Dano on Newt and others

Dano reports on the Republican debate last night. I missed it. I believe I was watching a re-run of Dexter. However, I'll take Dano's report as the whole truth and comment on the debate as well. Ron Paul, may be 75, but at least he knows what he believes and sticks by it. Dano's report also, oddly, stirs some sympathy for Newt. I've heard about Fannie and Freddie and the censure and all the marriages, but at least the guy can talk. Maybe that should be a threshold requirement.

I guess I am a little surprised that Gingrich was allowed to come out of this debate completely unscathed. Out in the real world, journalists, op-ed people, and probably the other campaigns, off the record, are attacking him vigorously. At the moment, believe it or not, Newt is ahead in Iowa and nationally. It has been my prediction that this will not last. I'll stick with that, but I will say that I would like nothing better than to be wrong. If the R's actually nominated Newt--and I guess that possibility has at least to be mentioned because Iowa votes in a mere 42 days--absent some earth-shaking change, I think Obama would mop the floor with him. But, anyway, at the moment, Newt leads, and last night he got nothing but softballs from the moderator, the audience questions, and the other candidates. Romney, with one exception to be mentioned below, did his usual good job. Cain has lost his confident, happy personality and now has a little of the "deer in the highlights" look to him. I think helives in great fear of making another showing of his vast ignorance of the sorts of things that a candidate for president should know. I think his reaction is completely understandable. I also think he's toast. Now, his poll numbers still show him to be arguably in contention, but the leak, and the fall, continue. Much as I dislike Perry, every time he has the floor, I cringe that he is going to embarrass himself. I suspect most other people have the same reaction. Bachmann had a decent performance and was heard from a lot. I doubt she will survive the Iowa Caucuses, but she has a bit of a chance there. Before her drop, she did win the Ames, Iowa straw poll; she was born in Iowa; she holds office in a neighboring state; and she has campaigned very, very heavily in Iowa. Maybe she will do well enough to survive there. My bet is no. This was a "national security" debate, and so a lot was on foreign policy. Ron Paul's views on those issues are clearly out of themainstream among most Republican voters. But he certainly did nothing to try to cover that up. Rather, he defended all of his dovish (and perhaps isolationist) views very vigorously and passionately, and, I thought, quite persuasively. He seemed to have part of the audience on his side. I continue to think he will do well better than he did in '08. Also, I think everyone seems to be forgetting that his age--75--has always been considered way too old for a presidential candidate. I didn't listen to any of the post-debate spin, and I haven't read anything about it yet, so this spin is purely my own. One thing that happened that I think may have been a mistake by Romney is this: one time Paul was speaking, with passion, about one of his foreign policy positions; the TV had a split screen so that you could see Paul speaking and you could also see Romney's reaction. Romney at one point "rolled his eyes." I think that may be significant because Ithink it has the potential of really pissing off the Paul supporters. They have cult-like loyalty. Romney may not have known he was on a split screen. If Romney gets the nomination, he will need those Paul voters. I think some day he may regret that eye-rolling. Like today, for instance. Gingrich's hope is that while each other "non-Romney" had its 15 minutes and then had its bubble burst, he gets his 15 minutes so late in the game that his bubble is still there when the real voting starts! I guess it's possible. I suppose stranger things have happened. But I can't think of any at the moment.

The Rise of Ron Paul

Dano in the following post discusses Gingrich's likely collapse and the benefit to Ron Paul. Ron Paul has long been my favorite Republican. In fact, I think he is better on war issues than almost all the Democrats. I am not a libertarian; far from it. A true libertarian begins with a belief in free will and I can't go there. But I also think that government largesse is distributed so unfairly that the poor may be helped if subsidies to the rich could be curbed. Anyway, as weird as Ron Paul is, I still prefer him to a Gingrich or a Romney.

Dano says:

Well, just after my last post, where I concluded that there was a good chance that Gingrich would emerge as the main alternative to Romney,Newt got hit with an avalanche of bad publicity about his work forFreddy Mac in the early 2000's. In a recent debate, a moderatorasked him what he did for Freddie Mac to earn $300,000, and Newt saidit was just advice "as a historian", that he told them they weremaking bad loans and that a bubble was looming. It turns out hewas paid $1.6M instead of $300,000, and the folks he spoke to atFreddy Mac say they remember no advice along the lines that Gingrichclaims. They said he was hired to help them state positions thatwould be Republican-friendly so that the then-Republican controlledCongress would not dismantle Freddy and Fannie.Freddy and Fannie are hated by the Tea Partiers, so when this sinksin, it is going to hurt him--pretty badly, I think. He was tryingto help Freddie survive Republican attacks, and he lied about itbesides that.It hasn't sunk in yet. The most recent polls in Iowa and N.H. showhim in a very strong second place in both, one per cent behind Cain inthe former and 2% behind Romney in the latter.So, I am back to the position that it looks like Romney if for noreason other than you can't beat someone with no one. It is 46 daysto the Iowa Caucuses, and 53 to the N.H. Primary. I don't know ifthere is even enough time for another candidate to become thenon-Romney. Now, Santorum is conservative enough to satisfy thebase and has no big flip flop problem. Jennifer Rubin in the Wapohas several times suggested that he might have an ascendency. He isalso not a bad debater. But Santorum has never been out of singledigits, mostly not even out of low single digits.Another man who warrants discussion is Ron Paul. His numbers areinching up. Now, he will never be nominated because he is out ofthe mainstream of the R party on a lot of issues, especially onforeign policy where he is a consistent dove. So, I have alwaysthought he would be irrelevant--getting his 10 per cent or maybe even15 or a little higher--never enough to win anything. Well, hisnumbers in some polls are starting to rub against 20. So, he mayfinish second in a lot of primaries; I say "a lot" because he will noteasily drop out. He has a cult-like following that keeps giving himmoney no matter what. So, he can run and run and run and run, andhe may keep finishing second a lot--might even eak out a win or twosomewhere.I'll stipulate that there is some wishful thinking here, but I amhoping he loses (he will) but he does so well that he gets pissed offand runs in the General Election as an independent or third partier.He did that before--Libertarian candidate in 1988. However, hisfollowing is much larger now. Paul believes in conspiracy theories,and is a little off balance, so I can imagine him working himself intoa lather with the idea that he was cheated out of winning by the REstablishment. If he were to do that, Obama would benefit greatly.One poll on this showed Obama beating Romney by 6 without Paul as athird partier but by 12 with Paul in the race.Paul would know that he would be hurting the R's, but I am not surethat would stop him. He dislikes the R's about as much as the D's.I have even noticed that he rarely criticizes Obama in the debates;rather, he criticizes the whole American status quo, and thus"everyone else." Now, the history of third party candidates is thatthey poll well early sometimes but their percentage usually drops byelection day, sometimes by a lot. But in the case of Paul, while hemight have some of that usual erosion, his cult-like backers aremostly going to stay with him. And they don't mind losing toomuch; they think they are on some mission which goes beyond 2012.That would be a real nightmare for the R's.Obama's prospects still look pretty decent to me, but I worry thatEurope may plunge the world into more economic distress, and it wouldbe hard to see him winning if the economy were even worse than it isnow.