Credibility and the Republican Primaries

Fox News put him at center stage during the most recent debate. Having been heard, Newt Gingrich can rejoin the pack…

Yet again, the leading candidate has deflated. Several polls have demonstrated that the former Speaker of the House has lost his lead in the Iowa race (he has dropped from 27 percent to 14 percent).

Ron Paul, whose “footwork” (his organization for the caucus) is the best, will sweep the caucus. Mitt Romney, who has been pretending not to care, will be second and this will be presented as a victory (according to the “downsize expectations” theory).

In New Hampshire (January 10), the story is a bit more complicated. Jon Huntsman has made a mini-breakthrough which may claim some of Romney’s votes. In South Carolina (January 21), the strong-minded tea party might just put Gingrich back in the saddle…

The attacks on Gingrich are sticking (the latest: he demanded two bathrooms in a hotel where he was giving a talk). In Iowa, Ron Paul, the loaded Libertarian, has broadcast heavy-hitting televised advertisements. Mitt Romney has done so, too, although more discreetly via a super-PAC.

But, above all, fundamentalist Christians are divided. It would be difficult to imagine them succumbing to the sinner Newt.

The nth swing of the Republican yo-yo nevertheless raises questions about credibility. The credibility of polls and of suspense-mongering television, maybe even of the Republican base…

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has resumed his centrist campaign. Activists ought to be getting used to it, even if he seems more and more like a Republican Kerry.

After having been set off-kilter in the second-to-last debate by the Gingrich fad, he has recaptured his ascendance during the December 15 Sioux Falls debate by staunchly defending his bipartisan leadership in Massachusetts and by daring to say that there are Democrats who love America just as much as the Republicans.

“I had the disadvantage of some respects of becoming governor and a state with a legislature 85 percent Democrat. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. To get anything done, I had to learn how to get respect of the speaker of the house and the senate president and Democratic leaders. I found a way to do that, to find common ground from time to time. And when crisis arose, we were able to work together. That is what has to happen. There are Democrats who love America as Republicans do,” Romney said during the debate.

The anti-Red-Meat-Republican Romney was on Charlie Rose’s talk show last night (a favorite amongst Bobos — or bourgeois bohemians).

He knows that the election depends, largely, upon college-educated whites, a category in which both [Romney and Obama] are competitive.

Barack Obama captured 40 percent of their vote in 2008 (a real feat since the “white” vote — including all educational levels — has traditionally gone to the Republicans). His re-election will depend upon his ability to maintain the mobilization of his base: Blacks, Latinos (a growing population) and the youth. And it will depend upon his ability to limit the erosion of his support amongst this category of well-off whites and of moms.