Why in Jon Huntsman’s first TV ad you hear him using demotic language (“we’re getting screwed as Americans”) but see him dressed primly in coat and tie (which looks particularly formal on his thin frame). There’s a dissonance here. Also, why hasn’t Huntsman been conducting more public events, which should at least get him coverage on Channel 9? Surely he doesn’t need all that much time for debate prep.
Why Ron Paul has been absent from New Hampshire, where he is currently running second in polls, and is just getting back this afternoon for an airport rally in Nashua. I guess he just gets tired. His people are out working, though. Outside a Rick Santorum event at Windham High School last night, there were a dozen Paul picketeers with signs. Interestingly, instead of chanting, “Ron Paul! Ron Paul!” they were extending good wishes to those going inside to see Santorum. Smart tactic.
Why Rick Santorum, when Boston radio host Michael Graham asked him whether he was an economics guy or a Jesus guy, replied, “You always need a Jesus guy,” when he could have said, with some justification, “I’m an economics guy, a foreign policy guy and a moral values guy.” Santorum himself noted, when asked about the comment in his evening event at Windham High School, that he had been advised that “you don’t talk about these things when you’re in New Hampshire.” And he explained there, as he hadn’t on the radio, that when he used the phrase “Jesus guy,” he meant someone who had a strong framework of beliefs, and not necessarily a Christian—which seems to me to be a critical point in a nation whose Constitution says there is no religious test for public office. But he could have avoided the need for all this additional explanation and clarification (politicians who need to clarify something are almost always in trouble on it) by refusing to gulp down Graham’s bait and endorsing his “Jesus guy” phrase.
Why Mitt Romney voters are more likely to express strong support for him than supporters of other candidates. You don’t hear that much from interviewing voters at events for other candidates—but maybe that just means strong Romney supporters aren’t bothering to attend those events, or Romney events either. Cozier to stay home by the fire than venture out in the cold.
What I’m not puzzled by:
Why Newt Gingrich is staying in the race and pummeling Mitt Romney when this is, by itself anyway, unlikely to advance his own cause. Seeming to be enraged is, after all, no way to get voters to entrust you with the presidency, as Fox News’s Brit Hume among others has argued. But I think there’s a clear explanation for Gingrich’s behavior. From around the end of October, when Herman Cain’s candidacy started to crater, until Christmastime, Newt Gingrich really, really believed that he was going to be the Republican nominee and that he was going to be the 45th president of the United States. Gingrich has always seen himself as a world historical figure, and has often compared himself to Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. And he did in fact play a significant and important role in American politics as the key figure in installing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and then using that majority to make serious and enduring changes in public policy. He deserves a prominent place in the history books—but not as prominent a place as he thought up through Christmastime he was about to get. Then his candidacy was undermined by attacks launched by Romney and by others, the most damaging of which were those focused on the $1.6 million he received from Freddie Mac. I think Gingrich sees Romney as a plodding managerial cipher, certainly not a world historical figure, and the attacks on his income as trivial as attacks on Winston Churchill’s dodgy finances in the 1930s (and they were dodgy) would have been in May 1940. History has been bent from its proper course, in his view. It’s as if Churchill had been set aside for the intelligent but uninspiring and wavering Lord Halifax as Hitler’s troops were sweeping into France. Gingrich has written counterfactual histories of the Civil War and World War II, so he’s used to thinking about how small things can turn history in starkly different directions. What he thinks he sees now is small things blocking his chance to make important history. If you looked at things the way he does, you’d be furious too.
