I’m talking about the thing with most of the GOP presidential candidates here. You know, the come-and-kiss-DeMint’s-ring thing.
I was out of town Monday, and haven’t had time to watch it online. In fact, I haven’t seen the whole thing online anywhere, but here are some pieces.
Anyway, I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations today with people who were there, and that’s about it. Their comments were positive, by the way, and they would probably not agree that it was a DeMint-as-kingmaker thing, even though it was his show and he summoned them each to stand alone without a lectern before him, like prisoners before a judge. And they may be right, because I wasn’t there.
Now we see what Ron Paul’s doing with all of that money. Or some of it, anyway.
He certainly has been able to afford better production quality than what the Democrats are churning out. Here’s what Politico had to say about Rep. Paul’s attack on his fellow Texan:
EXCLUSIVE — NEW PAUL AD HANGS AL GORE ON PERRY — Ron Paul takes the fight to Rick Perry today, releasing a new 60-second TV ad hammering Perry for supporting the Democrat’s 1988 presidential campaign. From the script of the ad, backed by a six-figure buy, which Paul’s camp is trying to place during Wednesday’s debate: “The establishment called him extreme and unelectable, they said he was the wrong man for the job. It’s why a young Texan named Ron Paul was one of only four congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president…After Reagan, Senator Al Gore ran for president, pledging to raise taxes and increase spending, pushing his liberal values. And Al Gore found a cheerleader in Texas named Rick Perry.” See the ad: http://youtu.be/kUHlIPJTMIg
Apparently he couldn’t find actual video footage from Perry’s Gore days. Neither could I, at least on YouTube. Has anyone seen any?
Not that it matters to me. But it could certainly matter to those Tea Partiers.
Anyway, in trying to find that link above, I went to Wikipedia, and ran across the name of Katherine Harris, and suddenly pictured her in my mind, and thought, Hey, wait a minute…
I’ve been thinking since she emerged on the scene that Michele Bachmann looked familiar, like someone I hadn’t seen since…
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave a speech in Florida Friday in which he talked a tough game on immigration, saying that “our country must do a better job of securing its borders.” He said it was time for “a high-tech fence” and insisted the country needs to “get tough on employers who hire illegal immigrants,” reports ABC News. Although Romney never mentioned Rick Perry by name, it was clear he was referring to the Texas governor who has what Time’sMichael Crowley characterizes as “a relatively moderate record on the issue.” Perry has supported granting in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants, has qualified the idea of a border fence that covers the entire border as “ridiculous,” and even supported a guest worker program.
You mean, Rick Perry, who seemed to have been assembled in a lab from pieces of dead right-wingers, is actually more like John McCain on this issue?
Or perhaps I should say, like George W. Bush? Maybe there’s something about living and growing up with actual Mexicans, having them for a long time as integral parts of your community, that causes Texans to be a little more realistic on the issue than Republicans from, say, Massachusetts. Or, in many cases, from South Carolina…
After receiving yet another of these from Michele Bachmann:
Dear Fellow Conservative,
It’s hard to believe that September is already upon us. As the summer comes to an end, I hope that you are able to spend and enjoy this long Labor Day weekend with your friends and family.
It has been just over 70 days since we announced our campaign for President, and the days have flown by. Although the seasons and months may be changing, one thing remains certain in the United States: Americans are tired of President Obama’s failed leadership and policies….
Below, I’ve included some informative articles about the past week, and some great ways for you to get involved with our campaign. After reading them, I hope that you will consider making a contribution of $25, $50, $100, or any amount up to the legal limit to help spread us our message of growth and prosperity in this busy time.
Sincerely,
Michele Bachmann
Well… at least she didn’t call me “Brad,” the way those grasping missives from the Democrats do. I wrote this note in response:
I seem to have ended up on the wrong email list. I’m a journalist, a 35-year newspaper veteran. I’m now covering the campaign for my own blog, bradwarthen.com. What I need to receive are press releases and media advisories. Yet somehow I’ve gotten on the fund-raiser mailing list.
I assure you, I will not be giving to this or any other campaign. I just need the info necessary to COVER the campaign. Anything you can do for me would be appreciated.
— Brad Warthen
I have no idea whether this note will do any good. It’s one of those “info@” addresses, and those are generally not read by humans, right? But one must try.
I think I got on this list by requesting via Twitter to be included in campaign communications. I need to be more specific in the future, I guess.
The other day, I was at the presser at which Jon Huntsman announced that Attorney General Alan Wilson was supporting him (which I still intend to write a post about, but haven’t had time to go back through all my notes), and at one point I happened to look around and think how very, very young most of the media people were.
When I stood in that same place two years ago representing The New York Post, in front of that same (I think) lectern, listening to Mark Sanford tell about his surprise vacation in Argentina, I didn’t think that. I saw mostly usual suspects I had known for years. (Although I did notice in photos of the gaggle later that I had the grayest hair in the bunch. It was one of those “Who’s that old guy? … oh!” moments.)
But the biggest difference between this group and the media mob scenes I experienced when I was as young as these kids were was that the TV crews are so much smaller. As I saw Ali Weinberg of NBC packing up her stuff after, I mentioned to her that back in the day, her network would have a four-person crew covering a presidential candidate: the talent, (at this point she started saying it along with me), the camera guy, the sound guy (and back then those two jobs usually were filled by guys), and the field producer. Now, it’s just her. And she’s in front of the camera, behind the camera, carrying the equipment, handling her own arrangements, Tweeting, and I don’t know what all.
Of course, it’s been this way for several years now. I remember Peter Hamby and others doing the same thing four years ago.
But seeing someone as petite as Ali getting ready to carry all that stuff kind of dramatized the situation. Yes, Ali agreed with me, all told it probably did weigh as much as she does. And no, she didn’t need any help.
Her affiliation reminds me of the NBC crew I kept running across in Iowa in 1980 when I was following Howard Baker, who was running in the caucuses that year. I rode with Jim and Flash (the sound and camera guys, respectively) through an ice storm in a four-seater plane between Des Moines and Dubuque. Just the two of them, the pilot and me. The pilot kept squirting alcohol on the outside of his windshield to make a clear space in the ice about the size of his hand to see through to fly. When we got out on the tarmac — which was covered in ice — I went to put my overcoat back on, and the wind caught it and I started gliding across the runway like a ship on the sea. (I only realized later — after the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 into the Potomac in 1982 — how dangerous that trip was.)
On another occasion, the producer of that crew — a pretty young woman who reminded me of the actress Paula Prentiss — overheard my photographer, Mark, and me discussing where we were going to stay the night and holding open our wallets to see what was left inside. She offered to put us up if we were in a bind. Producers had that kind of cash to throw around in those days. Like Ali today, we said no, thanks.
Allan Lichtman, the American University professor whose election formula has correctly called every president since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election, has a belated birthday present for Barack Obama: Rest easy, your re-election is in the bag.
“Even if I am being conservative, I don’t see how Obama can lose,” says Lichtman, the brains behind The Keys to the White House.
Lichtman’s prediction helps to explain a quirk in some polling that finds that while Americans disapprove of the president, they still think he will win re-election. [Check out political cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]
Working for the president are several of Lichtman’s keys, tops among them incumbency and the scandal-free nature of his administration.Undermining his re-election is a lack of charisma and leadership on key issues, says Lichtman, even including healthcare, Obama’s crowning achievement.
Lichtman developed his 13 Keys in 1981. They test the performance of the party that holds the presidency. If six or more of the 13 keys go against the party in power, then the opposing party wins.“The keys have figured into popular politics a bit,” Lichtman says. “They’ve never missed. They’ve been right seven elections in a row. A number that goes way beyond statistical significance in a record no other system even comes close to.”…
Of course, things can change, and Obama’s had a bad run of luck in recent weeks. I still wouldn’t yet change my prediction that he will win the general election, mainly because Republicans (so far) seem determined to nominate a Perry rather than a Huntsman.
Texas governor Rick Perry called into the Sean Hannity radio program Tuesday afternoon, where he responded to questions about his intelligence first raised in a Politico article with the blunt headline: “Is Rick Perry Dumb?”
Perry, who has surged in the polls since he announced his candidacy just over two weeks ago, shrugged off the speculation that has become fodder for cable news.
“It’s kind of the same old attacks that they made on President Reagan,” he said. “The better we do down here in Texas, my bet is the more they’re going to attack us and that’s fine. I think my record is going to stand the scrutiny of time across the country.”
Perry, who made many C’s and D’s as a student at Texas A&M, turned the attack on the Harvard-educated Barack Obama — whose transcripts have not been released to the public.
“What’s dumb is to oversee an economy that has lost that many millions of jobs, to put unemployment numbers – over his four years will stay probably at 9 percent, to downgrade the credit of this good country, to put fiscal policies in place that were a disaster back in the ’30s and try them again in the 2000s — that’s what I consider to be the definition of dumb,” he charged.
And he didn’t stop there.
Perry stoked the ‘book smarts v. street smarts’ flames by chiding President Obama for surrounding himself with academics instead of people who’ve had “real life experience.”
“They are intellectually very, very smart, but he does not have wise men and women around him. And I think that’s what his real problem is. He has listened to the academics,” he said….
Ummm… Y’all know what I think: I think Perry is going to win the nomination — unless Republicans start thinking strategically and look harder at a guy like Huntsman.
But gee, fella. Oh, yeah? Welll… they said that other guy was dumb, too! Kind of a weak defense. I think if people were saying I was dumb, I’d have come back with something sharper.
Of course, I don’t think like a partisan, and I guess among Republicans, “they said Reagan was dumb, too” is a heckuva powerful argument.
As for the “We’ve tried smart people and it didn’t work…” I’m not sure that’s a strong refutation, either…
Bachmann Says Irene, Earthquake Were Messages From God
“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of politicians,” the GOP presidential hopeful said over the weekend at a campaign event in Florida, the St. Petersburg Times reports. “We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”
I agree completely. God IS wondering what it will take. He’s all like,
Yo! Down there! What’ve I gotta do to convince you people that you’re totally screwing up the Earth here? Can you say, “global warming”? Can you say “hurricane hitting New York, of all places?” Can you say anything? More to the point, can you hear anything? I gave you ears! Or is it just that you don’t want to? I’m starting to have second thoughts about the Free Will thing…
Just before I left the office last night, this Politico piece landed in my Inbox:
It’s a tough time to be a conservative intellectual.
From the Weekly Standard to the Wall Street Journal, on the pages of policy periodicals and opinion sections, the egghead right’s longing for a presidential candidate of ideas — first Mitch Daniels, then Paul Ryan – has been endless, intense, and unrequited.
Profoundly dissatisfied with the current field, that dull ache may only grow more acute after Ryan’s decision Monday to take himself out of the running.
The problem, in shorthand: To many conservative elites, Rick Perry is a dope, Michele Bachmann is a joke, and Mitt Romney is a fraud.
They don’t publicly express their judgments in such harsh terms but the low regard is obvious…
“It just does seem to be a little crazy in a year when you have a chance to win the presidency that a lot of leading lights aren’t putting themselves forward,” said William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor and indefatigable Ryan advocate who hopefully brandished a Ryan-Rubio button on Fox News Sunday…
There’s a reason for that, Bill. Actually, a couple of them.
Early on, when some of the smarter conservatives — I count Mike Huckabee among their number, for instance — decided not to run, I attributed it in part to the widely-held belief (and one I still hear smart Republicans express, sotto voce) that Obama was going to win re-election.
Since then, the president has suffered a number of setbacks, and retreated to Martha’s Vineyard to rest and recuperate. And he’s looking vulnerable.
So why don’t we see people the more intellectual conservatives could respect step forward? Because of what Rick Perry has realized: Anti-intellectualism sells, big-time. There’s nothing original about this. Anti-intellectualism is as American as blue jeans. And anyone willing to stoop to conquer is going to have a wild ride upward, at least for a time. And when you find a candidate who doesn’t have to stoop, who doesn’t dumb down because he or she truly doesn’t know any better, well you’ve found electoral gold. For a time, at least. Because the voters love the real thing.
I’m not saying the voters are dumb. It’s just that, if you don’t hesitate to think, you can say things very forcefully, and without complicating caveats, you can charm a crowd — sometimes. This seems to be one of those times, at least for a portion of the electorate.
Unfortunately for those who would like to see a change in the executive branch, that portion numbers less than 50 percent of the overall. But within the Republican Party right now, it’s big enough to scare away the deep thinkers. I’ll be surprised if anyone who would have been to William F. Buckley’s liking emerges.
Democrats may have used the strategy to win elections in 2006 and 2008, but Jeb Bush has a stern message for those seeking the GOP nomination in 2012: “You can’t just be against the president.”
The former two-term Florida governor warned the field of Republican presidential hopefuls that they risked alienating moderate voters with a campaign based solely on criticism of President Obama.
“I think the president means well, but his policies have failed, and to point that out — nothing wrong with that. That’s politics,” Bush told Fox News host Neil Cavuto in an interview Tuesday. “But just to stop there and say I’m going to win because I’m against what’s going on is not enough. You have to win with purpose if you really want to make these big changes.”…
“I think the president was dealt a tough hand. He didn’t have the experience on how to deal with it. He made a mistake of outsourcing big policy decisions to Congress, to Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and her leadership team, and that was a disaster. He’s made a situation that was bad, worse. He is deserving of criticism for that,” Bush said. “He’s not deserving of criticism of everything, the common cold all the way up the chain.”…
This tells us several things:
Jeb Bush isn’t running for president. Hence the “above-the-fray” tone.
Maybe there’s something to the old saw about, “If you had a family member who…” You know, like, “If you had a family member who was gay, you’d be for hate crime laws,” or whatever. In this case, maybe if you had a family member who was president, and was the target of a lot of hatred from the other party…
He knows a thing or two about independent voters, things that pols in his party have largely forgotten in their terrified eagerness to please the Tea Party: We don’t like hearing the kind of stuff that appeals to the angry extremes. We don’t like Obama Hatred any more than we liked Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Which might make you curious which candidate Jeb Bush likes for president:
“I am neutral in the presidential race, but I am an admirer of Gov. [Mitt] Romney’s and I’m excited that he’s laying out a jobs agenda to set the agenda a little bit, because the conversation needs to get to how do we grow so we can create jobs over a long period of time, not just short term,” Bush said.
By the way, PBS got this from an interview on FoxNews.
I didn’t really notice Phil Noble’s release earlier about Rick Perry and Ben Bernanke (I’m drowning in email), until it was also forwarded to me by Samuel Tenenbaum today. Here’s the full release, and here’s an excerpt:
Noble Calls on Perry to Apologize for ‘Unacceptable’ Attack on South Carolina Native Son Bernanke
In response to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s continuing suggestions that South Carolina born-and-bred Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is not acting with America’s best interests at heart, SC New Democrats president Phil Noble is calling on the GOP front-runner to apologize.
“In the last few days,” Noble said, “Rick Perry has called our native son Ben Bernanke ‘treacherous’ and ‘treasonous’ and has questioned what his ‘true goal is for the United States.’ Somebody needs to tell Mr. Perry that we don’t talk that way about central bankers here in the South Carolina, and we certainly don’t talk that way about central bankers who happen to be Jewish.”
Noble continued, “The stereotype of the ‘treacherous” or ‘treasonous’ Jewish banker is one of the most poisonous slurs in all of recent Western history. And whether Rick Perry is exploiting this anti-Semitic stereotype today out of true malice or simple ignorance of that long and tragic history doesn’t really matter. Either way, it’s completely unacceptable, and he needs to apologize to Mr. Bernanke and all the people of our state for this grossly inappropriate attack on one of our most distinguished native sons before his Texas boot heel touches South Carolina soil again.
“Or, to put this in terms that even the Governor should understand: Gov. Perry, don’t mess with South Carolina.”
Samuel offered his own observation, which I’ve heard him make before in different contexts:
Remember Campbell and his political anti-Semitism [a reference to the campaign against Max Heller]? It is the old nod and wink game here. Call it the “nink.” Those who have the correct receptors get his message and those who do not, never would associate anti-Semitism with his statement.
True, as a goy, I did not at first associate what Perry said with Bernanke’s Jewishness. But then, I had not initially heard that one bit of comment from Perry, “… I think there will continue to be questions about their activity and what their true goal is for the United States.” To a Catholic, that sounds familiar. But still…
Samuel and I have a lot of discussions about stuff like this. We went to see “The Passion of Jesus Christ” together, along with Moss Blachman, on Saturday in 2004, and then we all went to lunch and debated it. We did not see it the same. But we agreed about one thing: We didn’t like the movie.
Bottom line, I don’t think Perry is going after Bernanke because he’s Jewish any more than because he’s from South Carolina. I think Perry is going after him because a section of the electorate he’s trying to woo deeply dislikes the Federal Reserve, and Bernanke just happens to be its current chairman. The Fed chair could have been a gentile from Oregon, and for that matter could be pursuing policies completely different from Bernanke’s, and Perry would still be on his case.
Folks on the left in South Carolina, few as they are, have really been cranking out some videos lately.
Now there’s this one, above, from SCForwardProgress, which rips into Rick Perry for calling our homeboy, Ben Bernanke, “treasonous.”
And yeah, I felt pretty indignant, too. Ben’s one of us. He’s from the county right next to mine. He worked at South of the Border when he was in school, for goodness sakes. And he was appointed by George W. Bush, not that Obama feller or any other blamed librul.
And of course, in all serious, speaking that way of the fed chair is in NO way appropriate coming from someone even thinking of becoming president of the United States. The remark was, not to put too fine a point on it, gross.
But on the other hand, if you’re surprised, you haven’t spent much time around the Tea Party. They talk like this.
(Oh, one last thought, about the latter part of that video. We SC boys aren’t in much of a position to get on other people’s cases for talking secession. Puts us at a disadvantage…)
But the contrast that may lift Perry, and undermine Bachmann, in their high-stakes battle for Iowa had less to do with what they said than how they said it — and what they did before and after speaking.
Perry arrived early, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The Texas governor let a media throng grow and dissolve before working his way across the room to sit at table after table, shake hand after hand, pose for photographs and listen politely to a windy Abraham Lincoln impersonator, paying respect to a state that expects candidates, no matter their fame, to be accessible.
But Bachmann campaigned like a celebrity. And the event highlighted the brittle, presidential-style cocoon that has become her campaign’s signature: a routine of late entries, unexplained absences, quick exits, sharp-elbowed handlers with matching lapel pins, and pre-selected questioners.
She camped out in her bus, parked on the street in front of a nearby Ramada Hotel, until it was time to take the stage. Even after a local official’s introduction, Bachmann was nowhere to be found. It was not until a second staffer assured her that the lighting had been changed and a second introduction piped over the loudspeakers that she entered the former dance hall here. By the time she made her big entrance to bright lights and blaring music, the crowd seemed puzzled….
What the writer is trying to describe there is something I’ve seen over and over in campaigns over the years. Sometimes a certain rhythm, a certain tone, a certain something that is hard to put in words develops that tells you one candidate is a winner while the other is descending into loserdom, even if she was the flavor of the week the week before.
Perry is the genuine phenom. He’s got the patter. He could be a carnival barker or a televangelist. He’s the Christian Right candidate from central casting, and the only actual governor running with Mark Sanford-type credentials on the Tea Party uber-libertarian shtick. Take a look at this picture. I ask you. He’s everything Andy Griffith was in “A Face in the Crowd,” only without the folksiness and the self-destructive tendencies.
By comparison, Bachmann is a walking wreck waiting to happen. She’s got jack to show in the area of accomplishments, and she’s got that crazy look in the eyes. The one Newsweek committed the unpardonable sin of capturing accurately. And now, people are starting to notice the way she let the celebrity she attained before Perry got in go to her head.
Up against the real thing — or someone who at least could play the real thing on TV (just as Dennis Haysbert was perfect as the Obama prototype, the First Technically Black President, on “24”) — Bachmann will melt like a typical freakish dusting of snow in Columbia.
I say that with the usual caveat — “as long as current patterns continue.” Things can change just as rapidly as they just did for Ms. Bachmann. But until something comes along that takes Perry out, there seems to be little Ms. Bachmann can do to improve her own fortunes.
CHARLESTON — As Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was still talking to the 2011 RedState Gathering at the Francis Marion Hotel today, I sent out this Tweet from the sweaty, charged-up ballroom:
I’ll go out on a limb here, even as he announces, and say Rick Perry WILL be the Republican nominee. But he won’t be president…
And an hour later, somewhat cooled off, I stand by it. Sure, I could be wrong, but if I can’t get at least one overbold statement out of driving down here and stumping around in this steamroom of a town (the only room in the hotel where the A/C seemed to be working was another ballroom where they were having an event called “GOP Leaders Meeting.” After all the leaders were let in, they allowed anyone else who wanted to come in, except for one demographic group: the press.)
So basically, y’all can quit worrying about all this, and pay attention to more fun stuff. I told Tim Smith of The Greenville News (the cowboy hat guy) about my realizations right after the speech, and I could tell he was relieved just knowing what was going to happen. Strangely, he did not close his notebook and head home to enjoy his weekend. He started interviewing RedStaters as though it mattered, as though it weren’t all over. I guess he figured, as long as he had come this far…
Then again, maybe he was hedging his bets, because I could be wrong (I hope that doesn’t shock you). Perhaps I should amend my statement, and say Rick Perry will be the GOP nominee IF every day of the campaign is like today. Yeah, that’s the ticket…
I guess it was fitting that it was so sweaty in that hotel, given all the bottled-up passion. And it was, literally — every SC GOP politician I ran into and shook hands with had sweaty palms. They, unlike the RedState conventioneers, were in full uniform: dark suit, red tie, white shirt. I, who would normally dress that way, did not today. I wore an open-necked shirt, my ragged-cuffed brown chinos, and my cheap sandals from Walmart. And inspired by Trey Gowdy, I did not shave today. Of course, this was Saturday, and I wasn’t speaking to the state’s largest Rotary, but still… he was my role model.
Anyway, back to Rick Perry, even though, as I said, there’s no point talking about it because it’s all over. Why do I think he’s going to be the nominee? Well, here are some of the reasons:
The way he pulled off this free-media coup. Remember the front-page advance story in The State yesterday? Well, there was also a front-page story in the WSJ today, in advance, about this thing that hadn’t happened yet, and written as though this speech in South Carolina was to be the 9/11 of political events, the event That Changes Everything. Based on the play of similar stories last night on the websites of the WashPost and the NYT, I’m guessing those, too, were on their respective fronts (those of you who have seen dead-tree versions of those today can confirm or deny).
He did this in the face of THE biggest event of the GOP nomination contest thus far. You may not have noticed (none of the media here was noticing), but the Iowa Straw Poll was held today. Perry was not on the ballot. And it seemed clear by the way media were treating this event that that didn’t matter a bit. THIS was the event. Forget those other guys and gal. As the WSJ put it today:
Everything about the Perry launch is designed to poke a finger in the eyes of the other candidates. His Saturday speech comes on the same day as a closely watched GOP straw poll in Ames, Iowa, the campaign’s most notable set-piece so far. His name won’t be on that ballot, and his speech seems designed to steal thunder from the event.
His entry is already stirring widespread excitement in elite GOP circles. Many predict he could pick up the backing of an array of top GOP governors, including the influential Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a major fund-raiser in his own right.
And Mr. Perry may already be benefiting from a lack of enthusiasm for other candidates, as polls show that none has garnered support from even a quarter of the GOP electorate. Mr. Romney’s Massachusetts health-care law, Rep. Michele Bachman’s relative inexperience and Tim Pawlenty’s inability to catch fire appear to have left the door open for a new candidate…
How successful was this stunt in pulling free media? Well, you can see the media mob scene. You might say, well, you’ve seen ’em that big before. So have I, but not that often, outside of a national convention. And I asked conference publicist Soren Dayton, just before Perry spoke, for his perspective on it. He said that at last year’s RedState conference, in Austin (with Gov. Perry in attendance), he had “zero” media to deal with. Today, he had 120 of the unruly creatures.
But the press can show up and do all the front-page stories about the Perry juggernaut (before it even starts rolling) all they want. That doesn’t nominate presidential candidates, does it? Well, the thing is, Perry showed up and met expectations — not only of the ink-stained wretches, but of the salt-of-the-earth (just ask ’em; they’ll tell ya) folk who show up at a conference like this one. And they had turned out en masse as well. Dayton estimated the crowd in that room about about 750, and there was a spillover room. I found myself wondering whether it was any cooler there…
It was not cool where we were, I can assure you. Aside from the humidity, Perry was on and hot and the crowd was hot, too (over that Obama, of course). And Perry, bringing all the talents of a bareknuckle Texas politico and a wannabe televangelist, threw them all the certified USDA RedMeat this RedState crowd could inhale. And they feasted on it. Watch the video. It doesn’t capture the sound fully, or the atmosphere (especially the humidity), but you’ll get an idea about how easily he spotted all their political erogenous zones and stroked them mercilessly.
He used every cliche in the book, and the tone of the response clearly said that this folks had never heard anything like it! They had waited their whole lives to hear a candidate — to hear anyone! — say these things! Such insights! He was their hero. Afterwards, I didn’t interview anyone for their reactions, because I had heard their true, spontaneous, visceral response. It wasn’t the most intense crowd response I’ve ever heard — I’ve visited black churches. It was more like the feel of the Sarah Palin-Nikki Haley rally last year, turned up several notches. (And of course, many of the same things were said — only in a more masculine manner.) I only recorded two reactions from individuals. As I was leaving the room, a woman behind me said, “I got chills!” A moment later, a man said, “He’s very direct.” Who could argue?
With this crowd (and this crowd was a great litmus test for the nomination — but not for election), he came across more clearly than any other Republican running this cycle as the AntiObama. And that’s the key, right? Because we all know where the emotional center of this passion lies.
At one point during the speech, I posted back-to-back Tweets that may have seemed to contradict each other. First, I wrote, “It astounds me that a crowd like this so wildly applauds assertions that are… obvious… things everyone knows, that OBAMA believes…” Then, I said, “Perry definitely positioning himself, more clearly than anyone, as the hyper-aggressive anti-Obama.”
What I meant was that whether he was saying things that everyone knows and believes, painfully obvious things (such as pointing out that every tax dollar had to be earned first by the sweat of an American taxpayer, which this crowd greeted like it was the most fresh, original and profound thing they had ever heard), or mischaracterizing what that wicked Obama and his minions believe in order to define what he (and everyone in the crowd!) opposed so passionately, it was all about saying that he, Rick Perry, was the one who believed, with the greatest purity and passion, all the right and good things that true Americans believed, and the one guy with the know-how, strength and determination to undo all the foolish evil associated with “Washington, D.C.” in general and Barack Obama in particular.
Some examples that illustrate what I was trying to say in that run-on sentence just now (most or all are on the video above, and most or all were applause lines):
“Washington is not our caretaker.”
“In America, the people are not subjects of the government; the government is subject to the people.”
“It is up to us, to this present generation of Americans, to take a stand for freedom, to send a message to Washington that we’re takin’ our future back from the grips of these central planners who would control our healthcare, who would spend our treasure, who downgrade our future and micromanage our lives.”
“And we will repeal this president’s misguided, one-size-fits-all government healthcare plan immediately!”
“We’ll get America working again.” (This, they say, is to be his campaign theme.)
“And I’ll promise you this: I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your life as I can.
“… basing our domestic agenda on importing those failed Western European social values…”
“We don’t need a president who apologizes for America. We need a president who protects and projects those values.”
“America is not broken; Washington, DC, is broken.”
Again, I could (theoretically) be wrong in my predictions. This guy hasn’t been tested in the bigs (although there’s no bigger farm team than Texas) beyond this one speech. We’ll see. But right now, I expect this is the guy the GOP will be nominating at their convention about this time next year.
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman’s (R) presidential campaign manager, Susie Wiles, is resigning and will be replaced by communications director Matt David, according to the campaign.
Huntsman is announcing the changes to his staff at a meeting this afternoon. Top adviser John Weaver confirmed the changes to The Fix.
“Susie has served the campaign well and was vital in getting it off the ground in such a short time-frame,” Weaver said in a statement provided by the campaign. “In just under three months, Governor Huntsman has returned from China, launched a campaign and created a strong infrastructure in the three early primary states. He’s built important relationships with donors, as well as political, policy and grassroots leaders that other candidates have been courting for half a decade.
High-level staff departures early in a presidential campaign are generally not seen as a good thing, but thus far, Wiles is the only known departure from Huntsman’s team. (Another staffer recently took a leavefor personal reasons.)
The campaign did not expound on the reason for Wiles’s departure. Weaver said the campaign is simply shifting gears…
The thing I’ve thought about is this: Who in the world would want to work on a political campaign?
OK, that’s not quite what I mean… I know lots of people who DO work on campaigns, and who do little else. So the answer to the “who” is easy. But I’ve always sort of wondered about them, and marveled at them.
They mystified me more back when I had a long-time steady job. I just could not imagine anyone deliberately taking a job with such little job security — back when I had been working for the same company for 24 years, with good pay and benefits, and intended to stay until retirement.
Now, I’ve had more experience with the ad hoc lifestyle, and it’s not as scary as I always figured it would be. I see how someone can get used to it. I still don’t see choosing it.
Even if you really, really believed in a candidate… even if that was the only candidate in the world you would work for, and you were willing to give up all the comforts of a steady job in order to help that person get elected… it still sort of befuddles me.
There are problems with the whole campaign-staff career, as I see it, both from the perspective of the staffer, and from the perspective of those of us who want a healthy republic:
Lousy job security, in the sense that the “firm” for which you work — the campaign — is an extremely volatile enterprise. It could become essential to the success of the enterprise (or perceived as essential, which amounts to the same thing) for you to be fired at any moment. And there will be little warning, if any. One day, you’re fine. Next day something erupts that makes in impossible for you to stay.
Even worse job security, in the sense that even if things go well and you don’t get fired, the job only lasts a few months. Yeah, you might get hired by the newly elected official if things go really well and he or she wins, but that’s dicey. That’s like counting on getting hired when your boss moves on to another company. Could happen. Might not. Just as likely, you’re going to be looking for another campaign to work on the day after Election Day.
Once or twice in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to work for a candidate you really, truly believe in (unless you’re pretty indiscriminate). And it won’t last long.
You will probably have to associate yourself, permanently, with one of the political parties. This wouldn’t be a drawback for a lot of people — obviously is not a drawback for the people who actual do this for a living — but it certainly would be for me (speaking as a guy who’s had occasion to think of it since leaving the newspaper biz). The kinds of people who do the hiring for campaigns may run across an independent who is really knowledgeable about issues and politics and messaging and the rest, and really believes in the candidate individually, but they are not likely to hire such a person because there’s a long line of loyal party people wanting the job.
Finally, the big drawback to society of all of the above… It’s bad enough that politicians have trouble leading normal lives. It would be great if they could have some people around them who DO live normal, workaday lives in the regular economy and therefore have a deep, personal, working understanding of regular voters and their concerns. But for the reasons I cited above, the fraternity of people likely to work on a campaign and be in the best position to advise the candidate tend to be rather insular. (By the way, the newspaper industry is the same way — ever since afternoon newspapers died, newspapermen and -women have tended to be people who all work weird hours and therefore mostly associate only with people like themselves. Which is not good, in terms of staying in close touch with the community.)
It would be great if some of you folks who do this for a living, or at least have taken time out from the rest of life to work for pay on a campaign, would weigh in and enlighten us on this. I know there are quite a few of you who read this blog.
I don’t go in for blasphemy, which means I don’t like it when politicians (usually conservatives) claim to be tighter with God than other people, or when critics (usually liberals) make fun of them for it. I especially, speaking from my own brand of conservatism, don’t like it when people presume to put words in God’s mouth.
But I must confess to you, my brothers and sisters, that I did find the point brought up by The Onion here at least worth discussing:
July 21, 2011 | ISSUE 47•29
AUSTIN, TX—Describing Texas Gov. Rick Perry as grossly unqualified for the position, God, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, urged Perry not to run for president of the United States Wednesday. “I prayed last night and asked the Lord to support my candidacy, and He said no,” Perry told reporters outside the Texas Capitol, explaining that God had cited the governor’s rejection of federal stimulus funds to expand state jobless benefits, his irresponsible speculation about Texas seceding from the union, and his overall lack of concrete solutions to nation’s problems as reasons why He could not endorse a Perry presidential bid. “I believe God made some valid points about my lack of credentials, and He’s absolutely right. My extreme beliefs when it comes to social issues and states’ rights are not only disturbingly narrow-minded, but would also make me a horrible president.” When reached for comment, God said He would not be present at Perry’s much-talked-about Christian day of prayer on Aug. 6, calling the governor’s use of his public office to endorse a religion both “irresponsible” and a violation of the Constitution.
OK, it’s not as funny or creative as some Onion stuff. I’ll confess that, too. I think they sort of called this one in. They thought, “Somebody needs to make this point, and it might as well be us.” What keeps it from being brilliant is that the writer couldn’t resist making serious points, and even doing it in a sort of preachy manner.
But hey, I thought that referring you to it would be one way of bringing up the topic of Perry suggesting that he is on a mission from God. So we could discuss it.
Personally, I don’t think God wants to get involved in the Perry candidacy one way or the other. I am, of course, not positive about that. I could ask Him, in order to make sure, but I really don’t like to bother Him with stuff like that.
But her aside, running for and holding public office takes an awesome amount of physical vitality. I’ve always sort of marveled at it. And I’m not talking just about the pace of a president, with the astounding schedules they keep (which is why they age so much in office). It’s true right down to county council.
Yeah, you can see out-of-shape slackers in public office, especially in some of the less visible offices. But I don’t notice them as much as I do the people who just never seem to stop. Since I wouldn’t want to run for office without knowing I’d do it well, I’ve always found the idea of going to all those night meetings — governmental, neighborhood associations, etc. — sort of overwhelming. I like to work hard all day, but then I like to rest. The idea of having to put in an appearance at all those events can put you right off of political power.
You wouldn’t mistake Joe Wilson, for instance, for a triathlete — or consider him to be a legislative dynamo, either. But he is EVERYWHERE. And always filled with enthusiasm, just thrilled to be there. Ditto with lots of legislators, and others you don’t hear about as much.
Some of it is personality type; getting a charge from something that would fill others with boredom. But there’s something physical there as well.
This morning, I got a late start on my day because I turned on the TV at about 7:20 to check something I’d tried to record last night on a new DVR, and there was the House of Commons grilling David Cameron, live on CSPAN2, about the hacking scandal. A remarkable exhibition of energy. (Not up to Tony Blair standards, but pretty good.) It went on for hours after what I saw.
Actually, that’s one thing I think I could do, and not get tired during the event itself. I’ve always liked fielding multiple questions from a crowd on a topic with which I’m well familiar, even when the crowd is trying to trip me up. It causes the adrenaline to flow, and I can feel my brain getting into the zone. It’s actually pleasurable. I’m not crazy about conventional public speaking, but I love taking questions, to the point that it’s hard to shut me up on the answers.
But after that exhilarating experience, he has to sit in a debrief on the South Africa trip, or a meeting with a constituent group, or a state dinner, or all of the above, plus grinding stuff I can’t even imagine. That’s what I wouldn’t have the energy for.
You ever sit through a city council meeting that goes on and on for hours? I know some of you have. I certainly have, in spades. When I was young and full of energy, I had days when, on account of having a beat covering five counties, I would attend three or four such meetings in different towns, then stay up all night writing about them. It was an afternoon paper, so deadlines were in the morning. I’d get to work at 7 a.m. Monday morning, work through deadline, then start with the meetings and interviews, finishing them by 10 or 11 p.m. then write in my office all night, and file multiple stories Tuesday morning, finally slowing down around lunchtime on Tuesday. Then I’d go home for a nap and start again. Then I’d probably take off later in the week, say on Friday.
Spread that out a bit, with more regular sleep time, and make it 7 days a week, without any real vacations, and you have the schedule of a POTUS.
Cindi had a good column today on the subject of arbitrary caps and limits and pledges and the like. There are a number of good things to get out of it.
The first is the fact that Jon Huntsman is the only Republican presidential candidate who has refused to sign Jim DeMint’s Cut, Cap and Whatever pledge — which apparently irritates our junior senator no end.
Jim is all like, “I won’t support any candidate who does not support balancing the budget. … So for me, he’s out.”
Which ignores reality, of course. It doesn’t occur to Jim (or at least, he lets on that it doesn’t occur to him, on account of amassing personal political power now being the most important thing to him, judging by his actions) that a guy could be for a balanced budget amendment (which Huntsman is) and not want to kowtow to him by signing his pledge. For that matter, just to go way deeper into territory that Jim DeMint would find impossible to imagine, one can be for, very passionately for, a balanced budget — and yet not favor a constitutional amendment mandating it.
Personally, I’m ambivalent about the amendment thing. A balanced budget should be standing operating procedure, except in times of full-mobilization war and other serious emergencies. But that should be an annual decision by Congress, not a mechanism. Whether we’ve reached the point that we have to throw out that process is not yet entirely clear to me. Maybe we have. I’m just not sure.
That aside, though, there’s a bigger point here — a point even bigger than the national debt. It goes to the heart of representative democracy:
But there’s an important principle involved as well: Pledging to do or not do anything important is an abdication of elected officials’ duty to examine the issues before them and make their own decisions on behalf of their constituents. And it makes it impossible for officials to govern in a changing world. Imagine the pledges some politicians might have signed before 9/11 — and how that could have prevented them from taking necessary actions to protect our nation after the attacks “changed everything.”
Yes! Yes! YESSSS!!! (Waiter, I’ll have what he’s having…) Continuing…
When you sign away your right to consider all your options, when you are bound by uninformed opinions, when you take directions from people whose primary purpose is to maintain power and defeat those who don’t think exactly as they do, rather than taking advantage of different points of view to come up with the best solutions, then you can’t even imagine the complex solutions to our state’s interwoven ills, much less enact them.
Sounds like Cindi was listening all those years, huh? Not that she couldn’t have come up with all those thoughts on her own. Come to think of it, maybe it was me listening to her…
Last evening I tried to post on Twitter, and for some reason (probably the fitful Internet connection at my house, which is why I’m about to change providers), it did not transmit. I found it in drafts this morning:
As you can see from the links (which illustrate an advantage of this medium over Twitter), all of those petty political potshots were fired on Monday.
One of them is out of place. Yes, for some reason, Dick Harpootlian is not content to sit back while Republicans tear each other apart. He is joining in, and attacking one of them in particular.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked Dick why Huntsman? Is it because that’s the Republican he fears the most? The one who might be a threat to Obama in the general election, if he can get past the extremists in his own party? Does he feel a particular responsibility as the Democratic chair in the first-in-the-South primary state to stop him here?
Dick said no. But his actions say otherwise.
Yesterday, I received three separate emails from Dick about Huntsman — the first two telling me, then reminding me, that Dick would have a conference call about Huntsman at 2:30. I missed the call, because I was tied up after the Haley appearance at Rotary. But no fear. Dick summarized his message in this release:
Harpootlian calls Jon Huntsman disloyal and disingenuous.
Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootilan held a conference call today to welcome Jon Huntsman back to South Carolina.
During the opening of the call, Harpootlian discussed Huntsman’s support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s radical revision to Medicare. In response to Huntsman’s comment on his support, “[If Ryan’s plan is radical] then guilty as charged”, Harpootlian replied:
“He supports a plan that would double the out-of-pocket Medicare expenses to those who are younger than 55, but yet, the taxpayers are paying for the subsides of his private jet, every time he turns it on.”
Finally, when asked if he thought Huntsman was President Obama’s biggest threat on the Republican ticket, Harpootlian responded:
“Here’s a guy who had his lips firmly planted on the president’s butt three months ago, and now is speaking ill out of ’em out of those same lips. Can you trust a guy who turns this quickly? He is somebody who apparently will say whatever it takes to get elected. Huntsman, not only is he disingenuous, he’s disloyal.”
# # #
Of course, that “lips firmly planted on the president’s butt” phrase is classic Dick, but it’s interesting to note that if he can get Republican primary voters to hear it, it will resonate with their Obama Derangement tendencies.
Between the last time Dick went after Huntsman and this time, I don’t recall him going after any other particular Republican candidate so specifically (it’s possible that he did in passing and I missed it in the flow of my IN box, but I know he didn’t go to this much trouble to attack them). It will be interesting to see whether he does so subsequently.
In response to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s continuing suggestions that South Carolina born-and-bred Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is not acting with America’s best interests at heart, SC New Democrats president Phil Noble is calling on the GOP front-runner to apologize.
