Monday Catch-up
Pain for Cain; Why the Knives Are Out for Romney
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is ahead in five polls in Iowa, where the caucuses on January 3 will be the first test of the GOP hopefuls. And despite a spate of recent gaffes and a flap over his campaign manager smoking in one of his political ads (Bob Schieffer scolded him about that on Face the Nation), Cain even leads rival Mitt Romney by four points in a Fox News national poll.
That could change fast if a Politico story is right, and as head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s – where he was essentially a glorified lobbyist -- Cain was accused of “sexually suggestive” behavior by two female employees. When confronted with the charges on Sunday, he declined to comment, Politico says.
But whether it’s a butt-smoking campaign aide or 10-year-old sexual harassment allegations, it really doesn’t matter. The Herminator isn’t the Terminator – he’s not the candidate who keeps Barack Obama up at night, probably having a smoke himself. And Cain isn’t the candidate who makes Republican conservatives close their eyes in pain and toss back another martini.
No, that would be the current chameleon of national politics, Willard “Mitt” Romney.
On Meet the Press, Obama senior advisor David Plouffe was unusually harsh when asked about the former Massachusetts governor. “One, [Romney] he has no core.” he said. “…He was an extremely pro-choice governor, now he believes that life begins at conception and would ban Roe v. Wade. …Issue after issue after issue, he's moved all over the place. And I can tell you one thing, working a few steps down from the president, what you need in that office is conviction, you need to have a true compass, and you've got to be willing to make tough calls. And you get the sense with Mitt Romney that…[if] it was good to say the sky was green and the grass was blue to win an election, he'd say it.”
And in The Washington Post, conservative columnist George Will practically popped his bow tie he was so flustered by the prospect of Mitt carrying the GOP flag. “Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November,” Will wrote, “is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.”
So why are two points on the political spectrum as far apart as Plouffe and Will so withering in their attacks on Romney?
For the White House, there is plenty to fear. Romney has money. According to Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, he has raised $32 million so far and former Bush moneybags are getting behind him “despite tepid enthusiasm for his candidacy at many levels of the Republican Party.” And if he does win the nomination, there will be plenty more campaign cash as the long faces with deep pockets on the Far Right dig deep to defeat Obama.
And even if Cain is currently ahead in Iowa, the first bona fide primary will be in New Hampshire. There Romney is leading in two well-regarded polls. The Rasmussen Reports have Romney ahead of his rivals by 24 points, and the CNN/Time poll gives him 40 percent to Cain’s 13 (the same poll gives Romney a 3-point edge in Iowa, too).
Besides the money, Romney is not a nutcase, a yahoo, or a tongue-tied Texan. He may flip and flop faster than a trained seal at Sea World, but he is a cool-headed, skilled debater who will be able to match wits with Obama. Plus, he looks presidential and in person – if he ever loosens the rep tie pulled tight up against his personality – he can be charming.
Conservatives of the Will stripe fear him for different reasons. They see this election as a chance for a Republican candidate who embraces hardline social values and rigid fiscal discipline to triumph over an agenda that is pulling the country left. And despite his pedigree, Romney is not their man.
Romney is not an ideologue. He is a politician. And the Right fears he will govern like a Northeast moderate – a leader more like George H.W. Bush than the Ronald Reagan ideal (the real Reagan could be pretty pragmatic). In short, conservatives don’t trust the man.
“Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis,” Will wrote, “a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from ‘data’…and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) ‘competence,’ not ‘ideology.”
The Math of Perry’s Flat Tax
On Fox Sunday, Chris Wallace said an accounting firm that had been asked to audit Rick Perry’s flat-tax plan reported that it would bring in $4.7 trillion in less revenue over the first four years.
Perry’s response, in part: “You got to look at the spending cuts as well, and you have to look at the dynamics of the growth that goes on here. …You know who's going to hate this more than anybody, Chris? The Washington lobbyists that have been carving out all of these corporate tax loopholes…. Make it simple and put those guys out of business. I guarantee you, that's the type of approach Americans are looking for -- a simple tax code corporate tax rate of 20 percent [and] bring those corporate tax proceeds back from offshore at 5.25 percent. And we will balance that budget in 2020.”
Bachmann Refuses to Cry ‘Uncle’
“Is it going to take some kind of a miracle now to resurrect your campaign?” Christiane Amanapour asked Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann on ABC’s This Week.
Despite the fact that she now averages just 7.4 percent in the Iowa polls, Bachmann refused to concede she is in trouble. She cited her victory in the Iowa straw poll and said: “It's amazing what a difference several weeks can make in the course of a presidential campaign. These are snapshots in time….”
