Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is continuing in his evolution as a conservative candidate most appealing to those who idolize conservative talk shows and as a candidate who most reflects those in the GOP who seemingly seek a smaller tentby making it clear those who don’t fit a rigid ideological profile need not attempt entry. His two latest endorsements are sure to be (additional) baggage for him if he gets the nomination and plans to talk to more than his existing choir — like, for instance, have a good chunk of independent voters and moderates (second to conservatives in number and more numerous than liberals in a Gallup poll) seriously consider him.
First, there’s former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, someone who appeals and excitesmany Republicans but who others find anything but brimming with articulate ideas and inviting to those who don’t agree with her.Here’s part of what she says on her Facebook page (which is what she uses to make her case, except for interviews with Sean “Softball” Hannity on Fox News):
We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.
Did I read this right?
Ms. Palin has it wrong. In fact, both parties have been in a major race over the past 30 years to use the politics of personal destruction, which were most notably made fashionable by the Lee Atwater when he ran campaign for George H.W. Bush and by Ted Kennedy in his successful campaign to defeat Robert Bork as a conservative Supreme Court nominee.
What is delicious here is reading Palin use the same kind of demonization she and talk show hosts have used against Democrats, liberals, moderates and (when they felt the party didn’t need them) independent voters — but this time against Republicans.
The only thing missing now is suggesting that their critics want the terrorists to win or that Romney is planning a death panel and not demanding to see their birth certificates. Palin’s Facebook page is living proof of “what goes around comes around.” Here’s a bit more and I encourage you to read it in full yourself and draw your own conclusions:
We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.
I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.
We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out,
I’ll leave it there because the “as Rush Limbaugh pointed out” gets back to the point of Gingrich and his existing appeal.
Yes, you can quote Rush about the glories of Newt Gingrich, but Gingrich would be far better served by having some non-talk-show-hosts or non serial partisan demonizers quoted and talking about his leadership qualities, what Gingrich (truly) did during the Reagan and Bush years to help Republicans unseat the New Deal coalition. A case can be made and it is clear the Romney camp is trying to blur.
But Sarah Palin is not the best one to do it since Gingrich will lose people — particularly when Palin claims that the innocent, never-denomizing GOPers are merely using the tactics of “the left” (which has come to mean in the eyes of some left, moderates, centrists and independents since all of those groups are either mushy or closet liberals).
Gingrich’s second defender is someone who has a radio show that I love to listen to when I can get it, but who will chase a chunk of voters away: talker Mark Levin. Levin belongs to the Michael Savage school of broadcasting, where he seems angry a lot of the time, he shouts and he gives sarcastic demeaning names to media types and reporters. It’s another show where all Ds and Ls are bad and if it’s suspected you’re a R leaning moderate, watch out. Still his segment needs to be listened to IN FULL so you can judge for yourself.
Levin makes a correct point about Gingrich: Gingrich was indeed battling for conservatives way before some of his Internet and TV commentators even knew what a conservative was. Levin makes good arguments (he is an attorney and must have been great in court) but the ideological labels and attacks he makes along the way undermine his good argument. He’s highly critical of Romney surrogate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The problem these two folks have is this: you CAN defend someone without going after and sticking labels on those who are going after Gingrich. Levin’s actual factual points about Gingrich are correct.
It’s amazing watching the indignation of Palin and Levin upset over the way Gingrich is being demonized. Haven’t they done that also in the case of Barack Obama?
But none of that matters in politics anymore. The consistency and at times the accuracy doesn’t matter.
It’s all about hurling the names and demonizing.
Which is what Gingrich does, what Romney and associates are doing to him, and what Palin and Levin do in going after Romney and associates for doing it to Gingrich.
Get it, kiddies?
FOOTNOTE: This is from my perspective as an independent voter. But The Politico has a different view of this:
Newt Gingrich has a new unofficial campaign surrogate and her name is Sarah Palin.
As the 2008 veep nominee sees it, Gingrich is getting a raw deal from the national media and conservative elite, the very same forces who conspired against her when she was on the national ticket. Palin hasn’t endorsed Gingrich — and has no official role in his campaign — but she is repeatedly surfacing at just the right times on the national airwaves to vociferously defend him.
In her latest appearance, Palin stated: “Look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him via the establishment’s attacks,” she said, though the original question was about Ron Paul. “They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years.”
Palin then called conservative writer Peggy Noonan “hypocritical” for recently calling Gingrich an “angry little attack muffin.”
“They maybe subscribe such characterization of Newt via words like that, but they don’t subscribe those to say Mitt Romney when he or his surrogates do the same thing,” she said. “That’s that typical hypocrisy stuff in the media that I’ve lived with over a couple of decades in the political arena. So I’m used to it.”
“But in order to help educate the rest of the American public, I’ll articulate that it is hypocritical of the media to subscribe to one candidate and not another, that kind of angry attack muffin verbiage to one and not the other.”
Though she declined to run for president in 2012, Palin still has a devoted following among tea party conservatives. Despite her non-endorsement, her views on the race have become crystal clear as she has waged an insistent public campaign for Gingrich that can’t be mistaken for anything but support for the volatile speaker and his ideas. As has usually been the case with Palin, her exact motives remain a mystery. But it does seem like the two Republicans share a common bond in suspecting the media and Washington power brokers are biased against them.
When asked about Palin’s unofficial advocacy for him on Friday, Gingrich’s campaign had no comment.
But after Palin picked Gingrich in South Carolina, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told NBC News: “We think it’s a pretty darn clear call to arms.”
Palin’s husband, Todd, backed Gingrich just days before he won South Carolina, and right afterward, the former vice presidential nominee touted Gingrich as the leader of the GOP pack.
Gingrich rarely employs the use of official surrogates, lacking the organization of Mitt Romney, who frequently dispatches supporters to make public appearances. A surrogate that is doing so voluntarily is a plus for a campaign that is struggling to fend off a barrage of attacks.
But my point remains: in a general election if Palin is enthusiastically endorsing someone that will chase a chunk of voters away.
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.