In the final scene of the classic 1931 movie “Little Ceasar,” the gangster, played by the great Edward G. Robinson, his body riddled with bullets shot by police, says: “”Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” In the wake of last night’s lively CNN Republican Presidential debate, many observers are now seriously asking: “Mother of mercy, is this is the political end of front-runner former House Speaker Newt Gingrich?”
And expect that question to be increasingly asked: a new Quinnipiac University poll released today now gives former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a 38% to 29% lead over Gingrich, who had been ahead in most polls until recently.
In newspapers, in the old and new media, among political observers, on cable newscasts, and on programs such as MSNBC’s must-view “Morning Joe,” many think its likely Gingrch will be THIS when Florida GOPers cast their primary votes. The reasons: Gingrich’s bag of tricks had now gotten old, and he seemed tepid and at times virtually stunned by Romney’s new aggressiveness (Romney did his homework, had a new debate coach, and seemed extremely comfortable with his new aggressiveness, which could be bad news for Barack Obama). It’s like the old cliche: once you can fake sincerity you have it made. Last night, many believe, the world’s highest paid historian couldn’t fake it and the moments that could have been “organic” slipped through his fingers or were poorly delivered.
By debate time yesterday the Republican establishment had in essence repudiated Gingrich as someone who could help by being at the top of the party’s ticket. Meanwhile, if Drudge, prominent GOP politicians, and close associates of Ronald Reagan were blasting Gingrich, Gingrich was being defended by talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and retired talk show host Michael Reagan, who insisted Gingrich would have made his dad proud. So there was heightened drama when viewers tuned in.
Gingrich has been written off and risen more again more times than a moody teenager who ditches a day at school but has serious college aspirations. Part of the reason he rises isn’t just his ability to hurl red meat more skillfully than a zookeeper feeding a lion: journalists love a quote machine and despite his nearly-by-rote-attacks on the press, Gingrich reportedly enjoys good relationships with many reporters. When I was a full-time reporter I had several sources like that: they could be counted on for a fiery and great quote, they were more than willing to oblige to give me the quote, they were fascinating to cover due to their quotability, they were very nice to me personally, and they blasted the press because it was what they considered almost part of their job description and a way to please their bosses or readers who didn’t like the press.
In recent months Gingrich skillfully used red meat attacks on the press plus hammering at the fact that Romney is in his umpteenth incarnation and began to be The Anti-Romney — helped by the fact talk show hosts and the Republican base don’t want the GOP establishment dictating their choices.
But what happened last night? One of the best analyses comes from Salon’s Steve Kornacki. Some key parts worth pondering and discussing:
The fundamental problem, to use the sort of language he prefers, for Newt Gingrich at Thursday night’s debate was that his instincts were at odds with his main imperative.
Gingrich took the stage with his Florida prospects dimming by the minute. Polls earlier in the week had shown him opening a significant lead in the state over Mitt Romney, but by Thursday afternoon there was clear evidence that Romney – boosted by sharp attacks against Gingrich that have been amplified by many influential conservatives and by a massive television blitz – had reversed the tide. So Gingrich was in obvious need of one of his trademark debate moments, something to recapture the base’s excitement, dominate the free media and overcome the many powerful forces arrayed against him.
Note that what was at play here was the “free media.” And how does a candidate get that? By being outrageous, expressing rage, sucking up all the oxygen so viewers can barely breathe. Gingrich had some of these moments and had risen in the polls — just as top rated talk show hosts get into big controversies or are denounced, and their ratings zoom. It is a fact of American life: anger and controversy can translate into money and votes. MORE:
The problem was that Gingrich’s debate moments, which slowly elevated him to contender status last summer and fall and which helped revive his campaign in South Carolina last week, have had an organic quality to them. Certain ingredients – like rowdy, partisan audiences and clumsy moderators and media panelists – are helpful, if not essential. But as Gingrich himself recognized in a Newsweek interview back in December, there’s just no forcing the big, defining moments.
“You can’t do that, because you will look like you’re trying to hit a home run,” he said. “What you have to do is go in and look very stable, so you look competent. And you have to be very patient.”
This was the crux of Gingrich’s dilemma on Thursday night. Without a Big Moment, he’d be left with no way to steal back the momentum and regain the lead before next Tuesday. But unless he got lucky and the moment presented itself, he was going to have to break his own rule and try to force it.
AND:
And that’s exactly what he did about 30 minutes in – and the result was devastating. It was at the start of the second segment that moderator Wolf Blitzer brought up a comment Gingrich made at a forum in Miami earlier this week, where he belittled Romney for living in “a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work.” In his most effective debate moments, Gingrich has lashed out at moderators and rallied the partisan audience to his side. He called the same play here, deriding Blitzer’s question as “nonsense.”
“How about if the four of us agree for the rest of the evening we’ll actually talk about issues that relate to governing America?” he asked.
Blitzer observed that Gingrich himself had made the comments about Romney – he was just asking about them.
“I did,” Gingrich replied. “And I’m perfectly happy to say that in an interview on some TV show. But this is a national debate where you have a chance to get the four of us to talk about a whole range of issues.”
It was here that Romney spotted an easy and effective opening. After Blitzer told Gingrich that “if you make a serious accusation against Governor Romney like that, you need to explain it,” Romney himself spoke up.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” he asked, “if people didn’t make accusations somewhere else that they weren’t willing to defend here?”
At that, the crowd went wild. It was the first time that the cheers at the end of a Gingrich confrontation with a moderator had come for a candidate besides Gingrich. Then, almost as if to taunt him, Blitzer told Gingrich that he was ready to move on to the sort of substantive topics that Gingrich was so eager to address if he was. But Gingrich couldn’t let Romney’s line go, and tried to offer a comeback. But it didn’t really matter. The moment was over and Gingrich had lost it – badly.
The moment almost reminded me of this moment from the Army McCathy hearings:
The National Review’s Rich Lowry:
If you believe the polls, Newt needed a big night to turn around the momentum and he didn’t get it. He struck me as tired and too ticked for his own good. I don’t understand why he invested so heavily at the beginning in defending the “anti-immigrant” ad that he pulled and Rubio had criticized. For the first time perhaps ever, Romney effectively showed righteous indignation (unfortunately for me, since I have a column tomorrow saying he isn’t quite capable of it). On Fannie and Freddie, Romney won the exchange when he dropped it on Gingrich that the Speaker, too, had invested in the mortgage giants; whatever oppo guy came up with that for Romney deserves a raise and perhaps should get cut into one of those Cayman accounts. Then, the decisive moment of the debate and perhaps the primary, when Gingrich tried to wheel on Wolf Blitzer and it didn’t work. Gingrich attempted to argue that it was OK for him to attack Romney for his tax returns in a TV interview but “nonsense” to try to get him to talk about it during the debate. Romney pounced and—in a moment reminiscent of Pawlenty’s “Obamneycare” snafu–hit Gingrich for not being willing to repeat his charge in person. Gingrich had to give in and address the matter, after seeing his old moderator trick fail and sounding peevish in the bargain.
The Daily Beast’s David Frum, who worked for George W. Bush:
Gingrich arrived with no plan at all except to repeat his now-famliiar stunt of denouncing the question. This time, though, the stunt failed. Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich to justify the accusations he’d flung about Romney’s finances. Gingrich tried to treat the question as an impertinence. Blitzer pointed out he was only repeating Gingrich’s own words. That opened the way for Romney’s shiv: wouldn’t it be nice if people couldn’t make accusations somewhere else if they weren’t able to defend it?
That encounter broke Gingrich’s nerve and his performance sagged through the evening. He got drawn into an unproductive exchange on space exploration: a dog biscuit at which he should not have snapped, a vivid demonstration of his lack of self-discipline. The evening culminated in a series of brutal Mitt-slaps: one when Romney pointed out that Gingrich had invested in the same Fannie and Freddie securities that Gingrich had attacked Romney for investing in— and without the excuse of having his affairs in a blind trust; the second when Romney powerfully accused Gingrich of offering every state in which he campaigned a major federal giveaway: a new powerline for New Hampshire, a new port for South Carolina, and finally and most fantastically a new moon project for Florida’s Space Coast.
Even the one encounter where Gingrich had the chance to have the best of it— when Blitzer refused to accept Romney’s claim “I haven’t seen that ad”—ended in bad news for Gingrich when Romney entrapped Gingrich into repeating his claim that yes languages other than English were the language of the ghetto.
Gingrich seemed to just stop fighting, beaten not only on points, but psychically.
Gingrich is leading Romney in a national poll of Republicans, but will that last? He’s now dumped on by conservatives, dissed and disdained by prominent GOPers such as former Majority Leader Bob Dole, and generating a lot of heads shaken in sadness for his debate performance.
Since I started live blogging debates, I’ve been turned off by Gingrich’s attacks on the press, and not just because I wrote for newspapers from India, Spain and Bangladesh in the 70s and worked on two big chain newspapers as a reporter.
To me, you could almost set your watch by Gingrich’s attack the press technique in every debate. It was quintessentially manipulative — and the voters were falling it every time.
Almost every time.
He finally scored Bigtime in South Carolina when he blasted CNN’s John King — but it turned out Gingrich was wrong on some of the basis for his outrage and his camp later admitted it.
In watching last night’s debate, if you watch the tape you can almost see Gingrich’s wheels turn inside his head just looking for the moment to go after the press, and looking for an opening to escalate it. But just as John King would not let Gingrich’s inaccuracy from the South Carolina debate stand, Blitzer, about as professional a working journalist you can find (he is not just a rip and read reporter or anchor there for show), responded as MOST trained journalists did: he would not let Gingrich get away with the way Gingrich framed his charge. Wolf Blitzer is no Sean Hannity.
Gingrich had long been predictable to me but he had excited the party’s base with his media attacks. Why? Because they seemed genuine.
On Thursday night, Gingrich did a lousy acting job — and it was evident to all (wait: I haven’t heard Rush Limbaugh yet, and millions will hear Rush and absorb his viewpoint).
Now pundits are saying he is on the descent and could lose Florida and might never regain his footing.
Try this:
Carefully watch and listen to the end of “Little Ceasar” below. If Rico is Gingrich and the Republican establishment is the policeman, can’t you see some parallels?
Or will THIS be the REAL story over and over of Gingrich this course of this primary season ?
UPDATE: Time’s Mark Halperin:
Candidates matter but campaigns matter, too. After leaving Gingrich alone until it was too late in South Carolina, Boston focused on Newt from the start in Florida. And, like when Perry threatened the frontrunner, Team Romney has been incredibly effective tearing down Gingrich, going after him on the campaign trail by sending surrogates to crash his events, hitting him with TV and radio ads, holding daily media conference calls to drive choice themes, lining up newsmaking anti-Newt statements from people like Bob Dole and using Matt Drudge. All of that contributed to the goal of rattling Gingrich and forcing his campaign off message. Romney World’s performance — along with Mitt’s Jacksonville killer debate — could ease Establishment worries about whether Boston is capable of competing in a general election.
Now a big name has taken Gingrich to task: Jeb Bush:
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush tells National Review Online that Newt Gingrich should stop insinuating that Mitt Romney aides, due to their past work for Charlie Crist, are part of a moderate GOP conspiracy….
….“That’s not a serious accusation,” Bush says. “Candidates win elections. I’m not a big Charlie Crist fan, as you recall, but these guys shouldn’t have that moniker attached to them, as if Governor Romney is part of some evil plot. That’s ridiculous.”
And yet another poll holds bad new for the former House Speaker:
With the Presidential Preference Primary looming on Tuesday, Mitt Romney holds a solid lead over the Republican presidential pack in Florida, according to a Sunshine State News Poll of likely primary voters.
Romney tops the poll, which was conducted by Harrisburg, Pa.-based Voter Survey Service (VSS), with 40 percent. When he ran in the 2008 presidential primary, Romney placed second in Florida, taking 31 percent and winning 18 of the 67 counties in the Sunshine State. Newt Gingrich places second with 31 percent. Rick Santorum takes third with 12 percent followed by Ron Paul with 9 percent. One percent of those surveyed back other candidates while 6 percent remain undecided.
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.