Gallup reports:
After enjoying 14- to 15-percentage-point leads over Mitt Romney in early
December, Newt Gingrich is now statistically tied with Romney in national
Republican preferences for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination: 26% for
Gingrich vs. 24% for Romney. This follows a steady decline in support for
Gingrich in the past 10 days.
The latest findings are from Dec. 13-18 Gallup Daily tracking, based on 1,177
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered to vote.
Gallup initiated Daily tracking of the Republican presidential trial heat on
Dec. 1, and reports the results in continuous five-day rolling averages.
CNN reports:
Newt Gingrich's lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination has
evaporated, according to a new national survey.
A CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday indicates that 28% of
Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say the former House
speaker is their choice for their party's nominee, with an equal amount
supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. In CNN's previous national
poll, conducted last month, Gingrich held a 24%-20% margin over Romney. And
Gingrich's lead over the rest of the field of candidates was even larger in
other surveys conducted at the beginning of this month.
Full results (pdf)
Public Policy Polling reports:
Newt Gingrich's campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has nowtaken the lead in Iowa. He's at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich, 10% each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4% for Jon Huntsman, and 2% for Gary Johnson.
Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row. His share of the vote has gone from 27% to 22% to 14%. And there's been a large drop in his personal favorability numbers as well from +31 (62/31) to +12 (52/40) to now -1 (46/47). Negative ads over the last few weeks have really chipped away at Gingrich's image as being a strong conservative- now only 36% of voters believe that he has 'strong principles,' while 43% think he does not.
As a previous post noted, the audience for debates has been greater than it was four years ago. Politico reports:
RATINGS FOR THE 13 GOP DEBATES, per Nielsen data:1) ABC, Dec. 10 -- Des Moines: 7,631,000 total viewers (2,101,000 in 25-54 demographic)
2) Fox, Dec. 15 -- Sioux City, Iowa: 6,713,000 (1,865,000)
3) Fox-Google, Sept. 22 – Orlando: 6,107,000 (1,701,000)
4) CNN, Oct. 18 – Western debate in Vegas: 5,495,000 (1,660,000)
5) CBS, Nov. 12 – Spartanburg, S.C., national security: 5,480,000 (1,520,000)
6) NBC-POLITICO, on MSNBC, Sept 7 – Reagan Library: 5,411,000 (1,728,000)
7) Fox, Aug. 11 – Ames, Iowa, two nights before Straw Poll: 5,053,000 (1,430,000)
8) CNN, Sept. 12 – Tea Party debate in Tampa: 3,613,000 (1,132,000)
9) CNN, Nov. 22 – national security, DAR Hall in D.C.: 3,602,000 (1,041,000)
10) CNBC, Nov. 9 – “Your Money, Your Vote,” Rochester, Mich.: 3,332,000 (993,000)
11) Fox, May 5 – Greenville S.C. (first debate): 3,258,000 (854,000)
12) CNN, June 13 – Manchester, N.H.: 3,162,000 (918,000)
13) Bloomberg-WP, on Oct. 11 in Hanover, N.H., wasn’t carried on a rated station.
At The New York Times, Katherine Q. Seelye reports:
An analysis by The New York Times of more than 50 polls between June and last week shows a stark pattern of how voter sentiment shifted in defined blocks, first for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, then for Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, then to Herman Cain, the former business executive. Support for Mr. Romney and for Representative Ron Paul of Texas remained fairly static.
The Times charts the candates' rise and fall here.
The drop in the unemployment rate from 9 percent in October to 8.6 percent in November raises the legitimate question of whether the picture is brightening for the economy and the incumbent. Some analysts noted the similarity between November’s 8.6 percent unemployment rate and the 8.5 percent jobless rate in November 1983, a year before President Reagan won reelection in a 49-state landslide. Unemployment had been a bit worse for Reagan earlier in his first term than it was for Obama, 10.8 percent for the former compared with 10.1 percent for the latter. Reagan got to enjoy a strong “V” shaped recovery where unemployment fell to 7.2 percent by Election Day. But no economists anticipate such a swift recovery now.
But maybe the job recovery will be swifter than they expect.
CNN reports:
Fewer Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week. So few in fact, that initial jobless claims were at their lowest level since May 2008.
About 366,000 people filed initial jobless claims in the week ended Dec. 10, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was a decrease of 19,000 from the prior week, and far better than the bigger influx of claims that economists were expecting.
Public discontent with Congress has reached record levels, and the implications for incumbents in next year's elections could be stark, according to the the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 7-11. Two-in-three voters say most members of Congress should be voted out of office in 2012 - the highest on record. And the number who say their own member should be replaced matches the all-time high recorded in 2010, when fully 58 members of Congress lost reelection bids - the most in any election since 1948.
The Republican Party is taking more of the blame than the Democrats for a do-nothing Congress. A record-high 50% say that the current Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses, and by nearly two-to-one (40% to 23%) more blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for this. By wide margins, the GOP is seen as the party that is more extreme in its positions, less willing to work with the other side to get things done, and less honest and ethical in the way it governs. And for the first time in over two years, the Democratic Party has gained the edge as the party better able to manage the federal government.
Jonathan Salant writes at Bloomberg:
The Federal Election Commission said it won’t consider requiring organizations that air political advertisements to disclose their donors.
On a 3-3 party-line vote, the FEC decided today not to proceed
on a request for such a rule by Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland
Democrat.
Van Hollen filed his petition in April, more than a year after
the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which removed restrictions on
political ads funded by corporations and unions. Senate Republicans twice in
2010 blocked legislation that would require public disclosure of
contributors.
The FEC did agree to begin changing regulations that conflict
with the court decision. Chairwoman Cynthia Bauerly and fellow Democratic
commissioner Steven Walther called the action “the bare minimum necessary” in a
statement. Democrat Ellen Weintraub voted with Bauerly and Walther to consider a
disclosure rule.
...
Of the five Republican-leaning groups that spent the most money,
four kept their donors hidden, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which former Republican White House
aide Karl Rove helped create.
Crossroads GPS and its affiliated American Crossroads, which
does disclose donors, said they planned to raise more than $240 million for the
2012 elections. Democrats have countered with their own political groups,
including some that won’t disclose donors.
In a remarkable editorial, National Review issues an anti-endorsement of Gingrich:
His character flaws — his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for
half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas — made him a poor Speaker of the House. Again and again he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute
action, bringing Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position
without actually taking one. Again and again he put his own interests above
those of the causes he championed in public.
He says, and his defenders say, that time, reflection, and religious conversion
have conquered his dark side. If he is the nominee, a campaign that should be
about whether the country will continue on the path to social democracy would
inevitably become to a large extent a referendum on Gingrich instead. And there
is reason to doubt that he has changed. Each week we see the same traits that
weakened Republicans from 1995 through 1998: I’d vote for Paul Ryan’s
Medicare reform; Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform is radical right-wing social
engineering; I apologize for saying that, and no one should quote what I said
because I was wrong; actually, what I said was right all along but nobody
understood me. I helped defeat Communism; anyone who made money in the ’80s and
’90s owes me; I’m like Reagan and Thatcher. Local community boards should decide
what to do with illegal immigrants. Freddie Mac paid me all that money to tell
them how stupid they were. Enough. Gingrich has always said he wants to
transform the country. He appears unable to transform, or even govern, himself.
He should be an adviser to the Republican party,
but not again its head.
Newt Gingrich's surge to the top of the Republican presidential field is
attracting donations and volunteers to his minimalist campaign. But Gingrich
still lacks a staple of successful bids for national office: a big-name
endorsement.
No prominent Republican leaders have jumped aboard Gingrich's growing but
still-small bandwagon.
...
[W]hen it comes to major Republican office holders, "I think people are
waiting and seeing to see if (Gingrich) is going to falter like so many of these
other supposed front-runners" such as businessman Herman Cain and Texas Governor
Rick Perry, said Republican strategist Keith Appell.
"So people are keeping their powder dry a little bit."
“If this becomes a race between competing visions of America, and not about personalities, I can’t think of a better spokesman than Newt Gingrich getting up there and being able to articulate a competing vision,” said Davis, a former congressman from Virginia who was first elected in 1994 as part of the Gingrich revolution. But Davis warned that Gingrich’s past ethics issues and his extramarital affairs provide Democrats with ammunition against GOP candidates.
“If this becomes about all the other baggage and so on, he’s a loser,” said Davis, who twice chaired the National Republican Campaign Committee, the House GOP’s campaign operation. “The question is: Can you get there or can you not get past [the baggage]? I think that the jury is still out on that.”
Also at The Washington Post, Rachel Weiner has a collection of not-so-fond reflections on Newt by those who served with him. At McClatchy, William Douglas quotes former Rep. Susan Molinari and Senator Lindsay Graham:
"Even though Newt liked to talk about team-building and quality management, the theory he really subscribed to was management by chaos," Molinari wrote. "He loved chaos, and even when he didn't create it knowingly and intentionally, he managed to leave it in his wake after every meeting, after every press conference, after every phone call."
...
Graham, now a senator from South Carolina, likens Gingrich's tenure as speaker to a "Tale of Two Newts."
"We got things done in a bipartisan fashion that we could only dream of today: welfare reform, balanced budget agreement with President Clinton," said Graham, who personally likes Gingrich. "Then there was the Newt that got us all frustrated and upset, and that's the guy who was erratic. If you could bring out the best of Newt Gingrich and encapsulate that, you could have a transformative president."
