Courtesy of Mrs. Berlinerblau, I was afflicted on Tuesday night–the night of the GOP Iowa Caucus–by the most debilitating, vomit-positive, 36-hour stomach virus known to medical science.
The illness rendered me not merely nauseous, but delusional. One of my delusions was of a boxer speedbag-punching my stomach as his trainer (named “Mack” in my reverie) exhorted him with the words: “F&^& him up, Jake. F%^% him up good.”
Assaulted as such, I was not able to post about the spectacular goings-on in Iowa. I console myself with the hope that my hyper-contagious virus has made its way to the Hawkeye state by now (and, in defiance of basic principles of immunology, right back to Mrs. Berlinerblau as well). The niceness of Iowans notwithstanding, I am quite frankly tired of hearing about them: their county fairs, their beef jerky prowess, their godforsaken food-on-a-stick culinary hoe downs.
Yet surely I wasn’t hallucinating as I watched Newt Gingrich deliver one of the most acrid concession speeches in recent memory. Common wisdom has it that the former Speaker of the House is now going to unleash the hounds of hell on the rump of the “timid” and “moderate” Mitt Romney (attributes not to be associated with the creators of Romney’s anti-Gingrich attack ads, I would observe).
Common wisdom is correct. For months Gingrich ran as the avuncular grandee of the GOP slate–sort of like the proud department chair awed by how much talent was to be found in his academic unit. He urged civility among his fellow Republicans. He praised them with statesmanlike froth. Their vitriol, he felt, should be directed in Reaganesque unity toward the liberal media and Barack Obama.
Considerably less magnanimity was on display on Tuesday as Gingrich seethed his way through his remarks, forgetting to congratulate Romney on his victory. Gingrich lamenting negative politicking indicates that he has never reflected profoundly upon the axiom “what comes around, goes around.” It also indicates his anger may be misdirected.
Permit me to suggest that it was Michele Bachmann who hastened the Gingrich slide. It was the congressperson from Minnesota who charged during a debate in mid-December–the height of Gingrichmania–that her adversary had pocketed $1.6-million dollars serving as a lobbyist for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (a claim that had originally surfaced in November and whose accuracy was subsequently debated).
Whatever admiration Tea Partiers may have had for the former Speaker of the House it was certainly tempered by that exchange. Other clever Bachmannian allusions to Gingrich’s Beltway bona fides certainly took their toll as well.
Immediately after the debate I noted that Bachmann hinted at sexist condescension in Gingrich’s response to her. Other commentators saw it as well, and perhaps this too chipped away at his support among women.
As for Bachmann: mystery. How did the winner of the Ames Straw Poll plummet to the bottom of the pack? Let me say, earnestly, that she showed herself to be the most on-message and polished debater of the group. The overlapping constituencies of Tea Partiers and White Conservative Evangelicals had many reasons to adore her. She lived down the block. She pounded Obama mercilessly and among an increasingly extreme base she could deliver the extremist rhetoric with the best of them (fried and on a stick, as it were).
Yet there she was on Wednesday morning mouthing desultorily the words of a scripted concession speech. She punchlessly vowed to “stand aside,” her campaign played off, incongruously, to a recording of Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister.” Why did Bachmann collapse so spectacularly?
At the risk of sounding shrill, can it be ventured that a certain sexism may have been at work? It’s a serious charge and not one that I am entirely confident in leveling (for whatever it’s worth she received only 5% of female votes, fewer than any male candidate!). But insofar as the making of outrageous statements was not a dealbreaker for the 2012 GOP electorate, and insofar as Bachmann was no loonier than let’s say, Rick Perry or the Herminator I am at a loss to identify other reasons for her horrid performance.
Much has been said about anti-Mormon prejudices among Evangelicals. Yet they gave 32 percent of their vote to a Catholic, Rick Santorum (more than Perry and Bachmann combined at 20 percent). If we damn some Evangelicals for being anti-Mormon (and I repeat that there are many who have shown no such tendency) ought we not acknowledge a certain civic-mindedness, and de-theologicalizing of politics, in their embrace of a Catholic candidate?
Poll results indicate that Santorum carried both Evangelicals and Tea Partiers (though there is great overlap between these two groups). The question to be answered is why these voters (suddenly) glommed on to the former senator from Pennsylvania.
His hardcore pro-life positions? Perhaps, but he was not the only candidate that held such views. His diligence on the campaign trail? Plausible, but others had been munching venison jerky at Iowa fairs far longer than he had.
I prefer the old “absence of scrutiny/smears” rationale. The GOP base at present is volatile and extremely intolerant of ideological drift. Had Santorum peaked a few weeks earlier, attack ads–conceivably from the Ron Paul people–would have emerged pointing to his some of his old Big Fed tendencies. (Update: with research like this).
In other words, had a Super Pac been given a few weeks to do to Santorum what was done to Gingrich (and by that I mean what Jake did to me) perhaps we would have witnessed a different outcome in Iowa.
