of office when it was discovered he’d been messing around with a call girl. A South Carolina governor disappeared for days, said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, then admitted he was in Argentina with his soul mate, a woman who was not his wife. A New York Congressman, who had a pregnant wife at home, sent nude photos of himself to strangers over Twitter. A California governor admitted that he cheated on his wife with the family’s housekeeper, fathered a child by her (a baby who was born a week apart from a child he had with his wife) and kept the mistress working at the home. A 2008 Democratic candidate for president fathered a child with a consultant to his campaign, tried to cover it up by having another campaign supporter say that he was the father, all the while, continuing to campaign for president while his wife was battling cancer for a second time. One of the 2012 GOP candidates for president dropped out of the race after multiple women claimed he’d sexually harassed them and another woman said she had an affair with the married businessman.

So, back to this campaign . . . what could Nancy Pelosi have been implying? Here are some outlandish guesses about what Pelosi knows the guy who walks around saying he thinks “grandiose” thoughts and, just this week, announced that he wants to colonize the moon (seriously). My guesses are as good as any of the other looney real life stories that have unfolded recently:  

• Mitt Romney isn’t the only Republican candidate who had a mishap with a vehicle and a family pet.
• Newt just recently had his 9-9-9 tatoo removed.
• Gingrich has a secret wall in his home office covered with photos of Snookie.
• Anthony Weiner is the one who taught Newt how to “tweet.”
• Newt’s preferred ringtone? Rod Stewart's “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
• Gingrich accidentally left behind an album full of Polaroids in the back of one of the desk drawers of the Speaker’s office. Suffice is to say, Newt knows what Victoria’s Secret is.
• The real story about how John Kerry got those black eyes and a broken nose . . . it involved Newt and two words: Fight. Club.

What do you think Pelosi has on Gingrich, if anything? Or is this all a bluff? What do you make of Pelosi trying to play down what she was obviously trying to gin up when she spoke with John King?

On New Hampshire Primary Day, Do Negative Campaign Ads Persuade You?

Although I can appreciate the cleverness of a well executed, tough political ad as well as the next cynical voter, I really don’t like it when the atmosphere get toxic, when campaigns try to trick voters by obfuscating the facts and intentionally mislead people, or just outright name call. I hate that. It’s beneath them and the office which they seek to hold, especially if they’re vying for the post of commander-in-chief.

However political pundits, along with a large body of research, tell us that it’s those negative ads that help win elections. The charges in those ads remain with you, like an insidious ear worm. The positive ads, the ones that are all motherhood and apple pie with a crisp flag snapping in the wind in the background while the candidate looks regal in front of it, conventional wisdom says that they make little difference when we are deciding for whom to vote.

Even though folks will say that they don't like negative ads, a University of Georgia advertising professor wrote on CNN's web site that they're used for one big reason: "The answer is simple: They work. And they work very well." She added that, "There is some evidence that negative messages may be more likely than positive ones to passively register [with viewers.]"

So, on the day before the New Hampshire primary, I surfed the internet and culled two different kinds of ads from the remaining GOP presidential candidates' web sites to compare and contrast the positive ads with the negative ones.

The Good



In this pro-Mitt Romney ad, with inspirational music and images, Ann Romney takes to forefront to try to soften the straight-laced businessman. (Romney did himself no favors today in the softening department by using the phrase "I like being able to fire people," which will, I predict, appear in a political ad very soon.)



Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman’s campaign neatly packaged up Huntsman’s rebuttal during the final debate this weekend to Romney’s assertion that by serving as the U.S. ambassador to China under President Obama, Huntsman wasn’t putting his party first.



Here, Huntsman says that his election would be the answer to the nation’s “trust deficit.”



Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich explains his belief that government doesn’t create real jobs.



Texas Congressman Ron Paul takes a rather loud approach with this “Big Dog” ad which seems more like it’s promoting a pro wrestling match rather than a presidential candidate.



Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s family-centric “Pop-Up” ad describes him in a very general way without attacking anyone else.



This “Morning in America” type of ad from Texas Governor Rick Perry shows a much better side of him than he has exhibited in the debates.

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.