Topic: Romney

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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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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The Legacy of the Nixon-to-China Moment

Seth Mandel 02.21.2012 - 10:10 AM

“China will never be a superpower and it opposes hegemony and power politics of any kind.” So reads the “Shanghai Communiqué,” the joint statement released by President Nixon and Chairman Mao Tse-tung during Nixon’s famous trip to China, which began exactly 40 years ago today. The street value of diplomatic joint statements is always lower than their face value, of course. Nonetheless, an argument can be made (and is being made far and wide) that there are no more pressing concerns for the West in this still-young century than China’s taste for hegemony and power politics, not to mention the possibility of parity with the world’s current sole superpower.

Nixon’s propensity for the historic left its mark on our political lexicon. Any scandal, no matter how ridiculous, earns a “-gate” suffix, and any major politician’s rebuke to his ideological compatriots, no matter how superficial, is a “Nixon-to-China moment.” But while Nixon’s critics are, for all the obvious reasons, reluctant to give him recognition for his accomplishments, Nixon deserves the credit for the China trip. (As he does, as we now know, for Operation Nickel Grass, the weapons airlift to Israel during the Yom Kippur War.) What was so notable about Nixon’s desire to work with China for mutual benefit is not that Nixon considered China a paper tiger—quite the opposite. Nixon understood China’s potential, once unlocked, to dominate, and worked to facilitate it anyway. As Niall Ferguson said in his opening remarks at last year’s Munk Debate on China:

Four decades ago Richard Nixon got this point sooner than most: [Nixon said,] “Well you can just stop and think of what would happen if anybody with a decent system of government got control of that mainland. Good God, there’d be no power in the world that could even…I mean, you put 800 million Chinese to work under a decent system and they will be the leaders of the world.”

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Has Santorum Peaked Too Soon?

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.20.2012 - 8:06 AM

In a Republican presidential race in which no candidate has ever been able to hold onto a lead for more than a couple of weeks, it has been difficult to tell whether Rick Santorum’s recent surge would last until next week’s crucial Michigan primary. Santorum’s star has been rising ever since he swept the February 7 trifecta in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. But after a few days in which his hard line stands on social issues started to become the focus of mainstream media attention, what happens in the next week will tell us a lot about whether the Pennsylvanian has what it takes to become his party’s presidential nominee. The first indication that the Santorum tide may be ebbing a bit came yesterday with a Public Policy Polling survey that shows his lead in Michigan might be slipping.

PPP’s previous Michigan poll was an outlier in that it gave Santorum a 15-point lead in Romney’s birthplace, far more than others taken in the state (though all had Santorum ahead in the race). So Romney’s camp may take heart from the Democratic-leaning firm’s latest effort that shows him down by only a 37 to 33 percentage-point margin. Though PPP’s breakdown of the numbers doesn’t seem to show much leakage for Santorum because of the abuse he’s been taking about his views on religion and sex, Romney’s intensive campaigning in Michigan seems to have improved his numbers there. The question for Santorum is whether he can maintain his momentum now that he, rather than his opponent, is in the glare of the spotlight.

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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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Will 2012 Be a Referendum on Mormons?

Bethany Mandel 02.17.2012 - 11:50 AM

This past week, the Mormon Church, and Mitt Romney, came under fire when it was discovered that the parents of Simon Wiesenthal were proxy-baptized by the Church. In 1995, the Church of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, outlawed the baptisms of anyone outside of their members’ ancestors in response to outrage over their baptisms of Holocaust victims (which Wiesenthal’s parents were). In an apologetic statement released after the Wiesenthal baptisms became known, the Church explained that a rogue member had submitted the names without the knowledge or consent of leadership and that there would be action taken to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.

Immediately after the baptisms hit the headlines calls came for Romney to condemn the action, from Elie Wiesel to top leadership of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, pushing the story onto front pages. Given that the Church had already officially prohibited the baptisms of Holocaust victims, there was little for Romney to do but condemn his own Church, publicly, with no chance of accomplishing anything but further embarrassing his faith.

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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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Romney Outflanks Santorum on Unions

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.16.2012 - 11:44 AM

The latest of several polls of Michigan Republicans released in the last few days confirms what the others reported: Rick Santorum is leading Mitt Romney in the state where the latter was born and raised. Though the Detroit News poll gives Santorum a four-point edge that was within the margin of error, the survey was one of five polls that all pointed to a Santorum victory in the Feb. 28 Michigan primary. That leaves Romney, who told reporters yesterday that a loss “just won’t happen,” scrambling for an issue with which to counter the rising conservative tide that has lifted Santorum from the second tier of the GOP race to the frontrunner position. His answer appeared to be an unlikely choice for Michigan but one that would, at least on this one point, allow him to outflank Santorum on the right: combating the influence of unions.

Romney came out swinging at organized labor yesterday, taking specific aim at the United Auto Workers. Channeling voter resentment at the role of unions in sending states into near-bankruptcy has been a familiar theme for the GOP around the nation as governors such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and New Jersey’s Chris Christie have rallied the GOP base on the issue. Picking up the anti-union banner is a way for Romney to connect with Tea Party voters. It also provides him with a way to bring up Santorum’s record of voting for big government spending packages. But given the outsize influence of union voters in Michigan, it’s an open question as to whether this tactic will help or hurt Romney, especially because Santorum is going all-out to emphasize his working class roots and sympathies.

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Undergarments In a Twist?

Naomi Decter 02.16.2012 - 9:02 AM

Hmmm. Two stories, in two different publications, on the Mormon Church? Is something afoot?

Alana noted a Washington Post piece about the church posthumously baptizing Holocaust survivors, and that same issue made the cover of The Daily (which you can only read if you own an iPad). The Daily goes further than the Post, sharing some of the stranger Mormon beliefs and customs, including the odd, 18^thcentury-ish style undergarments Mormons supposedly wear (they actually look quite comfy).

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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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Should Romney Tell Mormon Church to Stop Proxy-Baptizing Jews?

Alana Goodman 02.15.2012 - 2:00 PM

Keep a close eye on this issue, because if Mitt Romney wins the nomination it’s going to be a big component of Democratic attacks. Elie Wiesel has been a longtime critic of the Mormon Church’s proxy-baptisms of Jewish Holocaust victims, a practice the church has now officially prohibited. But apparently there was a breakdown in the safeguards used to prevent Holocaust victims from being entered into the Mormon Church database, and the deceased parents of Simon Wiesenthal, the notorious Nazi-hunter, were recently proxy-baptized:

Nobel-laureate Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and a top official from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should use his stature in the Mormon Church to block its members from posthumously baptizing Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Their comments followed reports that Mormons had baptized the deceased parents of Wiesenthal, the late Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter. Wiesel appeared in a church database used to identify potential subjects of baptisms. …

Romney “is now the most famous and important Mormon in the country,” Wiesel said. “I’m not saying it’s his fault, but once he knows, morally he must respond. . . . He should come out and say, ‘Stop it.’”

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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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Where Are You When We Need You, Ronnie?

Naomi Decter 02.14.2012 - 1:00 PM

Whenever I hear myself crying, “Where are you when we need you, Ronnie?” I give myself a couple of smart slaps in the face and tell myself, “Naomi, get over it! A Ronald Reagan doesn’t come around every century.”

Doesn’t mean Republicans can’t have a solid, electable candidate – even one who could morph into a powerful president when the call came (think George W. Bush).

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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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Romney Should Run Scared in Michigan

Jonathan S. Tobin 02.13.2012 - 1:28 PM

Mitt Romney’s victories in the Maine Republican caucus and the CPAC straw poll may have, as I wrote yesterday, stopped the bleeding after a week in which Rick Santorum’s sweep of three states halted the frontrunner’s momentum. But a pair of polls from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling firm as well as one from the American Research Group ought to be scaring the pants off of Romney’s camp. As I wrote yesterday, PPP’s national poll of Republicans shows, in distinction to other surveys, Santorum taking a huge lead over Romney in the wake of his wins last Tuesday. But far more interesting are new polls of Michigan Republicans that also show Santorum leading Romney in his home state. A PPP Michigan poll shows Santorum leading there by a 39-24 percent margin. The ARG poll also has him ahead, though by a smaller 33-27 percent differential.

Bigger leads than that have evaporated in less time than the two weeks Romney has to make up this deficit, so there is no reason for him to panic. But if any in his campaign were inclined to dismiss Santorum’s surge as a mere bump in the road, this poll is proof they are dead wrong. Despite Romney’s huge advantage in money and endorsements as well as delegates, a loss in Michigan would be fatal to his presidential hopes. If he is beaten there, the air would go out of his inevitability balloon and Santorum would, despite his threadbare national campaign, assume the unlikely role of frontrunner.

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