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Posts Tagged ‘Gingrich’
Gingrich fades in Iowa and nationally (Reuters)
DAVENPORT, Iowa (Reuters) ? Former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich’s status as the front runner for the 2012 Republican U.S. presidential nomination is fading after weeks of attacks by rivals and intense media scrutiny of his political record and personality.
Gingrich acknowledged that negative advertisements by political opponents had dented his popularity but suggested he would refrain from launching his own attacks while responding more aggressively to criticism of his record.
“I will be back on a positive basis, I will … tell you what I stand for and I will answer any question that comes up based on the false and inaccurate advertising of some of my friends,” Gingrich told a crowd of about 250 people at a campaign event.
A Public Policy Polling survey of likely participants in the January 3 Iowa caucuses — the first-in-the-nation Republican nominating contest — showed the former House speaker dropping to third place from first in the Midwestern state in the span of a week. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas led the new poll, which was released on Monday.
Gingrich’s lead also evaporated in national polling as Republican candidates competed for the right to face President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the November 2012 U.S. presidential election.
“Newt Gingrich’s campaign is rapidly imploding and Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row,” Public Policy Polling, which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, said in a statement.
Gingrich earned just 14 percent support in the new Iowa poll compared to 22 percent a week ago and 27 percent two weeks ago.
Paul took over the lead in Iowa with 23 percent in the new polls, an increase of 5 percentage points over the past weeks. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has been seen as Gingrich’s main national rival, was second with 20 percent.
The survey of almost 600 people, taken December 16-18, had a 4 percentage point margin of error.
Another poll, by CNN/ORC International, showed that Gingrich and Romney were tied with 28 percent of support nationally from Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
An onslaught of television and radio commercials by Gingrich’s opponents that paint him as unreliable and a Washington insider has taken a toll.
“It’s tough not to feel the effects in millions of dollars in advertising spent against you with no comparable response,” said Tim Albrecht, spokesman for Republican Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and a former Romney staffer during Romney’s unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Gingrich acknowledged that criticisms aimed at him by rivals — omnipresent on Iowa television and radio — had taken a toll.
“You get enough negative ads before you start answering them, your numbers go down for a while,” he told reporters after speaking to a small crowd at Global Security Services, a small business.
‘WORLD IS DANGEROUS’
He nevertheless took a swipe at his rival Paul, who has opposed much of U.S. military action abroad, while discussing concerns about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.
“The world is dangerous,” he said. “I really stand apart from some of our candidates in believing we need a strong defense.”
Gingrich’s personal favorability numbers also fell during the past two weeks among Iowa voters polled ahead of the January 3 caucuses, the polling firm said.
Gingrich’s front-runner status has prompted attacks from rivals who say he is an unreliable conservative and an influence peddler, particularly because of fees he earned from Freddie Mac, a mortgage giant tied to the economic recession.
“(Gingrich) is taking an unprecedented beating. … I have just never seen so many negative, substantively negative ads aimed at one candidate from so many different angles,” said Cary Covington, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa. “Ron Paul is just eviscerating Newt Gingrich in the ads.”
Iowa political operatives said there is still plenty of time for more changes in the two weeks before the caucuses.
“Newt may have peaked at the right time or peaked just a little bit too early,” said Will Rogers, one of the members of Gingrich’s campaign team who resigned en masse in June amid frustration over how it was being run.
Rogers, who has returned to support Gingrich as a volunteer and is heavily involved with the Republican Party, said polls represent only a snapshot in time and said it seems that many Iowa voters still remain undecided.
Rogers said Paul was benefiting from his strong organization in Iowa, unlike Gingrich who had to scramble to beef up his staff as he rose in the polls.
“You don’t know where Iowans truly sit until January 3,” Albrecht said. “There’s an unprecedented level of uncertainty this late.”
“Caucuses always surprise people at the end. One thing caucuses do is defy conventional wisdom. Someone always dramatically outperforms poll numbers and someone under performs.”
Gingrich has run an unorthodox campaign, signing books at events and talking about topics ranging from the economy to brain research and lunar mining.
“His campaign has been one of speeches and ideas, not one as organized as the others. And it’s been interesting to watch at public forums and speeches that people have gravitated toward him and liked what he’s had to say,” said John Gilliland of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry.
“But it’s hard when you’re trying to build infrastructure when you’re behind the eight ball,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert and Lily Kuo in Washington; Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by Will Dunham)
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Attacks hurt Gingrich in Iowa, no letup pre-caucus (AP)
DAVENPORT, Iowa ? More than $1 million in negative advertising ? much of it bankrolled by Mitt Romney’s allies ? has eroded Newt Gingrich’s standing in Iowa and thrown the Republican presidential race here wide open two weeks before the first votes.
The former House speaker’s Iowa slide mirrors his newfound troubles nationally, and it has boosted Romney’s confidence while fueling talk that libertarian-leaning Texas Rep. Ron Paul could pull off a win in the leadoff caucus state on Jan. 3.
“It’s very disappointing to see so many of my friends who are running put out such negative junk,” Gingrich said Monday as he arrived in Davenport, poking at his opponents even as he insisted he was running an upbeat campaign. “I really wish they would have the courage to be positive.”
Despite his chiding, attacks against him are all but certain to continue. For one, the Restore Our Future political action committee, made up of former Romney staffers from his failed 2008 bid, plans to spend $1.4 million more over the next two weeks, including on a new ad beginning Tuesday that’s expected to be aimed at Gingrich. That would bring to roughly $3 million the amount spent by the group against Gingrich.
Aides for several campaigns competing against Gingrich as well as outside independent groups aligned with the candidates say their internal polls find that he has fallen over the last week from the top slot in Iowa. And a national Gallup poll released Monday found Gingrich’s support plummeting: He had the backing of 26 percent of Republican voters nationally, down from 37 percent on Dec. 8. Romney’s support was largely unchanged at 24 percent.
Gingrich’s weakened position follows a barrage of advertising that cast him as a longtime Washington, D.C., power-broker. The ads, primarily financed by so-called super PACs, underscore the power of independent groups following a Supreme Court decision last year that allowed people, unions and corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to outfits advocating the election or defeat of candidates. Since the ruling, groups have popped up to work on behalf of every serious Republican presidential candidate.
Gingrich said while campaigning in Iowa that any candidate faced with such a concentrated an attack will slip.
“You get enough negative ads without answering them, your numbers go down for a while,” said Gingrich, who has tried to refrain from attacking his fellow Republicans. “I think the average Republican’s going to be very unhappy with Republicans whose entire campaign is negative.”
With the caucuses looming in two weeks, the race in Iowa is arguably anyone’s to win. And the results here will shape the rest of the state-by-state march to the GOP nomination.
Gingrich has acknowledged that the onslaught has tested his pledge to keep his criticism focused on Democratic President Barack Obama.
The Republican rushed back to Iowa on Monday after a three-day absence for three days of campaigning before voters tune out this weekend for the Christmas holiday.
He told about 200 people in the garage of a security company in Davenport that he would launch a 44-stop Jobs and Prosperity tour before the caucuses, and use those events to answer any charges put out there. Gingrich, whose campaign nearly collapsed last summer, also acknowledged his Iowa organization lags behind. “There’s no question, some candidates have been running for five or six years and have raised millions of dollars and they’re better organized than I am.”
But Gingrich has also been trying to catch up, and got some good news upon his return to Iowa.
Gingrich planned to announce Wednesday during a campaign stop in Des Moines the endorsement of Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen and New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien.
Gingrich has also redoubled his appeals to conservatives, who make up the base of the GOP, with sharp criticism of the judiciary, saying he would have the Justice Department instruct the U.S. Marshal service to arrest judges who ignore subpoenas to testify in Congress about their decisions. And he tried anew to end accusations he lobbied on behalf of troubled Freddie Mac or other organizations.
“We should have had a much more coherent answer,” he said about charges that he earned a windfall from the federally backed mortgage giant.
He then offered his latest explanation, saying that his consulting firm, the Gingrich Group, was hired over a period of six years for strategic advice and he earned about $35,000 a year ? “less than I got per speech.” Gingrich said that when Freddie Mac was seeking a bailout in 2008, he told House Republicans “my position was to not give them money.” Altogether, Gingrich’s firm earned some $1.6 million from Freddie Mac.
As Gingrich tried to answer the criticism, Romney, his chief rival, was increasingly expressing optimism as he reveled in a series of endorsements from establishment GOP figures such as Bob Dole, the 1996 GOP nominee, early-state leaders like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and newspapers including The Des Moines Register.
Romney joined those criticizing Gingrich’s comments on judges, telling Fox News in an interview Monday that Gingrich’s idea of sending authorities after judges was neither constitutional nor practical.
“Let me tell you, there are a lot of decisions by judges I vehemently disagree with,” Romney said. “The solution to judges out of control is not to tear up the Constitution and say that the Congress of the United States becomes the now ultimate power in this country. … In the Constitution, there is a method for removing a justice. There’s also a method for reversing their decisions.”
Paul, who has built arguably the largest get-out-the-vote organization in Iowa and has steadily been inching up in Iowa polls, spent the day in New Hampshire before returning to Iowa for a packed schedule later in the week. He’s been on the air here with ads assailing Gingrich.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was among several conservatives canvassing Iowa in hopes of taking advantage of Gingrich’s slide and mounting a late-game surge.
Another, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, was in the midst of a bus tour when he slapped at two strong-running candidates Monday over their past support of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout while visiting a pizza buffet in Manchester.
“This Wall Street bailout is the single biggest act of theft in American history,” he said. “And, you know, Newt and Mitt, they both were for it. That’s one of the reasons I say that if you really want an individual who is an outsider, someone who has not been engaged in part of that process, I hope you’ll take a look at me.”
Most of the money lent to the financial institutions has been repaid.
On her own bus tour of the state, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, looking to peel off Paul supporters, sought to sow doubt about Paul’s opposition to pre-emptive military action in nations such as Iran and North Korea.
“Ron Paul would be a dangerous president,” Bachmann said in Grundy Center. “He would have us ignore all of the warning signs of another brutal dictator who wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. I won’t…The death of Kim Jung Il reminds us that we live in a dangerous world.”
Gingrich, indirectly but unmistakably, went after Paul, too, for wanting to close U.S. military bases abroad and bring all or nearly troops home. “I stand apart from some of our candidates in believing we need a strong defense,” Gingrich asserted.
That criticism aside, the vast majority of attacks over the past week have been against Gingrich, and not limited to television advertising.
An anonymous independent group calling itself Iowans for Christian Leadership is urging conservatives not to back Gingrich, in light of his two divorces and past marital infidelity. The group has issued fliers and posted a scathing online video aimed at Gingrich, but has not begun showing TV ads.
The pro-Romney group, meantime, has spent $1.1 million on Iowa advertising over the past two weeks with a spot referring to Gingrich’s “baggage,” including ethics charges that led to his departure from Congress.
Paul’s campaign has also run an ad pointedly attacking Gingrich’s work for Freddie Mac and his former support for a health care mandate, a position unpopular with conservatives. And Perry also has started to run ads against Gingrich.
All have painted Gingrich as a Washington insider who profited from his stature after leaving Congress more than a decade ago.
Paul is scaling back his advertising to $55,000 or so over the next two weeks but the pro-Romney super PAC is filling the void with roughly $1.4 million in ad time reserved for the rest of the Iowa campaign.
The group also is advertising in Florida, spending a modest amount, roughly $143,000 over two weeks. But the ad buy is significant because Florida, which holds its primary Jan. 31, is seen as a potential showdown for Romney and Gingrich.
____
Associated Press writer Shannon McCaffrey contributed to this report.
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Video: Should Romney attack Gingrich more?
Think you’re too old to travel? Think again
Some companies are beginning to offer travel companion services for seniors, modeled after programs airlines currently have in place for unaccompanied minors, to help grandma or grandpa safely get where they are going and back home again.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45574437#45574437
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FACT CHECK: Misfires on Iran, China in GOP debate (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Herman Cain contradicted himself on torture, Mitt Romney offered a prescription for challenging China that didn’t add up and Newt Gingrich seemed to forget about crucial help by Pakistani intelligence in running down terrorists.
Factual missteps in the latest Republican presidential debate suggested that on some the knottiest foreign policy and national security issues of the time, contenders were out of their comfort zone. Several raised the prospect of an eventual war with Iran that the U.S., by any current measure, is ill-prepared to start.
A look at some of those claims Saturday night and how they compare with the facts:
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ROMNEY on President Barack Obama and Iran: “What he should have done is speak out when dissidents took the streets and say, `America is with you.’ And work on a covert basis to encourage the dissidents.”
GINGRICH: “First of all, as maximum covert operations ? to block and disrupt the Iranian (nuclear) program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable. “
THE FACTS: It is widely believed that the Obama administration has been covertly attacking the Iranian nuclear program. By definition, covert action is not publicly acknowledged, so criticizing Obama for not doing something that he might very well be doing adds little to the debate. On just one front, there are strong suspicions the Obama administration either unleashed the sophisticated Stuxnet computer worm on Iran’s nuclear program or supported Israel in that effort. The attack infected systems at the Bushehr power plant and set back Iran’s nuclear development.
It is also believed the administration has provided secret help to Iranian dissidents, even if to little effect so far. Romney, Gingrich and most other contenders do not know what the U.S. is doing, and not doing, covertly. Michele Bachmann, as a member of the House intelligence Committee, might. If so, she’s legally barred from talking about it.
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ROMNEY on China: “On Day One, it’s acknowledging something which everyone knows, they’re a currency manipulator. And on that basis, we also go before the WTO and bring an action against them as a currency manipulator. And that allows us to apply, selectively, tariffs where we believe they are stealing our intellectual property, hacking into our computers, or artificially lowering their prices and killing American jobs. We can’t just sit back and let China run all over us.”
JON HUNTSMAN: “I don’t think, Mitt, you can take China to the WTO on currency-related issues.”
THE FACTS: As Huntsman, former ambassador to China, said, the World Trade Organization has no specified mandate to adjudicate allegations that a country is manipulating its currency to gain an unfair trade advantage. But using currency in a trade dispute hasn’t been tried, so it’s unclear how that might play out in practice.
Even if the international trade panel does take the case, any remedy would come long after Day One. As a highly political case, it would drag out. For example, the U.S. and European Union have been litigating a dispute over alleged subsidies to Boeing and Airbus since 2004, with no resolution in sight.
Nor is it clear how a currency case could address the theft of U.S. intellectual property, an issue unrelated to the price of Chinese exports.
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CAIN: “I will trust the judgment of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture. That is the critical consideration.”
CAIN: “I would return to that policy (waterboarding). I don’t see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.”
THE FACTS: Cain’s conclusion that waterboarding is a legitimate means of interrogation contradicts the judgment of military leaders ? and his own statement that he would be guided by them. The Army Field Manual prohibits waterboarding. It was the CIA, with the approval of the White House and Justice Department that conducted waterboarding, not the armed forces. As president, Cain could certainly decide that interrogators need not be constrained by the Army Field Manual rules. But if he did so, he would not be letting military leaders determine the tactics.
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GINGRICH: “We don’t have a reliable intelligence service. We don’t have independent intelligence in places like Pakistan. We rely on our supposed friends for intelligence. They may or may not be our friends. And the amount of information we might or might not have, might or might not be reliable.”
THE FACTS: U.S. killing of a succession of al-Qaida figures in Pakistan, none more prized by America than Osama bin Laden, demonstrates that the United States indeed gets vital and reliable intelligence out of Pakistan. While it may have been true when Gingrich left government in 1999 that the CIA’s spy network was limited, since 2001 the agency has dramatically expanded its on-the-ground operations worldwide. The CIA station in Islamabad is now one of the most important in the world and officers there are responsible for building sources and helping select targets for the long and successful campaign of drone attacks.
Gingrich is right that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is an often-unreliable U.S. partner and elements of the country’s power structure have supported U.S. terrorist enemies. But as the bin Laden raid shows, the CIA is hardly impotent in its ability to operate alone in Pakistan.
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ROMNEY: “The president should have built (a) credible threat of military action, and made it very clear that the United States of America is willing, in the final analysis, if necessary, to take military action to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
GINGRICH: “Every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down. And I agree entirely with Governor Romney. If, in the end, despite all of those things, the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon.”
CAIN: “I would not entertain military opposition…. We could deploy our ballistic missile defense … warships strategically in that part of the world. We have the biggest fleet of those warships in the world. And we could use them strategically in the event that they were able to fire a ballistic missile.”
THE FACTS: It is an open question whether the U.S., stretched thin by two long wars and a massive debt, is in a position to make a credible threat of war against Iran right now.
As it stands, U.S. plans to put additional forces in the Middle East, including in Kuwait, are part of a military hedge against Iran. So is a program to put missile defense radars and interceptors at sites around Europe and the region. The threat of U.S. attack might become more credible in time, whether from Obama or the next president.
Meantime, Obama, like George W. Bush before him, has not ruled out military action against Iran as a final resort.
The U.S. certainly has military force readily at hand to destroy Iran’s known nuclear development sites in short order. This is highly unlikely, however, because of the strategic calculation that an attack would be counterproductive and ultimately ineffective, spawning retaliation against U.S. allies and forces in the region, and merely delaying eventual nuclear weapons development.
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GINGRICH: “You’re giving some country $7 billion a year. So you start off ? or, or, in the case of Egypt, $3 billion a year. So you start off every year and say, `Here’s your $3 billion, now I’ll start thinking’? You ought to start off at zero and say, `Explain to me why I should give you a penny.’”
THE FACTS: In supporting Rick Perry’s proposal to make every recipient of U.S. foreign aid justify the money before it is approved, Gingrich exaggerated the amount of aid the U.S. gives to Egypt. The Congressional Research Service says total aid to Egypt is about $1.5 billion annually.
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BACHMANN: “Now President Obama has made a very fatal decision in Afghanistan. He’s made the decision that by next September, our troops will be withdrawn. ”
THE FACTS: By September 2012, Obama is only planning to withdraw the additional forces he sent in. Once the 33,000 “surge” troops are gone, 68,000 will be left. They are to be pulled out gradually and won’t be gone until the end of 2014, barring some change in the drawdown of troops.
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RICK PERRY: “This country can sanction the Iranian central bank right now and shut down that country’s economy. And that’s what this president needs to do, and the American people need to stand up and force him to make that stand today.”
THE FACTS: Perry is right that sanctions have stopped short of tough action against Iran’s central bank, which handles the country’s massive oil commerce around the world. The debate moved on without the pros and cons of that step being explored. The option of banning U.S. and European dealings with the bank is being considered by Western powers and their allies, even if it is a stretch to expect such a move would shut Iran’s economy as Perry suggested. The downside risk is significant: Isolating the bank could drive up oil prices and imperil the fragile world economy.
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Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Robert Burns, Jim Drinkard, Bradley Klapper, Lolita C. Baldor and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.
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