hereFour Republican candidates spoke last night, not one of whom would be
mistaken for another in a dark alley. Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick
Santorum, and Ron Paul are a grab bag of looks and styles and figures—a
credible set of extras for a movie scene shot in an all-night diner—even
if they are, basically, all white men of a certain age, three of whom
advocate similar policies. Their ways of speaking are distinct; and yet,
in a series of Super Tuesday quasi-victory speeches, they all provided
variations on a single theme: resentment. If not for the distraction of
counting the votes—the most contested state, Ohio, was not called until
they’d all gone to bed—the night would have been most notable as a study
in scorn.Gingrich, when he spoke, was a soft package of sour narcissism, like a moldering lemon with a sunken white fuzzy spot where his head should be. When he came onstage, in Georgia, he had won that state—where he’s from, which he’d represented for years—and spoke as if everyone who’d ever doubted him ought to be ashamed. He turned an isolated win in a losing campaign into an occasion to recite an enemies list. “I hope the analysts in Washington and New York, who spent June and July explaining our campaign was dead, will watch this,” he said.
It was precisely because the national élite—especially in the Republican Party—had decided that a Gingrich Presidency was so frightening that they had to kill it early.
“Especially in the Republican Party”—peevishness seems to be the reward for getting anywhere near Newt. But not to worry; even though, in his telling, the agents of “Wall Street money” plotted against him, he was saved by “the power of large solutions and big ideas.” Would those “large solutions” be the millions of dollars Sheldon Adelson gave via a Super PAC? “Big ideas” seems to mean anything that crosses his mind.
It took several minutes for Gingrich’s railing about wrongs other Republicans had done to him (“the Reagan negative ad, that is a total lie, O.K.?”) to be joined by his contempt for Obama (“shallow”; “deliciously incoherent”; “debating him would be just one of those moments where you could almost sell tickets for charity”). Also, the media was so “desperate to prove Gingrich was gone” that it didn’t get that Santorum was a phony: “He went to three states nobody else was in, and he won them.” As for the other not-Romneys,
It’s all right. There are lots of bunny rabbits that run through. I am the tortoise.
“Bunny rabbits.” Newt aims for condescension, but stumbles on his own pettiness.
And yet Newt, in his loud, crude way, illustrates what other Republicans are trying for, too. They all come bearing grievances. Santorum seems to welcome the wounds—to want everyone to know that he is bitter and has been wronged, and that America has been, too. His speech Tuesday night, at a school in Steubenville, Ohio, offered a license to seethe; his opening lines were about how hardly any candidates would even come to Steubenville. In every contest—“in every case”—other candidates had more money than he had. He did have a point: he pretty much tied Romney in Ohio, while being badly outspent, and won North Dakota and, more important, Tennessee. (John Cassidy has more on how the results played out.) Like Newt, Santorum said that “the élites” were after him—and, more than that, were after America.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the beginning of the end of freedom in America. Once the government has control of your life, then they got you. That’s why we decided to step out. As you look, I mean, Karen and I have seven children, ages twenty, ages twenty to three, not exactly the best time to be out running for President of the United States. We’ve given up our—our jobs. We’re living off our savings. Yeah, we’re making a little sacrifice for a very, very big goal, and that is replacing this President on November of this year.
There was also an invitation to feel looked down upon by Obama:
But this is a—this is a President who believes—who believes that he simply is better able to do this than you are, that he will be fairer than you are with your fellow man.
This sounded somewhat off, coming from a man who has made such a point of pushing his own personal morals. But in his speech, Santorum argued that there were only two options: either government or God is the “allocator” of rights. That is a profoundly isolating view. Does he believe that we—We the People, one might say—don’t know how to realize or defend rights without crediting a God? (It seems he does.) In Santorum’s depiction, religion is not a rock but a raft. He is also repeating a question Republicans keep asking: Who does Obama think he is?
That air of being affronted is refined in Romney’s speeches. Romney, in real life, has little to resent—he is rich and lucky—although on the campaign trail he might wonder at the hard time he has making friends. He regularly asks voters to join him in amazement that Obama could be President, to wonder at his weakness, while affecting a wounded dignity. When he spoke Tuesday, he knew he had won Massachusetts, Vermont, and Virginia, but was trailing in Ohio (and waiting on Alaska). “You have not failed,” he said. “You have a President that’s failed you.” He went on,
They’re high-fiving each other in the West Wing, but, my friends, the truth is, eight per cent unemployment is not the best America can do. It’s just the best that this Administration can do.
At least he went with “high-fiving,” rather than “fist-bumping.” Still, this was relatively mild compared to the way Romney often portrays Obama (out of his depth, after an “entitlement society,” practically building the Iranians’ bomb for them). And compared to where the fourth candidate, Ron Paul, saw America going, it was almost sunny. (I’m going by excerpts, since CNN & co. came to Paul late and left early.) Paul’s great currency—one he trusts more than the Fed—is with those who believe they have been defrauded and disenfranchised. The mystery of Paul’s appeal is the way this is done with a smile; it helps, of course, that Paul is ecumenical in his targets, and some, like the ones who set up the Fed, are long dead. (“It’d be nice if we could blame one person or one Administration, but it’s been going on a long time,” he said Tuesday. More than that, Paul seems to know who he is. Romney, as a candidate, does not.
Romney couldn’t even be sure that he could call himself a winner, which may have been why he appeared particularly lost—and why Santorum, too, got lost in his grievances, a place from which Gingrich rarely emerges. There are certainly reasons to resent what’s gone on in this country lately—or, rather, to recognize it, get angry, and calmly vote. But the G.O.P., for Super Tuesday, offered four shades of resentment without painting a picture of where the Party was headed, and the kind of America it might make.
Actually, there was a fifth; Sarah Palin, a master of grudges, was interviewed by CNN as she went to vote for Gingrich in Alaska. If there did turn out to be a brokered convention, Palin said, she was available.
Author: Amy Davidson
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