Florida primary, 2012

Florida primary 2012, yesterday and today

In other news, Florida held its 2012 Republican primary Tuesday. Newt Romney defeated Mitt Gingrich, 46 percent to 32 percent.

For perspective on the hullabaloo over the GOP primary, Republicans constitute 36 percent of registered voters in Florida. Total Florida voters: 11,053,664. Democrats: 4,604,373. Republicans: 3,962,406.

 

Florida law suppresses vote

The former fact was mentioned on MSNBC, not live-voice but in a banner on screen. John King on CNN soon afterward said that the primary was open to “more than four million Republican voters” in Florida.

 

Turnout was 1,663,698 as of recent numbers linked above, or 42 percent of registered GOPers. Down from the 2008 primary, as noted elsewhere, including at TPM, but better than the gubernatorial primary of 2010.

 

Probably commentators will rush en masse to blame the lower (than 2008) turnout on Romney’s “carpet bombing” ad campaign.

History shows primary turnout low for Florida, of course, as in other states generally, so it would be a mistake to read too much into it. Nonetheless, two sizable factors each reduce turnout in a GOP primary in Florida. Only one has been much discussed on air.

  • So many of the in-the-minority-and-they-know-it Obama haters are so content to have any GOP candidate, any at all, that they are content to stay on the sidelines in the primary. Generally they’d rather just know as little about their nominee as possible. They don’t want to be informed of any good reason they have to vote against him.
  • With a foreclosure rate among the highest in the nation, the economy dwarfs every other concern. Even the large media outlets cited exit polls showing economic concerns outweighing social issues, religion, hate-Obama-ism (dignified as ‘electability’), etc., in the Florida primary.

 

And it’s on to the Nevada caucuses.

 

The unfolding primary season is providing a useful punch list of reforms and small election improvements needed, state by state.

 

  • Iowa needed more oversight for careful counting of the vote at its highly respected caucuses. In 2012, some watchful Ron Paul supporters happened to provide the assistance that would better be built into the process. Even though some of them raised the alarm at the time, Romney was still mistakenly declared (more or less) the winner in Iowa.
  • Florida began reporting early returns—broadcast on national television—before all of the state’s polls had closed. This is what the Baptists used to call backsliding.

 

Cable channels, after all, are careful to reassure viewers repeatedly that they will not announce exit polls results on how people voted until the polls have closed. That cable hosts and pundits MSNBC and CNN drop heavy hints of the outcome beforehand, and that the channels jump to announce projected results a few seconds after the much-built-up top of the hour, is beside the point. Clearly the networks understand that it is anti-democratic-process to start announcing results before all citizens have had a chance to vote. Florida earliest returns showed Romney running ahead almost 2-to-1, too. That could not have been heartening for other people voting after work, in the Panhandle.

 

Gingrich

Obviously the smaller corrections are dwarfed by larger problems. Since the moment of Obama’s election, the GOP nationwide has engaged in a campaign of vote suppression on a scale unprecedented since the era of legal segregation. But that issue needs fuller detail.

Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

 They couldn’t work without an element of verite.

Talking Points Memo runs this piece on Florida today, reporting that Romney forces are outspending Gingrich forces there five-to-one.

“The Dems think these figures suggest something else: that it’s not Romney who’s winning votes in Florida, but the size of his wallet. ”

Point taken. However, these trend lines should not be over-simplified.

Certainly money has a devastatingly corrosive effect in politics. So do infamous ad campaigns–Willie Horton, the Osama bin Laden attacks on Max Cleland in Georgia, etc. This writer opposes on constitutional grounds any notion that a) money is speech, or b) corporations are persons.  The effect of the unanswered ads against Gingrich in Iowa is now part of the history of election 2012.

But the success of that ad campaign went beyond money. The ads were devastating because they showed Gingrich in live and still footage doing things he actually did, because they revived press accounts of Gingrich’s actual deeds.

Romney ads are not the only ones playing in Florida. As another local source points out, pro-Gingrich ads are running every ten minutes in Miami, in rush hour–in Spanish. The line is always the same. The ads attack not Romney but Obama.

“Same ad.  The ad attacked only Obama–the theme was broken promises–jobs, housing. ”

At a guess, it is aimed at Hispanics facing either foreclosure or pink slips, or who know someone who does face either one, betting the farm that the voters will blame the president and will see Gingrich as the GOPer best poised to oppose the White House.

Gingrich

It is hard to imagine Gingrich flying high in the Latino demographic. This has less to do with Cuba than with how he comes across–as disrespectful and presumptuous. Aiming over Romney’s head at the Rose Garden is liable to look much the same way, as far as I can tell.

‘Broken promises’ looks to be the line against Obama in the general election, at this point. They must be hoping for an awful lot of amnesia, even more than usual, given the state of the economy at the end of the GWBush administration and the GOP opposition to every improvement since.

One big question about election 2012 right now is whether the amnesia will be facilitated, or how much, by news media predisposed to a ‘close election’.

Why did Freddie Mac have to hire more lobbyists post-Gingrich?

Why did Freddie Mac need more lobbyists after Gingrich departed?

 

Newt Gingrich’s 2006 contract with Freddie Mac offers little direct information. The contract runs 15 pages. Services to be provided by Gingrich appear in “Exhibit 2.”

Here is the text from the page headed “Exhibit 2,” in its entirety:

Exhibit 2

“Consultant will provide consulting and related services as requested by Freddie Mac’s Director, Public Policy in exchange for which Freddie Mac will pay Consultant $25,000 per each full calendar month during which Consultant provides Services.”

 

The $25K-a-month question, of course, is what Gingrich did for Freddie Mac, and in particular whether his “consulting and related services” included lobbying. Gingrich has denied being a lobbyist. In Monday night’s GOP debate in Tampa he said he has “never” done any lobbying, repeating the “never.”

Tampa debate stage

When direct information on such questions is limited, one must find indirect information. Lobbying Disclosure, U.S. Clerk’s office, House of Representatives, confirms indirectly that the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) needed a bunch more lobbyists after it no longer had Gingrich Group as a consultancy.

Short chronology: The Gingrich Group worked for Freddie Mac from 1999 into 2007. The original contract from 1999, renewed through 2002, reportedly cannot be found, although one would think congressional investigation of Freddie and Fannie would turn it up. (Where is Issa when we really need him?) The now available Gingrich Group contract was signed in 2006 and reportedly was renewed in 2007.

Searching the U.S. House Disclosure site for registered lobbyists and their clients does not turn up the name Gingrich or the names of Gingrich’s companies.

Not much new there.

However, checking the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation as a lobbying client yields a few hard numbers.

  • Freddie Mac filed client forms on its lobbying 81 times from 2004 to 2008, only once in 2004, most often in 2008
  • Freddie Mac filings increased in 2007 to 19, only mid-year and year-end
  • Freddie Mac filings increased in 2008 to 30, all quarters, with more individual lobbyists—new and former*

Thus for what it’s worth, Freddie needed significantly more lobbyists and more lobbying activity from some point in 2007. Freddie Mac had one lobbyist registered in 2004. In 2005, 2006 and 2007 it had respectively 8, 10 and 9 lobbyists. In 2008 it had 12 lobbyists, filing quarterly reports, which is a lot of activity.

As mentioned above, the 2007 filings for individual lobbyists for Freddie Mac are only for mid-year and year-end. It might be illuminating to know exactly when in 2007 Gingrich Group stopped working for Freddie Mac. The question, emailed to Gingrich’s campaign, has not yet been answered.

While I await response

The arguments here are obvious. Freddie Mac was in hot water getting hotter, and had a track record of poor document handling and of hiring more high-paid hired guns to get it out of trouble. So its growing contingent of lobbyists is explainable without reference to Gingrich.

On the other hand, it looks as though a gap opened up when the Gingrich Group and Freddie Mac parted ways. If the gap could be filled only by lobbyists, then Gingrich looks like a lobbyist.

 

This, be it noted, is the overwhelming probability anyway.

She said it too

 

Another search can be done on the lobbyist disclosure site, though only back to 2008. One can look up entities in the database by “Contribution.” Checking Freddie Mac in the Lobbying Contributions Search yields 22 filings for 2008: Again, significant activity. Nine individual lobbyists contributed services to Freddie Mac in 2008, some of the same names as on the other lobbying filings, plus a few additional.** Again, it looks as though Freddie Mac needed some extra lobbying in 2008.

Regrettably, we do not have documentation on lobbying ‘contributions’ before 2008. Regrettably also, the only Gingrich contract available is for 2006.

As with so many scandals, the superficial political scandal–Gingrich’s prevaricating–is dwarfed by the open scandal that a taxpayer-supported entity was hiring lobbyists in the first place. Fortunately, Freddie Mac filings for 2009, 2010, and 2012 are zero. Following its well-publicized difficulties, it was prohibited from lobbying, thus roping off one well-heeled potential client from the white-collar goon squads in Washington. Thus far one waits in vain for GOP debaters to mention this improvement.

None of the above should be construed as saying that Freddie Mac hired more lobbyists than did other megaliths. For comparison/perspective, Verizon company has 1,334 filings under Lobbying Disclosure going back to 2005.

One firm Verizon hired for lobbying is Wiley Rein & Fielding, the firm Gingrich hired to represent him during his unfortunate congressional ethics investigation. Gingrich has since heartily dissed Wiley Rein, faulting the firm’s work in his case.

Baran, Wiley Rein attorney for Gingrich

2006 was the year of most filings for Wiley Rein. Wiley Rein & Fielding is a bigtime lobbying firm every year, but 2006 was especially active. The lobbying database shows 912 filings for Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP:

118 in 2007

153 in 2008

164 in 2009

146 in 2010

148 in 2011

(183 in 2006)

 

btw Freddie Mac obligations can be used as collateral in Florida. Romney’s Freddie Mac-oriented attacks on Gingrich might not play in Florida, after all.

 

*2004 names, Freddie Mac lobbyists: Clarke Camper

2005 names: Rhod Shaw, Doyle Bartlett, Dwight Fettig, James E. Boland, Sarah Dumont, Richard Roberts, Lendell W. Porterfield, Chris Fox (8)

2006 names: Shaw, Boland, Bartlett, Timothy McBride, Fettig, Lawrence Romans, Andrew Lowenthal, Roberts, Dumont, Stephanie Silverman (10)

2007 names: Shaw, Boland, Bartlett, Fettig, Romans, Richard Roberts, Lowenthal, Dumont, Silverman (9)

2008 names: Virgil Griffin, Richard Tarplin, Jack S. Deuser, James E. Smith, Anne Urban, Shaw, Fettig, Romans, Bartlett, Boland, Porterfield, Roberts (12)

 

**Names: Robert Zimmer, Virgil Griffin, Kirsten Johnson-Obey (filed amended form 2009), Timothy McBride, David Lynch, Christopher Young, Brian Smith, Regina Shaw, Lisa Ledbetter (9)

2004 election revisited, part 6: Florida

2004 election revisited, part 6: Florida

Monday night’s GOP debate in Tampa ( NBC) may not have produced much warmth or light, except for Ron Paul’s comments on the Strait of Hormuz. But it further highlighted reason to look back at the 2004 campaign. These guys are going to need all the help they can get in the general election. Citizens United notwithstanding, half a billion in paid political ads goes only so far when the the other ticket is Newt Gingrich. He says his message is that of Washington outsider because he was detested in Washington.

Gingrich is campaigning on a claim to be about “changing Washington.” It’s like the fat, intemperate, unreliable old Falstaff yelling, “They hate us youth!”

Shakespeare

Déjà vu all over again

The issue went nowhere in the political press at the time, but there were striking anomalies in the Florida vote count in 2004. The headlines were different from 2000. The problems were less blatant. No tiny white-collar mob of Republican congressional staffers and lobbyists raised fists against the vote counters. But even after all the attention directed to Florida’s electoral process in 2000, there were still problems in 2004.

Take a look at the numbers on the ground, including party registration. Unlike South Carolina, Florida registers voters by party.

Florida counties 2008 election

Of Florida’s 67 counties, in 2004 Republicans constituted more than 50 percent of registered voters in only eight. This fact might surprise readers who get their information from the national political press, which represents Florida as a red state. But eight it was:

  • Collier
  • Indian River
  • Martin, Clay
  • Okaloosa (57.2%)
  • Santa Rosa
  • St. Johns
  • Walton (barely)

Population of the eight red counties in 2000:  1,083,846.  Population of Florida:  15,982,378.

In contrast, Florida had 31 counties where Democrats constituted more than 50% of registered voters. In 21 counties, Democrats constituted more than 60% of registered voters. In thirteen of them more than 70% of registered voters were Democrats, and in four of them more than 80% of registered voters were Democrats.

Population in preponderantly Democratic counties:  2,700,000+.

This is a red state?

In 28 counties where neither party registered more than 50%, nineteen had more Republicans and nine had more Democrats. The biggest plurality county was huge Miami-Dade (pop. 2.3 million, 43% Dem). The smallest was Highlands (pop. 87K, 45% GOP).

Population in counties where GOP registration was heaviest, over 50 percent, totaled less than majority-Democratic Broward County alone. Population in counties with a less lopsided Democratic majority totaled 8.4 million.

A bigger anomaly

The biggest divide between Florida counties in the 2004 election was not red and blue but touch-screen and op-scan.

As in voting machines.

Fifteen counties used touch-screen voting machines, produced by ES&S or Sequoia. The other 52 counties used paper ballots, BUT not counted manually. Instead, the paper ballots were processed by optical-scanning equipment similar to that used by supermarkets, manufactured by ES&S, Diebold and (in one county) Sequoia.

Optical scanning in voting has been used for years, generally without the checking that turns up mistakes about 5 percent of the time in supermarket scanners. Mathematician and independent researcher Kathy Dopp tabulated differences between touch-screen counties and op-scan counties.

The difference? A simple and blatant pattern:

  • In touch-screen counties, the county’s vote for president went with its majority party almost always.
  • In op-scan counties, the county’s vote for president went opposite to its majority party most of the time.

If this sounds like a small difference, it’s not. Whatever problems the touch-screens had, 14 out of 15 counties using touch-screen equipment had an outcome at least in line with registration. Counties with more Republicans went Republican. Counties with more Democrats went Democratic. Plant a tomato, get a tomato.

Of the 52 counties using op-scanned ballots, 21 voted in the direction predicted by their voter registration–fewer than half. The other 31 counties went opposite their own voter registration. The kicker is that almost always, they went to Bush.

In the 21 op-scan counties where the vote ran with party registration, it was often skewed. Somehow Democrats there did not vote Democratic, and Kerry also picked up NO percentage from independents and unaffiliated–in a national election where the independent vote trended toward Kerry.

How it works

If an operative wanted to help a candidate win, in a state like Florida with many counties, the way to do it would be subtly so as not to affect the outcome of any individual county. That way, no local challenges would be provoked; the only way to examine the outcome would be to challenge the entire state. A few hundred or a few thousand votes in a lopsided county would not be missed, or suspect.

This process would be aided by the predominant media focus on red and blue.

Access to county statistics on population, demographics, and voter registration is already in the hopper, remember. Source code does not control turnout, but the political experts could weigh in on that little problem; look at the lines in big touch-screen counties inadequately supplied with voting machines, the problems with provisional ballots and early voting, the misleading flyers and robo-calls, etc. In the op-scan counties, I wouldn’t need help with turnout; I would need primarily to be able to work without scrutiny.

This is not to say that touch-screen machines are off the hook. If as a shady operative I wanted that badly to help my man win, odds are that I would overreach once in a while.

Florida counties 2004

More later

South Carolina behind (way behind), Florida ahead

Two days after

South Carolina behind again, Florida ahead

The Florida GOP primary next up—Jan. 31—is the newest make-or-break or Big Moment, the newest primary event characterized as shaping up to be important or crucial. Gingrich won South Carolina’s heart by acting like a ghastly creep–SC is, after all, the state of Joe “You Lie!” Wilson. Question: What face will Gingrich turn toward Florida?

Newton Leroy McPherson

Partial answer: The day after South Carolina, Sen. Lindsay Graham appeared on Face the Nation, making Gingrich sound halfway decent and humane on the topic of undocumented immigrants. Florida, we are reminded, has a large Latino population. Graham suggested that Gingrich as president would favor extending something like amnesty (although not called that) and legal status to some undocumented immigrants. Graham spoke becomingly about a hypothetical combat veteran with Hispanic name coming home from war, only to see his mother or grandmother deported.

Every little bit helps.

South Carolina polls were mostly right

Back to South Carolina—

Gingrich’s win vindicated most polls leading up to the primary, although it probably didn’t do much for all the experts who shortly before had been writing and talking about Mitt Romney as inevitable.

Rick Santorum made a cogent point on the air Sunday, by the way. Santorum reminded his host that it was not necessary, after all, for religious or social conservatives to ‘coalesce’ behind one candidate, in order for Romney to be beaten.

But on Gingrich–

As a Southerner who has consistently defended the not-David-Duke parts of the South, I would not have thought South Carolina could sink any lower. Shows me. It is scant consolation to reflect that Gingrich probably would have lost to David Duke, if Duke had been running in the primary. If only the pollsters would conduct a poll on a hypothetical match-up of Obama and Duke. It would be instructive to see how many states Duke carried.

There is still time for Duke to jump into the Republican race.

We’ve seen one of them already. Turnout in the primary was record:

 “South Carolina’s Republican voters set a new primary turnout record Saturday when more than 600,000 of them went to the polls, shattering the previous mark set in 2000.

With 13 precincts still uncounted Sunday morning, 601,166 votes already were recorded, topping 2000’s turnout of 537,101 and well ahead of 2008’s 445,499 voters. Earlier in the week, officials had projected a moderate turnout about equivalent to the 2008 primary.

And the vote totals for the individual candidates were just as intriguing. Saturday’s winner, Newt Gingrich, collected 243,153, and second-place finisher Mitt Romney won 167,280. Both of them exceeded 2008 winner John McCain’s total.

And that also means Mr. Romney did far better than his own 2008 performance here, when he won just 68,142 votes en route to a fourth-place finish.”

The 600K+ turnout exceeded even that of South Carolina’s Democratic primary in 2008, an all-time high 532,468 voters, when Barack Obama bested Hillary Clinton. Of course, many people believe that a lot of the Clinton voters there were actually Republicans looking to slow down or hurt Obama. The GOP primary in 2008, as mentioned above, involved 445,499 voters.

John McCain, who got under 200K votes in that primary, went on to get 1,034,896 votes in the general election against Obama’s 862,449–a clear gain of over 800,000 votes for McCain in ten months. McCain must have climbed mightily in many people’s estimation during that time. Maybe somebody gave the populace refresher courses on Vietnam.

Presumably South Carolina voters will turn out in equal or greater numbers to vote against the president this year.

Gingrich won across the state, losing only three counties to Romney—Beaufort, Charleston, and Richland. Of these three, only Beaufort was among highest-turnout counties. Gingrich won in 43 of 46 SC counties.

State election board results show that turnout was 20 percent to 30 percent for most counties. This is high for a primary and especially high for a place in the condition of South Carolina, with close-to-the-bottom per capita readership and number of newspapers, libraries, and bookstores.

Still, it would be distortion to call the primary a landslide, as the example of York County shows. Turnout in York was higher than in 2008, and voter registration is up by 30,000 according to the local press—but turnout in the county was still 23 percent. Nor did women give Gingrich landslide treatment, cat-fight representations notwithstanding. Gingrich won the women’s vote with a plurality of 30 percent. Thus he lost 70 percent of women voters, which strikes me as about where he would stand in a general-election match-up. Women also were only 47 percent of the primary voters. So more of them voted with their feet.

Gingrich benefited mightily from his treatment by ‘media elites’. Wonder whether there might be a grain of truth in the Gingrich accusation that ABC wanted to help Romney. (“ABC acted as an arm of the Romney campaign.”) Either way, calling ABC “liberal” is hooey. ABC,  another union-busting corporation, might want to help Romney as plausible GOP contender, but there’s nothing liberal about it if so.

South Carolina has not benefited from its treatment by educated people who should know better, who have tossed No-prestige-land away, leaving it lying on the floor of a seldom opened closet. A public discourse that ropes off any part of the polity does harm to the whole.

If Matt Kibbe’s bunch have their way, things will get even worse for SC. They’re trying to get a publicly funded ‘school choice’ act on the books. H.4576 would assist, at public expense, any parent willing to pay to put his/her children into a  for-profit school. This would mean that the depleted public schools would shoulder even more of the burden of the poorest children, from the poorest families. So much for opposing an entitlement society. Any time you have a proposal to harm the greatest number, and get the taxpayers to pay for it, you have a good chance of lining up the GOP on your side.

How do they pull off this kind of thing? Well, for one, they call a for-profit school an ‘independent school’ and they include the same taxpayer-funded gift for home schooling, to sweeten the deal. Also, as summarized by supporters, the bill would send the taxpayer money to charity—‘Non-Profit Scholarship Granting Organizations’. Those orgs would then be obligated to pay over the money for tuition, books, etc.—to a private school, if the parent ‘chooses’:

“This bill will encourage parents to have a more direct impact on their child’s education as they will have a stronger voice in deciding how their child is educated. At the same time, the parent or legal guardian will have more money to save and put towards the child’s education. One of the most important aspects of the bill is that it does not favor any independent school or form of education in particular, but rather lets the parent decide what is best for their child. The Department of Education, Department of Revenue, or any other state agency can’t regulate the operations of a not-for-profit scholarship granting organization. Same rules follow that these state agencies can’t regulate the educational program of an independent school that accepts students who receive grants from the not-for-profit scholarship granting organization, except for the school’s compliance with the requirements of the bill. This bill will encourage school competition while engaging the parent directly in their child’s education.”

The legislation is introduced by Rep. Eric Bedingfield (R-Greenville), a staunch defender of one’s right to be poor. Bedingfield also crafted legislation enabling a former state Republican Party director to become a six-figure lobbyist for the University of South Carolina. The legislation was supposed to crack down on taxpayer-funded lobbying.

South Carolina primary, live blogging

South Carolina primary day live blog

Time

10:25 p.m.

As previously noted (below), the gender gap in SC voter turnout was men 53 percent; women 47 percent.

The population of South Carolina is 4,625,364 as of 2010, up 15.3% from 2000 to 2010.

Female 51.4%

Registered voters 2,722,344

So somewhat more than half the state is registered to vote. Not registered by party.

Daily Caller emphasizes that Gingrich won the women’s vote in SC, at least with a plurality of 36 percent. Romney came in second with 30 percent of the women’s vote.

However, most women in South Carolina did not vote.

Dems for Gingrich?

The stridently rightwing Examiner offers a further thesis: Gingrich was elected by Democrats.

 “Consider this–unlike most other primaries, South Carolina voters don’t have to register their party affiliation. With no election this time around on the Democratic Party side, it’s a guaranteed bet that a number of South Carolina Democrats voted in today’s primary. As one could assume, some voted because it was an exciting Republican race. Some voted because they had nothing better to do today. And some Democrats voted to help sway the GOP primary toward President Obama’s hopeful opponent–Newt Gingrich.

How much of an effect did the Democrats have on the Republican Party’s South Carolina primary today? It would be almost impossible to quantify. But rest assured, just as former Speaker Gingrich can thank women and evangelicals for his victory today, he can thank Democrats as well.”

There are already copious signs of Republican and conservative discomfort with Gingrich’s win in South Carolina. This is but one of them. David Gergen and others are openly–already–discussing the possibility of a brokered GOP convention, or of a split convention, or of finding someone else to jump into the race if Gingrich and Romney continue in their present courses. The discussion is undoubtedly premature, but it accurately reflects the party’s widespread aversion to Gingrich, who earned it.

So far, the Examiner is the only publication to blame the SC primary outcome on Democrats. Seems a bit far-fetched. I would think that if Democrats or others really wanted to participate constructively in the Republican primary in South Carolina, they would have voted for Herman Cain/Colbert.

But time will tell.

7:45 p.m.

CNN has now joined all the others in projecting SC for Gingrich, who with a whole 4 percent of precincts in has taken the lead over Romney.  Only question remaining for South Carolina, all hands concede, is how big the lead will be. If it’s double digits for Newtie, Florida–what will the campaign be like?

They haven’t said what the effect will be should Gingrich carry South Carolina GOPers by only single digits. The first three races have resulted in a win apiece for three candidates. Somewhat like 1964? —

Speaking of previous decades, a wonderful book is still floating around on the 1972 election, titled The Boys on the Bus. Author, Timothy Crouse.

Here is Crouse with a still-timely passage on George Romney, Mitt Romney’s father. The effect on the campaigns stems from the success of Teddy White’s Making of the President books:

“As recently as 1960, or even 1964, a coalition of party heavies, state conventions, and big-city bosses had chosen the candidate in relatively unviolated privacy, and then presented him to the press to report on.

Now the press screened the candidates, usurping the partys’ old function. By reporting a man’s political strengths, they made him a front runner; by mentioning his weaknesses and liabilities, they cut him down. Teddy White, even in his wildest flights of megalomania, had never allowed imself this kind of power. The press was no longer simply guessing who might run and who might win; the press was in some way determining these things.”

Side note: Much as the old party bosses over-relied on their own ‘power’ and ultimately ruined themselves by overreaching, the insiders in the national political press went on to do the same thing. Hence the millions of members of the public who turned first to cable television and then to the Internet. People got tired of not being able to find out anything by reading the paper. Thus the press got its comeuppance from the Internet.

Back, meanwhile, to George Romney:

“The classic example was George Romney. Romney had opened his campaign almost a year before the first primary, expecting a press contingent of two or three reporters. Instead, twenty or thirty showed up for Romney’s first exploratory trips around the country, and they all reported Romney’s embarrassing inability to give coherent answers to their questions about Vietnam, thus dooming his candidacy. But Romney was the perfect, textbook example. The process was usually more subtle, and more difficult to describe.”

Not that Romney senior was the only one, by a long shot. But the elder Romney’s experience provides a rationale for Mitt Romney’s perceived distance from the press.

Newt Gingrich, in contrast, cultivates the press. Politico reported yesterday that Gingrich pretty much butters reporters like toast, in fact.

It will be mildly interesting to see what face Gingrich turns to Florida. He got South Carolina by being ugly, if the numbers hold up. But Florida has different demographics and not a lot of fondness for being lumped in with South Carolina.

7:24 p.m.

Most of television has called it for Gingrich. No votes reported, no precincts, in unofficial returns on the South Carolina State Election Commission big board yet.

If the elite media jumped the gun for Gingrich, that might be ironic. Or it might suggest that bullying these guys works.

7:19 p.m.

Only CNN, of all the majors, is not calling South Carolina for Gingrich. Out of an abundance of caution, since only two precincts have turned in votes, they’re not saying. Makes sense.

Votes in so far show Gingrich and Romney neck-and-neck (Romney ahead by one, a minute ago). Rather a different tenor from the other media outlets, from which one would think that Newt had almost all the votes, with all the other candidates scrapping for a fourth-place tie.

7:03 p.m.

Sure enough, seconds past 7:00 p.m. when South Carolina polls closed, Fox News calls it for Newt Gingrich. NBC, ABC et al follow suit.

This is linked by the suits on television to exit polls showing that 45 percent of GOPers voting in South Carolina rated ability to beat Obama their top concern.

The concern is understandable from their (heated) perspective, but that led them to vote for Gingrich? Note that they don’t call it ‘electability,’ which would be a stretch as applied to Gingrich. They presumably just feel that Gingrich would say the ugliest and most shameful things on the stump and perhaps on the debate stage.

Women, by the way, did not vote in the same numbers as men in SC. The men had a 53-to-47 percent margin in turnout.

6:41 p.m.

Back to ‘weather’ and ‘turnout’: What is mind-blowing is to hear this kind of discussion about a Republican election, any Republican election, and about a Republican candidate.

Back when, weather-and-turnout was applied to Democrats, and generally with some undertone having to do with either race, poverty, or blue-collar workers, or all three. The line of thought, you see, was that Certain Paople were more easily influenced than others. Stalwart Republican voters would turn out, out of a sense of duty, in this line of thought, rain or shine. The little blue-haired ladies, the white-belt-white-shoes contingent, retired military, etc, they would always vote, with or without enthusiasm, with or without special issues, with or without hot-button topics in the headlines. Those people with little pins in their lapels did not need any special stimulus to go pull the lever for whatever candidate the party establishment threw at them. Plus, they tended to drive better cars–this is the same line of thought–so they were less affected by bad weather anyway. Maybe an extra car wash during the week, but nothing to affect the election.

Turnout and weather, au contraire, were held to be closely entertwined on the Democratic side. Some paople just can’t handle the slightest obstacle. Even the slightest difficulty keeps them from doing what they should.

We’re hearing this last thought, if you call it that, in the Gingrich campaign. Gingrich is doing it more explicitly and with more sharp-edged ugliness than most people have thought tolerable over the last thirty years.

But to hear on the airwaves that Mitt Romney desperately needs good weather?

Mind-boggling.

Ironically, it has been less current as applied to the Dems, ever since Jesse Jackson ran and won the Virginia primary in 1988.

6:18 p.m.

At six-ish the major cable channels began official coverage of the South Carolina primary, as opposed to just talking about it almost nonstop.

The biggest surprise from MSNBC so far: Keith Olbermann‘s name briefly flashed across the screen, in the crawl. Olbermann was named as one of the commentators providing coverage of the primary.

Not so. Just a stutter. Nothing to see here.

Olbermann will be covering the primary, but from newer venue as of last year, at Current TV.

First exit polls indicate that surprisingly 64 percent of GOPers who turned out describe themselves as born-again/evangelicals, 66 percent support the Tea Party, and 69 percent are conservative.

Question is how this preponderance plays among Santorum–who says he’s felt a surge since yesterday–Gingrich and Paul, presumably.

5:05 p.m.

Not a dissentient voice on MSNBC as to Gingrich’s win in South Carolina. Craig Melvin just reported that every politico in SC says it’s not a question of whether Gringrich will win, just by what percentage. Drumbeat for Newt turning into an avalanche, from all signs. The weather is also touted as a sign of things to come, rain depressing turnout–and Mitt Romney, of all candidates in the world, dependent on turnout. So it is said.

This is a twist in itself. Turnout reported to be high in upstate South Carolina,  voters coming out for Gingrich (and Santorum? and Paul?) Turnout light to steady on the coast, and in the midlands, where the votescasters feel that Romney would get more support.

Entertaining piece by James Carville as CNN commentator, taking some easy shots but undeniably good ones. It might be premature to call the GOP field a “disaster” (aside from their core policy, breaking the middle class and destroying everyone but the super-rich). Abysmally unqualified candidates have managed to emerge victorious before. But politically speaking things are not looking too good for them at the moment, except for the humor. Stephen Colbert as Herman Cain is doing a great job, head-and-shoulders above the other candidates. No other candidate even comes close, although at least Ron Paul has remained consistent on his views and stated positions. He can speak understandably, too.

12:13 p.m.

In all the on-air chatter about Romney’s gaffe and Romney as out-of-touch, no one has mentioned how much like legalized bribery, or subornation, speaker fees are to begin with. No one brings up the Koch-brother-funded functions where right-wingers like Charles Krauthammer and George Will prostitute the art of letters in service to war and exploitation. David Brock of Media Matters noted in his after-the-fall book that he was no longer going to receive six-figure speaking gigs and seven-figure book advances. Has anyone pointed out that those six-figure and seven-figure payments are going to propaganda instead of to legitimate publishing and writing, what we used to call arts and letters? Has anyone talked about America’s intellectual infrastructure?

 

Not this week.

 

All the pundits declare this Romney’s worst week ever. These are the pundits who determined three days ago that Romney was the inevitable nominee. The Rominee. True enough, Romney has suffered a downturn–the Santorum win in Iowa, Newt Gingrich surging in the polls, more verbal slips. Thus we have a new overworked word to be sick of, “collapsing.” (Re Romney’s campaign.) First it was “coalesce.” Then “forgiveness.”

I’m all for forgiveness. The one episode of Modern Family I’ve seen did a nice job with it, too. But there is some woolliness about how this concept is being applied in the current commentary. It is pure, and clean, and noble, to forgive someone who has wronged you. It is less noble to forgive someone who has wronged someone else.

Speaking of gagging, some commentators are also taking a new oddly deferential tone about Newt Gingrich. Partly this reflects the newest opinion polls, partly the standing ovation when Gingrich used John King’s question about the Marianne Gingrich interview to vilify “elite media” and their (fancied) protection of Barack Obama. The man is tripping—or rather, lying—but that’s not the main point right here.

The big thorn here is that Gingrich comes across as rather loathesome. He may have boosted himself in South Carolina by out-uglying everyone else, but there is a reckoning ahead. For King not to have asked about the “open marriage” interview at all would have been ridiculous.

It would have been better not to lead off by asking about it, but ignoring it entirely would have looked odd. There is no reason to bend over backward for Newt Gingrich. A couple of things not mentioned on air: When the candidates entered the room for that South Carolina debate, as each name was announced, Gingrich got boos as well as cheers. And when Gingrich got his standing ovation for attacking King, plenty of women remained seated.

10:39 a.m.

Another ongoing theme of discussion, on air at least–how or why Mitt Romney has so much trouble ‘connecting’ with the average person. Maybe eventually they’ll get around to discussing the rich-get-rich economic policy destined to turn the U.S.A. into ColombiaArabia if not redressed.

Not any time soon, though.

That said, there are moments when I feel sorry for Mitt Romney. It happens when Romney’s calling his $374K speaking fees “not very much” comes up in the news media.

 

Romney announces

It is surprising to feel this way about a candidate whose policies as president would in all likelihood be worse than GWBush’s, but even an offshoring robber baron can be misunderstood.

Take that off-the-cuff “not very much” comment:

  • Romney was brought up to act like a gentleman, and good manners forbid a gentleman to brag about how much he is paid for speeches. He does not put himself forward unduly about anything, in fact—making a parade of anything is antithetical to his background. (Mine, too, for that matter.) Needless to say, this ethos makes running for office a hard row to hoe, although Barack Obama has the same one and handles it brilliantly. But then the president has the additional ethos of cool, an attribute Romney does not have and to do him justice—gentlemanly self-deprecating again—does not claim.
  • So when Romney was asked about his income sources aside from capital gains, he ticked them off–the book sales, which he donated to charity; the speaking fees, “but not very much.” He would not bill himself as one of your top speakers getting six figures for a single appearance. Primarily concerned not to brag, Romney played down his status on the speaker circuit. He does the same kind of thing when he says things like “I worried about whether I would get a pink slip,” and when he laughs (self-deprecatingly), “I’m unemployed.” Not acting grandiose is a big part of his moral lexicon for personal behavior.
  • Unfortunately, his acute attention to one part of the radar screen (don’t brag) left his radar completely down on the fact that $374K is actually a lot of money.

That fact has been duly noted, the point made. Income inequality has finally lighted up on the big board.

N.b. Re the question raised earlier about how well Gingrich is doing among women–today’s Washington Post quotes from 15 women interviewed in So. Carolina, most of whom support Gingrich in the exchange with John King at Thursday night’s debate. Several of them seem from the quoted comments to be more siding against Marianne Gingrich, but it works the same way.

9:57 a.m.

It’s Saturday, the non-Tuesday GOP primary in South Carolina–forget religious observance–and the talking heads are going at it. This is not lawn-mowing weather anyhow.

Big question of course is whether Newt Gingrich managed to out-ugly everybody else enough to pull off a South Carolina win that would be considered an upset. The most recent polls put Gingrich ahead of the field including Romney.

Gingrich

“Callista doesn’t care what I do.”

How people judge the content of the Marianne Gingrich interview is up to them. I believe the woman, but many people reportedly believe Gingrich’s denial. Either way, presenting this issue as public-versus-private muddies it.

The issue as applied to Newt Gingrich is not divorce or that Gingrich is thrice-married. The issue is how Gingrich has treated women—asking for a romantic triangle, etc–with some perceivable parallel to how he treats the suffering and unfortunate, the poor, and minorities; his penchant for bullying and for lying; his ethics violations while in office and then denying same; etc. Whether he has a track record of treating people decently is a reasonable question in the circumstances. To present this question as unwarranted intrusion into a public figure’s private life, like someone sneaking photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge, is mistaken at best. Too bad they keep using the vague generality “character” instead of asking, Does the candidate treat people with decency and respect?

The Gingriches, in earlier years

On that question, Barack Obama shows well. He has a track record of having treated the people in his life decently. Maybe that’s why they don’t ask the question on television, during an election year. It would weigh in the president’s favor too much. He hasn’t laid off a bunch of people, either.

Back to Gringrich, what makes the current opinion polls really remarkable is that quoted statement that Callista didn’t care what Gingrich did—i.e. having an ongoing three-way relationship while remaining married to Marianne, for six years. Gingrich is out ahead after that? Maybe: Most times when I have thought one thing and the polls showed another, the polls have been vindicated. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

Forget the overworked and tired terms “Christian right” and “values voters.” Assuming that fundamentalist right-wingers are the only people who care about the conduct in question is like assuming that African-Americans are the only people who care about Gingrich’s misstatements on food stamps. False, but television largely has not caught up with the trends.

Am I the only voter who remembers that right-wing Southern women often disparaged Hillary Clinton for staying with Bill Clinton? Am I the only pop-culture aficionado who remembers Gone with the Wind, that bible of fun-loving white South Carolinians? Remember the laugh the Yankee women got, at the expense of Southern womanhood, when Ashley Wilkes and the guys supposedly got caught drunk in a brothel and their women put up with it?

New Hampshire primary results coming in

New Hampshire primary results coming in, reporting and periodic reactions–

8-oh-not-much-and 30 seconds p.m. New Hampshire polls now officially closed, NBC et al. can pronounce that Mitt Romney is the projected winner in the state’s primaries. Percentages about where they have been, with Romney well ahead of Ron Paul, the latter solidly ahead of everyone else, and Gingrich and Santorum about tied.

Next big hurdle for the political news media: finding enough to say about Newt Gingrich’s ad campaign in South Carolina to eat up or fill up the air waves for the next couple of weeks. As Al Gore pointed out, SC governor Nikki Haley has already endorsed Romney.

More suspenseful is the Virginia legal matter. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue in their supporting brief that the constitutional question may never have to be considered by the court. That is, the question of whether Virginia’s restrictive rules on ballot access violate the First Amendment and the 14th amendment, among others, may not have to come up at all.

Plaintiffs hold that the Virginia Board of Elections, named defendants, misapplied Virginia statute in the first place. That “may” and “shall” question.

To a non-lawyer, it does look as though that one will have to be answered. But determinations depend on the courts.

7:44 p.m. With 5 percent of the NH vote in, it’s Romney with 36  percent, Ron Paul with 25 percent, Huntsman with 15, Gingrich and Santorum close to tied at 11 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Votes in are those only from polls closing at 7:30 rather than 8:00.

‘Real’ returns to begin flooding in at 8:00.

Rick Perry’s brief and complaint look substantive, in that filing against the Virginia Board of Elections GOPers.

Of particular interest: the difference between “may” and “shall.” Plaintiffs argue, convincingly, that the Virginia statute says candidates “may” file a petition with 10,000+ signatures. Plaintiffs’ attorneys quote the statute at copious length, clarifying that the statute does indeed use “may” at some points and “shall” at others. Turns out there was a Virginia legal case, decided by the Virginia Supreme Court just four months ago, in which the court ruled explicitly that when the law uses “may” in some places and “shall” in others, the wording is to be regarded as intentional.

Funny how little of this is coming out in the ad-infinitum commentary and reporting on the primary process. Virginia is not the biggest state in the union, with the most delegates, but it is not a small state. Furthermore, it has been treated by the national media as a definitively ‘red’ state for twenty years now, notwithstanding any evidence to the contrary.

7:07 p.m. Switching channels to Current TV

Useful reminder from former Vice President Al Gore, re South Carolina as a hotbed of socially conservative et ceteras: the late Lee Atwater constructed the South Carolina primary in the late Seventies as a conservative firewall–i.e. to protect the establishment candidate. It was thought that Ronald Reagan might need some protection against an insurgency by John Connally.

Setting aside any question of how ‘insurgent’ the GOP challengers actually tend to be (aside from Ron Paul), in national elections, the fate of John McCain in 2000 is another memento mori for insurgent candidates. McCain was infamously slandered in a whispering campaign by GWBush’s people, including First Brother Marvin Bush. Thus ever challengers, in South Carolina. Huckabee went down in SC in 2008, too, but more cleanly.

6:07 p.m. First 1 percent of the votes reported, and it’s Romney out front with 37 percent, Ron Paul 26 percent, Huntsman 21 percent. Rick Santorum with zero, tied with Michele Bachmann, no longer in the race. Newt Gingrich so far with 11 percent but looking forward cheerfully to South Carolina, where the super PAC supporting him has bought more million$ worth of television ads than any other campaign including Romney’s.

To do him justice, Gingrich is one of the few candidates who appropriately defended Romney’s famous “I like firing people” comment. Ron Paul also defended Romney today, against the all-sides demagoguing on the off-the-cuff remark. Paul went farther, defending the entire Bain Capital process as capitalism at work.

Romney’s getting vilified for firing people is one thing. His getting vilified for the remark about insurance companies not providing good service is one of those sadly selfish mishaps that drag down the entire political process. It also sheds further light, if any were needed, on GOP party establishment priorities. Romney suggested, after all, that people should have a choice about insurers. He went so far as to suggest that insurers should do right by their customers. He even went so far–and this seems to have been the bridge too far–that customers can exchange an insurance company that does not do well for another one.

These ideas are not popular among GOP candidates for office. It will be little short of miraculous if they are repeated on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, for other GOPers to attack Romney for them is rather like the attacks on Rick Perry for taking a humane line toward immigrants.

Speaking of Bain Capital–

Wouldn’t it be great if the millionaires and billionaires connected with Bain Capital had joined in an enterprise to buy suffering companies and do something good with them? This idea is not to be confused with charity. A consortium could legally act as a private task force–acquire companies and re-engineer them with socially conscious objectives in view. Keep an eye on the situation of the workers, keep an eye on the environment, learn to make a worthwhile product. Is that notion considered on-its-face impossible?

Romney

Rick Perry lawsuit moves forward, Virginia ballots delayed

2012 Rick Perry Virginia lawsuit, 2

Rick Perry lawsuit moves forward, Virginia ballots delayed

Perry

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s legal team won an early round in Virginia courts Monday. Federal judge John A. Gibney ordered all of Virginia’s local electoral boards to hold off on mailing out absentee ballots.

In a conference call, Judge Gibney ordered the Virginia State Board of Elections to send a directive to each local board to refrain from mailing out any absentee ballots until after a January 13 hearing on the temporary restraining order and injunction moved by the Perry campaign. Perry’s campaign is suing Virginia Board of Elections members Charles Judd, Kimberly Bowers and Don Palmer over Virginia’ rules restricting access to the presidential ballot for candidates.

As previously written, at issue are the Virginia rules, the most burdensome in the nation, that

  • Any presidential candidate, even a major-party candidate, who wants to appear on the ballot in the March 6 primary must gather 10,000 signatures of registered voters
  • At least 400 signatures must come from each of the 11 congressional districts
  • The signatures can be gathered only by people who themselves live in Virginia

The rules do not allow write-in candidates, in the primary elections. Be it noted also that the Board of Elections rules recognize only the Democratic and the Republican parties. Thus the 10,000/400 signature-gathering rules do not have the rationale of leveling the playing field for smaller parties or for nonaffiliated candidates.

Defendants Judd, Bowers and Palmer are appealing the January 9 order. They are joined by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Solicitor General of Virginia E. Duncan Getchell, Deputy Attorney General Wesley Russell, and Senior Assistant Attorney General Joshua Lief.

Perhaps the rules should have been vetted with this kind of firepower before they were instituted.

Gov. Perry, Repubs gain ACLU support

On the plaintiffs’ side, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia has filed for permission to file an amicusbrief.

The ACLU position:

“The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the petition process is political speech that is protected by the Constitution and that the state can’t impose residential requirements on such speech,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis.

“Petition circulators must explain their candidate’s positions to the electorate, and persuade voters that the candidate deserves to be on the ballot,” added Willis.  “Reducing the number of available petition circulators by imposing a residency requirement limits this important means for candidates to get their message across.”

The ACLU brief argues that the residency requirement not only violates the free speech rights of candidates, but of petition circulators, voters, and political parties, as well.

“Non-residents who wish to circulate petitions for a candidate are deprived of the ability to do so,” said Willis.  “Voters are deprived of the information and ideas that these circulators would provide.  And the Republican Party is unfairly limited in its choices for a nominee when valid candidates are unable to obtain the required signatures.”

Perry’s lawsuit is joined by Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum. Michele Bachmann also joined in before dropping out of the race following the Iowa caucuses.

[update]

Local readers of the Washington Post have to find information about Perry’s Virginia lawsuit elsewhere. The print edition received in my county contained no mention of it this morning, although the online edition has two short AP items.

The edition of the paper going out to Prince George’s county must run off before midnight. The day after the Saints won the wild-card playoff against the Lions, bizarrely the WashPost sports section contained no mention of the Saints or of the game.

Live-blogging Iowa caucus day–Gingrich on incentive

Live-blogging the Iowa caucus coverage–

Time in a bottle

12:51 They presented Newt Gingrich just now, speaking on the stump in Burlington IA, mainly railing against negative ads. How many of you here are fed up with all the negative advertising? he asked his audience, getting some hands raised up. –So go out and vote for me, and you will be casting a vote against negative ads, a vote that could change political campaigns in this country.

Noble sentiments. They come oddly from a guy who started the day and seized CBS’ attention, this morning, by repeatedly calling Romney a liar. To be precise, it was not Gingrich who used the word liar. He just (repeatedly) answered yes, when Norah O’Donnell asked him whether that was what he was calling Romney. Schieffer helped Gingrich dig the hole deeper, following up with that old eleventh-commandment question as to whether he would support Romney as the nominee. Gingrich said yes, leading to softball Qs as to whether he would really support a “bald-faced liar” as Schieffer put it. Still yes. Gave Gingrich another chance to say something disrespectful about Obama. These people are tiresome.

Back to Gingrich’s Burlington appearance–

Having stated his opposition to negative campaign ads and to donations in the millions from Romney’s millionaire friends, again, Gingrich segued to criticism of federal judges. They’re too strong, he said.

Again, he might be right in some sense. Federal judges can get away with a lot, including selective punishment and caving in to political pressure. (Something the right wing is none too shy to apply; ditto federal lobbyists.) Gingrich comes across as something of a macht haben recht type himself, though. Hard to see him as the right messenger.

Side note: It’s funny how few of these sanctimonious Christian-right-cultivating political candidates cite the Sermon on the Mount. Reminds me of Tim Tebow. A quick physical sign of his religion may have First Amendment protection. But there is nothing particularly devout about it. As all Southern Baptists were taught, following the Sermon on the Mount, it is best to pray in the privacy of your own closet.

The hypocrites, as the Speaker of the Sermon on the Mount pointed out gently and with mild urbanity, have their own reward. You–the genuinely devout–are seeking yours elsewhere.

Speaking of pieties, Gingrich also proclaimed today that he wants to “incentivize the work ethic.” He wants to incentivize invention, to incentivize innovation.

This is the kind of statement you get from a major party that seizes every opportunity to oppose

  • a living wage
  • raising the minimum wage
  • health benefits on the job
  • retirement benefits from working
  • prosecution for fraudulent managers
  • prosecution for endangering workers’ lives
  • prosecution for Wall Street executives
  • limiting bonuses for malperforming executives
  • education in music and mathematics
  • support for the arts and letters at every level
  • physical education and healthful exercise
  • Et cetera

Gingrich, of course, puts it differently. In his spin, the other party–the Democrats– “want to take money from everybody who’s successful to give to everybody who’s failed.” Possibly his term ‘failed’ refers to everyone who has been foreclosed on after unemployment, and in turn everyone who has become unemployed as a result of the worsening economy.

It is beyond incredible that our publishing industry rewards this kind of Orwellian claptrap with mega-bucks book contracts, and that our infotainment industry rewards it with mega-bucks speaking engagements.

In Gingrich’s particular case, the buzzwords innovation etc probably his ongoing willingness to accept money from Big Pharma, which has a vested interest in preventing prescription medications from (ever) becoming generic and thus affordable.

Gingrich and Bachmann in particular seem to share Gov. Branstad’s penchant for using stump appearances and interviews as communiques for potential donors.

Not illegal, just unsavory.

Iowa caucus day, and Gingrich calls Romney a liar; Live-blogging the coverage

Live-blogging the coverage on the media-saturated Iowa caucuses–

7:40 a.m. We’re not off to a good start. Newt Gingrich just appeared on CBS’ The Early Show, pitching for himself, and called Mitt Romney a liar.

Gingrich

The exchange with guest interviewers Norah O’Donnell and Bob Schieffer started ordinarily. Gingrich boosted himself, then criticized Romney’s super-PAC ads against him, then characterized Romney’s positioning as less than candid.

O’Donnell: “Are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?”

Gingrich: “Yes.”

O’Donnell, flapped at getting a direct answer to an oversimplified question, pressed Gingrich to repeat. So he did. Schieffer ditto.

For the record, there is a difference between characterizing a statement as false, or even a lie, and characterizing the person as ‘a liar.’ This is a central distinction in ethics.

In politics on television, no difference. Gingrich could have said, “No. I’ve done no name-calling,” and gone on to make the distinction between lying–something everyone has done at some point–and throwing out the whole person. Of course, throwing out Romney Gingrich’s objective.