Human
Events...
Obama,
Romney Change Tacks in Week of
Political Risks
by Michael Barone
12/12/2011
It
was a week of risk-taking in the
2012 presidential race.
Barack
Obama, his job approval
languishing in the low 40s, delivered a much heralded speech in
Osawatomie,
Kan., framing the choice between the parties in class-warfare terms.
That’s
a risky strategy. Democrats
haven’t won a presidential election on class warfare since 1948, when
Obama’s
mother and Newt Gingrich were 5 years old.
Al
Gore, in a year when political
scientists’ formulas pegged him as an easy winner, ran on a “people
versus the
powerful” theme and managed to win only 48 percent of the popular vote
and lost
in the electoral college in 2000.
John
Edwards, as the candidate of the
99 percent against the 1 percent, finished a poor third to Obama and
Hillary
Clinton in 2008.
Undaunted,
and perhaps feeling he has
no better option, Obama made it plain he’s staking his chances on class
warfare.
He
did so even though the policies he
trotted out amounted to little more than the Democrats’ 2009 stimulus
package
(road building, high-speed rail), education spending (a payoff to the
teacher
unions) and higher tax rates on high earners.
It’s
hard to see how this thin gruel
is going to strike independent voters as (to use Bill Clinton’s 1996
re-election theme) a bridge to the 21st century. And it’s notable that
Obama
scarcely made reference to the Democrats’ signal legislative
accomplishment,
Obamacare.
He
has thrown away his image,
established in his 2004 convention speech and maintained through the
2008
campaign, of a compromise-minded conciliator.
On
the Republican side, the
oft-proclaimed and oft-dislodged frontrunner Mitt Romney moved from
running a
risk-averse campaign to a tactic that is highly risky -- launching
negative
attacks on one opponent in a multi-candidate race.
Romney
did not see fit to do this when
Rick Perry zoomed to a lead in national polls in August or when Herman
Cain did
so in October. In effect, he bet that in the numerous candidate debates
Perry
would reveal himself as a parochial Texan and Cain would reveal himself
as over
his head on foreign policy. Both bets paid off.
But
Gingrich clearly has posed a greater threat
since he took the lead in
national polls in Thanksgiving week. Whatever else he is, Gingrich is
not
parochial or uninformed.
Moreover,
Gingrich currently holds
sizable leads over Romney in three of the four January contests. And he
is
closing in on Romney’s long-held lead in the smallest of those states,
New
Hampshire.
Romney’s
Granite State firewall is
looking dangerously weak. “If Romney loses New Hampshire,” writes
longtime election
analyst (and George W. Bush cousin) John Ellis, “the Romney campaign
collapses
in a heap.”
So
on Thursday the Romney campaign
arranged a conference call in which former New Hampshire Governor and
White
House Chief of Staff John Sununu and former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent
excoriated Gingrich.
He “is not a
reliable and trusted leader,” Talent said.
And
the Romney campaign has put out a
60-second spot labeled “With Friends like Newt,” attacking Gingrich for
referring to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan
as
“right-wing social engineering.”
“It’s
a character problem,” the spot
shows Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer saying of Gingrich. “He
doesn’t
have the discipline you need in a president.”
For
the moment, at least none of the
other candidates seems to be piling on Romney for going negative. On
the
contrary. Ron Paul, tied for second with Romney in Iowa polls, has a
tough
anti-Gingrich spot himself. Michele Bachmann, who once was leading Iowa
polls,
has been charging that Gingrich is not a real conservative.
The
Romney campaign is presumably
betting that Paul and Bachmann will pummel Gingrich in the hope of
winning
Iowa. They undoubtedly calculate that there is a ceiling on their
support and
would prefer having either of them rather than Gingrich coming out of
Iowa with
momentum as Romney’s most visible opponent.
The
obvious dynamic in the Republican
race this year is that many voters, particularly those who identify
with the
tea party movement, are casting about for an alternative to Romney. At
the
moment they’re delighted at the prospect of Gingrich debating Obama.
Romney’s
negative attacks are an
attempt to get them to focus on the qualms many former Gingrich
colleagues have
about him. It’s a risky move, but probably not as risky as Obama’s.
Read
this and other columns at Human
Events
|