THE STUMP JANUARY 20, 2012
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
HARTSVILLE, S.C. -- If South Carolina is on the verge of its second great rebellion, then it is happening not with a bang but with a shrug. Specifically, the sort of shrug I got here in the heart of the state's cotton country from a staunch conservative by the name of Elayne Mahn, a retired admissions officer at tiny Coker College, when I asked her why revelations about Newt Gingrich's alleged request for an "open marriage" were not enough, in combination with all the rest of Newt's baggage, to scare her off of voting for him Saturday.
"Why is everybody harping on his personal stuff, when Bill Clinton was getting favors from Monica Lewinsky in the White House?" she huffed. "And now everyone says he was one of our best presidents." Yes, but, I ventured, wasn't there a question of hypocrisy, given that Newt was leading the impeachment push against Clinton at the same time as he was carrying on with Callista? Not so, said Mahn. "Newt was pretty open about his relationship." Um, no. He was open about his relationship -- and supposedly asked for an open marriage -- only after his second wife, Marianne, found out about it in the late 1990s, years after the affair started. Still, Mahn was unmoved. "It's immaterial to the way that he would lead his country," she said. (The one thing that worried her about Newt, she said, was his age and weight: "Let's face it, this country is plagued by obesity and Newt needs to get in shape.")
Mahn was far from the only Gingrich supporter to cite Clinton to me in rationalizing away Newt's marital messes. If South Carolina -- a state where even radio ads for pest control companies invoke the Lord -- gives Newt a win tomorrow, a rare act of defiance in a state where Republicans invariably jump on the establishment bandwagon in the presidential primary, it will be siding with the bad boy from the state next door partly because of the bad boy from the South's other flank. Somewhere, Strom Thurmond is smiling.
But of course it's not really about Newt. It's about the man that Republicans here were asked to rubber stamp, just as they rubber stamped John McCain in 2008 because it was his turn. It's Romney's turn now but for too many, he's a concession too far. For Rick Santorum supporter Kathy Mangone, a retiree who moved to the state 15 years ago from Pennsylvania, it's about Romneycare. "It's hard for him to stand there and attack Obamacare when Obama can just say, thanks for the blueprint!" she said. In general, she said, "Romney's been all over the place. He's like a weeping willow, blowing around. We need someone who will stand for what he believes."
For Kevin Giompalo, a 38-year-old truck driver who voted for McCain in the 2008 primary, Romney's being "too middle of the road, with no solid positions" was the main problem, but he was also put off by his resistance to releasing his tax returns. "He's waffling too much on the tax issue," he said. "It'll make it too easy for Obama -- he'll eat him up about the 99 percent stuff." Giompalo will vote for Newt instead. But what about the personal baggage? "I just believe redemption is the key," he said. "Some people do things at different times. He's answered all the questions; he hasn't run from it. I'm satisfied with how he's lived his life the last, what, 12 years."
Mark Moore, who runs a brick manufacturing company near here, says it's a "personal thing about Romney" that pushes him away from him and to Newt. "I just don't latch onto his presentation. The way he presents himself doesn't appeal to me. It's too polished. Whereas Newt will fire right back at you." He made the comparison I've heard repeatedly here: Newt is Reagan. "What convinced the Soviet Union that Reagan was serious about nuclear weapons was when he fired the air traffic controllers. Newt's that way. He means what he says he's gonna do." But what about his baggage? I asked. Won't that keep him from getting elected?? "It could be an issue, but it's how you spin it," Moore said. "It's like when Clinton had his fiasco in the Oval Office..."
Let me interject here three mini-theories to explain why this is happening, beyond the obvious one: that Newt got one helluva spark with his food-stamp riff against Juan Williams Monday night. One, there is no question Gingrich benefits from his (former) Deep Southern address -- voters here speak of him with familiarity, as they would of a roguish uncle who's trying to settle down. Second, Newt is oddly not being hammered as much as he was by Romney's Super-PAC in Iowa, even though his chances here are far, far better than they were in the final week in Iowa. The Iowa airwaves were full of Newt's $1.8 million grab from Freddie Mac. Yet Moore, for instance, said he'd never even thought of that issue as he moved toward supporting Newt. Third, it seems quite possible that the utter dominance of Republicans in this state, and the rise of the Tea Party here, has made the state's Republicans a little, how shall we say, detached from political realities. (Not to mention inured against philandering politicians, what with their Buenos Aires-bound former governor.) If you can elect to Congress Tea Partiers like Tim Scott alongside die-hard stalwarts like "you lie" Joe Wilson, if Lindsey Graham is unacceptably moderate, then who's to say you can't elect Newt Gingrich president?
Trying gamely to talk some sense into voters is Santorum, who has boiled his pitch down to a pure electability one -- a bold move for a man who lost his last race against a Democrat by 18 points. When I saw him speaking to a small but fervent group of supporters at a BBQ joint in Lexington, just outside Columbia, Santorum was making the Goldilocks argument, which he'd picked up from a Christian talk show host -- "one candidate is a little too radioactive...and one candidate is just too darn cold...we need a candidate who's just right." A woman in the crowd ventured another electability metaphor -- the game of paper scissors rock. "McCain beat Romney, and Obama beat McCain, so what we need to beat Obama is someone else," she said. Except that under the metaphor of the game, it actually would be Romney who would beat Obama...
My favorite figurative language was quoted second hand by Mangone, the Santorum supporter. She had been making calls on her candidate's behalf and reached an older woman who was despairing over her choice. "I'm about to vote for my dog Oscar," the woman said. "I'm faced with choosing between a guy with a lot of money in offshore accounts and a guy who is an adulterer." Mangone of course told the woman, "Not really -- there's Rick Santorum!" The older woman was doubtful. "At this point, I'm just so disgusted."
Which pretty much says it all. If Gingrich manages to win here Saturday, it will throw us all into a tizzy as the circus heads to Florida. But make no mistake: it will be a grudging and settling choice, just a different sort of settling than settling on Mitt would have been. A more grandiose settling, if you will. Not so much amazing as mildly amazing.
follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis
21 comments
Alec - get a grip! Do not overplay Gingrich being from Georgia. People do not want Romney, and Gingrich reminds them of when everyone could still get a job and the Federal budget was balanced. It is why my knee-jerk Democratic friend who will defend Rangel for hours, recently asked me why Bill Clinton is not running in 2012. Santorum reminds real fiscal conservatives of Big Government spending under DeLay/Bush43, especially NCLB and Medicare Part D. Try finding out why Ron Paul has spent the past few years getting his devotees in place as Romney delegates on future ballots...THAT is some story.
- K2K
January 20, 2012 at 5:29pm
Under pain of burnt mental fuses, do not, EVER, attempt to find reason in the American voter, and particularly in those in the lower 3 quartiles of the education scale. My old man, bless his rascally soul, once switched from Bobby Kennedy to George Wallace in the blink of the overnight tragedy that took Kennedy out of the race forever. My old man was not dumb - he was largely self educated, but he mastered everything he needed to run a large and complex farm quit successfully enough to go from "can't afford shoes for all the kids" to millionaire by the time he retired. But his thinking, like so many in the political sphere was a mix of gut-reaction and catchy one liners, that utterly defied reason. I mean Kennedy to Wallace with a straight face is something I beheld with wonder then, and recall with equal wonder now. Kick a rock in rural Iowa and 9 times out of 10 you'll find another just like him, as measured by the shear opacity of how they make decisions. It surprises me not at all if South Carolina is the same way.
- IowaBeauty
January 20, 2012 at 5:50pm
IowaBeauty, People who turn their political affiliation around 180 degrees almost overnight are, as you say, inscrutable. And intellectuals can sometimes pull the same stunt. David Horowitz comes to mind--raised by communists, worked for the Black Panthers--and then when he became convinced that the Panthers had murdered a friend of his, he went all the way over to the Right. I can understand someone who, after a trauma, draws back from Left or Right somewhat. What I can't comprehend is someone who goes from one side completely to the other side. I guess it doesn't have much to do with thinking. There might be something emotional in the background waiting to surface. South Carolina Republicans can certainly switch from one candidate to another without a lot of reason being involved. BTW, Horowitz's Radical Son is a fascinating account of his conversion from Left to Right--one of the best political memoirs I've ever read. Maybe Horowitz subconsciously resented being brainwashed by his parents while he was growing up and was just waiting, like Jim Morrison was, to "break on through to the other side."
- magboy47.
January 21, 2012 at 1:32am
Tell me how Horowitz was wrong to go from the totalitarian beliefs in which he was raised to embracing the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? I don't think the ideas of Marx and Lenin and those of the English and American Enlightenment are "two extremes". Do you? The difference between Horowitz and today's so-called liberals is that Horowitz is unabashedly pro-democracy, pro-freedom, pro-Western Civilization while the "liberals", to put it frankly, are at best equivocal as to which side they are on.
- bulbman1066
January 21, 2012 at 3:24am
SC is actually three states, the low country, the piedmont, and the mountain regions, each with different populations and economies. While the unemployment rate in SC spiked following the financial collapse, it was concentrated (in the piedmont). As for the low country, the Charleston area in particular, the downturn in the economy took a decidedly different path. As housing prices collapsed and foreclosures exploded in the low country of my state (Georgia), not so in the Charleston area. Downtown (the historic area), James Island, West Ashley, Mount Pleasant, North Charleston, Daniel Island, housing prices were resilient, as new residents continued to pour into the Charleston area and as the local economy continued to thrive. Confirming the economic rule that what goes up must come down, last year housing prices began the inevitable correction, and as the correction spread, so did the inventory of unsold houses for sale. What hasn't occurred is the realization that housing prices must come down, by a lot. In other words, what has already occurred in most places, mine included, is only occurring now in the Charleston area. And acceptance of the reality is made more difficult by good news, including the Boeing plant, and the irrational belief that it will create the buyers for all those houses for sale. The point is that the anxiety most folks around the country have been experiencing for three to four years is being experienced in the Charleston area only now. And anxiety can make voters act unpredictably as MacGillis has observed.
- rayward
January 21, 2012 at 9:02am
Iowabeauty has raised a very important point about how people think or, perhaps more accurately, fail to think. Albert Speer once complained about someone whose name I will not mention that, although he was very intelligent and could sometimes come up with solutions that experts overlooked, was nevertheless fatally hampered by a lack of systematic training in any field, which kept him from realizing the need for methodological thinking and comprehensive planning. I think the general problem is even worse that that particular instance. Speer was wrong to believe that expertise has much general cognitive effect. Many very well educated people do not apply systematic thinking to areas outside of their field of expertise. There should be no college educated creationists. And there would be no creationist car mechanics if they thought as carefully about evolution as they do about carburetors. Somehow, people need to learn to think logically and reasonably about politics and religion. Damned if I know how to do it.
- Vekert
January 21, 2012 at 11:52am
But, bulbman, Horowitz embraces every Fox News talking point. He makes good arguments against liberals sometimes, but he doesn't disagree with anything in Right ideology. He's right back in the trap that he justifiably escaped from. That kind of thinking is not the American way. America became great by people admitting that somebody they disagree with might have a legitimate argument. It's called compromise, something the Soviets, especially Stalin, never knew--at least in public. I greatly admire Horowitz's mind, but I wish he would use it to creep toward the Center occasionally. To me, that's what makes America the shining city upon a hill that it still is. Yes, bulbman, I can be a Near Leftist (I've never been a liberal) and still love America. And, yes, I served in the military--Air Force Intelligence--and I'm proud of it. That good enough for ya? BTW, you sometimes shade your arguments toward the Center. Horowitz could learn something from you.
- magboy47.
January 21, 2012 at 11:57am
A great deal of what has been described as "liberal" or even "left" policy in American history has been in fact pragmatic and solution-oriented thinking, from Teddy Roosevelt and the trust-busting through the New Deal and the Civil Rights Act to today's proposals for financial sector regulation. The fact that otherwise (supposedly) intelligent people can seriously call President Obama a socialist reduces any substantial arguments they might have to meaningless abuse.
- ironyroad
January 21, 2012 at 1:03pm
It's fascinating, watching an entire State's electorate sell their soul to the devil. They don't like Mitt, he's too moderate, too Massachusetts, too rich, too reasonable. The complete lunatics (Palin, Bachman) are out of the race. They've got Newt Gingrich telling them exactly what they want to hear, going "in your face!" to Juan Williams, being the swaggering confident anti-Federalist. They haven't woken up to the fact that Gingrich is Catholic, and ex-Baptist, a two-time divorcee and adulterer, a completely unprincipled hypocritical man pandereing for their votes. That his policies will work to 'save' South Carolina just as badly as Mitt's would. But for anti-Obama, anti-Fedralism, anti-Blacks, anti-Immigrant, anti-Abortion, anti-Media -- Newt's the man of the moment. So they'll vote for him in celebration of all these things, unaware that there's no THERE there, that they're simply voting against things. The things they'll actually GET for this are ... nothing. They won't get anti-abortion passed, they won't get Obama defeated, they won't get Christianity as the law of the land, they won't get lower taxes, they won't get a better economy, they won't get more money from the Feds for doing less. They won't get less Federal intervention in their state's anti-black anti-minority anti-immigrant policies. They're registering their protest to everything that could possibly drag their state out of the 1860's, while they suffer the economy of the 1920's. It's a deal with the devil, full of deceit and Orwellian words they want to hear, that delivers emptiness. I just hope Florida isn't as ignorant and racist as South Carolina is revealing.
- AllanL5
January 21, 2012 at 1:37pm
Allan5, You're right. Most Republican voters in S.C. are like nullification voters on a jury. They're protesting something from the recent past, rather than voting to improve their future. And many Palmetto State residents are living in the distant past. Some of them hark back to the day in 1856, when Representative Preston Brooks of S.C. bludgeoned the anti-slavery Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, nearly to death on the Senate floor with his heavy walking cane. I would suggest that the Democrats and Independents exit S.C. and leave the Republicans there to secede again. It is far and away the most messed up state in the Union. Republican politicians there are proudly proclaiming now that "South Carolina picks the president." But there are Democrats in the state, too. I think they'll pick Obama.
- magboy47.
January 21, 2012 at 2:39pm
Why is everybody harping on his personal stuff, when Bill Clinton was getting favors from Monica Lewinsky in the White House?" she huffed. "And now everyone says he was one of our best presidents." Here is the difference. If I was harshly criticizing people for being oveweight and I was obese, would you conclude I said things that I didn't truly believe but had some other motive?
- Nusholtz
January 21, 2012 at 3:39pm
The only argument in favor of Romney has been "electability"; now that has been exposed as a fraud, given the taxes and Bain issues. The others, of course, are less electable. Glad I'm not a Republican. Has there ever been a prior presidential election when either party had, at this point, no options for nominating a viable candidate?
- cf1125
January 21, 2012 at 7:02pm
We all want to be good as individuals and as a society. It's very difficult, especially in areas such as sexuality and money. If I am not that good as an individual, I will probably still want my society to be good, and I will probably speak in favor of goodness as a principle. If I am not good as an individual, and if I am a religious believer (or play one on television), there are various time tested techniques. If I am a Catholic (I am not, so if you consider my statement incorrect or offensive) let me have it, I can go to Confession and be absolved of my sins. By the way, hasn't Gingrich become a Catholic? Isn't there something in Catholicism about not getting divorced and not getting re-married? Well, never mind. If I am a Protestant, don't I have to go directly to Jesus for forgiveness? (I am not a Protestant, so ditto about letting e have it if I have it wrong? As far as money, wasn't there something about camels and eyes of needles in the Bible. Well, there probably aren't that many camels in South Carolina, except perhaps for the kinds on cigarette packages. Here's the thing. [Note--I am not a religious believer -- so if you are -- let me have it -- as some people are in another thread.] Christianity has been one of the most successful religions in the history of humanity. Perhaps one reason it has thrived is that it is so flexible and adaptable, rather like "Alice's Restaurant," where you can find anything you want, except perhaps Mitt Romney, though he's doing his damnedest to sneak into the tent, as is the entire Mormon religion. Perhaps they should change their logo from Joseph Smith to a camel.
- skahn
January 21, 2012 at 8:28pm
I see Newtie won S.C. I really hope he's the nominee. He would bring out millions of Democratic voters who normally wouldn't care about the election this November. Remember, he was instrumental in impeaching Clinton over nothing. But S.C. is like another planet compared to some other states. I think Romney still leads in overall delegates, 18-13. Gingrich could still lose. Maybe Santorum will win on the 14th ballot at the convention.
- magboy47.
January 21, 2012 at 8:53pm
The total delegates figure is now 18-17, Romney. A horse race. Is that figure for S.C. alone? How could it be, if Gingrich won there? I'm confused.
- magboy47.
January 21, 2012 at 9:06pm
"With about 95% of polling places reporting, Gingrich had 40% of the vote, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney getting 27% and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum getting 17%. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas had 13%. Based on early returns and exit polls, CNN projected Gingrich the winner." [cnn] ... "'Gingrich has been harder to kill than Rasputin,' Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos said Saturday. 'He has been dead three times in this campaign, and ... the guy keeps coming back.'" I can't think of a more apt comparison than Rasputin, perhaps my favorite character in Russian history. I am sure Gingrich, an exemplary history buff, would be pleased also by the comparison.
- skahn
January 21, 2012 at 11:03pm
The real issue is the Jobless President. Obama does not want to create jobs. All of his behavior these three years has been not an iota to create jobs. Let us kick ass and not re-elect the Jobless President.
- JAIMECHUCH
January 21, 2012 at 11:46pm
You haven't heard of the American Jobs Act Obama proposed in a nationwide address last fall? Putting Americans back to work repairing our infrastructure? Could create almost 2 million jobs fairly quickly? The jobs act that Republicans say would help Obama get re-elected, so they want nothing to do with it?
- magboy47.
January 21, 2012 at 11:54pm
Obama is the Jobless President. For three years he has done nothing to address 25 million unemployed plus 10 million homes under foreclosure. The electorate blames his ineptitude about the economy. The Jobless President can not hide or run away.
- JAIMECHUCH
January 22, 2012 at 1:29am
Obama did not fight to create jobs. He is the Jobless President. He should not be re-elected.
- JAIMECHUCH
January 22, 2012 at 1:32am
magboy47. Did Obama fight about his proposal? Actually trust me , I have observed Obama from day one as president. No intensions in creating jobs. It is in his nature. He deserves the title of Jobless President. Why? What is the rational to keep 25 million unemployed, and 10 million homes under foreclosure? And doing very little to help them? Why? The Jobless President failed. And to tell you the truth he doesn't care. But helas the electorate cares. Republicans, democrats and independents will vote against the Jobless President.
- JAIMECHUCH
January 22, 2012 at 3:06am