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?

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: 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.