Bad 1998 Memories of Newt

Why are so few Republican lawmakers supporting their former Speaker? At Human Events, Neil McCabe quotes a former House GOP leadership staffer who recalls how Gingrich botched the 1998 midterm. Even though Congress had not reached a budget agreement, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott let senators go home for campaigning, and Gingrich did not object. Meanwhile, four House Republicans running for the Senate were suddenly at a disadvantage.

“The result was that while Newt kept those four congressmen in town with the rest of the House to vote on stupid resolutions and to name post offices, the Democrats they were running against were back in their states campaigning.”

The four were: Rep. John E. Ensign (R.-Nev.) who lost to Sen. Harry M. Reid (D.-Nev.) by 428 votes; Rep. Robert D. Inglis Sr., (R.-S.C.) who lost to Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D.-S.C.) whose 47 percent held Hollings to his second lowest percentage in his six Senate elections; Rep. Mark W. Neumann (R.-Wis.), whose 48.40 percent was bested by the 50.55 percent Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D.-Wis.) garnered; and Rep. Linda Smith (R.-Wash.), who lost to Sen. Patricia L. Murray (D.-Wash.).

And Gingrich's style hurt on his own side of the Hill:

On the House side, Gingrich placed his home state ally Rep. John E. Linder (R.-Ga.) as the leader of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, he said. “He also sent over a tribe of his gurus from his office to work at the NRCC.”

This move gave Gingrich complete control, he said.

“Today, you can look at any race and there are five different bloggers, who can tell you exactly what is happening up-to-minute,” he said.

“Back then, you had to rely on what the leadership told you what was happening, so we lost five seats, there was complete shock—no one saw it coming at all.”

“What was even more galling to the members was the way Gingrich and Linder had everyone convinced we were headed for a 30-seat gain,” said the former staffer, who is not affiliated with a presidential campaign.

“It also didn’t help that the budget that passed was a disaster. It had no tax cut and Clinton got everything he wanted,” the former staffer said. “Limbaugh was killing us and calling the budget a sellout, so conservatives stayed home.”

The key to the budget disaster was Gingrich’s leadership style, he said.

“Because Lott was just going to go along with whatever, it came down to the White House and the House,” he said.

“Gingrich’s ego was so huge, he insisted on conducting the negotiations himself,” he said. “There would be four staffers from the White House on one side of the table and then Newt.”

Obama...or Gingrich?

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) attacks President Obama at The Hill. The criticism strongly resembles descriptions of Newt Gingrich's speakership.

After observing President Obama for the last three years, it has become obvious to me that the president might prefer to be a university professor rather than do the job he holds today. While he might not realize that he feels this way, the evidence is very clear to those who work with or watch him closely.

Let me be clear — I’m not trying to disparage professors. But anyone who wonders why the president is not crushing the weak Republican field only needs to examine how President Obama has behaved more like Professor Obama:

In the president’s first year in office, his administration suffered from what I call “idea disease.” Every week, and sometimes almost every day, the administration rolled out a new program for the country. There was no obvious prioritization and, after the rollout, very little effort to actually pass the latest idea/imperative/plan/edict.

...

Early in his administration, President/Professor Obama repeatedly referred to “teaching moments.” He would admonish staff, members of Congress and the public, in speeches and in private, about what they could learn from him. Rather than the ideological or corrupt “I’m above the law” attitudes of some past administrations, President Obama projected an arrogant “I’m right, you’re wrong” demeanor that alienated many potential allies.

Pew Measures the State of the GOP Race

New Pew survey:

It finds that 70% support Gingrich or say there is a chance they would vote
for him. Romney trails Gingrich for the nomination, but as many as 61% of likely
Republican primary voters either support Romney or say there is a chance they
could support him.

Just 18% of likely Republican primary voters say there is no chance
they could support Gingrich and only somewhat more (26%) say there is no chance
they could vote for Romney. More than four-in-ten likely Republican primary
voters have effectively ruled out voting for the other GOP candidates.

The survey finds that neither Gingrich nor Romney is drawing much in the
way of strong support. Just 29% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who
favor Gingrich for the nomination support him strongly; 69% support him “only
moderately.” Similarly, far fewer GOP voters support Romney strongly (33%) than
support him only moderately (66%). Support for both Gingrich and Romney
is softer than was support for the leading GOP candidates four years
ago.

Elizabeth Warren, Banks, and the Crossroads Groups

Crossroads GPS has gone after Elizabeth Warren on her ties to the financial services industry and Occupy Wall Street. Michael Beckel writes at The Open Secrets blog:

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies -- the conservative nonprofit advocacy group founded with assistance from GOP strategist Karl Rove -- wants you to believe that Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is too close to Big Finance. However, last month, the group criticized her for being too close to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Warren has called Crossroads GPS' new ad “factually wrong and morally wrong.”

Who is funding these attacks? For its part, Crossroads GPS is not legally required to publicly disclose its donors, but its sister organization -- a super PAC known as American Crossroads -- is. And American Crossroads has significant ties to the finance sector and other wealthy business interests.

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, called the pair of Crossroads GPS-produced ads some of the "least effective" ads he has seen.

"Rarely do you see such diametrically opposing attacks made by the same group within a short period of time," Sabato told OpenSecrets Blog. "Given her liberal ideology, a viewer could believe that Warren had some sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, but to make her somehow sympathetic to big bankers and Wall Street? That strains credulity."

For her part, Warren helped create the President Barack Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- a new regulatory body that many finance sector interests spent heavily to oppose.

Crossroads GPS v. Obama on Solyndra

A release from Crossroads GPS:

WASHINGTON – Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) today is releasing a new TV ad focused on President Obama and his involvement with Solyndra, the failed solar energy company that squandered at least $535 million of taxpayer money.

Entitled “Typical,” the ad will run on national cable for ten days in a buy totaling $500,000. It can be viewed here.

The new ad focuses on the fact that Solyndra’s executives were major campaign contributors to President Obama; that they were able to leverage their White House connections to help secure a taxpayer-guarantee on a $535 million loan; and that the company dramatically failed to create jobs and instead left taxpayers on the hook for its losses. Instead of Obama being an agent of change in Washington, he participates in the games and cronyism of typical Washington.

Additionally, Crossroads GPS released a memo, entitled “New Crossroads Ad Confronts President Obama’s Crony Keynesianism,” which lays out the strategy behind the ad.

Attacking Newt

An earlier post featured a tough Ron Paul web ad against Gingrich. And now, James Hohmann writes at Politico:

EXCLUSIVE – PAUL VIDEO BLISTERS GINGRICH FOR “SELLING ACCESS”: Ron Paul continues to intensify his attack on Newt Gingrich, releasing another two-minute web video this morning that seeks to define the former House Speaker as a corrupt Washington insider who got rich by “selling access.” The fast-paced video, which will be pushed hard on conservative web sites this week, includes a clip of Gingrich calling himself “an insider” and another in which he mind-bogglingly brags about getting paid $60,000-a-speech. The video comes on the heels of the Paul campaign’s decision to expand the buy size for their first, 60-second Gingrich takedown in Iowa and New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's campaign just launched unreliableleader.com to highlight Newt's breaks with conservative orthodoxy: http://unreliableleader.com/. Watch the Paul video: http://bit.ly/tcKufR.

Hohmann continues [emphasis added]:

USA TODAY - "GINGRICH SLAMMED '96 RIVAL ON CHILD LABOR": "Before Newt Gingrich questioned the validity of child labor laws, he used them to attack an opponent," Jackie Kucinich writes in what is likely a rival campaign's quick-hit oppo dump. "...in a 1996 ad titled 'Cookie,' Gingrich slammed his then-congressional opponent, Michael Coles, former CEO of Great American Cookie Co., as an 'unscrupulous businessman' partly because of a 1993 violation of child labor laws and accused him of using children 'for hazardous labor,' according to a transcript of the ad in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution." http://usat.ly/vD4N3f

Team Romney is also going after Gingrich's desciption of Palestinians as an "invented" people. Scott Conroy writes at RealClearPolitics:

In addressing Gingrich’s comments, Romney said that while he agreed with most of what his opponent had said, he took issue with Gingrich’s eagerness to throw “incendiary words into a place which is a boiling pot.”

In language that seemed to imply Gingrich is a loose cannon, Romney added, “I will exercise sobriety, care, stability and make sure that in a setting like this, anything I say that can affect a place with rockets going in, with people dying, I don't do anything that would harm that process.”

In the spin room following the debate, Team Romney turned up the heat with some of the most eviscerating language that a campaign aide has leveled against a GOP foe in the primary fight thus far.

Romney spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom called Gingrich’s remarks “tremendously destructive to a negotiated settlement” in the Middle East and said that he was “astounded that Newt Gingrich stood by his incendiary comments.”

“You heard Mitt Romney say, ‘I’m not a bomb-thrower.’ Newt Gingrich clearly is,” Fehrnstrom added. “He comes across as the Foghorn Leghorn of politics -- very loud, very brash, and very sure of himself, even when he’s wrong.”

Filling Gaps in the White House Website, Part 75

From Steve Kroft's interview with the president on "60 Minutes":

KROFT: I'm not saying this as fact, and hindsight is always 20-20. But there's [a] general perception that the stimulus was not enough. That it really didn't work. That...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let me stop you there, Steve. First of all, there's not general perception that the stimulus didn't work.

From a November Reuters-Ipsos poll:

On balance, a majority of Americans (62%) believe that the stimulus bills that Congress has approved in recent years have ‘just created debt’ (as opposed to helped the economy), but there is a strong division here by party:

• Democrats are equally divided on the issue, with 44% believing it has helped the economy, and 45% that it has created debts
• The vast majority of Republicans, on the other hand, believe the stimulus bills have created debt (82%).