It’s Tuesday, January 31st, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, William McGurn offers his input as to….

How Mitt Can Finish Off Newt

Those of us who believed a primary fight would toughen Romney up have little to show for it.

It looks like it’s all over in Florida. Even before the voting has begun in Tuesday’s primary, polls show Mitt Romney with a comfortable lead. If the former Massachusetts governor wins by a respectable margin, it would be completely understandable to take it as confirmation that he needs to stick with his campaign strategy.

It would also be a colossal mistake.

At least since South Carolina, Mr. Romney has been laboring under the assumption that his most serious challenge is to defeat Newt Gingrich. It’s not. Mr. Gingrich’s viability after months of also-ran status owes itself almost entirely to Mr. Romney’s glaring weaknesses. The governor’s challenge is not merely to best Mr. Gingrich but to do so in a way that addresses those weaknesses.

For those who have dealt with him, Mr. Gingrich presents an oddly captivating figure. Where Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president for the way that attacks never seemed to stick to him, Mr. Gingrich is like the blob from some horror movie, absorbing everything shot at him without stopping. That’s why Nancy Pelosi’s claim that she has something that would sink him is laughable: At this stage, is there really anything left that could discredit this man?

GOP voters know all about Mr. Gingrich’s dirty laundry. What attracts them, especially in the debates, is that they see him taking the fight to all the people they oppose: liberal Democrats, the liberal press, and squishy Republicans afraid to challenge either with conservative ideas.

On the other hand, Mr. Gingrich has attacked Mr. Romney from the left on his earnings at Bain Capital and disparaged the man’s character. With his usual reach for superlatives, the former speaker of the House accuses Mr. Romney of giving “the most blatantly dishonest answers” not just in this race but “in any presidential race in my lifetime.”

Mr. Gingrich is neither the front-runner nor the likely nominee. But he may be the candidate who ensures that the present nastiness continues right up and through the convention. And while Mr. Romney may win Florida, dusting off Bob Dole to launch an assault on Mr. Gingrich’s character will do nothing to kill the larger threat from the Newt insurgency.

That’s because at bottom the Newt insurgency is fueled by the sense that Mr. Romney’s tepid policy agenda reflects no fixed beliefs. Many who support Mr. Gingrich will concede he is not their ideal candidate. In fact, it’s telling that Mr. Romney’s GOP rivals are defined as non-Romneys, each standing for something lacking in the front-runner.

The most constructive way for Mr. Romney to kill off his rivals while bringing the party together is simple: Steal their best ideas. Mr. Gingrich has done precisely that with Ron Paul by calling for a commission to study the gold standard. Mr. Romney could easily do the same, echoing Mr. Paul’s call for an honest dollar or adopting Mr. Gingrich’s flat tax.

He might steal a lesson in style from Rick Santorum. With little money and a shoestring organization, Mr. Santorum has managed to articulate the core arguments of the conservative agenda: why we need to address Iran, why we need to help Americans keep more of what they earn and, most of all, why the words of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution matter still. In the last debate he proved you can be tough without being personal, skillfully demolishing all the governor’s pat answers about RomneyCare.

Ronald Reagan always understood that ideas were more potent than invective. Nor was he above looking to others for those ideas. The across-the-board tax cut he made the heart of his 1980 campaign was largely the work of a then-obscure congressman from upstate New York named Jack Kemp.

There’s no reason Mr. Romney could not likewise work with the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, on a complete rewrite of our debilitating tax code—which would give all Republican Party candidates something substantive to rally around in this fall’s campaign against President Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

In the end, the arguments for Mr. Romney come down to this: He has executive experience in both business and government, he’s got the most money and the best organization, and he’s electable. They are good points. Still, they add up to one argument by résumé and two from process.

Those of us who believed that a primary fight would toughen Mr. Romney up have little to show for it. Far from sharpening his proposals to reach out to a GOP electorate hungry for a candidate with a bold conservative agenda, Mr. Romney has limited his new toughness to increasingly negative attacks on Mr. Gingrich’s character. It’s beginning to make what we all assumed was a weakness look much more like arrogance.

Which, as the WSJ‘s Allysia Finley observes, is a goal Newt himself makes even easier to achieve:

Newt’s Trust Deficit

A new survey from Purple Strategies, which focuses exclusively on the 12 swing-states inds that nearly half of voters believe that the former speaker’s personal life is a relevant issue in the race.

Herman Cain’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich over the weekend was no doubt aimed at bolstering the former speaker’s support among Florida tea partiers, who handed the pizza magnate a huge victory in the state’s straw poll last fall and fueled his unlikely surge. However, Mr. Gingrich probably won’t get much of a bounce since the personal issues which ultimately felled Mr. Cain’s campaign also appear to be dogging Mr. Gingrich.

A new survey from Purple Strategies, which focuses exclusively on the 12 swing-states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin), finds that nearly half of voters believe that the former speaker’s personal life is a relevant issue in the race. The share is slightly higher among females than males and among independents than conservatives. Further, 60% of females view Mr. Gingrich negatively, compared to 52% of men. Polls this weekend by NBC News/Marist and the Tampa Bay Times also showed Mr. Gingrich trailing Mitt Romney by a more significant margin among women than men. (What a surprise!)

Mr. Gingrich’s problems with women, or rather, their problems with him, are manifold. Many women are surely concerned that two of his three marriages ended with his infidelity, and likely view his philandering as a reflection of his erratic character. It does after all reinforce many conservatives’ impression that he has difficulty staying grounded and keeping promises. Women may also be put off by the former speaker’s dyspeptic assassinations on Mr. Romney and moderators during debates. His chest-thumping and brow-beating manner, which to some may demonstrate assertiveness, can also come across as arrogant and belligerent. Neither of these qualities are becoming to a man, let alone one vying for higher office.

If the former speaker wants to win the nomination, he’s going to have to convince female voters that his personal problems don’t reflect deep-seated character flaws. His standard line that he’s a changed man isn’t cutting it in the primaries and won’t in the general election.

Alternatively, Mr. Gingrich can try to argue that his personal affairs shouldn’t be an issue when voters determine whether to re-elect the president. There’s certainly a case to be made for that, but he is unlikely to win the Republican nomination or White House if voters don’t trust him.

And this just in….

Newt: I Won’t Participate in Any Debates Moderated By Reporters

We’ve a sneaking suspicion this isn’t something Newt need worry about.

Then there’s this from Michael Barone in the Washington Examiner….

Obama hides on Earth, Newt crash lands on moon

We got mixed signals from a turbulent political week.

Barack Obama seems to be enjoying an uptick in polls, moving toward 50 percent approval. It’s a reminder that he can expect to benefit from Americans’ desire to think well of their presidents and by the reluctance of many voters to be seen as rejecting the first black president.

But his weakness was apparent in his State of the Union address: issues. He devoted a mere 44 words to the health care law passed in March 2010. This is the strongest evidence possible that his signal legislative achievement is a millstone around the neck of his campaign.

Similarly, we heard little in the hour-plus speech about infrastructure. The words “shovel ready projects” and “high speed rail” appear nowhere in the text — significant omissions from a president who (as a mischievous Republican ad shows) sprinkles the same phrases in one State of the Union after another.

And there was a third omission, not perhaps as obvious but in the long run possibly more glaring. There were no serious public policy initiatives to quicken the pace of economic growth and address the long-term entitlement problems that Obama has occasionally noted.

Yes, he did call for higher taxes on high earners. But the man who can call on experts at the Treasury Department to draft legislation gave no indication that he has any feasible draft for his “Buffett rule” that would presumably require a second alternative minimum tax for very high earners.

Nor did he indicate that he has made any serious effort to come up with language to penalize corporations that “ship jobs overseas.” Once again a president hailed for his brilliance has handed off the grimy task of writing legislation entirely to the Congress. What we saw Tuesday night was more like a candidate than an incumbent president.

Not that any of the Republican candidates yet looks like a plausible incumbent. Polls show that their nomination battle is lowering poll ratings of the leading contenders, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The eventual nominee may be able to repair that, though he won’t get a pass from the mainstream media on his weaknesses, as Obama did on Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Newt Gingrich came out of his victory in South Carolina eight days ago leading in polls but now seems headed for defeat in Florida. Debates boosted him in South Carolina but cut him down in Florida. And not just by his opponents’ attacks. In the second debate he was put on the defensive on two characteristically Gingrichian proposals, one based on his study of history, the other on penchant for futurism.

His proposal to have local boards, modeled on World War II draft boards, decide on legalization of longtime illegal immigrants put him to the left of Romney on this issue — and also gave Romney an opportunity to laud legal immigration and to highlight attacks on Gingrich tactics by the technically neutral Sen. Marco Rubio.

And Gingrich’s proposal for a moon colony, to be granted statehood when its population reaches 13,000, drew scornful rebukes as impractical and hugely expensive from Romney and Rick Santorum. Neither would have had these openings if Gingrich had resisted the impulse to set out novel proposals.

Romney’s rebukes of Gingrich and defense of his business record were his strongest debate performances, and Santorum also performed impressively, especially in criticizing Romney on his Massachusetts health care law.

Romney has led Gingrich by 7 to 9 points in every poll taken since the first Florida debate, and looks to be in shape to carry the state and win all its delegates. A victory in Florida would once again install the well-financed and well-organized Romney as the clear favorite for the nomination.

But even in that case Gingrich, Santorum and Ron Paul would each have plausible reasons for continuing through the few contests (and one debate) in February.

The race so far has given Romney the opportunity to develop the political instincts because he never had to go door-to-door for votes or interact with lowly party activists in a caucus. His performances in the two Florida debates show he is making some progress. Not enough to be the ideal nominee, perhaps, but maybe enough to beat an incumbent with serious weaknesses as well as some strengths.

Here’s the juice: the key to Romney sewing up the GOP nomination for President is simple: RECANT ROMNEYCARE!  We don’t care how it’s accomplished, it’s Nike Time: just DO IT!  No matter the manner, he takes the issue off the table for his Republican rivals today, and come the Fall, no one’s gonna remember what he did six months before.

Besides, The Obamao was never going to be in a position to hammer Mitt on Health Care; to begin with, Tick-Tock’s own plan is Romneycare on steroids, and what’s he going to say….you’re wrong….and I’m wronger?!?

Take the hit now; offer a mea culpa about how you’ve come to realize pride prevented you from realizing your mistake, seek forgiveness and MOVE ON!

That being said, if we were a betting man, the odds of Mitt heeding this advice are about the same as us taking down Rory McIlroy….with two shots a hole!

Next up, it’s the “MSM Bias….WHAT Bias?!?” segment, where we learn, as James Taranto details, the New York Times is really THREE papers in ONE!

“It is time to end the ability of a single senator, or group of senators, to block the confirmation process by threatening a filibuster, which can be overcome only by the vote of 60 senators,” the New York Times editorialized yesterday:

We agree with President Obama’s call in the State of the Union address for the Senate to change its rules and require votes on judicial and executive nominees within 90 days. This is a major change of position for us, and we came to it reluctantly.

In calling this “a major change of position,” the Times gives the impression that it has long supported the filibuster. But a Times editorial of Jan. 1, 1995 was headlined “Time to Retire the Filibuster.” It called for abolishing the process altogether, for legislation as well as nominations.

The paper’s “major change” yesterday was a change from its last major change of position, which it explained in a March 29, 2005, editorial titled “Walking in the Opposition’s Shoes”:

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the “nuclear option” in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton’s early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it’s obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

Yet amid its zigging and zagging, the Times has been consistent, in that its view on the filibuster has always been in line with the immediate interests of the Democratic Party. Its claims both in 2005 and today to have undertaken a thoughtful reconsideration of the matter look rather hypocritical.

Andrew Rosenthal, the Times’s editorial page editor, seems aware of this problem. Yesterday he tweeted a link to the new editorial with this comment: “It risks fringe rightwingers getting named by a GOP president, but filibustering nominees must end.” This seems to imply a promise to stick to the current antifilibuster position if, a year or two from now, President Romney’s nominees are being held up by a Democratic minority’s unwillingness to bring them to the Senate floor.

We’ll believe that when we see it.

And even then we’ll be looking for the fine print!

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, in the “That Was Different” segment, courtesy of Best of the Web, Juan Williams displays an amazingly short memory:

Two weeks ago, when Juan Williams asked Newt Gingrich to reply to charges that his characterization of Barack Obama as the “food stamp president” were racially insensitive, this column applaudedGingrich’s answer. We did not, however, take exception to Williams’s question, which struck us as a reasonable one.

We do, however, think Williams goes off the rails in a commentary for the Hill:

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society”–as used by Mitt Romney–and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president”–as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

Really? Accusing someone of not respecting “the ‘Constitution’ ” is a racial code word? If that were true, the American Civil Liberties Union would be the biggest racist organization around.

Not as long as the NAACP and the Rainbow Coalition are still in business!  As for Juan, his seven-figure salary seems to have eased the pain of having been let go for uttering similarly innocuous sentiments.

Magoo