Topic: GOP race

Which Rick Shows Up Tonight in Arizona?

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.22.2012 - 10:35 AM

Tonight’s presidential debate in Mesa, Arizona, is rightly be touted as a crucial moment in the Republican race. Much has changed in the weeks since the GOP candidates were brought together in front of the television cameras. Rick Santorum, whose strong showings in the Florida debates were not thought to signify any real hope of his being the nominee, is now leading in the national polls. Mitt Romney, who was hoping to create an aura of inevitability, is now struggling to stay ahead of Santorum in his home state of Michigan, and Newt Gingrich has sunk to last place in some surveys and must fight the belief he no longer has a ghost of a chance of victory.

But while Santorum will enjoy being in the center of the stage rather, as up until now he has been relegated to the sides, he will also have to cope with being the object of attacks from both Romney and Gingrich in a way that he has never had to deal with in the many debates that have preceded this one. While all the participants, save Ron Paul, have something to prove tonight, the outcome may turn largely on one question: which Rick Santorum shows up in Mesa? Will it be the confident, relaxed and personable Santorum who has done so well in the previous encounters and whose image is as a caring father and clean politician who is not willing to engage in mudslinging? Or will it be the angry culture warrior whose obsessions with gays, contraception and abortion have become the liberal caricature of conservatism in the last week?

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A Bad Week for Santorum

Alana Goodman 02.22.2012 - 10:14 AM

Rick Santorum is trying to dodge questions about a 2008 speech, where he suggested that “Satan” was planning to infiltrate the United States. If he thought he’d be able to avoid addressing this during a general election campaign, he was kidding himself. Americans may be religious, but they’re not looking for a president who chalks up our societal problems to meddling by the devil.

The Satan comments aren’t Santorum’s only problem this week. His alleged private conversation with Sheriff Joe Arpaio about the veracity of Obama’s birth certificate is also something he needs to respond to:

Arpaio said he plans to endorse one of the four remaining GOP candidates in the coming weeks. But the sheriff added he would not make his choice known before he announces the findings of his birth certificate probe at a news conference set for March 1. This endorsement would be his second in the race; in November 2011, he endorsed then-candidate Rick Perry.

Santorum, he said, seemed to have no problem with the nature of his investigation.

“He had no problems with what I told him that I may be doing,” Arpaio told reporters.

The sheriff said he is conducting the investigation after receiving requests from “the Tea Party.”

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Rick Santorum and the Social Issues

Peter Wehner 02.21.2012 - 4:15 PM

One of the arguments Senator Rick Santorum made on behalf of his campaign was that if he were the nominee, he’d succeed in making Barack Obama the subject of the election, not himself.

That was before Santorum shot to the top of the GOP field. What candidates can never fully anticipate, until they’re considered a frontrunner, is the sheer intensity of the focus on their past record and words. That’s now happening to Santorum, and suddenly he’s on the defensive, despite his best efforts to avoid that from happening.

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Another GOP Momentum Shift?

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.21.2012 - 3:49 PM

Just when the public was starting to get used to the idea of Rick Santorum perhaps becoming the new Republican presidential frontrunner, it appears that another momentum shift may be under way. After steady gains in national and state polls in the last two weeks, the Santorum juggernaut — which has been powered by both the passion of evangelicals and the widespread dissatisfaction on the right with Mitt Romney — may be starting to lose a bit of steam. Another new poll out of Michigan shows Romney gaining ground today and resuming a small lead over Santorum. When combined with other surveys showing the former Massachusetts governor assuming a sizeable lead in Arizona — which along with Michigan will hold primaries seven days from now — the Michigan polls ought to worry Santorum’s camp.

Up until late last week, Santorum had been leading a charmed life as far as avoiding negative publicity and engendering good will. But when the debate about contraception morphed from one about defending the religious freedom of the Catholic Church into one that centered on Santorum’s personal views on the matter, it served to remind Republicans his stands on social issues tend to be outside of the mainstream. While most Republicans do not hold his ideas about the importance of the family and opposition to abortion and gay marriage against him, the last week has been highly reminiscent of the way his 2006 Senate re-election campaign was dogged by controversial quotes from his book, It Takes a Family. Though Romney is still plagued by his inability to connect with ordinary voters and doubt has been cast on the notion of his greater electability, the kerfuffle about birth control may have been just enough to halt Santorum’s momentum and give his more moderate opponent a chance to save his candidacy before the voters in his home state of Michigan destroyed his hopes.

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Robot Romney for President

Bethany Mandel 02.21.2012 - 2:10 PM

Today, BuzzFeed released “25 Photos of Mitt Romney Looking Normal,” and — to my surprise — he actually looks normal! Along with the photo series, one of BuzzFeed’s political reporters wrote a column highlighting the Romney family’s social media prowess, wondering why the candidate can’t connect as well as his family members seem to (without ever seeming to reach a conclusion). BuzzFeed reports:

Mary Romney’s blog, Kendrick said, is a “very typical” example of the genre. Titled “Me & My Boys,” it has apparently been open to public view for years, drawing occasional interest from the political class. The blog was made private shortly after BuzzFeed asked the campaign about it, and about the Romney family’s social media presence in general.

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Adelson and Santorum Agree on Gambling

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.19.2012 - 12:02 PM

Last Thursday, Jim Geraghty speculated at National Review that Sheldon Adelson might have a business motive for his preferences in the Republican presidential race. Adelson has donated more than $10 million to keep Newt Gingrich’s campaign alive and has seemed to indicate he will support Mitt Romney if and when Gingrich throws in the towel. But Adelson doesn’t appear to be at all interested in Rick Santorum, the Republican who is currently leading in the national polls. That caused Geraghty to ponder whether Santorum’s opposition to gambling may be causing the casino mogul to want to keep Gingrich in the race so as to ensure that Santorum can’t beat Romney.

Given that Adelson’s priority is ensuring a strong pro-Israel alternative to President Obama and that Santorum is as solid a supporter of the Jewish state as Gingrich and Romney, Geraghty’s notion seemed logical. But this morning COMMENTARY received an e-mail letter-to-the-editor from Adelson’s office (in response to posts by Alana and myself on the subject of Santorum’s stand on gambling) that should debunk this thesis. It reads:

Regarding your February 16th article: “Santorum wants to ban gambling?”

I agree with Rick Santorum. I am in favor of the comment he made about destination casinos and I am, as he is, against any type of gaming on the Internet. You might also know I am not against Rick Santorum. I am in favor of Newt Gingrich.

Sheldon G. Adelson

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Santorum’s Contraception Contradiction

Peter Wehner 02.19.2012 - 6:15 AM

Rick Santorum was interviewed Friday morning by CBS’s Charlie Rose on the former Pennsylvania senator’s views on contraception. It’s clear that Senator Santorum is tired of talking about contraception. One can understand why.

Senator Santorum’s core defense is that he’s supported federal funding for contraception in his role as a public official, even though he’s personally opposed (as a faithful Catholic) to it. But in this October 2011 interview Santorum – presumably in an effort to contrast himself with the other GOP candidates — insisted that he would talk about contraception if he were president. He argued that contraception, even within the context of marriage, was damaging to the institution. In talking about contraception, Santorum said this: “Again, I know most presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things, but I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues. These have profound impact on the health of our society.” [emphasis added]

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Romney, Santorum Back Out of Debate?

Alana Goodman 02.16.2012 - 4:10 PM

Mitt Romney was the first to announce earlier this afternoon he’ll skip the March 1 CNN Georgia debate:

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul emails over to confirm, “Gov. Romney will be spending a lot of time campaigning in Georgia and Ohio ahead of Super Tuesday. With eight other states voting on March 6, we will be campaigning in other parts of the country and unable to schedule the CNN Georgia debate. We have participated in 20 debates, including 8 from CNN.”

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Adelson’s New Goal: Take Down Santorum

Alana Goodman 02.16.2012 - 2:47 PM

Considering the attacks Sheldon Adelson funded against Mitt Romney – a candidate he reportedly likes – just imagine how he treats candidates he disagrees with:

In a bit of political chess, Mr. Adelson is ready to not only directly support the former House speaker in the Republican primary, but to use his cash to push Rick Santorum from his position atop the latest national polls, according to people who have discussed the matter with Mr. Adelson.

If Mr. Gingrich could afford to continue campaigning, one of those people said, he might be able to draw off conservative and evangelical voters from Mr. Santorum, improving the chances of Mitt Romney, who Mr. Adelson believes has a better chance to win November’s general election. …

Mr. Adelson doesn’t oppose Mr. Santorum, but he doesn’t share the former Pennsylvania senator’s socially conservative positions, including his strong anti-abortion views, associates said. Mr. Santorum was one of only two Republicans who didn’t meet with Mr. Adelson in October around the time of a candidates’ debate in Las Vegas, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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What Do You Want to Spend the Next Nine Months Defending?

Alana Goodman 02.16.2012 - 2:02 PM

One of the most persuasive cases against nominating Mitt Romney is that he would make it difficult for Republicans to attack Obama over health care during the general election. But conservatives need to go beyond just asking themselves what ground they want to challenge Obama on. They also need to ask themselves what ground they want to spend the general election defending.

If Mitt Romney is the nominee, Republicans will have to scale back the all-out assault on ObamaCare they hoped to pursue. But at the same time, they won’t have to spend the race mounting a vocal defense of RomneyCare, since Democratic attacks aren’t likely to focus on that issue. Instead, Democrats will target Romney on class warfare, business regulations, taxes, Wall Street, and so on.

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Reports of the Death of Conservative Consensus Are Greatly Exaggerated

Seth Mandel 02.16.2012 - 1:16 PM

One of the more interesting questions to come out of the visibly pronounced chasm between the Republican Party’s moderate/establishment and more conservative/Tea Party wings is what happens if the Republican candidate for president loses to President Obama in November? I waded into the discussion a bit a couple months ago, when there seemed to be a distinct possibility that Newt Gingrich would solidify his place as the “not Romney” of the election and make it a two-man race between himself and the former Massachusetts governor.

Today, Ben Domenech proposes an updated version of the question over at Ricochet. If conservatives would be blamed for a Gingrich or Rick Santorum loss (social conservatives especially, in the case of the latter) and moderates for a theoretical Romney loss, Domenech asks, with which candidate would conservatives rather lose? I don’t have an answer to this particular question, but rather an observation about it: This is almost entirely a function of the specific candidates competing for the nomination this year, and not particularly representative of each wing more generally.

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Santorum and His Case Against Contraception

Peter Wehner 02.15.2012 - 6:45 PM

Now that he’s surging in the polls, Rick Santorum’s words are being scrutinized not just by his political opponents but also by members of the press. For example, Michael Scherer of Time magazine highlights this October 2011 quote from Santorum:

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also unitive, but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Again, I know most presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things, but I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues. These have profound impact on the health of our society.

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Romney’s Biography Is Not Enough

Peter Wehner 02.15.2012 - 5:50 PM

The Romney campaign is now turning its attacks on the GOP candidate, Rick Santorum, who poses a greater threat to the former Massachusetts governor than any so far. Will it work? Perhaps, though I doubt it will work as well as the attacks on Newt Gingrich. The criticisms of the former House speaker succeeded because they seemed to conform to reality, with Gingrich himself confirming concerns about his emotional state and erratic style. It won’t be as easy to portray Santorum as a faux conservative, especially when the charge is being leveled by Romney, who has his own history of deviations from conservative orthodoxy. There’s also a chance Romney’s tactics will begin to backfire (which is what the Santorum campaign is hoping for in putting out this ad).

At some point, though, Romney has to begin making an (effective) affirmative case for his nomination. That remains his chief weakness so far – the inability to tie his campaign to a great cause. Right now, Governor Romney’s reflex is to rely on his biography, to portray himself as a successful businessman, a competent fixer, and a man who has never worked a day in his life in Washington. That simply isn’t enough. Both John McCain and Bob Dole had far more vivid and moving life stories than Romney – and they were wiped out by Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2008.

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Will Social Issues Sink Santorum?

Bethany Mandel 02.15.2012 - 3:55 PM

Last week, Rasmussen Reports polled likely voters in the swing state of Ohio to gauge how the three GOP candidates matched up against President Obama. Somewhat surprisingly, Rick Santorum polled in a dead heat with Obama and Mitt Romney was slightly edged out by the incumbent president. Can Santorum withstand a full-scale assault on his conservative social values as the GOP frontrunner until the November elections and keep that edge?

Throughout his candidacy, Santorum has made a point to emphasize his pro-life, pro-family platform. He has made controversial comments on gay marriage, the role of women in the military, abortion and contraception which have been, until recently, largely ignored by the media and voters. While the GOP base may not mind his focus on social conservatism, liberals in the news and entertainment media will see his comments as so abhorrent they may take it upon themselves to ensure his campaign is over before it starts.

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Romney Narrows in on Santorum’s Voting History

Alana Goodman 02.14.2012 - 5:09 PM

Even though Rick Santorum has billed himself as the conservative in the GOP race, he has a history of big government votes during his time in the Senate that are starting to get attention from conservative bloggers. At the Washington Examiner, Phil Klein ticks off a few controversial votes that Santorum will no doubt be forced to explain in the coming weeks:

To his credit, Santorum did not support the kind of mandate and subsidize approach to health care as Romney, but as senator, he still voted like a big government Republican on many occasions. Some of this had to do with being a loyal soldier during the Bush era, when he backed the Medicare prescription drug plan and No Child Left Behind. But a lot of it had to do with his parochialism.

As a senator from Pennsylvania, Santorum took earmarks, pushed a support program for dairy farmers, sided with unions and backed steel tariffs. In these instances, when free market principles clashed with local concerns, he abandoned limited government conservatives.

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Romney’s Campaign Goes to the Dogs

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.14.2012 - 4:42 PM

It’s been a rough week for Mitt Romney since getting swept last Tuesday in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri. Rick Santorum has caught up to or passed him in the national polls. Even worse, a new poll of Michigan Republicans shows him trailing Santorum in his home state of Michigan. Losing Michigan could kill his hopes of winning the GOP nomination. But if that wasn’t bad enough, now the dogs, or more specifically liberal dog owners, are mobilizing against him.

As the New York Times reports, a small group calling itself “Dogs Against Romney,” showed up outside Madison Square Garden in New York today to garner a little free publicity while the Westminster Kennel Dog Show was being held there. A dozen protesters with pooches in tow carried signs saying “Mitt is Mean,” which was intended to reference a story about a Romney family trip in which their dog Seamus was transported in a dog carrier on top of the car. The organizers and, no doubt, President Obama, hope this odd tale will, as the Times helpfully notes, serve “as a window into Mr. Romney’s character.” The group is an obvious front for the Democrats, so it is unlikely this publicity stunt will cost the GOP candidate too many votes in Republican primaries. But if you actually get into the details of the story, rather than the popular caricature of it that has Romney literally tying some poor dog to the roof of a car, the charges of animal cruelty fall flat.

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Gingrich: I’m Not Going Anywhere

Alana Goodman 02.14.2012 - 2:30 PM

Via the Washington Examiner, Newt Gingrich declines to take the National Review’s friendly advice to drop out of the race and endorse Rick Santorum:

“The National Review wanted me to drop out in June,” Gingrich said to reporters last night, calling such speculation, “silly.”

“You guys go around and pick up the same people that said that I was dead in June, that said that I was dead after Iowa, you know, twice I lead in the Gallup poll, ok?” Gingrich said.

Gingrich said that he had no plans to drop out before Super Tuesday and boasted that his campaign was still competitive.

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New Polls Give More Bad News for Romney

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.14.2012 - 9:43 AM

There were some in the Mitt Romney camp who spent the last two days downplaying a Public Policy Polling survey that showed their candidate trailing Rick Santorum by a wide margin among Republican voters nationwide. Because PPP is a Democratic-leaning firm, they argued the stunning 38-23 percentage point lead given Santorum in that poll was unreliable. But with the release of three other national polls in the last day, there can be no doubt Santorum has, at the very least, caught up to Romney.

A new CBS News/New York Times poll shows Santorum with a 30-27 point lead over Romney with Ron Paul in third with 12 percent and Newt Gingrich bringing up the rear with only 10 percent. A just-published Pew Research Center for the People and Press poll shows a nearly identical spread for the two leaders with Santorum leading Romney 30-28, though it differs over the second tier candidates as its results give Gingrich 17 percent and Paul 12 percent. The latest Gallup tracking poll provides somewhat better news for Romney. It shows him still ahead by a slender 32-30 margin with Gingrich at 16 percent and Paul at 8 percent. These three polls provide solid proof that Santorum and Romney are now in a statistical dead heat. But no matter how you spin these numbers, it’s all bad news for Romney. The polls show him losing support among the independents who made him more electable in a November match-up against Barack Obama and show him trailing Santorum among the Tea Partiers, social conservatives and the political conservatives who make up the base of the Republican Party.

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Should Gingrich Drop Out?

Alana Goodman 02.13.2012 - 4:40 PM

Newt Gingrich’s arguments for telling Rick Santorum to drop out of the presidential race last month are starting to boomerang on him. The National Review wonders whether it would be better for the Republican Party if Gingrich hung it up and endorsed Santorum:

It is not clear whether Gingrich remains in the race because he still believes he could become president next year or because he wants to avenge his wounded pride: an ambiguity that suggests the problem with him as a leader. When he led Santorum in the polls, he urged the Pennsylvanian to leave the race. On his own arguments the proper course for him now is to endorse Santorum and exit.

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Can the Santorum Surge Last?

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.12.2012 - 9:30 AM

Mitt Romney’s narrow wins in the non-binding Maine caucus and the CPAC straw poll changed the topic of conversation among Republicans — at least for a day — about Rick Santorum’s surge into contention in the GOP presidential race. But a Public Policy Polling survey released the same day ought to provide as much encouragement to Santorum’s backers as Romney’s fans took from Maine and CPAC. Feeding off his wins in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri earlier in the week, the PPP poll showed Santorum taking an astounding 38-23 percentage point lead over Romney, with Gingrich at 17 percent and Ron Paul trailing with 13 percent.

National tracking polls have been volatile throughout the race, giving each of the various flavors of the month like Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich their moments in the lead. So Santorum’s spike in popularity shouldn’t be taken as proof the Republican race has been fundamentally altered by recent events. Nevertheless, the poll does illustrate the willingness of Republicans to embrace an alterative to Romney even at this stage of the race. It also demonstrates that Santorum’s popularity and positive image — at least among GOP voters — could prove troublesome to the frontrunner.

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