For Conservatives, Two Profiles In Contrast, If Not Courage: Mitt and Newt

[This post was written just before the December 10 Presidential Debate in Iowa.]

After simmering on the stovetop of Republican politics for nearly a year, the Republican Presidential Primary pot au feu seems to be reducing to two main ingredients: Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The residual candidacies of Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michele Bachman, and Rick Santorum are still discernible in the broth, but these provide not so much sustenance as flavorful aromas.

In this era of voter discontent, most Republicans,  many Independents, and some Democrats would prefer any of the half-dozen Republican candidates (or a ham sandwich, for that matter) to the current President. At the same time, conservative voters who dominate most Republican primaries view the two leading candidates, Romney and Gingrich, as - how to say it? - lightly equipped, both personally and programmatically, for the role of President.

Why?

Well, let’s start with Mitt Romney. 


Mitt is an exponent of America's managerial class. Further, he was born on third base. Unlike many so blessed, Mitt is refreshing in that he has not spent his life bragging about how he hit a triple; instead, he has tiresomely spent much his life blatantly attempting to steal home.  GGF (Genetic Good Fortune), GQ male model good looks, plus joint MBA/JD degrees from Harvard, followed by a lengthy and lucrative stint at Bain & Company, have prepared him well for this act of rapacity and hubris. 

Surprisingly, for all his purported “business skills”, Mitt is not really an entrepreneur. He may have invested in businesses, but no one seems to be aware of any that he actually started himself. This squares with the business model of Bain & Company, which is “consultancy” (i.e., preying on the institutional insecurities of corporate America by stealing the managements' watch, and then telling them what time it is). Bain’s website modestly proclaims, “our business is making businesses more valuable.” Toward that end, one of the first recommendations of a Bain consultant usually involves streamlining, hence reducing, the workforce. In the haste and superficiality that characterize today's political culture, this makes Mitt appear to be a "jobs creator", but only when standing next to a "community organizer."      

But I digress. Mitt’s intergalactic ambition puts one in mind of another Massachusetts’ politician: John F. Kerry. Each gives the impression that he would say and do anything it takes to become President, including marrying a ground hog in Times Square (perhaps more than one groundhog for Mitt; certainly a rich one for Kerry).

While long on resume credits, Mitt is decidedly short on metaphysics. Worse, he doesn't seem to care. At a time in the nation's history when citizens of all ideologies and parties - from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street - are yearning for radical change in government as never before, Romney's principal objection to the status quo of contemporary Washington seems to be, in the words of George Will, "that he is not administering it."

Watch this clip of eager-to-please Mitt at a debate at Faneuil Hall during his 1994 run for the United States Senate against the late Senator Ted Kennedy, especially the part where he discusses his greatest personal failing at about minute 3:43:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ySBQ2GHLHBs

In fairness, the 1994 race against Kennedy was Mitt's first campaign. He was certainly less practiced than he is now in the arts of institutionalized insincerity - the hallmark of successful politicians. But that is precisely why this clip is so revealing. Just as "education is what remains after a person has forgotten every fact he ever learned", so too political principle is what remains when a politician is stripped from the cocoon of his handlers and thrown into the arena alone, where he must rely on his wits and basic beliefs in answering questions of first impression. This is one big reason why we have debates in a democracy.

After this clip, need anything more be said or written by conservatives about the boy from Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan?

Let us now turn to Newt Gingrich. 

Where Mitt is a member of the managerial class, Newt is a Washington insider and certified member of the chattering class. Where Mitt, the Mormon, is monogamous, Newt, the recent convert to Catholicism, is thrice married. Where Romney, the ex-Governor, is comely and prepossessing,  Newt, the bubble-butted ex-Speaker, is, well, not just another pretty face. Where Romney is all management and no metaphysics, Newt is no management and all metaphysics (often of the nutty variety). Indeed, in George Will’s words, Newt is “blown about by gusts of enthusiasm for intellectual fads” and “believes that everything is related to everything else and only he understands how”.  Where Mitt had a Fortune 100 father (George) who was Chairman and CEO of American Motors, Newt, like Clinton (and Obama, for that matter), did not know his father. Where Mitt has the skills of a corporate raider, Newt lacks hard skills, and has spent his years in the private sector as "a hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as ethanol and cheap mortgages."

To see Newt as Newt, take a walk down memory lane with the following clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWKTOCP45zYhis DNA  

What to do?

At this point, absent a charisma transplant for Ron Paul, a brain transplant for Rick Perry, and enthusiasm transplants for Bachman and Santorum, it appears that Republican primary voters who are true conservatives will yet again be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, to be consoled only by the following maxim: "Let not the best be the enemy of the good.”  


This is perhaps as it should be. In the final analysis, conservatives are not about creating Utopia. 

GOP Chairman's Battle

What are the signs by which one determines that one is moving into a new political epoch? 

History suggests that such auguries are often small, apparently insignificant, and frequently counter-intuitive.

One that might portend a sea change in Massachusetts’s political culture could be discerned in an underreported event that occurred last Wednesday night when the Republican State Committee convened in a special meeting to elect a new Party Chairman to succeed Jennifer Nassour. In that election, Bob Maginn, a former Bain & Company partner of Mitt Romney and successful businessman, defeated Frank L. McNamara, Jr., a trial lawyer, movement conservative, and former United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts under President Reagan.

On the surface, this event appeared to be just another dog bites man story. After all, didn’t Mr. Maginn have all the money, the active support of the entire Republican establishment, and endorsements from Romney, Senator Scott Brown, former Governor Paul Cellucci, and the entire GOP legislative leadership on Beacon Hill? In addition, didn’t he vastly outspend Mr. McNamara on lavish dinners, lunches-with-legislators, and Top-Of-The-Hub receptions with Scott Brown, in a successful effort to secure the support of the 80-member state committee insiders, in a campaign that, according to one wag, gave new meaning to the term “Republican Party”? [The answer to both questions is “yes”.]

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is not the fact that Mr. Maginn won, but what he had to do and say in order to win. That an ex-Bain partner and seemingly certified member of the “sex and money wing” of the Republican Party felt constrained at every opportunity to present his credentials as a pro-life, grassroots-oriented, evangelical Christian and social conservative was truly stunning. Indeed, there were times when Mr. Maginn sounded like cross between a turf salesman and a fundamentalist preacher. It was not a performance that many of us expected we would ever see in a successful candidate for Republican State Committee Chairman in our lifetimes.

Bottom line: it’s not your father’s Bain & Company, and this is rapidly becoming not your father’s Republican Party.

With the establishment Republicans now only the fourth most numerous political affiliation in the Commonwealth, behind that of Unenrolled, Democrat, and Tea Party Republicans, and with the depth and breadth of voter anger greater than at anytime in my lifetime, the gravitational pull to the Right is now acknowledged even by those Republicans heretofore dismissive of the conservative canons of government and culture. 

Whether the state GOP establishment will now begin to pay more than lip service to the grassroots, and demonstrate more respect and less arrogance towards those elements in the Party hitherto regarded as the "Great Unwashed” (members of the Tea Party, pro-lifers, and Second Amendment folks who do most of the dirty work to get those at the top elected) will depend upon whether Mr. Maginn’s deeds match his words.

In the meantime, one thing is clear: Mr. McNamara and his conservative allies drove the agenda in this Chairman’s race, and may have established a pattern for the election year that is about to unfold.