Visual source: Newseum
It's Republican primary day in Michigan! And as Paul West points out, the class fight between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney has reached a fever pitch:
The class competition played out visibly Sunday at Daytona International Speedway, which was to have opened NASCAR’s season until rain forced a postponement.
Romney flew to Florida from Michigan and put on a public display of affinity, strolling the NASCAR pits in a bright red Daytona 500 jacket and blue jeans. At one point, he walked past a car emblazoned with Santorum’s campaign logo. (Out of public view, Romney also had a private breakfast with the billionaire founders of the auto racing operation and was introduced at a meeting of racing teams, corporate sponsors and celebrities.)
For both men, biography — or a gauzy version of it — is driving their acrid dispute.
Looking at the Republican versus Democrat dynamic at
The Washington Post, AEI's
Marc Thiessen is baffled as to why Republicans are losing the "class warfare" fight:
A recent Gallup poll found that Americans reject the view of this country as divided between “haves” and “have nots” by a 58-41 margin (in 2008, they were evenly divided 49-49).
Moreover, addressing income inequality is low on the American people’s list of priorities: 82 percent say it is extremely or very important to “grow and expand the economy” and 70 percent say it is extremely or very important to “increase the equality of opportunity for people to get ahead if they want to” (emphasis added). But only 46 percent say that it should be a priority to “reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor.”
In other words, a campaign focused on “fairness” should be a losing campaign. Yet somehow the leading GOP presidential contenders seem determined to turn Obama’s weak hand into a winning one. First, Newt Gingrich launches class warfare attacks on Mitt Romney that would make Obama blush. Then, Romney declares that he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” that “corporations are people,” and brags in economically depressed Detroit about owning four cars. Then, Rick Santorum steps up to defend income inequality, declaring: “There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully — and I do say that — there always will be.”
Instead of defending income inequality, Republicans should be turning Obama’s income-inequality attack around on him. They should be saying: Mr. President, your policies exacerbate income inequality.
The reason Republicans are losing the "class warfare" fight is because the facts are not on their side. And as for a campaign on "fairness"...deficit issues rank in the low single digits but you don't see Thiessen writing up columns about how the Republican campaigns focused on that issue "should be a losing campaign." I love watching conservatives scratch their head as to why the president's numbers are going up. The answer: people want, as President Obama said, "a warrior for the middle class."
Michael Schear writes about "mischief" (read: Operation Hilarity) is today's Michigan primary:
[E]ven before the calls began, it was clear that Democrats could make a difference in the close Michigan contest.
Why?
Two reasons. First, the state has a history of partisan meddling in the opposing primary, a fact that makes it more accepted among Michigan voters. And second, Mr. Romney’s well-publicized opinions about the auto bailout offer the perfect issue to lure members of the United Auto Workers to the polls.
At
The American Prospect,
Jamelle Bouie breaks down the GOP's fractured relationship with the Latino vote:
Yes, Asians and Latinos will continue to move to the United States in large numbers, and yes, growing intermarriage rates will diversify the population even further.
But there’s nothing about either trend that guarantees Democratic dominance; if Republicans were to run counter to the administration—which has set a record for deportations—embrace comprehensive immigration reform and put themselves on the side of open immigration law, then they could build an enduring advantage with immigrants of all stripes, and maintain a competitive edge in future elections.
By digging in and demonizing Latino immigrants, conservatives have convinced many that the Republican Party stands explicitly against their interests. And in the process, they have helped shape a discrete “Latino bloc” which leans heavily toward Democratic candidates at all levels of electoral competition. Even if they win in November, this will hurt their party for the forseeable future.
From
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, "Republicans are crazy, but that's perfectly normal":
I can't peer into the souls of Republicans, but I don't get any sense that they believe themselves to be doomed. People just don't think that way. Rather, I get the sense that they're true believers who think that, deep in its heart, America agrees with them. [...]
Basically, I just don't think there's a huge mystery to be solved here. When Democrats lost to Reagan, they nominated first Walter Mondale and then Michael Dukakis before finally tacking to the center and putting Bill Clinton in the White House. That was a 12-year stretch. Britain's Labor Party spent a decade moving left before they finally tacked back to the center after losing to Margaret Thatcher. It took them 18 years to finally regain power. Republicans have only been in the wilderness for either four or six years, depending on how you count. If it takes until 2016 for them to come to their senses, that would be a pretty normal progression.
Republicans don't think they have one last chance before the fat lady sings them off the stage. They're just reacting emotionally to a big defeat by convincing themselves that they were rejected because they hadn't been true enough to their principles. That happens all the time. They'll come around eventually.
Julian Zelizer at CNN points out that social issues are not benefiting Republicans like they used to:
The strategy plays into a conventional argument about how Republicans can succeed with voters whose economic interests are better served by the Democrats, namely through focusing on social and cultural issues that shift attention in a different direction.
This is a risky bet for the GOP and a positive development for the administration and congressional Democrats. While most successful Republican presidential candidates have paid lip service to social conservatism in the last three decades, the truth is it has never been an issue through which Republicans have been able to build successful coalitions that can win at the polls and get bills passed.
Currently, polls show that the public is not in favor of many of the positions espoused by the right when it comes to culture. According to a poll by CBS and The New York Times, 66% supported the administration's plan to require private health insurance to cover birth control and 61% said yes with regard to religiously affiliated employers; Catholics supported the administration 61% to 31%. In 2011, Gallup found that a majority of Americans supported the legalization of same-sex marriage.
And, on a final note...it was bound to happen sooner or later:
GOP presidential candidate action figures. It's worth a click through just for the picture:
Still haven’t had enough of the GOP presidential candidates? Wait, there’s more.
Hero Builders, a Connecticut-based company, just came out with its versions of three GOP presidential action figures — Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.
Santorum is wearing his signature vest. Romney is buttoned up and well-coiffed, and Gingrich has an uncharacteristic big grin.