19 November 2015
Noises Off
by J.R.Thomas
It is often said that it is much easier to lose an election than to win one. The leaders of the GOP are rapidly becoming convinced of that, so the frantically flailing Washington rumour mill has it. The contest ought to be looking so different at the moment. Mrs Clinton has had two difficult weeks, with that annoying thing, “the record”, continuing to show that whatever she claimed to have said or done, in relation to the death of the American Ambassador to Libya, her manoeuvrings in the Middle East, the “secret list” issues in the Veterans Department, and her use of private email servers for government business, is not quite what she said it was.
And each week produces more things to her detriment, quietly stacked up for future use by the Republicans, probably: the media, certainly. Bernie Sanders, who now seems to be unable to make any headway in the polls, indeed is slipping slowly back except in New Hampshire, is too nice a man to fling much of that sort of dirt about. Or is now playing for the vice presidential slot, depending on your cynicism.
So things ought to be going the GOP’s way. If they had a mainstream front runner candidate that might well be so. But they haven’t. Whilst Hillary sails on, mud slowly accumulating with every step but not slowing her progress, the Republicans are still fighting like pre-schoolers in a playground – and in a rough neighbourhood at that. The Iowa caucus is two months or so away. In reality though, it is a lot less, because of the number of public holidays between now and mid-January. They certainly should not still have sixteen candidates slugging it out, and the party grandees do not think that their front runners should still be Donald Trump and Ben Carson, with everybody else down in the low single figures. Iowa is now the focus. Anybody who can’t put up some sort of show there is going to lose money, support, coverage. And with sixteen candidates that could be an early bath for quite a lot of candidates.
Recently the media has been paying a lot of attention to Dr Carson’s self expounded history, some of it both dramatic and strange. And most of it completely uncorroborated. Dr C. claims that he had a violent temper in his teens and tried to assault his mother with a hammer and stab a friend with a knife. This, if true, most politicians would want to keep as quiet as possible, but Ben is on a slightly convoluted life journey to prove how he has pulled himself up as a worthy citizen, a shining example to all. The result is the rather odd spectacle of the media trying to prove these harrowing tales are not true, that Ben actually helped with the washing up and always did his homework on time. And also of course, at the same time, that there is something a little odd about him…
Carson’s main rival remains Trump, who he is running very close in the Iowa opinion polls. Trump is very happy to believe Carson to be a little odd; though the Iowa electorate seem to feel there might be a bit of pot and kettle in that regard going on at the hustings.
Last week the Donald rather lost it. He has been working extraordinarily hard in Iowa. If he can win this convincingly he could well start a chain reaction that will carry him to further victories and take most of his opponents out. Carson is running a very strong fight there; it is very important for each not just to win but to do it very well; especially for Trump who needs to keep up the momentum of being the confident leader. Carson has rather positioned himself as the challenger, the brave quiet cool guy scrambling up, and could take a defeat.
But by the end of last Thursday both supporters and mere observers were beginning to wonder if the Donald had been getting enough sleep (indeed, mutterings from his own team suggest he had been only taking a couple of hours a night for a week or so). He was down to address a meeting at Des Moines, one of those mid-west towns that are always said to be the true backbone of America, prime Trump country. His allowance was sixty minutes – Trump is very disciplined about that sort of thing. He gave his standard campaign oration but, instead of asking for questions, allowing scope for the jokes and digs at his opponents off the cuff edge that he does so well, he just kept going and what he was saying developed into a deep, and personal, attack on Ben Carson. Especially the good doctor’s rather rum teenage history.
“Anybody have a knife?” he asked the audience, who had grown steadily more silent. Then: “How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?”
Iowa is, especially for Republican leaning voters, that old fashioned evangelical country that we don’t hear much about but it is real and powerful in the USA. They like Carson’s faith, his willingness to profess it, his modest lifestyle, his redemptive tales. After ninety-four minutes of this from the Donald, they had not been visibly converted to the Trump view of life. Donald realised and stopped. Said he maybe should give up politics, move to Iowa, and buy a farm. One hopes he slept longer that night.
This can’t have done him much good. In spite of his ability to survive gaffes and disasters, publicly insulting the voters in front of you never runs well for anybody. In Washington and the places where the great and the good of the Republican Party drink cocktails and talk quietly but meaningfully, there are now conversations going on, and being leaked to the media. The previous position was that Donald was unlikely to win; soon modified to that he might, but was learning political skills and polish at a rapid rate. He might not be the men in grey suits’ ideal choice, but he might turn out alright.
This, and a pretty poor performance by Trump a couple of nights earlier at the all candidates debate in Milwaukee, with further eccentricities and signs of hubris, and the alternative being Carson (nice enough but not a Presidential winner, is the view) has now brought the problems of the party sharply into view. Somehow a couple of serious candidates must emerge. Bush just does not seem to cut it, Rubio is an immaculate performer but the public don’t seem to warm to him; Fiorina is a great speaker and gets a crowd going, deals well with questions, but again does not really seem capable of showing that in the polls; and her corporate life is a bit problematical. Chris Christie is still struggling with that damn bridge. In the fourth debate in Milwaukee nobody was bad; everybody has got better; nobody stood out.
What the party needs is a Ronald Reagan, a successful popular politician with a regional base. They haven’t got a Ronald Reagan. But they have got a Mitt Romney, a successful governor (ex Massachusetts), right age (68) and one with experience in a Presidential campaign. A campaign in which he put up a good show, losing by only 4% of the popular vote nationally, though admittedly losing the big key states more heavily. Sounds good, looks good, no skeletons, no funny habits or background. Winning against Hillary is sort of believable. He indicated several times in 2014 that he would be very likely to run for President again, but at the beginning of this year told friends that he thought the baton had passed to the next generation, and that Jeb Bush would be his choice, announcing in late January that he would not run.
But with Jeb sinking and the party split, the front runners two controversial outsiders with no experience, can he not run? The party grandees may well soon be trying to persuade him that not only he can, but he must. What will he say to that?
