Romney Wins Florida: Will the Media Ditch Newt?

An interesting question raised by Romney's decisive win tonight: Will this signal to news executives that it's time to scale back campaign coverage? BuzzFeed thinks so, though Politico's Dylan Byers disagrees. (It seems to me that even if they do go to "zone" coverage, it won't matter much, since the reporters will also tell you they've not gotten a lot of access to candidates this season. The candidates have relied on the debates, TV ads, and social media to reach voters--not the MSM).

On the other hand, many reporters I've been observing are not eager for this race to end. Regardless of how they may feel about the candidates personally (which they don't divulge to me anyway), they kinda hate the thought of essentially covering just Mitt all the way until at least late March, when a candidate can finally amass enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

Meanwhile, David Corn at Mother Jones, who's been following this race closely, asks whether Newt will be the "Doomsday machine" of the GOP: "Gingrich is a problem for the front-runner and the entire GOP establishment—and that's because he's following the scorched-earth playbook that he long ago developed for the party and that the party has embraced for years."

On the eve of the Florida primary

Some stories I'm watching as we wait for voting to begin tomorrow:

A new report analyzes ad spending so far in the Republican presidential race and finds that spending by interest groups (i.e. SuperPACs) has increased by 1600% over 2008 levels, and that Romney's campaign and its SuperPAC allies have run 13,000 ads in Florida compared to Newt and company's 200.

Probably reflecting that outsized advertising influence, the polls all show Romney with a comfortable lead in Florida. Yet Newt is threatening to go all the way to the convention, and as a Politico story pointed out earlier today, there's little holding him back: As an aging pol who's long wanted to hold center stage, he has little to lose (ahem) in terms of respect within the Republican establishment by creating a contested convention. And the Republican party's new rules for apportioning delegates allow a challenger like Gingrich to actually rack up a delegate count rather than being shut out even if he loses Florida (a fascinating case of unintended consequences?).

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin cheers Newt on from the sidelines: "if for no other reason [than] to rage against the machine: Vote for Newt, annoy a liberal. Vote Newt. Keep this vetting process going..." And writing for the Times, Thomas Edsall shows just how compromised the so-called values voters have become: "Joining Gingrich’s National Faith Coalition are Tim and Beverly LaHaye (Tim LaHaye is the author of “Battle for the Family” and Beverly LaHaye is the founder of Concerned Women for America, the largest women’s pro-family advocacy group in America); Dr. Jim Garlow, the California pastor who presides over the websiteProtectMarriage.com, which backed the Proposition 8 campaign against gay marriage; and Don Wildmon, whose American Family Association website features his unshakeable commitment to “Strengthening Today’s Marriage and Family Movement.”

The Florida primary approaches

On Sunday I fly to DC to do interviews and observation and the Washington Post and Politico as they cover Tuesday's primary in Florida. Looking forward to the experience; not looking forward to the cold. :)

In the meantime, here's a random collection of my latest favorite observations about state of the Republican nominating race:

Re. last night's debate, some consensus that it was a Newt "no-show": "the Gingrich who lit up a pair of moderators last week in South Carolina on his way to a thumping win didn’t show up here Thursday evening."

Politico this morning: "In soliciting support on Capitol Hill, Romney has sought to highlight his potential reliability as a Republican nominee. At a closed-door meeting with GOP lawmakers last year, Romney offered this promise to the more than 60 members who came to hear him. 'I won't embarrass you,' he said."

David Brooks in the New York Times: "...it’s an odd thing when a leading Republican candidate has the children of his first wife attacking his second wife for things she said about his third wife and this candidate is the one getting social conservative support."

Tim Egan, also in the Times: "After inventing, and then perfecting, the modern politics of personal destruction, Gingrich has decided now to bank on the dark fears of the worst element of the Republican base to seize the nomination — using skills refined over four decades." [In case you don't get the previous quote, this second piece will explain it.]

ANOTHER debate??

The Republican candidates will line up tonight for their umpteenth debate. One question is whether Newt will repeat his masterfully evasive performance from last time (see Jon Stewart's expert analysis here.) Suddenly, as Politico reports today, many key figures in the GOP and conservative circles are sounding alarms about Newt. "Erratic" is one key charge. False flatterer of Reagan is another (a theme of a new pro-Romney SuperPAC ad as well). The bottom line: These people are actually frightened that Newt might really become the nominee--though, as Politico notes, many won't speak publicly against him in case...he becomes the nominee.

Another question is how the audience will react. As the New York Times reports, CNN (host of tonight's debate) likes a raucous crowd.

Overall, the race in FL may be boiling down to The Tea Party vs the cocktail party--though the outcome may also depend on how Romney and Gingrich handle the complicated politics of Florida's large Hispanic communities.

update to Newt in Action

Just saw Chris Matthews' commentary on Gingrich's debate performance last night. I'm not always a big fan of Matthews, but I think he nailed the racial dog-whistling that occurred last night dead on.

Newt In Action

This morning at an unassuming art gallery in Florence, SC, Gingrich continued his attacks from the debate last night--at which, his presenter said, "Newt KICKED BUTT."

Newt: "the audience spontaneously started standing and applauding," and he described watching the wave grow from the back of the huge lecture hall to the front.

The same lines worked well for this morning's much smaller but still pretty fervent crowd.

In addition to the "food stamp president" charge, he declared that "No American president should ever again bow to a Saudi king," and that there's a big difference between "a Saul Alinsky radical" and a candidate (himself) who "believes in the AMERICAN Declaration of Independence, the AMERICAN Constitution," etc. (emphasis in original).

Having never watched the Newtster in person before, I have to say he is more formidable than I imagined. On TV he sometimes comes across (to me, anyway) as a bit of a blowhard buffoon. But this morning he was focused, firm, and very aggressive in a way that played well to a group of voters determined to, as one questioner put it, "bloody Obama's nose." (Newt corrected the metaphor: "I don't want to bloody Obama's nose," he said, "I want to knock him out." Big cheer from the crowd).

Newt promised that if he wins the nomination, he will challenge the president to "seven three-hour debates" with no moderator. He won't need to use a teleprompter himself, Gingrich said, though he suspects that Obama will. "If you had to defend Obamacare," he asked rhetorically, "wouldn't you want a teleprompter?" If Obama refuses to debate, he said, he will follow the president everywhere he goes, rebutting Obama's every speech with one of his own.

Seeing him work this morning made me wonder if the White House really does rub its hands together in glee at the thought of running against Gingrich. I'm not convinced many people remember or care about his scandals from earlier decades, and he would undoubtedly provide a riveting performance against Obama.

debate #16 post-mortem

You will all (if you are junkies, anyway) get your fill of post-debate analysis. But let me add a couple of observations.

It seemed to me that the tone of the debate around racially-charged issues was palpable and disturbing, including the way the crowd boo-ed Juan Williams for pressing his line of questioning about Newt's racial (in)sensitivities, and the way the crowd gave Newt a standing ovation at the end of his tirade. Newt didn't back away from or try to explain away his repeated description of Obama as a "food stamp president"--and the crowd loved it. (See the Washington Post's fact check of Newt's claim). And they also really loved Perry's rousing call for a new civil war in South Carolina (prompting one tweeter to wonder if the explosions we were hearing here at the end of the debate meant the war had actually begun). I asked my kindly guide Dan Balz of the Washington Post whether he could remember a similarly raucous debate audience, and he could only think of one: last year's tea-party hosted debate. Which tells you something.

But it's also important to remember Mr. Williams' own past role in America's racial discourse. It's not unimaginable that he was playing willing foil for the kind of "color blind" rhetoric that many white Americans find empowering and reassuring (and that FOX News, his employer, revels in). It's not racist, according to this rhetoric, to insist on "work" and "responsibility." As Newt blandly asserted, there is no racial overtone to calling our first Black president a "food stamp president." Cue the wildly cheering crowd.

The exchange did little to damage Mr. Williams, and did a great deal to boost Newt.

Keep your eye on how the media handle this tangled, difficult topic.

Republican debate #16

I'm sitting in the packed press "filing room" (that's right, reporters don't get to sit in the actual room where the actual candidates have their actual debate), waiting for the debate to begin. We get to watch the debate on a giant (but poorly lit) TV screen. The parallel event is on everyone's laptop screens: the Twitter feed, which is already firing up.

While I'm waiting for things to get started, some quick notes from today:

- most reporters I've talked with think that the interesting story to watch now is Gingrich: He's made it clear he will attack Romney hard.

- got to see Perry and Romney each address the "Faith & Family" event hosted by Ralph Reed. Romney connected surprisingly well with this largely evangelical crowd; Perry was even worse than I expected. The man really has trouble stringing together a sentence--even in a "natural" crowd for him.

Now, off they go!

...and Going to South Carolina

I guess I should have known better than to name my blog after NH.

An unexpected opportunity popped up in the last two days, and I'm off to South Carolina--the home of the "brawl," the "bloodbath," and other fun names--on Monday and Tuesday. This time I hope to have better access, as I'll be attending the candidate debate Monday night along with a Ralph Reed sponsored candidate forum Monday afternoon, plus traveling with Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater (a veteran of presidential campaigns who was featured in Alexandra Pelosi's dry and hilarious film Journeys With George).

Should be interesting. As you've probably heard, South Carolina has become Super Pac Land, so the airwaves will be saturated with the finest offerings of the politico-consultancy complex.

So, stay tuned!

leaving New Hampshire

I've spent the day mulling what I learned here. For one, I learned a great deal about how reporters are using social media, especially Twitter, in covering this campaign. The ironic fact is that Twitter is ubiquitous, yet not really integrated into reporters' work in any systematic way--except for "lurking" on Twitter, as one reporter calls it, which they all seem to do. Twitter has become the new circulatory system of the journalistic body politic. Every reporter knows instantly what their colleagues and competitors are seeing and thinking. That puts pressure on them to figure out how to distinguish their work from others', how to go beyond the basic facts that (it seems to them) "everyone already knows." And it means that repetitional clout is increasingly measured by the number of followers and retweets one gets. Beyond that, campaign reporters are using Twitter in idiosyncratic ways, and many expressed concerns to me about its effects on the quality of reporting.

I also learned that New Hampshire is very cold, even when the locals think it's not.

...Okay, Not Totally Boring

Sure, Romney won with the requisite double-digit lead (requisite to the pundits, that is). But Paul exceeded expectations, it seems, winning almost 24% of the vote. (though the sage Charles Franklin reminds us in a recent tweet to be wary "of declaring an overperformance by Paul. Lots still out. Romney will rise. Paul will fall most likely."

Take a look at these exit poll results for some eye-opening patterns: Paul rocked the youth vote, winning 46% of younger voters, but none of them were college grads--according to this poll, precisely zero% of college grads voted for Paul, while Romney and Huntsman dominated the college-educated vote. Really surprisingly, Romney won a greater % of the evangelical vote than did Rick Santorum.

Less surprisingly, Romney won nearly half of those who said their family is "getting ahead financially" (though those voters comprised only 16% of the electorate). But he edged out Ron Paul and did-I-tell-you-my-father-was-a-coal-miner Santorum among those who said their family is "falling behind financially" (also 16%).

Meanwhile, Huntsman cornered all 4% of Democrats who voted, along with all those who said they are enthusiastic about President Obama.

The Boring-est NH Primary Ever?

Writing for the New Republic yesterday, longtime political reporter Walter Shapiro claimed this is the most lackluster New Hampshire he's ever seen. This certainly puts things in perspective for me: Other than the Ron Paul event I blogged about on Sunday, it was hard to see much genuine grassroots excitement around the candidates or the process. Which is weird in a way, since the Republican party hasn't had such a wide array of candidates to choose from in awhile--and because the party changed some of its rules for allocating delegates this time around to offset the front loading of primaries (and thus undercutting the early coronation of a single candidate). But the effect of those rules changes and the surprising number of candidates still standing has been far outstripped by the effects of what Shapiro calls "the fix-is-in-feeling that is permeating New Hampshire."

So, we await the results as the last polls close here in 5 minutes--but without much baited breath.

Following the $$

An update to my last post: You've probably heard by now that Newt got "a big lift," as the Times describes it this morning: A $5m donation from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson that helped buy "more than $3.4 million in advertising time in South Carolina, a huge sum in a state where the airwaves come cheap and the primary is 11 days away." For a preview of what that money is going to help buy, see this preview of "When Mitt Romney Came to Town"--the movie the pro-Gingrich super PAC is also releasing.

So, take that! Romney. And take that! journalists who think it's all over as of today. And let's not forget to thank the Supremes and their Citizens United decision that have made it all possible.

Voting Day in NH

As voters here start to go to the polls, I'm still thinking about yesterday. It was a busy day here for the candidates, with each criss-crossing the lower half of the state making multiple appearances. I was determined to see the Newtster in the flesh--still trying to figure out his appeal. Unfortunately, every event I arrived at turned out to be closed to the public. I got this picture and a new understanding of the phenomenon of "political tourism" by hanging out with 4 delightful retirees who'd driven up from MA just to shadow the candidates all day.

Even the reporters are commenting on the prevalence of political tourists this election season. It's getting harder, they say, to find actual NH voters to interview at these events. My Massachusetts friends told me they were interviewed multiple times, particularly by the foreign press, and that they were halfway through a TV interview at a Santorum event before the reporters discovered they were not Granite Staters and turned off the cameras.

So, the candidate events were for me a bit of a bust. But a happy coincidence struck in a Manchester Starbucks--I had to have my morning mocha!--when I ended up in line behind a prominent guy (who shall remain unnamed) who's been a leading political figure, blogger, and commentator. He graciously agreed to sit with me for awhile, and I learned from him one key to understanding how some journalists see things. "This is not the election," he told me. "The real campaign began two years ago. New Hampshire is the end of it." Since Perry self-destructed, there is no credible challenger to Romney in terms of money. Forget the multiple candidate appearances and the independent-minded voters here who show up to scrutinize them. Forget the debates, the fluctuations in the polls, and practically everything else that fills the news pages and airwaves. In reality, he said, the nominating race is over--not because the voters have decided, but because Romney's money machine is too big to beat.

If he's right that many journalists and commentators see things this way, that means they spend considerable hours every day telling tales about campaigns and voters that, in their eyes, are really just a charade.

Last night I attended a panel of national reporters sponsored by Politico that included my kindly guide on this trip, Dan Balz of the Washington Post, as well as Candy Crowley, Chuck Todd, Jon Karl and the estimable Dan Rather. Several on the panel insisted that the race for the Republican nomination won't be over til the Florida primary at the end of this month. On a more profound note, Dan B. observed that "we've lost something" in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Because candidates haven't traveled these states nearly as extensively this time--some showing up very late in the game--and because of the practically non-stop TV debates, and also because Romney's commanding lead here may have discouraged other candidates from investing heavily in NH, the experience for reporters and voters has been different: more shallow, he implied, less useful. And, he said, he suspects this is a permanent shift.

Callista's Hair

TV doesn't do it justice. I saw the famous gold crown this morning outside a Newt event (couldn't get in without press credentials), and it is truly impressive. It kind of walked into the event by itself.

Ron Paul in Meredith

This afternoon I attended a Ron Paul event in the charming lakeside resort-ish town of Meredith, NH. The room was packed to overflowing and the energy level among Paul's supporters high. My anecdotal confirmation of what the polls suggest: Lots of young people in the room, many of them sporting "Liberty" t-shirts, hawking Ron Paul pamphlets, even reading his book about the federal reserve as they waited for the candidate to arrive.

Paul is just as disarmingly quirky and avuncular in person as he seems on TV--even more so. During an impromptu press conference after his event (what campaigns call an "avail"), one reporter asked how his health is holding up (a question she said she's been getting from some of her viewers). He grinned, laughed, and said "Let's ride a bicycle!"

Paul hits many notes that explain his oddball appeal to disparate sets of voters--while at the same time asserting things that (I can't help it) make me roll my eyes. When asked to reassure voters worried about his foreign policy views, especially his beliefs about 9/11, Paul says that the 9/11 attacks were misused by politicians to pass the Patriot Act--thus infringing on our civil liberties--and invade Iraq; at another point he asks, If American civilians had been bombed by a foreign country as we have done to people overseas, how would we respond? Here he effectively conjured a very basic human sense of injustice and why military might is not the real key to international peace. On the other hand, when asked what he would do to improve working relationships in government, Paul asserts that if everyone abides by the constitution and government cuts its spending way back, the quality of politics will improve. Hmmmm....

In the end, I came away with a better sense of why he appeals to so many voters here. His message seems simple and makes a kind of gut sense to post-partisan young adults, military vets, and retirees alike. And he doesn't always sugar coat his prescriptions. When asked what a Paul administration would do to fight Alzheimer's disease, he doesn't give the standard response of 'committing more resources' to the fight. Instead (and here I rolled my eyeballs big time), he says that the answer doesn't lie in government-funded research "because those funds are all allotted for political reasons." Wow.

The NH Debates

The candidates and reporters stumbled out of bed this morning to sit through another debate--at 9:00 local time--after a 9:00 p.m. debate last night. Notice the bags under their eyes?

The ads that had been absent from the airwaves appeared in a flood during these debates--nearly every ad during those hours was political, most of them favoring Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman (the two who got the biggest bump from the debates, according to the tracking polls). Perhaps my favorite political ad line: "The world's literally collapsing. Where's the conservative we can trust?" Literally??

Right now the local NH station is deconstructing the debate. One local correspondent who appeared on the moderators panel sums it up nicely: "The closer you are to the candidates, the less you are able to comprehend what is going on." The reporters' dilemma!

Rick Santorum fills the barn

Santorum held a town hall in The "Lawrence Barn" (no relation that I know of) this afternoon in Hollis, NH. Overflow crowd--though that's fairly easy to get in a barn.

My main take-away: If you just listen to their stump speeches, Santorum and Romney aren't really different. Main message of both: Obama 'doesn't believe in America,' they do.

Also interesting to see how Twitter condenses events and, in some cases, takes things out of context. A snarky quip attached to a candidate's one-liner is a tantalizing tease to other Twitterers, but it may not represent very accurately what the candidate really said--or what the crowd did. E.g.: One prominent Tweester tweeted that the crowd was "chanting 'Rick! Rick!" Not sure a half-hearted effort by a few in the standing-room only crowd to break the tedium (Santorum was over 30 minutes late) really counts as heartfelt chanting.

A final takeaway: There are A LOT of "political tourists" in NH. The warm-up guy asked for a show of hands of NH residents, and at most 40% of those in the crowd raised their hands.

Saturday morning in NH, 3 days before the primary

What is it like? Well, for one thing, there aren't any campaign ads to speak of. I sat through almost an entire Hannity show (a personal first) and bopped around CNN and MSNBC, intending to soak in the political ads, but didn't see one.

The Romney event this a.m. was well-attended (by past Romney standards) and relatively enthusiastic (ditto). Gov. Nikki Haley persuasively auditioned for the role of presidential candidate, giving an effective warm-up for a candidate who (the reporters tell me) is notoriously hard to warm up to.

The most interesting moment happened off stage. As Romney was pressing the flesh, Mother Jones' David Corn asked Romney if he really meant to say that there is more poverty in Europe than in the U.S. (Yes, he actually said that, in a new flourish on his Obama = Europe = not American riff). Mitt responded that he was really talking about Cuba & North Korea. Guess that counts as "Europe" now? (Keep an eye on Corn, who'll be writing about the exchange with Romney soon).

More on the NH Expectations Game

An update: Indeed, the New Hampshire Union Leader is setting the expectations bar high for Romney--increasing the news drama of a contest that has pretty much a foregone conclusion--and making it harder for Romney to claim a decisive win in NH even if he wins by 9.9%.

From Iowa to New Hampshire

Compared to the nail-biter finish to the Iowa caucasus last Tuesday, next Tuesday's NH primary is likely to seem dull. Romney, after all, continues a strong lead in the polls there. But what WILL be interesting is who comes in second, because that candidate will create or sustain the media narrative going into South Carolina. Will it be Paul or Santorum? And how will Gingrich perform there?

Also keep your eye on the all-important expectations game, because the candidate who does better than predicted will likely get a big bounce in media coverage and thus, opinion polls (e.g. Rick Santorum since Iowa). (See Nate Silver's excellent analysis of how Iowa performance shapes media coverage and therefore NH performance). And if Romney does "worse than expected" in the Granite State, expect a flurry of media coverage of his "stumbling" campaign.

Entering the "Hall of Mirrors"

This NYT piece from yesterday in Des Moines offers a preview of the not-so-behind-the-scenes, behind-the-scenes scene for reporters and campaigns in Iowa. Expect to see the same in NH?