Rasmussen now shows Gingrich behind Romney in Iowa and the trend lines are pretty bad. The process stories are no longer about his amazing comeback and how brilliant he is. They are about how his support is soft, and how his Iowa operation is feeble and how he isn’t spending enough time in Iowa. Momentum is a cruel mistress. I’ve always (well, since the Gingrich surge) thought something like this would happen.
But…Gingrich might be declining at just the right time for Gingrich. This was always going to happen if his opponents were minimally competent. He still has tonight’s debate to start his way back. If this decline were happening two weeks from now he would be toast. He has a chance to use the debate to portray himself as a victim of the establishment pointyheaded weenies who can’t stand a real transformational conservative. And he NEEDS the other Republicans to lay off him a little (since he is on the way down anyway), and not challenge his alibis on all his flip-flops and business dealings. If they mostly ignore Gingrich and focus on each other, Gingrich could go back to running against the liberal media (presumably including FOX News and National Review), tell preposterous stories about himself, and generally pretend to be the above-it-all, visionary, brainiac, futurist, super-statesman. He is good at that. What he needs is for the other Republicans to give him the space to get off the mat.
If they are smart, they won’t give it to him, but the incentives are changing. In the last debate, it was imperative for everybody not named Gingrich or Huntsman to bring Gingrich down. If Gingrich didn’t go down, nothing else mattered. So Gingrich faced a gang attack, and despite all the positive commentary from the national media, it hurt him. Now it is in every other candidate’s interest to have someone else finish Gingrich off while they themselves stay above it all. That means Gingrich might get fewer attacks. Or maybe Romney just needs to rip Gingrich apart for what happened on Saturday. And maybe Bachmann needs to distinguish her own outsider authenticity by drawing sharp contrasts between herself and the insider/sellout Gingrich. Same thing with Santorum and Perry. Ron Paul will be Ron Paul.
December 15th, 2011 | 9:11 pm
Lots of good advice here. The R is only one poll. I hope the debate can be as important as Pete thinks. I want Newt to be on the way down, but it’s not as clear to me. And nobody is on the way up.
December 15th, 2011 | 10:11 pm
2 polls show Gingrich on the way down in Iowa. I don’t think he is finished. I think the debate will be important to the extent it turns things around for Gingrich.
December 16th, 2011 | 7:05 am
Polls and criticisms of the Newt aside, I just heard him explain what he would do to any judges among the federal judiciary who would act outside their constitutional bounds. With all the negatives, the man can come up with stuff that makes my toes curl.
I seriously doubt Mitt’s even vaguely aware of judicial impropriety.
December 16th, 2011 | 10:00 am
Peter wrote the script for the debate, at least as far as Mitt was concerned–he never took on Newt directly, but everyone knew what he was talking about when he defended his record in business. Michele Bachmann took Newt on, quite effectively, and probably helped herself in Iowa. Hard to see that she could come all the way back, but who is to say? There is still space for an anti-Romney candidate, although the scare that Newt created led many to re-think Romney: Romeny has a much more “conservative” image than just two weeks ago.
Romney performed well. His one weakness is that he feels he really must refute every criticism of him, rather than use the occasion to further his goals. He did this a few week ago in the Bret Baier interview, in the last debate with Rick Perry, and again a little bit last night with Chris Wallace. But all in all Mitt comes out of this debate in good shape. He probably should not want anything more than good shape. Curiously, we now see, his best position strategically is when he is in second place to an implausible or declining “conservative” alternative. It is then that the media and the other conservatives focus on the person on top, saving Mitt from too much focus and criticism. He would be in the best shape not to win Iowa, but perform well enough and lose to an implausible conservative. If he begins to look like he is wrapping this thing up too early, it might be to his detriment–everyone would then have to turn directly on him. No one should want to look like a sure thing before Super Tuesday.
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