Strife Within the Republican Party

The November 22^nd National Security Debate for the Republican presidential nominees is one of many examples of internal strife within the party.  The Washington Post assembled a brief clip, shown below, which demonstrates the differing viewpoints of the potential nominees.  Granted, the starkest contrast was between Ron Paul – a man who is not very well trusted by other Republicans in the first place – and other debaters, including Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum especially.  Although the brief clip does not lend itself to deep analysis of the issues, it is an effective measure of the varying stances taken by the candidates.  If nothing else, the “sound bites” that have been assembled are useful because they serve as a representative sample of the main points of the overall discussion.

What was shocking about the debate as a whole is that the debaters referred to the Democratic president as the political enemy relatively few times; that is, on few occasions did the Republican candidates rally around President Obama’s perceived negligence because they were concerned with standing out from the crowd.  Thus, the party itself is tending to lose solidarity as a result of the intense competition for GOP nominee.  Michele Bachman, who interestingly enough is all but out of contention, referred to the sitting president’s negligence regarding national security and terrorism most frequently.  Others were more concerned with debating each other.  Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, for instance, disagreed on the issue of Pakistan, whereas Ron Paul vigorously argued against both Rick Santorum and the newly-minted frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, on the topic of the Patriot Act.

With Newt Gingrich now acting as a credible, reasonably vetted frontrunner, the campaign for the only consistently strong contender – Mitt Romney – is contemplating making an attack on the candidate.  The rivalry between two strong, intelligent and well-prepared Republican candidates has the potential for even further disunity within the party.  According to Philip Rucker and Peter Wallsten in their Washington Post article “Mitt Romneystruggles to find a strategy to combat Newt Gingrich’s surge,” however, a political consultant of the Romney campaign has warned against any attacks on the new frontrunner.  Every attack, claims the political professional, has the potential to harm the Romney campaign and, in turn, propel a third candidate.

 

Given the new dynamic in the race between Romney and Gingrich, the potential for additional attacks will likely remain, regardless of the warnings against them.  The reason for this is, simply put, Romney did not expect to have to defend against a candidate that will not fall on his or her own; this philosophy is unlikely to work with Gingrich – a career politician with a Ph.D in History – as not only have his “skeletons in the closet” been revealed, but they are no more damaging than those of Romney.  Gingrich may have a history of taking varying stances on certain issues, but this is no worse than Romney’s history.  His marriage history may cause him trouble with the Evangelical electorate, but the recent opinion polls speak for themselves.  Ultimately, Romney is beginning to realize Newt is a threat, and this is reflected in the following interview.

Newt Gingrich’s Re-Emergence

Early on, Newt Gingrich’s non-traditional ways seemed to almost destroy his campaign.  He was always well aware of his role as a rebellious candidate, but his initial strategy as such simply did not work.  The question, then, is what has changed?  That is, what has he learned from the beginning of the summer, when over twelve of his staffers decided to call it quits?  The answer could be, in part, that he knew the potential for his re-emergence all along.  In a story reported by CNN’s Kevin Conlon in June, Gingrich was quoted as saying the following:  “In July of 2007 Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee and Rudy Giuliani the Republican [nominee].  John McCain was out of money and written off by the press.  The fact is campaigns go up and down.”

The campaign’s money situation is better than it has ever been.  When his staffers decided to quit en masse during the summer, Newt was in a very precarious chicken-or-the-egg situation:  was he broke because he did not have campaign workers to raise money, or was he unable to keep staff members because he had no funds?  It did not matter to Gingrich either way; all he knew was that he was going to continue on with his candidacy.  Throughout the summer period when he had very few campaign workers, he was able to raise a mere $800,000.  However, from September to November, reports Trip Gabriel in his New York Times article “Gingrich Eager to Be More Than an Anti-Romney,” the campaign raised $4 million.

As always, Gingrich is making it his priority to run an issues-only campaign.  He is attempting to avoid the “dirty tricks” of politics, essentially protesting the less glamorous side of campaigning.  In his June article, Kevin Conlon quoted the candidate during a speech he gave regarding his troubled campaign:  “I’m not running to talk about the nuance of campaigns.”  He stated plainly that he did not want to discuss “campaign process,” but rather the issues that the campaign would seek to address.  At the time, one of the major reasons his staff decided to leave was that Gingrich refused to do campaign-like things, such as actually touring important states like, for instance, Iowa.  Now that he has accepted the necessity of such traditional campaigning strategies, he is beginning to secure more funding and support from conservative strongholds.

He is currently showing strong poll numbers – almost overtaking Mitt Romney – and is consistently gaining more support from the “anti-Romney” portion of the electorate.  As a newly-minted frontrunner, however, he will soon find himself coming under attack.  Romney will not likely be the one making the attacks, since his strategy thus far has been to sit back and watch the candidates destroy themselves.  Yet there is still enough competition in the GOP nomination race to elicit harsh criticism of Newt’s liabilities, including his marriage history and his previous stances on global warming.  If he can survive these attacks, then he will stand a good chance of maintaining a competitive edge until the Republican Convention.

Political Ads Equal Propaganda?

Evan Tracey, the president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, responds to a caller who asks about the “half truths” of the political ads being circulated.  He  claims that a particular side’s view of the truth can actually be construed as propaganda, and that it is not incumbent upon the campaign to give a context.

The Truth Scale of Attack Ads

Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact, describes the majority of 2010 campaign attack ads.  He says that many of the charges included in the ads are “barely true.”  In other words, there is a modicum of truth to the charges, but the truth is very much distorted.

Fewer Campaign Ads on Television

Charles Black, former campaign advisor to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, describes the political environment before the emergence of the internet.  He discusses how social media has become more important than the traditional television campaign ads, which was all that was at political strategists’ disposal during his time.

The Secretly Rational Jon Huntsman

When Jon Huntsman discusses an issue, he does something that an alarmingly low number of potential GOP presidential candidates are doing these days:  he makes sense.  He is not extreme, and nor is he concerned with saying anything in a dramatic fashion.  This level-headedness is, ironically, a major reason that he is doing so poorly in recent opinion polls.  Individuals like Hermann Cain, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and even Michele Bachman have a great deal of name recognition; for a few of the candidates, a potential voter might even conjure up a face with a particular context when the name is said.  Although a majority of these candidates is known best for some sort of egregious campaign mistake, the excessive coverage they receive tends unfortunately to drown out the more rational candidates.  As a result, too few people know enough about Jon Huntsman to throw their support behind him in an opinion poll.

Huntsman recognizes the sensationalism inherent in the media coverage of the Republican nominee race.  He nevertheless remains hopeful, saying that it is still the “pregame” and that people will ultimately make the rational decision as they cast their ballots.  Unlike other candidates, Huntsman is concerned less with being overtly partisan and more concerned with reinstating a level of Trust in the American political system.

His discussion of Trust in the previous video may possibly be just another work of sophistry, a means of manipulating a collectively naïve public.  Yet his point rings true either way.  Nobody seems to trust government these days – Republicans cannot trust Democrats, and vice versa; Tea Partiers choose to shun the majority of governmental action, both presidential and congressional; and even Occupy Wall Street protesters tend to be wary of the existing power structure.  At least Huntsman recognizes this sad fact.

In light of Hermann Cain’s most recent “Libya” flub, Huntsman’s experience as a diplomat working for the Bush Administration in East Asia would be a major asset to the country.  As Cain can hardly formulate an opinion on President Obama’s response to the Libya crisis and has trouble naming the leader of Uzbeki-beki-beki-stan-stan, having a commander-in-chief who speaks Mandarin fluently, like Huntsman, would be a much more preferable alternative. 

One potential snag the candidate might be experiencing is his moderate tendencies.  According to Michael D. Shear’s New York Times article, “Huntsman on Evolution? ‘Call MeCrazy,’” for instance, Huntsman does not agree with Rick Perry that evolution is a fallacy.  He agrees also that humans could potentially have left a carbon footprint, thus having a part in exacerbating the phenomenon of global warming.  “He doesn’t believe the party can be an anti-science party,” says Huntsman spokesman Tim Miller.   To those who claim that he “lacks faith” because of his pro-evolution stance, he has credentials as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan.  It is unclear if this fact is simply another snag, however.  Nevertheless, if Mitt Romney can overcome being a Mormon with certain socially liberal tendencies, then so can Huntsman.  It matters not what religion the candidate follows as long as he vows to carry out his duties with composure and rationality.

Potential Attack Ads

The most devastating attack ad of the 2004 election was arguably the "whichever way the wind blows" piece created by the Bush campaign.  In the advertisement, footage of John Kerry wind surfing in the ocean is shown while a narrator describes his history of political flip-flopping.  Flip-flopping, it seemed, was the biggest weakness of either of the candidates at that point in time.

Now it seems the only chance the GOP has to defeat President Obama in the 2012 general election is himself a documented flip-flopper – Mitt Romney.  This, in other words, is the most preferable choice for the Republicans who want to realistically take back the White House.  If the wind surfing ad was able to sway as much public opinion as it did, then imagine the potential for dramatic attack ads in the upcoming election cycle.

All Democratic political strategists would have to do before the general election would be to play clips of the candidates, followed by a narrator asking, Is this who you want for president?  In the best case scenario, it would be a message similar to the wind surfing ad; in the worst scenarios, clips from interviews like the following will be played:

When asked a direct question regarding United States foreign policy with Libya, Hermann Cain was unable to give a direct response.  This lack of a direct response is by no means a stylistic choice; he simply did not know what, exactly, the interviewer was asking, let alone an actual answer to the question. He equivocated and fumbled through the response for over five minutes, attempting to somehow make himself looks good.  He emphasized once again the unimportance of having foreign policy knowledge, as he could always “look up” facts if a situation presented itself.  Moreover, Cain gave the overtly partisan non-answer to the question:  he disagreed with how President Obama handled the crisis without really knowing what he did in the first place.  In other words, he felt that it was his duty to disagree with a Democratic president on principle.  Only later did he backtrack somewhat from this idea, when it was explained to him that many Republicans actually agreed with the president on the matter.

If Cain does not become the GOP nominee, then maybe the attack ads will look something like this:      

Realistically, this could be a case of bad nerves.  However, this flub is also a terrible mistake for a presidential candidate, as not only does it lend itself to detrimental sound-bites, but it also looks bad for the candidate when the entire question and answer sequence is viewed.  If nothing else, the potential nominee should be comfortable enough with his or her own plan that, even when placed under stress, the candidate should be able to access major points without a problem.  Ultimately, an attack ad using this video would need no framing.

Again, if Mitt Romney – the flip-flopper – becomes the nominee, then there is the potential for another wind surfing ad.  Republican strategists must not be sleeping well at night knowing that this is likely the best possible outcome of the GOP nomination process.