There’s been a lot of talk today about the fact that Newt, Sarah, Huck, and Mittens are all polling worse today (in terms of favorability) than they were two years ago.
In the case of Gingrich, do you think all his bizarre position changes have something to do with it? TPM details how far all over the map he’s been with Libya. Somehow, I can’t help but think there must be some method to his madness. Ditto for Haley Barbour and his fables of the confederacy. But is there or are these two guys just not ready for prime time at the national level? I just can’t figure it out.
Loneoak
I kinda feel sorry for these guys trying to triangulate the wingnutosphere. It would be like trying to live upwind of a factory hog farm—there is no upwind.
joe from Lowell
When you see a pattern that applies to a whole group, it’s a mistake to attribute that change to causes that are specific to one of them and don’t apply to the rest.
It’s much more likely that their approval ratings have all declined for the same reason, or for related reasons.
Jude
It’s because they’re horrible, horrible people.
Sure, so were all of the Congressional teabag winners in 2010, but the presidential race is much more dependent on charisma than simple protest voting.
And those folks ain’t got charisma.
BC
They have a lot of running to do to get in front of the tea party parade, then have to huff and puff back to get in front of the establishment parade, so this is where the madness comes in. Funny – the party that tries so hard to adhere to “principles” rather than what works is the party that is having the hardest time trying to figure out what their principles are from day to day.
Violet
Both of them have been in the Village cocoon for quite some time. Oh, sure, Barbour is still the Governor of Mississippi, but he’s in tight with the Village crowd. They love him. Newt got run out of town and has spent the last decade spinning talking points and hanging with fellow wingnuts. These guys haven’t been challenged in ages. They’re flabby and out of shape, both physically and politically.
Southern Beale
Meanwhile, some American religious leaders launch a hunger protest of Congress’ immoral budget.
And you thought all of America’s religious leaders were right-wing Republicans! Yeah, don’t expect the media to draw too much attention to this … but budgets are moral documents. So …
Barbara
The method to his madness could be senility. I mean, you shouldn’t forget the obvious things that might be considered with similar ramblings from a non-politician.
Elia
I think the years Newt’s spent in plush think tank rooms surrounded by sycophants and buttressed with gobs of corporate money have definitively shattered his previous already rather tenuous grasp on reality. I think his narcissism is at the point where he doesn’t think he’s being inconsistent and he doesn’t think that his candidacy–which was already a joke to begin with–has been definitively 86’d with this Libya nonsense.
With Barbour, I just don’t think he’s especially serious about a run. I think he’s bored, knows he’ll immediately get a lot of lobby/corporate money from all his old friends, and wants to raise his profile. He probably thinks that the worst he could play kingmaker in the South and demand his pound(s) of flesh.
Brachiator
None of this polling stuff means much of anything. It’s kinda like arguing over brackets in the College Basketball Madness fest.
There was a time not too long ago when Rudy G 911 was considered almost as inevitable as Hillary Clinton.
One thing to look out for though: see what actions by various GOP governors become part of the official GOP platform and the degree to which it is embraced by Republican presidential hopefuls. This won’t be quite the same thing as running on platitudes, but will be be a vision for the country based on the craziest and most cruel state laws.
cynickal
How hard is it to understand “If Obama is for it, Republicans are against it?”
Bloaty jumped in to bombing Libya as soon as the corporate media speed dialed him. When Obama joined the UN in a bombing campaign he’s against it and the media sucks his c*** like he’d never said a peep two days before.
cynickal
Sorry, I’m a tad cranky today.
Jay C
I’m sure a major contributory factor to so many GOP honchos’ recent spate of flip-flopping on so many issues is the disgraceful fact that they are rather unlikely to get called on their abrupt about-faces in any substantive way by just about anybody.
Our supposedly “liberal” media (outside of a few marginal DFH bloggers, of course) is loathe to go after ANY righties for their hypocrisies/inconsistencies/lies in any case: and the overtly right-wing media will simply deflect the issue with their usual attack-dog gusto, assuming (sadly correct for the most part) that their intended audience won’t really notice (or care) about the flippage; preferring to concentrate on the main point: viz.:
“Newt Gingrich attacks Obama over not intervening in Libya”
“Newt Gingrich attacks Obama over intervening in Libya”
Notice the common denominator…
Nellcote
Has anyone done a nice chart that compares the variations on PACs, 501c3/4, affinity groups, exploratory committes, etc with restrictions on donations if any. I’m curious how these money scams work.
JPL
@Jay C: I was simply going to type, well they can. There is no punishment for lying among the republicans.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
Situational fluidity can be spun into Very Seriosity.
joe from Lowell
@cynickal:
Point taken, but this flailing by Gingrich is just so…what’s the word? Incompetent? Inartful? Poorly executed?
The man looks like a moran. I remember Newt during the 1990s; he was a very skilled political tactician, and the fact that he had to go up against Bill Clinton doesn’t take away from that fact. And now, he gets himself caught out like this?
It’s like watching a former Cy Young winner get yanked in the 3rd inning four games in a row.
Tax Analyst
@Loneoak:
There’s no upwind because these guys are the hog farm.
The stench is just part of who and what they are; it ain’t going away.
Comrade DougJ
@joe from Lowell:
I’m not so sure. It’s four people and three have screwed up badly enough that it’s no surprise that they’re down (Palin and Barbour have made similar missteps).
BombIranForChrist
In both cases, let’s face it, the GOP base does not punish its leaders for failing to construct a logically cohesive world view. If it’s against the Negro Muslim in the White House, any given statement is correct on its face, regardless of consistency.
More specifically, Newt has always had a few cables loose. I think he’s too megalomaniacal to be smart.
And as for Barbour, I think he is a savvy corporate power politician who is nonetheless flummoxed by the impossible task of any GOP nominee: how do I appease Palin’s people while still appeasing enough centrists to win? I am not sure anyone will figure that out. I am not sure anyone can.
Jay C
@Jay C:
Second “headline” was meant to be bolded as well. FYWPVM.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Gingrich is more than a little bit nutty, not just obnoxious but the boy just ain’t right– what I can’t understand is how many times he needs to sting the media frog before they get that he’s a scorpion. HE’s not just a crank or a hypocrite, he is in himself pretty much the equal of every crank and hypocrite from Palin to Rush to Vitter to McCain all rolled into one.
Barbour is more banal, I think, a reverse spin on the old Pauline Kael chestnut “Everybody Ah know would vote fer me, why are the people too dumb to see that?”. See also Fred Thompson, too. There’s probably at least one in every cycle going back fifty years, especially on the GOP side.
Roger Moore
Maybe it’s because they’ve all spent the past two years trying to court the 27%ers, and that’s turning off the non-crazy part of the population.
FormerSwingVoter
It might have something to do with the Republican Party celebrating their 2010 victory by declaring open warfare on the middle class.
Subtle, they are not.
cmorenc
Newt, Sarah, and Mittens have all become, for various reasons, intractably damaged good with an increasingly widespread portion of the public even as they have grown more attractive to their respective faction of admirers, in each case still large enough for the MSM to continue covering their respective publicity-seeking antics. Huck is the one you all had better still be worried about. The stories about how he intervened in the parole of a prisoner who turned out to be violently dangerous after release loses him some traction with the conservative base, but he comes across (at least superficially) as much more personable and sane and much less arrogant and mendacious than any of the other three. Unless you are the sort who get an instant headache from evangelicals, he doesn’t provoke instinctive negative reactions from most people the way e.g. Mittens or Newt do, and Sarah does as soon as they recognize that underneath the superficially attractive brassy, outdoorsy, game exterior she is a profoundly ignorant, selfish grifter who’s completely full of shit, even for a conservative.
Beware the Huck.
trollhattan
@Comrade DougJ
Both from the South, elected by southeners. Neither has a ghost of a chance nationally, which makes me happy they’re supposed Republican front-benchers. Ain’t nobody taking Bachmann seriously but some do take Newt and Hailey seriously, to their continued detriment. Here’s hoping they never figure this out.
(Feel the Pawlmentum!)
Tim C.
Well, here are two things to consider on both of their parts. First, Newt was so inept that his own party dumped him out of the speaker’s chair after a mere four years. He’s a non-starter. As I think someone around here pointed out, he’s completely unable to actually campaign in an era where anyone can access what you said six months, six days, or six minutes ago.
Boss Hog… er….. Haley Barbour on the other hand I have no idea about. As near as I can tell he’s a more polite Jessie Helms, and that may be enough to get the nomination.
I guess the real story is just how the GOP primary dynamics have altered in the last 12 years. W did the classic routine of lining up the big money folk, and then being visibly religious enough to convince the Jesus brigade he was “one of them”.
This time around it seems most of big money boys have either lost control, (Mittens is their pick and he seems to be going nowhere), or are crazy themselves (Koch boys, I’m looking at you). So who knows. Honestly as much as I disliked the Pre-1994 GOP, they seemed much more reality based back then. At least back then I felt they didn’t believe their own lies. Nowdays…..
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: actually, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see Bachmann win Iowa– Pat Robertson won, FFS, and say what you want about Bachmann, at least she’s won elections. I could see her taking caucuses or closed primaries the deep South or the Red Mountain West, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, maybe even the Dakotas. Just wool-gathering, I have no idea how those states’ parties work. Newt’s too Yankee, too nasty, too repellent even for those people; Barbour…. it’s just amazing to see someone fill out a casting call for “corrupt good ol’ boy ward-heeler” in real life. IF I believed in God, I’d say she’s got a sick sense of humor.
Delia
I don’t know much about Boss Hog myself, only what I read in the press. Which tells me what a very, very smart operator he is. And is all written by Very Very Serious People in the Village. So that’s all I know.
Tax Analyst
I really feel bad about that last remark and I humbly apologize to any actual hogs that I may have insulted by lumping filthy slime like Newt Gingrich, Mittens, the Sarahcudda and the Barbour of Segregationville in with them. I’m certain the real hogs would all back away in disgust and hold their snouts.
My apoligies to any real pigs out there who might be reading this.
cmorenc
@BombIranForChrist:
George W. Bush seemed to have solved exactly that problem for much of his presidency, but toward the latter stage of his Presidency, the sort of wingers who eventually became Palenites and Tea Partiers figured out that they’d been given more circus than substance, and that the country-club business and finance community was the real core constituency of the Bush Administration. Most of these people still felt at home where they felt the Republican Party should be, rather than toward being inclined to any switchover to the Democratic Party, and so the arrival of Palin + the Tea Party gave them the organized influence to insistently demand of GOP politicians MUCH stronger substantive fealty to their principles, and not just lip service.
Meantime, the situations in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio seem to have at last sparked a reawakening among lots of middle-class folks (the ones not lost to the Tea Party movement) of why their sort of people used to tend to vote democratic, now that the GOP’s true agenda and priorities are becoming so starkly revealed (or at least they were until Libya and the Japanese Nuclear Reactor crisis stole the media oxygen from the MidWest).
Shoemaker-Levy 9
I don’t think that has much to do with it, I think with Gingrich it’s a more visceral response to the fact that he’s just not a likable person. You never hear from him anymore unless he’s complaining, often in apocalyptic terms, about something.
Bill Arnold
Nice piece on Gingrich at the Onion today: “Even Newt Gingrich A Little Depressed By Prospect Of Him Running For President”.
bjacques
@Tax Analyst:
“Barbour of Segregationville!” I am *so* stealin that! That is, if I ever meet anyone over here who gives a shit who Barbour is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You all are making this too complicated.
Three out of the four them are clearly members of the ruling class. And Princess Twitterbrain, also. Based on its performance in discharging its responsibilities over the last several years the ruling class in this country deserves nothing better than to be shot in the head, have their bullet-ridden bodies stuffed into a trash truck, and then have the trash truck set on fire and pushed into the hot steaming lava lake of an active volcano.
And people wonder why their polling numbers are down? The mystery isn’t “why are their polling numbers down?”, the mystery which needs explanation is why they aren’t being chased through the streets by howling mobs even as we speak. Indeed, the real mystery is why any person in a position of responsibility and power in this country is polling better than Japanese nuclear reactors located in coastal flooding zones.
Bill Arnold
@cmorenc:
I fear the Huck too. Maybe it’s the incessant adverts for killing the health care reform bill that feature his face. Maybe it’s the practiced preacher tones in his voice.
Redshift
I think it’s solely because they’re getting more publicity. The race for the GOP nomination has started (even if all of this group are gaming it to milk it for personal riches as long as possible), so people other than absolute politics junkies are starting to pay attention. Familiarity is breeding contempt.
Maybe the American people do have some sense, even if they’re not smart enough to get that off-year elections matter a lot.
David Brooks (not that one)
With Newt, it’s not the Libya flip-floppin’, it’s the screwin’. Libya only gets noticed by the High Information DFHs. But every time he tries to raise his profile, even the marginally informed voters remember the serial mistresses. You don’t even have to tie it to impeachment hypocrisy (after all, the impeachment was about lying under oath, not sex, mirite?)
ruemara
There is enough stupid and evil out there to ensure that 2012 will be horse race. I would ignore the polls and gird up for a battle.
Jeffro
@Violet:
Two thoughts:
a) this is spot-on – Barbour and Gingrich have been so isolated in their bubble and so unchallenged, that they threw their nonsense out there and were quite shocked when it wasn’t the CW. (Let’s hope they keep it up!)
and while I hate to go O/T, and/or draw the wrath of Obots everywhere (of which I am one)
b) this comment made me think of the Obama presidency compared to the Obama campaign. The campaign was just amazingly on-message, and they knew what they had to do to achieve the nomination – point out the differences with Hillary on the Iraq War, run against W as much as possible, and inspire many of the lower-turnout demographics to really ramp up.
So, you know, I hope the 2012 campaign gets settled on the R side as quickly as possible, with as few defining campagin issues as possible. It’ll help Obama immensely.
Cmm
I think @Elia has it right on Newt…many of short memory recall that Newt led the 94 wave…there are far fewer references to how long his tenure lasted, and the only reason the fact that he gt his ass handed to him on the government shutdowns comes up lately is because everyone on the wing nut side is so eager to go there again.
since he left Congress, Newt has been treated as a Serious Intellectual on the Right, and has gotten used to his every oration being treated as a definitive word on the matter. But he has been opining and selling books to and giving speeches and “seminars” to people firmly ensconced in the echo chamber. No one seriously challenges him there. And with the relentless spew of coordinated talking points, his audience is used to whiplash turns on “what we all think”. And the notion that it is all about opposing Obama no matter what, and anything othernthan that is just rationalizations, is invisible to his usual target audience because that is so completely their mindset.
I think Newt appears to be flailing and clumsy because he is not used to people analyzing and looking for proof of what he says. He has forgotten that the piss warm kiddie pool he has been lording it over is not the whole pool, and the depth and water temperature are shocking him. I predict he will posture some more, collect money, then scurry back to his comfort zone. I dont think he will ever be a serious candidate.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yep, I agree she can make both a run and a dent, but as a “populist” sort of candidate, not one who’ll get support from the Big Money Boyz.
She’d do okay in Iowa simply by being from a state where some of them shop, donchano? But party leaders and backers know she can’t behave herself too long and will self-destruct at some point.
Come for the rubber chicken dinner, stay for the spectacle!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ruemara: Me too. Were I a gambler, and nothing on the scale of 9/11 or Lehman Bros happens between now and then, I would bet on an Obama win, but it will be close. Closer than ’08.
Ruckus
@BC:
Your post implies that it is possible that conservatards have principles and just haven’t found them. I believe that you meant that they can’t find something they don’t have, never had and never will have. Although on second thought IGMIWY* is a principle, it’s just that it sucks.
*I got mine, I want yours.
alwhite
Back in ’94 I had the misfortune of seeing that McLaughlin Report guy (John?) on 4 different TV shows and he made 4 completely different predictions on the outcome of the elections. I thought he was just his usual ignorant, blustering ass of a self. But about 3 weeks after the election I saw him twice play the one clip of him predicting the outcome that was the closest to what actually happened. He, of course, used it as proof of his great political acumen. Thats what I assume these yahoos are doing; in 6 months nobody will remember all the things they said & they will gladly remind people of the correct stuff.
Delia
@alwhite: Well, you have to admit, that’s a pretty good con to run. And it looks like the Village never catches on.
Gus
You’ve obviously bought into the Joe Klein stupidity that Newt’s a brilliant public intellectual. The only talent I’ve ever seen Newt show is the ability to blow smoke up the asses of an admiring press corps.
sukabi
Please DougJ, I’m begging you… don’t talk about that serial adulterer Newt, poling and weird positions in the same paragraph… just not good for the brain.
canuckistani
I miss Richard Nixon. He was evil, but he wasn’t stupid. Well, not that stupid.