SALON

Thursday, Jan 19, 2012 12:19 AM UTC

If dismissing Newt is wrong, I don’t want to be right

His nasty, race-baiting campaign is tailor made for South Carolina, but Romney's still on top

By

Topics: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, 2012 Elections, ,

If dismissing Newt is wrong, I don't want to be rightNewt Gingrich (Credit: AP/Charles Krupa)

Predictably, Newt Gingrich is rising in the South Carolina polls since he dressed down Fox News’ Juan Williams for challenging his nasty comments maligning the work ethic of poor people and associating African-Americans with food stamps. On Wednesday afternoon, a Time/CNN poll found Mitt Romney still leading, with 33 percent to Gingrich’s 23 percent – a solid lead, but the former House speaker jumped 9 points, from third to second place, in front of a sagging Rick Santorum.

I know I’m supposed to get excited at this latest twist in the road to nominating Romney in Tampa, Fla., this summer. But why are we surprised that Gingrich is gaining ground? The real surprise has been that the man who finished fourth in South Carolina in 2008, with only 15 percent of the vote, has been leading in the polls since he narrowly won Iowa. Romney’s still on pace to win South Carolina Saturday, which would be his third win in a row, almost guaranteeing him the nomination.

Campaign reporters keep resetting the bar for Romney, but Romney gives them reason. First, he wasn’t supposed to have a shot at Iowa, given the influence of right-wing evangelical Christians, but when he began polling higher than expected, he put more time and money into the state. That made pundits raise the stakes — and Santorum’s coming within eight votes took the shine off Romney’s surprising Iowa victory.

Of course he was going to win New Hampshire, where he has a vacation home, right next door to Massachusetts. But the consensus was he had to win big for it to matter. Pundits on the left and right crowed when he spent most of election night in the mid-30s, but by the time all the votes were counted, he had a strong win with more than 40 percent of the vote.

Now we’re in South Carolina, where Romney was never supposed to do well, but after his first two (underplayed) victories, he jumped out to a big lead. When the South Carolina campaign began for real, his numbers began to drop some. It could be that the Bain Capital story and his “vulture capitalism” career, as well as unfolding revelations about his shamefully low tax rate, are taking a toll in this high-unemployment state. Unfortunately, it probably has more to do with Gingrich’s unapologetic racial appeals.

I think the real story this week is the splintering of the nation’s right-wing evangelical leaders, who have been working hard to anoint an official not-Romney, and who have failed. We keep learning more about the Texas confab where, on the third ballot, Santorum got the endorsement, as Gingrich supporters cried foul. That’s not all they’ve cried foul about. Focus on the Family’s James Dobson made a personal attack on Gingrich’s third wife, Callista, noting she’d been his “mistress for eight years” and concluded his Santorum endorsement by asking, “Who do you want as first lady?”

Yet while Dobson’s candidate won the group’s endorsement, it’s Gingrich who’s gaining steam this week.  Some evangelicals seem surprised. Concerned Women for America president Penny Nance endorsed Santorum early on, and she told the New Yorker’s Ariel Levy she expected other evangelical women to fall in line. But many haven’t.

“Initially, my reaction to Newt Gingrich and to Callista is that the third wife doesn’t get to be the First Lady,” Nance said. “I came at it completely believing that evangelical women would not even consider him, and I’ve been surprised by their willingness to listen and forgive. I attended an event he had here with evangelicals, and there were some pretty tough questions. The most interesting thing to me was not the answers but how he handled them. The old Newt that I knew would not have handled it very well, but this Newt did. He really tried to divine what was at the heart of the question and didn’t come across as rude or arrogant.”

But Nance held a hard line nonetheless, “We cannot allow Newt Gingrich or anyone else’s moral failure to be used as an excuse by others for their own wrongdoing and saying ‘Hey, I can still be President!’”

I think Gingrich’s rise has less to do with evangelical women forgiving him than with his pitch-perfect race-baiting, especially in Monday night’s debate. On Wednesday, a South Carolina voter praised Gingrich’s performance, telling him, “I would like to thank you for putting Mr. Juan Williams in his place.”

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is trying to make herself relevant again by telling Sean Hannity “if I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I would vote for Newt and I would want this to continue — more debates, more vetting of candidates, because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago was having a candidate who was not vetted to the degree he should have been.” It’s true, in 2008 one major candidate wasn’t adequately vetted – and it was Palin. Her husband, Todd, already endorsed Gingrich, and last week Palin refused to rally around Mr. Bain Capital in the name of freedom, defending Gingrich and Perry’s attacks on Romney’s “vulture capitalism.” Gingrich repaid her kindness by insisting he’d find a major role for Palin in his administration.

But there’s not going to be a Gingrich administration. Neither Palin’s mischief nor Newt’s tour de force of race-baiting will put him over the top. Romney has too much money, and his empire will soon strike back. For months now, the entire Republican primary campaign has been an exercise in trying to believe what you know to be impossible every time someone rises to challenge Romney – that Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain deserved to be taken seriously, that Rick Perry was ready for a national campaign, that Gingrich could shed his political baggage, that Santorum could survive his excessive social conservatism (or his Senate drubbing in Pennsylvania).

Now we’re supposed to take Gingrich seriously again. Even if he won South Carolina, the Tea Party capital and the first member of the Confederate States of America, do we really expect that to knock out Romney? Excuse me if I sit this round out. If dismissing Newt’s surge is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Joan Walsh

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America." More Joan Walsh.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 44 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations