Newt Gingrich to Republicans: Can we all just get along?
Newt Gingrich is correct, of-course, when he says of the GOP presidential contest: “There shouldn’t be a seventh grade recess argument. Because the media loves it. Every time we fight, we’re not hurting Obama.” He desires a campaign such as he himself is waging, where the candidates speak of their own strengths and solutions, and let the voters do the comparing and the picking. Ironically, if all of the other candidates switched to his style of campaigning, he himself would be the big loser, because it’s this positive approach that distinguishes him most dramatically from his rivals. Nevertheless, he’s right: the Republicans are handing the media just what they want by focusing on catty conflicts over this and that instead of just laying out what they each believe and why they are better than Obama.
After Gingrich, the candidate who has most successfully avoided taking knocks at his rivals has been Herman Cain, and it is one of the things that has helped him stand out and led to his rise in the polls. I was disappointed therefore to see him being totally played by Wolf Blitzer on CNN the other day. Blitzer was tossing questions at him about whether he “could support” some his rivals in November of 2012 based on disagreements about policy. Cain stated he could support Mitt Romney despite disagreeing with him over the Massachusetts health insurance law, but that he could not support Rick Perry based on his disagreement over the advisability of offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. This is absurd, of-course. Is Cain going to vote for Obama, or stay home, if Rick Perry is the Republican nominee? He seems to have way too much commonsense to take this position, but it looks like he got tied up in his own rhetorical (il)logic in attempting to answer Blitzer’s questions. I’ve seen him handle the media very well previous to this, so, again, it’s disappointing. His answer obviously should have been along these lines: “Listen, Wolf, I’ll support any Republican nominee against President Obama, but I fully intend to be that nominee. So my own position on this issue of [health insurance/illegal immigrants] is … ” And also turn it around to then criticize Obama’s position, rather than going after his Republican rivals.
|
|
It’s a shame, in debate after debate, to see most of the candidates jumping at chances given to them by the hosts to knock their rivals, like dogs rearing up for dog biscuits. They should all take a page from Newt’s book and quit it. I fear that they won’t, however. One reason, to which I alluded in my post on the last debate, is that early on in this process Tim Pawlenty was effectively destroyed when he neglected to take up his sword and run it through Mitt Romney in a question about the Massachusetts health care law. The candidates were all being quite civilized and positive during that debate, focusing criticism only on President Obama. But what happened? Pawlenty’s decision not to go after Romney tooth and nail was replayed again and again and amplified by the media for days on end until it utterly defined Pawlenty as someone who “wasn’t hungry enough,” “didn’t have the killer instinct,” and “wouldn’t be able to take it to Obama in 2012.” His candidacy never recovered.
We can consider the lesson to have been learned by the other candidates in this election cycle. And we can also consider the—yes—liberal media to be extraordinarily well pleased with themselves. Most of the Republican candidates are bent on tearing each other to shreds from here to the end of the primary season. Advantage in all this to Barack Obama. (And to Newt Gingrich, of-course, who looks good by not doing it, and to Herman Cain, if he screws his head back on straight and sticks to only attacking Obama from here on out.)
