No, this lady has not yet sung but a new Public Policy Polling poll in Iowa suggest that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is now “imploding”: their poll shows him on the descent, with Rep. Ron Paul in the lead and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney coming in second:
Newt Gingrich’s campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has now taken the lead in Iowa. He’s at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich, 10% each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4% for Jon Huntsman, and 2% for Gary Johnson.
One question is whether the media will then pay a bit more attention to Paul, who has been almost dismissively ignored and embraces some stands on issues that don’t fit into the cookie-cutter version of what a politician who hopes to be elected would say in a primary — let alone in a general election. If he wins he is a factor, and a player, and will be a force in future primaries. And any GOPer who wants to win would be wise to try and woo his supporters.
Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row. His share of the vote has gone from 27% to 22% to 14%. And there’s been a large drop in his personal favorability numbers as well from +31 (62/31) to +12 (52/40) to now -1 (46/47). Negative ads over the last few weeks have really chipped away at Gingrich’s image as being a strong conservative- now only 36% of voters believe that he has ‘strong principles,’ while 43% think he does not.
Gingrich’s constant problem in his career has been this: the more people watch and listen him, the less they seem to like him. And at times he seems to have questionable political chops.
Ovethe past week Gingrich almost gleefully embraced the idea that a President can pick and choose which Supreme Court decisions he’ll accept to follow. Sunday he said as President he’d favor setgin in motion the legal machinery to arrest judges whose decisions he doesn’t agree with. This ill frighten MANY voters in a general election. It may be his way of trying to set himself apart from the GOP conservative crowd and tapping into longstanding conservative anger over decisions by judges appointed by Democrats or Republicans who weren’t conservative enough for them. But it could put him into Barry Goldwater territory in a general. It will also be a motivating factor in Democrats rallying their party base if he gets the nomination.
If Gingrich’s idea had been followed by Richard Nixon the tapes would not have been turned over upon the Supreme Court’s decision and a President could have ignored court decisions on desegregation.
Paul’s ascendancy is a sign that perhaps campaigns do matter at least a little, in a year where there has been a lot of discussion about whether they still do in Iowa. 22% of voters think he’s run the best campaign in the state compared to only 8% for Gingrich and 5% for Romney. The only other candidate to hit double digits on that question is Bachmann at 19%. Paul also leads Romney 26-5 (with Gingrich at 13%) with the 22% of voters who say it’s ‘very important’ that a candidate spends a lot of time in Iowa. Finally Paul leads Romney 29-19 among the 26% of likely voters who have seen one of the candidates in person.
Almost all reporters in the field have complimented Paul’s campaign organization and effort in Iowa.
Paul’s base of support continues to rely on some unusual groups for a Republican contest. Among voters under 45 he’s at 33% to 16% for Romney and 11% for Gingrich. He’s really going to need that younger than normal electorate because with seniors Romney’s blowing him out 31-15 with Gingrich coming in 2nd at 18%. Paul is also cleaning up 35-14 with the 24% of voters who identify as either Democrats or independents. Romney is actually ahead 22-19 with GOP voters. Young people and non-Republicans are an unusual coalition to hang your hat on in Iowa, and it will be interesting to see if Paul can actually pull it off.
And Romney? He again here seems to be a solid fallback candidate for many:
Romney’s vote share is up 4 points from a week ago to 20% from it previous 16% standing. His favorability numbers have improved a little bit as well from 48/44 to 49/40. One thing Romney really has going for him is more room for growth than Paul. Among voters who say they’re not firmly committed to their current candidate choice, Romney is the second choice for 19% compared to 17% for Perry, 15% for Bachmann, and only 13% for Paul. It’s particularly worth noting that among Gingrich- who seems more likely to keep falling than turn it around- voters, he’s the second choice of 30% compared to only 11% for Paul.
In addition to having more support right now Paul also has firmer support (73% solidly committed) than Romney does (68% solidly committed.) But at the same time Romney appears to have more room for growth, which could allow him to overtake Paul in the last two weeks.
Two other notes on Romney: he’s now winning the electability primary- 25% of voters think he would have the best chance to defeat Obama compared to 17% for Gingrich and 16% for Paul. And he also leads Paul 24-18 among voters who watched the Sioux City debate on Thursday night, confirming general perception that he had the stronger performance.
A Paul win in Iowa would likely be discounted by many but it would bolster his standing in political history. A Romney win would give Romney “Big Mo” since it would create the media narrative of onetime front-runner Romney back on his feet and Gingrich sagging and perhaps being on the path to Rickperryland and Hermancainland.
And a lot is at stake: Gallup’s latest daily tracking poll has Obama at 51 percent disapprove and only 42 percent approve.
Meanwhile, Washington Examiner Political Columnist Timothy Carney predicts that if Paul wins the GOP will go after him:
If Paul wins, how will the media and the GOP react? Much of the media will ignore him (expect headlines like “Romney Beats out Gingrich for Second Place in Iowa”). Some in the Republican establishment and the conservative media will panic. Others will calmly move to crush him, with the full cooperation of the liberal mainstream media.
For a historical analogy, study the aftermath of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 victory in the New Hampshire primary. “It was awful,” Buchanan told me this week when I asked him about his few days as the nominal GOP front-runner. “They come down on you with both feet.”
The GOP establishment that week rallied to squash Buchanan. Just after New Hampshire, Gingrich’s hand-picked group of GOP leaders, known as the Speaker’s Advisory Group, met with one thing on their minds, according to a contemporaneous Newsweek report: “How to deal with Buchanan.”
While many Republicans dismissed Buchanan’s New Hampshire win as irrelevant, arguing his support was too narrow to ever win the nomination, the neoconservative wing of the GOP darkly warned of a Buchanan menace. “People are panicked,” Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard told Newsweek. “If they’re not, it’s only because they don’t know what’s going on.”
The liberal mainstream media dutifully filled out Kristol’s picture of “what’s going on.” Newsweek put an ominously lit picture of Buchanan on the cover under the words “Preaching Fear.” The article stretched itself into contortions to paint Buchanan as a white racist. (Buchanan was campaigning in South Carolina, which still flew the Confederate flag over its capitol.)
Ted Koppel, on “Nightline” in the days after New Hampshire, relied on unsubstantiated tales (for which he later apologized) about Buchanan’s father as a way of tying the son to “bigoted and isolationist radio orator Father Coughlin.” He also cited a Jewish neighbor of the Buchanans who was beaten up and called “Christ-killer” — without mentioning that Pat was off at college at the time.
Insinuations of racism and anti-Semitism were the weapons of the mainstream media, but Buchanan’s sins in the eyes of the GOP establishment were different. They feared Pat because he rejected a rare inviolable article of faith among the party elites: free trade. Also, in the post-Cold War era, Buchanan’s foreign policy had become far less interventionist than that of the establishment.
It’s similar with Paul. There are many reasons he is unacceptable to the Republican elite. Some of these transgressions reflect badly on Paul. Others reflect badly on the party.
Photo via Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.