What’s happenin’: more good moments for Newt

I remember the words “President Kennedy” spoken as a kind of live proposition: John F. Kennedy is President of the United States. But just to put things in perspective, I don’t remember where I was when Kennedy was shot.

I also remember the war in Vietnam, I remember some of the turbulence of 1968, and I remember watching live when Lyndon Johnson, then president, declined to run for President in March of that year, having only narrowly fended off a primary challenge from then senator Eugene McCarthy.



I’d like to stress that McCarthy didn’t even win. He merely showed up much better than expected in the New Hampshire primary. Wikipedia notes, “Opinion polls prior to the New Hampshire primary showed that McCarthy’s support stood at only 10 to 20 percent. Although he did not win the contest, he stunned spectators of the race by winning a surprising 42.2 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 49.4 percent.”

Richard Nixon went on to win the Presidency in 1968, and like many Americans, I’ve eagerly watched Presidential elections ever since.

Presidential nomination politics seem to have a rhythm of their own, and at some point, a certain kind of “inevitability” sets in. Johnson actually won in New Hampshire, but he knew the damage that could be done in a long primary season. In 1976, Jimmy Carter began with only a 2% name recognition, but won both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as an unknown, and went on to capture the Democratic nomination ahead of many better-known candidates. In 2004, after a raucous Democratic pre-Primary season, John Kerry won in Iowa, and even though it was a long primary season, his ability to clinch Iowa and New Hampshire seemed to secure his lock on the nomination.

This is one reason why I felt I could point to Rick Santorum’s candidacy with a great deal of hope. He, too, was unknown, and he ended up with a stunning result in Iowa, but Romney in New Hampshire stopped his momentum, and Gingrich had a stunning performance of his own in a South Carolina debate.

Of course, it’s too early to say that this year that Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee. But Santorum and Ron Paul both have lost momentum. Romney seems to have been stalled at his 25% level, and “conservatives” (not necessarily religious conservatives) seem to have found a non-Romney candidate they can rally around.

Of all the reasons why I would rather not see Romney as the nominee, “Bain Capital” is not among the reasons. To be sure, Romney is well-funded, and has well-established organizations in all of the upcoming primary states, whereas Gingrich will have to scramble. And as we have seen, Gingrich is a candidate with weaknesses.

But to paraphrase a Donald Rumsfeld idea, “you go to the General Election with the nominee you have, not the nominee you’d like to have”. Politics is, as always, the art of the possible. And you just have to do the best you can with what you’ve got.

I think the graphic below sums up nicely what happened in yesterday’s primary, and what we’ll be seeing in the coming weeks.