Motley Moose – Archive

The campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has entered a new phase and it is beginning to look like support for Romney and Gingrich aligns with the deepening division between “establishment” Republicans and the insurgent Tea Party movement.  We have seen Tea Party support crystallise around Gingrich, even though he is an “imperfect vessel,” largely because they are even more unwilling to support the mainstream candidate.  

The Republican party is experiencing an insurgency among the same disaffected cohorts they had enlisted in their campaigns against Obama and it’s causing a degree of panic within their ranks evident in the sheer volume of negative campaigning they have deployed, most recently in the Florida primary, where their advertising buy is approaching $13.8 million; not to mention the unprecedented, co-ordinated public attacks on Gingrich’s candidacy by former and current legislative Republicans.  Consider the reaction from the self-appointed spokeswoman of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin:

What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters.

Sarah Palin – Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left Facebook 27 Jan 12

That Palin would identify the GOP establishment as the opposition and characterise their behaviour as “cannibalism” suggests the famous aphorism on the French revolution:

La révolution dévore ses enfants.

Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death, Act I (1835)

The revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children.  And Republicans are setting themselves up for an inevitable banquet on Newt and his supporters; a recipe for a disastrous nomination fight entirely of their own making and a Tea Party cohort even angrier at them than Obama, if such a thing is possible.  The challenge for Democrats is to stand back and let them have it out, for now.  They seem to be making an excellent job of it so far.

The law of unexpected consequences is harsh.  That Gingrich, easily one of the most flawed figures in the Republican pantheon, should become the champion of the Tea Party insurgency is at once ironic and wholly appropriate.  While he can claim personal responsibility for recapturing the House for Republicans in the Nineties his level of approval within the establishment is difficult to underestimate.  His lack of ideological and moral purity notwithstanding, his bona fides as a cage-rattler are excellent and that is exactly the kind of champion the insurgency is seeking:

Given his record, it may be implausible that Gingrich can pose as anti-establishment. But the establishment is certainly anti-Newt. And for South Carolina’s voters, that was an endorsement enough.

Timothy P Carney – Gingrich win shows collapse of GOP establishment Washington Examiner 23 Jan 12

That’s all it will take.  One is reminded of the disastrous Democratic nomination of 1968 where the establishment candidate, Hubert Humphrey, fought a bitter electoral battle with Eugene McCarthy who was supported by students and intellectuals who saw themselves as the party’s future.  McCarthy refused to concede and fought a lopsided battle all the way to the convention which arguably was the harbinger of a split among Democrats that lasted nearly a decade.

Gingrich is clearly not following the Republican script:

“We are not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs who have foreclosed on Florida and is himself a stock holder in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together and understand what this is all about,” Gingrich declared in a preamble to a decidedly angry stump speech.

Sam Stein – Mitt Romney ‘Is Counting On Us Not Having YouTube’ Huffington Post 25 Jan 12

While it appears the Gingrich campaign is withering under the concerted pressure of attacks and resources directed against him he has also stated, for what it’s worth, the intention to go all the way to the nomination and one supposes that the Tea Party will follow along at least part of the distance.

For Mitt Romney there seems no alternative, for the moment, but to destroy Newt no matter how much of his treasury, integrity or appeal is consumed in the process.  The resentment of Tea Party supporters seems an abundant and renewable resource and, at least for now, is largely directed at the leadership of the party with which they have been in uneasy coalition since 2009.  In the event of a Romney defeat one assumes they will regroup and “reload.”  Republican strategists better think this all through very carefully; they awakened this sleeping giant and it is not behaving itself very well.