The end of the road for Gingrich?

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30 January 2012

Five days ago Newt Gingrich held a 10 point lead in Florida and looked poised to carry his momentum from South Carolina down into the Sunshine State. Alas, five days is a lifetime when it comes to campaigns. Over the last several days, Mitt Romney has surged back ahead and now is the clear favourite to win the January 31 Florida primary.

This is obviously bad news for Gingrich, but it’s especially damaging given the campaign schedule. The four upcoming states (Nevada, Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota) were all carried by Romney in the 2008 Republican primary. If Gingrich stalls in Florida, it will be exceptionally difficult to regain momentum.

And, as the support dries up, so do the campaign contributions. Money is always important in the primary, but in the earlier, smaller states like Iowa and New Hampshire, a candidate can somewhat compensate for a lack of resources by campaigning aggressively across the state, and holding face to face meetings with voters. However, as the campaign drags on, this becomes an increasingly difficult task. The number of days between each state primary shrinks, and a number of states begin holding their elections on the same day. A candidate simply doesn’t have the time to personally visit all the counties in each state. Under these circumstances, having the resources to blanket the airwaves with advertisements is an enormous advantage.

Of course, if we’ve learned one thing during the campaign, it’s not to count out Gingrich. Every time he’s been left for dead, he’s managed to rise from the ashes in a blaze of populist rhetoric. And the creation of Super PACs means that Gingrich can potentially rely on advertising campaigns financed by wealthy individuals, even if his own direct campaign contributions begin to dry up.

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Just how high is Mitt Romney's tax rate?

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27 January 2012

This chart comes from the Tax Foundation, via Ilya Gerner. It turns out that though Mitt Romney pays a much lower rate on his earnings than most comparably wealthy people, because he can claim them as capital gains, he still pays a greater proportion of those earnings in income tax than most Americans.

This is a good thing to keep in mind, but in the graphic above, the Foundation seems to be using that old sleight of hand where “taxes” and “federal income taxes” are supposed to be the same thing. I’m going to assume the culprit is an understandable desire for simplicity from the Tax Foundation, which describes itself as nonpartisan, rather than intentional deception. The post describing the chart is generally pretty good about clarifying that it’s talking about income tax, but it gets sloppy in the conclusion:

Which gets us back to Mitt Romney’s effective tax rate of 14 percent, after deductions. As the chart shows, this rate is still higher than the average rate paid by taxpayers earning up to $200,000. There are about 136 million taxpayers who have adjusted gross incomes less than $200,000, or 97 percent of all taxpayers. So even with an average tax rate of 14 percent, Romney paid a higher average rate than 97 percent of his fellow Americans.

I assume they intended “average rate” to be a shorthand for “average federal income tax rate.” But let’s not forget that as well as getting a sweet deal because his income arrives in the form of capital gains, Romney also sees a lower proportion of his earnings disappear in sales taxes and payroll tax.

And also, it’s worth discussing whether Romney’s capital gains earnings should be taxed at a lower rate than those rare wage earners who have done well enough for themselves to get paid $200 000 or more a year. The idea is that Romney is an investor, and the lower tax rate encourages him to keep up this economically valuable activity. There’s another school of thought that this rationale doesn’t amount to much.

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The evolving state of the Union

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26 January 2012

I've got a reaction to yesterday's State of the Union address up at American Review; you should head over there to get my complete thoughts on what may be President Obama's final one. The short version is that this was a bold address aimed at reminding the American people why they should give Obama a second term: "This was a State of the Union by a president who wants people to know that he gets things done." 

One thing I did notice about the speech was that, toward the end, Obama declared "the state of our Union will always be strong." I wondered: How does that assessment compare to previous years?

• 2012: "The state of the Union is getting stronger ... the state of our Union will always be strong."
• 2011: "The state of our Union is strong."
• 2010: "Despite our hardships, our Union is strong."
• 2009: "The United States of America will emerge stronger than before."
• 2008: "The state of our Union will remain strong."
• 2007: "Yet we can go forward with confidence — because the state of our Union is strong."
• 2006: "Tonight the state of our Union is strong, and together we will make it stronger."
• 2005: "The state of our Union is confident and strong."
• 2004: "The state of our union is confident and strong."
• 2003: "America is a strong nation and honorable in the use of our strength."
• 2002: "The state of our Union has never been stronger."
• 2001: "The entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union — and it is strong."
• 2000: "My fellow Americans, the state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been."

Turns out the state of the Union tends, by and large, to be... strong?

Actually, I did some digging, and it turns out this cliche is a relatively modern one. At the first State of the Union address, given by George Washington in 1790, the president didn't even bother to spell out his thoughts on the matter. The closest he got was a direction that he would have his underlings provide Congress with more detailed information:

I have directed the proper officers to lay before you, respectively, such papers and estimates as regard the affairs particularly recommended to your consideration, and necessary to convey to you that information of the state of the Union which it is my duty to afford.

But who was the first president to use the precise construction "the State of our Union is strong"?

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SOTU highlights package

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25 January 2012

President Obama’s State of the Union address was an opportunity to lay out his agenda for the coming year and make the case that he deserves a second term. The address was pragmatic and policy driven, mostly absent of the lofty rhetoric that has highlighted many of his past speeches. The goal was to draw a stark contrast between his proposals and those of the Republicans. Obama opened and closed with relatively uncontroversial remarks on the military, but the majority of his speech focused on the economy. The president struck a populist tone, criticising the reckless behaviour of Wall Street and calling on the rich to shoulder a larger portion of the tax burden. Obama also responded to attacks from the Republican candidates, while trying not to give the impression that he was in full on campaign mode. You can view the full transcript of the speech here, but these were a few of the highlights.

On the Economy

The state of our Union is getting stronger. And we’ve come too far to turn back now. As long as I’m President, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.

On Immigration

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The Gingrich face of the Republican Party

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24 January 2012

Newt Gingrich accomplished something remarkable on Saturday, not just by winning in South Carolina, but by managing to convince Tea Party Republicans that he exemplifies an authentic brand of anti-elite conservatism.

Gingrich rails against MItt Romney, the so called “Massachusetts moderate” who instituted “Romneycare” while governor, but again and again and again, he has voiced his support for the individual mandate that forms the centrepiece of both Governor Romney and President Obama’s health care plans.

Gingrich criticises the elites in the media and within government, but since leaving Congress in 1997, he’s epitomised the term “Washington insider.” Gingrich has served on numerous government panels and task forces, and most notably received $1.6 million dollars for his work as a strategic advisor/lobbyist for the government backed mortgage lender Freddie Mac. It’s true that he’s not the darling of the Republican establishment; but this is in large part because so many Republican colleagues were unimpressed with his leadership as Speaker of the House. If alienating members of your own party in this manner counts as being anti-elite and anti-establishment, so be it, but I don’t think it’s exactly what the Tea Party had in mind.

One of Gingrich’s selling points has been that he is an intellectual leader of the Republican Party; and a few days ago he described his candidacy as being built around “big ideas and big solutions.” However, as Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein note, he’s offered surprisingly little in the way of substantive policy proposals.

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Florida or bust

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23 January 2012

What is it they say about a week being a long time in politics?

Certainly Mitt Romney’s week started well: claiming two wins from two states, a lead heading towards Saturday’s South Carolina primary, and the endorsement of fellow moderate presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, who bowed out after coming third in New Hampshire.

The Romney campaign could have been forgiven for starting to think ahead to the coming main game against Barack Obama.

But what’s this? A recount of the tens of thousands of handwritten ballots from the Iowa Caucuses on January 3rd found that Rick Santorum was now 34 votes ahead of Romney, not eight votes behind as declared on the night.

Mitt Romney: one from two.

The week dragged on.

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More meaningless stats, stat!

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22 January 2012

I daresay we'll hear it said a lot over the next few days: No Republican has won his party's nomination without winning South Carolina since 1980. In fact, here's a New York Times report on Saturday's South Carolina contest, won resoundingly by Newt Gingrich, saying exactly that:

And after being so confident just 10 days ago, the Romney campaign is now fighting not only the perception that Mr. Romney cannot consolidate broad support among conservative voters, but also at least one troubling fact: No Republican has gone on to win the party’s nomination without winning South Carolina since before 1980.

Meaningless statistic is meaningless! We're talking about five races in which an incumbent Republican president was not running — hardly a decisive precedent. (Make it six if you consider Pat Buchanan's challenge against President George H.W. Bush in 1992 to have actually stood a chance.) And remember a week ago, when Mitt Romney was thought to have won Iowa and been all but a sure thing for the nomination, how commentators were fond of saying that, in the modern primary era, no Republican challenger had won both Iowa and New Hampshire? It was as if the eight votes by which Romney had been thought to have won by actually indicated some exceptional electoral strength that proved his competitiveness.

South Carolina's track record in picking winners is aptly explained by Jamelle Bouie at The American Prospect:

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Are Obama's critics really that dumb

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20 January 2012

Andrew Sullivan’s Newsweek article defending President Obama against criticism from both the left and the right has garnered much attention — in large part due to the pugnacious cover title, “Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb?” that the editors decided to slap on the piece. Sullivan’s own words are controversial, if less inflammatory:

It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.

Here, I’d like to focus primarily on the criticism of Obama coming from members of his own party. Sullivan is correct that Obama’s list of accomplishments is far more substantial than many on the left give him credit for. To a large extent, Obama's perceived failures have been the result of unrealistic expectations. I was attending a left-leaning college in Minnesota at the time of his election, and many classmates seemed ready to summit Mount Rushmore, chisel in hand, and carve Obama’s likeness right alongside Washington and Lincoln. Many, myself included to some degree, blurred the line between the historical significance of his election and what he could realistically achieve as president. And, as Sullivan points out, Obama never promised to be the “left wing crusader” that some had hoped for.

Still, it’s not as if Obama played no role whatsoever in creating this hype. He billed himself as a transformative figure who wanted to reform a “broke system.” Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig commented in a recent interview that Obama emphasised during his campaign “that the current system made it impossible to solve problems in a way that advanced the interests of either the left or the right,” but in his first term he’s seemed entirely content to “work within the current framework” rather than address its flaws. I can understand the frustration of those who saw the Obama presidency as the chance not simply to enact certain policy proposals, but to at least try and change the way Washington works.

Sullivan also explains that critics have mischaracterised and misinterpreted Obama’s political strategy:

To use the terms Obama first employed in his inaugural address: the president begins by extending a hand to his opponents; when they respond by raising a fist, he demonstrates that they are the source of the problem; then, finally, he moves to his preferred position of moderate liberalism and fights for it without being effectively tarred as an ideologue or a divider.

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Santorum nabs the coveted fictional mob boss endorsement

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19 January 2012

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum might be struggling to convert his strong Iowa showing into a successful national campaign, but he should be cheered by one vote of approval — that of HBO Mafia don Tony Soprano. The above clip comes from a 2006 episode of "The Sopranos," Live Free or Die, which featured one of Tony's mobsters, Vito Spatafore, being outed as gay. Vito flees to New Hampshire to escape the persecution of his compatriots, and Tony struggles to reconcile his revulsion at homosexuality with his lack of concern for people's personal lives as long as they don't interfere with his business activities. He particularly likes, he says, the anti-gay stance of Senator "Sanitarium."

Unfortunately for Santorum, the New Jersey primary won't be held until June 5th — and fictional characters can't vote.

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The case for the open primary

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18 January 2012

In accordance with the principle of federalism, each state in the US is given substantial freedom to conduct and regulate elections for state and federal offices. Consequently, there is great variation in election procedure between the states. While a few of these differences are abundantly obvious, such as the presidential caucus system used in some states, others are much less readily apparent. The distinction between a closed and open primary may not be a headline grabber (I haven’t seen it mentioned in the Australian media’s coverage of US politics) but it can impact the outcome of elections. While there is debate within the US over the virtues and empirical consequences of both systems, I’d argue that open primaries are superior in that they shift power from the political parties to the voters themselves, and can serve as a tool in alleviating the hyper-partisanship that contaminates the American political system.

In a closed primary, voters need to be a registered member of the party in order to participate, while in an open primary anyone can vote regardless of party affiliation. Even within these two categories there is much variation. For instance, some states hold semi-closed primaries, which permit first time registrants to participate in either party’s primary.

By limiting the pool of eligible voters to only long-term party members, closed primaries might encourage the selection of more ideologically extreme nominees. While more moderate candidates could have a good chance of winning in the general election, they are often weeded out in the primary stage, where it is the views of the party base that matter most. After the primaries, voters are often left with a choice between a very liberal Democrat or a very conservative Republican, and no middle ground. More open systems can help address these problems by allowing independents and members of the other party to vote in either primary.

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