Welcome to Establishment Fear-Mongering 101

Daren Jonescu


Apart from die-hard Ron Paul supporters, does anyone seriously believe that Paul can win the Republican nomination? Strategist Dick Morris agrees with you; of course he can’t win. But that did not prevent Morris from making the “terrifying” danger of Paul’s candidacy the theme of his interview with guest-host Mark Steyn on Hannity the other day. And his reasoning was a perfect window into the Washington Establishment’s machinations during this primary season. His method was to produce an irrational fear in voters’ hearts. His purpose was to cause frightened voters to run home to Mommy—who (surprise!) happens to look a lot like Newt Gingrich.

After identifying Paul as the “most liberal, radical candidate of the bunch,” Morris went on to explain his concerns about the Iowa Caucuses this way:

“If you have a situation where Romney narrowly wins Iowa and Paul is second, and Gingrich a distant third… or Paul in first place, Romney a close second, and Gingrich a distant third, you’re going to have a situation very, very much like 1988 and ‘92 in the Democratic Primary, where the main candidate destroyed his main opponent, and then ran against someone who couldn’t possibly win, and coasted to the nomination. Mike Dukakis beat Al Gore, and then coasted against Jesse Jackson; Bill Clinton beat Paul Tsongas, and then coasted against Jerry Brown… and you’ll create a situation where there really won’t be a Gingrich-Romney primary—which is really what you need to have at this point—because Ron Paul will get in the middle of it.”

First, let’s address this argument on its own, antiquated, terms. Or rather, let’s try to do precisely what a Clintonite “strategist” hopes you won’t do; namely, seek to define the terms he is throwing around, and look at the actual history he is citing as precedent.

The half-stated premise of Morris’ argument is that before a single vote has been cast in any caucus or primary, the campaign that Republicans “need to have at this point” is reducible to just two of the seven declared candidates. On what grounds is he making this assumption? The fact that recent polls show Romney and Gingrich ahead of most of the other candidates? Is it not obvious that this is putting the cart before the horse—indeed, that Morris, like the rest of the Establishment, is seeking to put the cart (the nominating process) so far up ahead that the poor horse (the voters) can barely even see the thing anymore, let alone pull it? Before anyone has earned a single vote, Morris and others of his ilk are hoping to convince conservatives that it is time to give up on everyone but Romney and Gingrich. Even if the polls showing those two candidates as the frontrunners could be trusted—they can’t—anyone who has watched the polling over the past two months knows that extraordinary fluctuations have occurred. Why should voters artificially designate this moment as the final stage of that flux, and accept that today’s frontrunners are the only plausible candidates? Might not the polls show another radical change in preferences next week? Or next month, for that matter—which brings us to the next absurdity in Morris’ sophistry, his mangled history lesson.

According to Morris, the danger of a strong Paul showing in Iowa is that it will spell the end of the Romney-Gingrich contest Republicans “need to have at this point.” The heart of his argument is the historical precedent of the 1988 and ‘92 Democratic Primaries. On his account of 1988, Dukakis beat his “main opponent,” Gore, early, which left only Jackson in the way of an easy path to the nomination.

Aside from the question of what criteria Morris is using to identify Gore as the only legitimate “main opponent” in a race that had no fewer than eleven declared candidates, let’s consider the precise historical analogy with which he is hoping to scare Iowans into Gingrich’s protective arms. A week before Iowa, he is warning Republicans to avoid the 1988 Democratic scenario, in which, he claims, the “main candidate,” Dukakis, prematurely “destroyed” the candidacy of his only legitimate opponent, thus allowing a weaker fringe candidate to become the only alternative.

What actually happened in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses in 1988? The winner was neither Dukakis nor Jackson. It was Dick Gephardt. Paul Simon was second. Dukakis was third. Then came New Hampshire, Dukakis’ first win. Gephardt and Simon were second and third, respectively. It was Gephardt, not Gore (nor Jackson), who was perceived as the big challenger at that point. It was Gephardt, not Gore, who came under early attack from the others, as they tried, successfully, to undermine his union support. On Super Tuesday, Dukakis won six states, while Gore and Jackson each won five. In other words, it was long after Iowa that Gore even became a strong contender on the delegate map. And through all of this, it must not be forgotten that the actual “frontrunner” in pre-Iowa polling was neither Dukakis nor Gore: as a recentBusiness Insider article reminds us, it was Gary Hart, whose apparent support suddenly evaporated at the last moment, amidst personal scandal. (So much, yet again, for the fantasy of “momentum” in a political race; individual human minds determine electoral outcomes, not pseudo-scientific metaphors of “momentum.”)

Thus, Morris’ attempt to use 1988 to frighten voters into accepting that now, before the actual race has even begun, they must restrict themselves to considering only Romney and Gingrich as legitimate options, is poppycock.

What about 1992, in which, as Morris says, Clinton “destroyed” his “main opponent,” Tsongas, leaving only the pushover Brown? First of all, as is also noted in the Business Insider article cited above, Clinton was not a poll-leader heading into Iowa, and Tsongas was polling down in single digits. Tom Harkin won his home state, Iowa, and Tsongas won New Hampshire, with Clinton second. It was from this point on that Clinton began winning primaries by running as a centrist, thus allowing Brown to set himself up as the legitimate opponent, the champion of the Left.

There is nothing in the 1988 or 1992 Democratic Primaries to suggest that Iowa was particularly important to the eventual outcome of the nominating process. Quite the contrary: what those two races show is that someone who is polling in the middle of the pack or lower going into Iowa, and who finishes out of the money in that state, can still win, and win big. Thus, Morris’ conclusion that now is the time to get behind Gingrich, lest the supposed “main candidate” be deprived of his supposed “main opponent,” is utterly without historical support—and Morris’ entire argument is based on this alleged historical support.

The claim that Paul threatens to “get in the middle” of the “real” Romney-Gingrich primary contest is simple fear-mongering. It is a pre-emptive attempt to configure the primaries as a two-man race between the two least conservative, most Establishment-approved candidates, and to short-circuit the hopes of those who wish to save their country from this Establishment by scaring them with the bogeyman, Paul.

But Dick Morris, the man whose name is most closely associated with the cynical method of “triangulation,” is too clever and experienced a strategist to leave such clear tracks behind him. After this fear-based, irrational case for getting behind Gingrich as Romney’s only true opponent, Morris turns to the remainder of the Republican field, in search of any other viable “conservative” options, and identifies just one possibility, Rick Santorum:

“I have a video on my website today, ‘Santorum Surges.’ It’s very interesting. In the national Tea Party Patriots Primary, they call it, where they had 23,000 of their supporters vote, Gingrich came in first, Romney second, but Santorum was third, and ran a very—I think he got 16%. And now in Iowa he’s moved from 4% to 6% to 10%, moving ahead of Michele Bachmann. And you know, in a sense he’s the only guy that’s never had negatives dumped on his head; everybody else has come in for their round of shellacking, and as such maybe he is less damaged than the others. I personally think he sometimes has a Rodney Dangerfield ‘I don’t get no respect’ affect to him. But he sure has a solid conservative record, and he certainly is articulate and capable….”

Omitting Bachmann

To begin with, the Tea Party Patriots Primary he cites did not produce the result he claims—Gingrich first, Romney second, Santorum third. In fact, the result was Gingrich at 31%, followed by MICHELE BACHMANN at 28%, Romney at 20%, and Santorum in fourth place, with 16%. In addition, Bachmann finished first on the question of which candidate voters would be “extremely enthusiastic” to support as the nominee. By omitting Bachmann from his account altogether, Morris is either making a very serious error in his reading of the current situation, or he is telling a very serious lie. (I’ll leave that judgment to the reader.)

Furthermore, the idea that 23,000 conference callers can be identified with the Tea Party movement is ridiculous, of course, as is the idea that a group that gave over 50% of its vote to the combination of Gingrich and Romney was made up entirely of legitimate Tea Party constitutionalists. What does shine through in this straw poll result, however, is that, among those voters in the mix who were legitimate Tea Partiers (i.e. constitutional conservatives) Bachmann fared considerably better than Santorum, both in raw support and in intensity of support.

By omitting her from his account—indeed, by erasing the close runner-up from the poll result completely—and by citing (though not by name) the Rasmussen poll from a week earlier which showed Santorum at 10% in Iowa, ahead of Bachmann, Morris hops the Republican Establishment’s bandwagon against the Tea Party, in the cleverest of fashions. The upshot of this method is clear: When polls can be cited to belittle the anti-Establishment candidates and scare people away from their campaigns, cite them; when a poll indicates strong support for an anti-Establishment candidate, ignore it, or simply misrepresent it.

There can be little doubt that Santorum is a genuine conservative, and that conservative voters would be well-represented by a Santorum presidency. That’s not the issue here. The issue is this: Fearing that they may have no choice but to accept a genuine Tea Party candidate’s challenge at some point in this primary race, the party Establishment will protect its favorites by trying to play the Tea Party against itself. The aim will be to use the same fear mechanism they are using to create the phony Romney-Gingrich optics to consolidate the constitutionalist vote prematurely in favor of what they perceive to be the weakest Tea Party choice, and thus the one least likely to damage their preferred scenario. Notice that even Morris’ talk of a Santorum “surge” is qualified by his own comparison of Santorum’s tone to a whiny Rodney Dangerfield routine, and by his overriding admonition that voters must accept Romney-Gingrich as the real primary contest.

Dump the manipulations, dump the polls, dump a “conservatism” that pays no heed to the U.S. Constitution

The Establishment has judged that it has more to fear from a well-funded Texas governor, and certainly from a beloved Tea Party congressional constitutionalist firebrand, than from a man who, though liked by conservatives, seems to fall short in the enthusiastic support department. By creating the impression of a mini-wave for Santorum, they hope to undermine those whom they deem to be most dangerous to their anti-constitutionalist Old Boys’ Club. “Oh dear,” they want Bachmann supporters to think, “it looks like Santorum is the only conservative candidate with any momentum. We’d better jump ship.”

Allow me to make a counter-proposal to Dick Morris’ out-dated Washington Establishment triangulation stratagems: Dump the manipulations, dump the polls, dump a “conservatism” that pays no heed to the U.S. Constitution, or sees it as no more than a bit of campaign color which can be overridden by any 87-step plan or 21st Century Agenda for America that any technocrat or megalomaniac dreams up. Let Bachmann and Santorum duke it out for the nomination. Any constitutional conservative could be happy with that.