Peggy Noonan

John Boehner is sighing. It’s one of those days, or maybe epochs. He’s just spoken to the House GOP conference. Some members are feeling fractious, disheartened. Time for a St. Crispin’s Day speech. What did he tell them? “I told them they have ocular rectitis. That’s when your eyes get confused with your butt, and it develops into [an unnecessarily fecal] outlook on life.”

It’s late Wednesday morning and the speaker of the House is seated in his Capitol office smoking and sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. What the conference is feeling is “the normal state of affairs for a majority that’s frustrated by a president who doesn’t want to work with us and a Senate that doesn’t do the bills we send over. And then the frustration builds and they get to nipping at each other. And so it was one of those mornings where you had to kind of re-set the table.”

He told them the historical moment is more promising than it looks: “Instead of looking at what we can do with it, we’re busy gnawing at each other over small differences that we might have.”

He sighs. A really big sigh.

“There’s a much bigger prize here. You can’t get the bigger prize without action. And we need to be united in order to have action.”

The prize is winning the White House and the Senate. “They all understand there’s big limits on what we can do only having one house. And while we’ve been able to stop all the real craziness of what’s going on, trying to peel this back . . . is gonna be difficult.” By “this,” he means the size, cost and power of the federal government. “It took the other side 80 years to build this monstrosity . . . and our guys want to get rid of it tomorrow.” Congress, he says, doesn’t work that way. The Founders designed it not to work that way.

What of the charge the tea party has made the House ungovernable? “False,” he says, it’s a media creation. “Virtually every Republican in the House was supported by the tea party in the last election. My problem is not with our 89 freshmen, my problem is with a few senior members who—they always want more. They always want more than what you can produce.” His predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, “went through the same problem with her side.”

But it gets on his nerves. “With modern communications, a handful of them who feel differently will go out there and make their case on why we oughta go further, why we oughta do more. And there’ll be a couple of outside organizations who come along and gin it up, and then all of a sudden [some] members are getting heat, and you know they really want to be with us but they don’t want to put up with the heat at home. But it’s not the freshmen, that’s the amazing part of this.”

His relationship with Majority Leader Eric Cantor? “Eric and I have never disagreed on strategy, ever. From time to time there’s been some disagreement on tactics, not usually between Eric and I, usually on the staff level.” The speaker, the leader and their staffs met in the speaker’s office after the House retreat. “Eric and I . . . both knew that we can’t be divided, and he and I had some conversation with our staffs that we’re all going to be on the same page.”

As for the president, “he and I get along fine. But boy do we have big differences.”

Mr. Boehner turns to the debt ceiling struggle of six months ago: “We had a little rough spot last summer. I would argue he moved the goal posts, and blew up negotiations about the debt deal.”

Congress needs “to show . . . that in spite of our differences we can find common ground to do the work of the American people. But I’ll just say this. There’s nobody who tried harder last year with the president to do the right thing. There’s nobody who walked further out on a limb than I did to try to get him to do the right thing. And one of my greatest disappointments was not getting an agreement.”

The drama was a trauma. “Oh, it really was. And we were pretty close to doing something nobody would have ever believed—real changes, real cuts. I put revenues on the table.” He says he put forward $800 billion in spending cuts and tax reforms—closing loopholes while lowering corporate and personal rates. “A lot of my guys would have choked to death on it.” But the deal, he says, was doable.

What happened? The White House “spun this thing that I walked away from this.” Actually, he says, the president did: “He lost his courage. . . . He just couldn’t bring himself to do what he had to do.”

Mr. Boehner says his staff felt some anxiety about what he’d offered. “I looked at them all because they were all getting nervous. I said, ‘Listen, if this means the end of my Speakership, fine.’” The famously emotional Boehner’s eyes filled with tears, and he paused: “I can walk out of here knowing I did the right thing. . . . If we don’t deal with it we’ll be like Greece and the rest of them.”

On the question of Congress’s low approval ratings, the speaker names the usual reasons: The economy is bad, Americans are frustrated, they look to Washington “and all they see is chaos.” Also Congress has been America’s “favorite whipping boy for 200 years.” So the low numbers are “not surprising.”

What about corruption? You’re the speaker of the whole House. Is corruption part of Congress’s DNA? Is it the No. 1 thing that’s bipartisan? “All members,” he says, “should be held to the highest ethical standards.” In the past six years, since becoming majority leader, he’s had many conversations with members about “allegations that were out there, public and not public.”

“People think I’ve got this job as a leader. They don’t realize that I have about 200 responsibilities and roles. I’ve gotta be the big brother, the father, I gotta be the disciplinarian, the dean of students, the principal, the spouse—you can’t believe all the roles that I have to play! But one of them is, you know, some problems you can nip early. I had three guys in here a few years ago, I said ‘Boys, you’re cruising down the wrong path.’ Two of them listened, one of them didn’t. He’s no longer here.”

“We got 435 members. It’s just a slice of America, it really is. We got some of the smartest people in the country who serve here, and some of the dumbest. We got some of the best people you’d ever meet, and some of the raunchiest. We’ve got ‘em all.”

How does word reach him that a scandal may be brewing? “Oh, it gets to me a lot of ways. The press, I hear about it from friends, I hear about it from colleagues. I’m out and about, I do what I do, I hear everything. There are no secrets in this town.”

In his time, has congressional misbehavior, publicly known or not, tended to go under the broadly defined category of “romance” or of “finance”?

A long sigh.

“Rarely is money an issue.”

The conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, who died Thursday, was a piece of work—bombastic, sensitive, angry, deeply generous, full of laughter. Spirited, too, like some kind of crazy knight. He was a battler and a warrior and he was brave and he made mistakes. He was a warm-blooded animal, not a cold one, and I suppose the thing that wounded him most was the thing that wounds everybody: He wanted to be understood. That’s a lot to ask of the other humans, who are mostly trying to understand themselves.

So many conservatives are mourning his passing, at 43, because he was irreplaceable, a unique human soul. The other day in a seminar at a university, a student of political science asked a sort of complicated question that seemed to be about the predictability of human response to a given set of political stimuli. I answered that if you view people as souls, believe that we have souls within us, that they are us, then nothing political is fully predictable, because you never know what a soul will do, how a soul will respond, what truth it will apprehend and react to. I was thinking as I spoke of the headline when the Titanic went down: “1,400 Souls Lost.” We used to see people in that larger dimension, which is not a romantic but a realistic one. The puniest person is big, and rich.

I had criticized Andrew last year in a column. A few weeks ago we bumped into each other at an airport, arranged to sit together on the plane, spoke our peace, hashed it through, and wound up laughing. He was endearing because he was exposed: If he felt it, he told you.
Afterward I thought again of something that has been on my mind the past five years or so. Longer, actually, but more so with time. In a way the argument between conservatives and progressives is that for the left, everything is about politics. Because they seek to harness government and the law in pursuit of what they see as just and desirable ends, everything becomes a political fight. Conservatives fought that narrow, constricted, soulless view of life: “We are not only political, we have other spheres, we are human beings.” But in their fight against liberalism and its demands, too many conservatives have unconsciously come to ape the left. They too became all politics all the time. Friendships were based on it, friendships were lost over it. “You agree with me? You’re in. You don’t? You’re out.” They became as good at ousting, excluding and anathematizing as Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, as Jacobins. As self-righteous, too, and as adept at dehumanizing the enemy.

It is not progress when you become what you hate, when you take on its sickest aspect.

Andrew and I talked about this that day on the plane. I agreed with his passion: We’re in a big struggle, we have to fight. His argument was in a way like Flannery O’Connor’s: You have to push back hard against the age that is pushing you. But he agreed too that politics can leave you twisted and deformed inside, that fighting those who would impose their will can leave you as consumed as they are. You have to be careful and not let political struggles take over your life, your affections—your soul.

We were not built to be all about politics. Empires rise and fall, nations come and go, but the man who poured your coffee this morning is eternal, because his soul is eternal. That’s C.S. Lewis. I don’t know if Andrew was a religious person or a believer, but I know he respected faith, understood it, felt protective of it. For which good on you, Andrew, and thanks. Rest in peace.

[DINGBATS]

So: this week in the run for the GOP nomination for the presidency.

They’re making me nervous. Are they you? I don’t mean nervous they’ll lose, I mean nervous.

There’s a sense now, encouraged by the press but also played into by almost all the candidates, that the subject matter out there on the stump has little relation to the actual and daily concerns of the American people.

They don’t seem to be speaking enough of the essentials, the central things that can actually be improved by governmental action. I’m not talking about Satan, contraception, class snobbery and whether JFK’s Houston speech made you want to throw up. Well, actually, I am, but also more. When the candidates do talk about pertinent issues—spending, taxes, energy—they tend to raise them through thought-killing clichés, to save time.

What is striking, too, is a growing air of goofiness. Its latest incarnation started with Mitt Romney’s Michigan aria. “You know, the trees are the right height. The streets are just right.” But it got a little too free associative the night of the Michigan primary.

Rick Santorum, in his concession speech: “This oil, yeah, this is oil. Oil. Out of rock, shale. It leaches oil. In fact, the highest quality oil in the world, light sweet crude.” And: “The British were the most powerful army in the world and the navy in the world. They were ruled by highly educated, noble people. The uniforms were crisp and stiff. They looked good.”

Newt Gingrich’s speech was mostly about trees: “He had a really big tree. . . . How hard can it be to cut down the tree? . . . None of us had studied physics. . . . Now the tree was dead.”

As I watched them, I thought what you probably thought: It’s not good to take an Ambien before giving a concession speech.

It is getting to them. Everyone gets goofy on the trail because the trail is exhausting, it’s a daily sandpapering that rubs you raw. Constant pressure, high stakes, long days, cameras and mics, the attempt at irony that becomes the gaffe that dominates the day.

But they should buck up. Running for president is tough, but it also means aides, gofers, strangers whispering praise in your ear, and people holding signs saying you’re great. Someone else gets the dry cleaning, someone lays out the crisp shirt. The worst that can happen if you lose is seats on boards, cable contracts, honoraria, book advances and a free office in a think tank. How terrible. No wonder they’re under stress.

To comfort myself on Thursday, I looked for great candidate gaffes in history. There was the candidate who in 2008 said: “I’ve now been in 57 states, I think one left to go.” That wasn’t Michele Bachmann, it was Barack Obama. Here’s one talking about hard times: “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” That wasn’t Mitt Romney, it was Sen. Obama. And how’s this for grandiose, when one candidate defined the meaning of his future victory: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” That wasn’t Newt, of course, but Mr. Obama.

All this makes me feel better, sort of.

Couldn’t the candidates make a pact? That from here on out nothing outré, strange, off point or nonessential will be discussed? That way they won’t embarrass themselves and have to put up a defense. And neither will their party.

Their central problem is that they’re all trying come across as normal. They shouldn’t. They’re running for president, they’re not normal. And anyway normal is overrated.

Obama supporters are beginning to feel more confident, or at least less embarrassed. A year ago, even three months ago, they were thinking: What a confounding, confusing loser this man is. They didn’t bother defending him never mind advancing him. But now they’re starting to get friskier. They believe there’s a new lay to the land: The economy is coming back, at least for now and at least a little; the Republican nominee will emerge so bloodied his victory will hardly be worth having; the Republicans are delving into areas so extreme and off point that by the end Mr. Obama will look like the moderate.

Here is a local Democratic political figure in conversation in New York: When you look at where we were after the crash in 2008-09, you look back and realize that whatever mistakes Mr. Obama made, “He got us through it.” He looked to me for agreement. That’s not really how I see it, I said. “But he got us through it!” Well, I said, in the sense that we’re here and not all dead, yes, but that would be an unusual standard by which to judge a president’s success.

We started to laugh, and he pressed on into foreign affairs. “He got Osama,” he said, “He kept us safe.” I’m not sure if he was knowingly mimicking what Republicans used to say in defense of George W. Bush: There was no second 9/11, “he kept us safe.” That grated badly on Democrats: “Are you kidding? He created catastrophes that will haunt us for decades!” One suspects it’s about to grate badly on Republicans.

Anyway, I heard two memes emerging, subliminal messages of the Obama campaign: “He got us through it” and “He kept us safe.” Or maybe they’re liminal.

[DINGBATS]

It is true the Republican candidates are making the president look better, and part of it has to do with circumstances. They’re locked in battle, full of argument and attack. He gets to be serene, above it all. They’re accusing each other, he’s ignoring them. He pounds away on his issues, they have a thousand issues, a jumble of questions and answers and stands. There is no nominee and so no prioritizing of concerns, and therefore no central meaning. It’s all an acrimonious blur.

Good news: This may be the Republicans’ low point. Bad news: The low point may last until the convention, and through it. It’s all getting a little exhausting. Thus the relatively lackluster debate this week. Everyone looked a little tired, out of gas, each playing a role: Mitt as Fred McMurray in “My Three Sons” in the episode where he’s tired and the kids keep interrupting his nap, Rick as the soulful seminarian who’s sort of defensive. Newt morphed into Grandpa, holding his wrist and smiling.

For almost a year Rick Santorum was made of Teflon. No one bothered to attack him, he’s a nothingburger at 4%, just be nice in preparation for the inevitable moment when he takes the stage and endorses you with an awkward man-hug. Now he’s Velcro, and trapped in a web laid by the administration’s claim that the furor over the ObamaCare mandate isn’t about religious freedom and abortion drugs, it’s about crazy people trying to take away your contraceptives. This is as big a lie as you can tell in politics, and a deeply mischievous one: It not only muddies the waters but adds a new layer of meaningless alarm to the political landscape.

But big lies can do damage unless deftly dealt with. And the mainstream media will help this particular lie along, not only because they’re carrying water and not only because they really do think Republicans are crazy on these issues and like to sit around having secret talks on ways to get CVS not to sell condoms, but because contraceptive use is an issue they can understand. What an abortifacient is and why it is unconstitutional to force the Catholic Church to ensure their provision is not something they really want to delve into. They don’t only have biases, they are, some of them, quite stupid.

But has Mr. Santorum learned anything from his 2006 loss in Pennsylvania? Since then he has gotten used to talking in venues where there was nothing to lose and little at stake (Fox News contributor) or the audience was fully versed in the reasoning behind his beliefs and supportive of them (Ave Maria University). Now he’s struggling with the fact that he’s in the leagues, and the leagues play by Miranda rules: Everything you’ve said can and will be used against you.

Since there’s no hiding from past statements, Mr. Santorum would be well advised to address it all thoughtfully and at length. He should sit down and pour out his thoughts on the extent to which one’s religious beliefs should and do inform one’s political views. Mitt Romney had his 2008 Mormon speech, and JFK his Catholic speech. Time for another. Mr. Santorum might keep this picture in mind as he writes. There’s a guy watching him in an interview, and he likes what he’s hearing. Then he thinks, “Wait—if the economy tanks in 2013 and I put on the news to hear the president’s statement, am I going to hear this guy saying, ‘And another thing that is societally destructive about how America conducts its sexual life is . . .’?” We’re talking about the presidency. No one’s going to hire that guy for the presidency.

[DINGBATS]

Meanwhile the story of the ObamaCare mandate continues.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, in essence the leader of the church in America, wrote a letter to the bishops this week saying that religious freedom is “a fundamental right” that “does not depend on any government’s decision to grant it: it is God given.” The president’s decision (including what Mr. Obama calls his “accommodation”) “violates the Constitutional limits on our government” and reduces religious liberty to “a privilege arbitrarily granted by the government.” This reflects, he suggested, “an extreme form of secularism.”

It was a strong letter, making clear the church is not backing down. But since the so-called accommodation, the call-to-action part of the church’s response has been weak. What should Catholics do? What should they know about legislative remedies? Whom should they call? Are the cardinals flooding the Sunday news shows?

There are bills in both the House and the Senate that would beat back the ruling. One may come to a vote next week in the Senate. But members of both houses fear nothing will go forward without full, explicit and vigorous church backing. Some Democrats are pursuing various fig-leaf bills that will give them political cover but not change the basic facts. They do not want to defy the administration or—more important—anger its powerful backers, including NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion provider in the United States.

What happens if the ruling stays? Will Catholic Charities close down? Assuming not, how big an annual fine will they have to pay if they refuse to bow to the mandate?

A fine on faith. Who thought they’d live to see that in America?

Will the priests be talking about this on Sunday so the phones of senators are ringing Monday?

A man’s voice, urgent:

“America is in crisis. It feels like we’re coming apart.”

Shots from a hand-held camera—blurry, indistinct. Angry citizens, protests. Closeup on a bearded young man, his face distorted by rage.

“We face unprecedented challenges.”

Cuts of lonely farms, small houses with for-sale signs. A little girl with pleading eyes.

“Is this any time for inexperience?”

A tattered flag blows in the wind.

“One candidate has silky words, but what do they mean? What do we really know of him?”

Video shot from behind a candidate who stands at a podium. We see his back, the jerky movement of his arms. We see faces in the crowd—confused, shaking their heads. Are they being gulled?

“His backwoods chatter can’t hide the facts. He’s never had a college education—or any education at all. He claims he read the classics at night, by candlelight. But that’s not really what the frontier was about.”

Cut to a raucous bonfire—frantic dancing, men and women, drinking. A hysterical laugh pierces the outer darkness.

“He says he’s for the little guy. Why is he hiding the fact that he’s a big-time lawyer who sold himself to the highest bidder?”

Archival film shot: a saloon table, a wad of bills gathered up by a fat man’s hand. Gleaming cuffs, cufflinks, ruby ring. In the background, a woman’s chuckle. Somehow we know her name is Belle.

“He served just one term in the House—one. And wasn’t reelected.”

Blurry photo of a man. We’re not sure who it is. Slowly it begins to come into focus—stark face, rude cheekbones, slick black hair. Now cut to close-up: his irregular eyes. One pupil is more dilated than the other. He’s cockeyed.

“He ran for the Senate, and failed.”

Video of torches being extinguished. A slump-shouldered voter walks away, alone.

“They said they loved his speeches, but what were they beyond words? His wife? Imperious. His address? Impeccable. As for the family he came from, he left them in the backwoods when he went to the big city.”

Shot of sad, impoverished family in an empty field.

Then quick shots: An honest American worker in front of a toolshed. Yearning families on farms and in cities. A little girl holding a flag, which droops wanly on her shoulder.

“This is a time of crisis—and he’s telling jokes.”

Screen goes black.

“They call him ‘Honest Abe.’ But he’s just another Springfield insider.”

Another man’s voice:

“I’m Stephen A. Douglas, and I approved this message.”

[DINGBATS]

So that’s my Abe Lincoln attack ad. It can claim to be factual, or at least arguable, and the parts that are too mean would ensure it got plenty of free play on “Hardball,” “Special Report” and “Morning Joe,” where we’d all deplore it. Then the Douglas campaign would pull it after complaining they have no control over their stupid, independent Super PAC, Americans for Sort of More Slavery at Least for a While.

I wish someone would make this ad and show it across the country and say at the end: “Cheer up, have faith, greatness is possible, sometimes it’s there but you only see it in retrospect. Not everyone’s a bum.”

Attack ads are the dreck of democracy. There are too many of them and there will be more. In the next 8½ months we will be engulfed. The Republican presidential primary is in full swing so we’ve already seen Bain Capital Took Your Job and Newt Is a Hypocritical Big Government Hack. Senate and House candidates will launch this spring and summer, so it’s going to get a lot more negative.

Why are attacks ads bad? Because at the end of the day they are damaging to our country and its processes, and they are most damaging to the degree their messages enter our children’s heads.

Someone once said that if you want to know the source of a person’s political views, go back to the newspaper headlines when he was 20. See what the country was talking about, and how it was talking about it, when he first started thinking of himself as a citizen, a stakeholder, a member of America.

But imagine you are today 8 or 10 or 12. You watch TV, you hear the radio in the car, you go on the computer, you see the ads. They inundate you. And they make, in the aggregate, an indelible impression: “They are all bad.” If your child is a happy little psychopath, he will be encouraged: “Good, I’ll fit right in when I grow up.” But assuming your children are not psychopaths, and in spite of their daily behavior that tends to be true, they will be discouraged. They would never want to take part in public life some day. They would never even want to pay attention to it. Because they want to grow up and be admirable.

We are poisoning their minds. I used to say liberalism was more damaged by this because liberals are inclined to think the answer to public ills resides in governmental action. Negative ads imply the people who run government are bad, so government must be too. Why trust it? But conservatism is undercut just as much, certainly now, because to make the changes they want, they need big numbers, big margins. Numbers come from passion. Passion is diminished by sourness, by “they’re all bums.”

Many say our politics are no more negative than they used to be, and they have a point: It’s always been a brute sport. We all know the drill, from “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” to the presidential election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson had one of his henchmen—excuse me, surrogates—accuse John Adams, in a series of newspaper essays, of being a “hideous hermaphroditical character,” a “strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness,” a “repulsive pedant.” That’s worse than what Mitt said about Newt. By the end, Adams was so beside himself he lost his temper and called Alexander Hamilton “a man devoid of every moral principle, a bastard . . . a foreigner.” That’s worse than what Newt said about Mitt.

The man in front of whom Adams lost his temper made sure to get the word out, through letters, the press, and word of mouth. And that of course is what’s different now. They didn’t have mass media to blanket everyone’s minds. You used to have to be sort of sophisticated to know Alexander Hamilton hated Adams. You had to read long newspaper accounts to find out why, and you had to go to the city to find the newspapers. You could find it if you wanted to, but if you didn’t, there was less chance it would find you.

And now there’s no place to hide. All screens are on.

What remedies might ease this situation will have no impact on 2012. What about self-policing?

You there, political consultant, genius ad cutter, sitting at your laptop reviewing the images and the script. Are you making a brutal ad to take the enemy down? Are you thinking of anything but your status as an effective guru and your pay? Are you thinking at all of the net effects of your dark work?

No? Then a curse upon you as you hit “save” and “send.” May your hand be palsied. May it lose its power.

The Romney campaign is better at dismantling than mantling. They’re better at taking opponents apart than building a compelling candidate of their own. They do not seem capable of deepening his meaning, making his stands and statements more textured and interesting. He comes across like a businessman who studied the data and came up with the formula that will make the deal.

A particular problem is that he betrays little indignation at any of our problems and their causes. He’s always sunny, pleasant, untouched by anger. This leaves people thinking, “Excuse me, but we are in crisis. Financially and culturally we fear our country is going down the drain. This guy doesn’t seem to be feeling it. So why’s he running? Maybe he thinks it’s his personal destiny to be president. But if the animating passion of his candidacy is about him, not us, who needs him?”

Mitt Romney’s aides are making the classic mistake of thinking the voters want maturity, serenity and a jolly spirit. What they want is a man who knows what time it is, who has a passion to reform our country, and who yet holds these qualities within a temperament that is mature, serene and jolly. Newt Gingrich has half the package: He has a passion to reform, but it exists inside a crazy suit. Mitt has no particular passion within an obviously sane suit.

Which leads to Rick Santorum. Nobody in the conservative base hates Rick. Newt is hated by many and Mitt by some. Mr. Santorum is liked. He has real indignation about what’s happened to America, and he brings passion to his ideas about reform. He’s got little money, little organization—there’s no broad assumption he can pull it off. And by the time the Romney campaign is done dismantling him, he may have some people who hate him. But this will only underscore the Romney campaign’s reputation for destroying, not creating. And nobody loves a Death Star.

Newt’s not done and could rise again. I keep thinking of what a sage old pol, a veteran former GOP governor, said two weeks ago. He turned to me in conversation and said, “By the way, don’t call it a brokered convention. That’s what the media and the Democrats will call it because it implies there are brokers. Call it a contested convention because that’s what it will be, contested.” Could it really come to that? The odds, he said, are still way against it. “But they’re probably the best in my lifetime.”

[DINGBATS]

Let’s turn to low turnout in the Republican races. Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri this week were all down, Iowa and New Hampshire were flat, Florida, that Little America, was down almost 15%. All this in a volatile race, in a time of crisis.

What are the reasons? Maybe it’s the increasing negativity of the campaign, maybe it’s widespread dissatisfaction with the field. Maybe it’s that, and more.

There are some small indicators something else may be going on. Cable news ratings, which should spike in an election year, and which indicate interest on both the left and the right, are relatively flat, with mild increases here and there. Broadcast evening news ratings continue their gradual decline. One network anchor, on being urged to capture more of the joy and ferocity of the Republican contest, sighed. “Every time we show those guys, our numbers go down.” A major website operator tells me people aren’t clicking on political stories.

But it’s not confined to the Republican side. Look at President Obama’s State of the Union numbers. That speech famously blankets all television and radio networks. His first speech to a joint session of Congress, in February 2009, drew 52 million viewers. A year later the State of the Union had an understandable fall-off to about 48 million. In 2011, another fall: 43 million watched. A few weeks ago his 2012 State of the Union drew just 38 million. From 52 to 38: That’s quite a decline. And again, during an continuing crisis and in a presidential election year. As for the president’s interviews and other speeches, well, when was the last time you heard someone ask excitedly, “Did you hear what Obama said?”

Whose numbers are up? The NFL’s.

Maybe the story the political class is missing is not “They don’t like the Republican field,” or “They don’t like Obama.” Maybe the story is that people are tuning out altogether. Maybe they’re bored with politics, and most especially with politicians. Maybe they don’t think our government can’t solve anything. Maybe, even, our political class has done such a good job depicting the crisis we’re in that the American people, with their low faith in institutions, think nothing, really, can be done about it. So let’s check out. Let’s watch the game.

[DINGBATS]

An update on the furor surrounding ObamaCare and the Catholic Church. The Obama White House was surprised by the pushback but hopes it will blow over. Their thinking: The Catholics had their little eruption, letters were read from pulpits, the pundits came out, and then the pols. But life goes on, new issues arise, we’ll hunker down, it’ll go away. Meanwhile, play for time. Send David Axelod out to purr about possible new negotiations.

That would be a trap for the church. Any new talks would no doubt go past Election Day, at which time, if the president wins, he’ll be able to give the church the back of his hand.

The short-term White House strategy is to confuse and obfuscate, to spread a thick web of untruths about the decision and let opponents exhaust themselves trying to fight from under the web.

The church must be resolute and press harder. Now is the time to keep pounding—from the pulpit, in all Catholic publications and media, in statements and meetings. For how long? As long as it takes. The president and the more radical part of his base clearly thought the church was a paper tiger, a hollow shell, an entity demoralized and finished by the scandals of the past 20 years.

Now is the time for the church to show it’s alive. How?

• Educate. Unconfuse the issues. Take a different aspect of the ruling and its deeper meanings every week, and pound away.

• Reach out. This is bigger than the Catholic Church. Go to the mainline Protestant churches, evangelicals, synagogues and mosques. Plead for vocal, public and immediate support: “If the church is forced to go against its conscience, religious liberty in America is not safe. If religious liberty is not safe, you are not safe.”

• Know your people. Mr. Obama carried secular Catholics overwhelmingly in 2008. But churchgoing Catholics were evenly split, 51% to 49% for John McCain. These are the voters the president could lose by huge margins over the ruling. And he will, if they fully understand it. Such a loss could determine the 2012 outcome. He knows it, you know it. Have faith in the people in the pews. Give it to them straight, week after week, and they’ll back the church overwhelmingly. The White House is watching. Pound away.

• Call for Democratic support. Religious liberty should not be a partisan issue. Republicans have come to the fore, but it’s better for the church if Democrats do too. They’re starting to come over. Make clear from the pulpit that members of both parties are absolutely essential in this fight. “All hands on deck.”

You can win. Keep the faith. Literally: Keep it.

What a faux pas, how inept, how removed from the essential realities of America. Yes, I’m referring to President Obama.

But let’s do Mitt Romney first.

He’s taken heavy fire for his statement, in an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, in which he said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

Every criticism has been true. It was politically inept, playing into stereotypes about Republicans and about his own candidacy. It was Martian-like in its seeming remove from the concerns of everyday citizens. We’re in a recession here! It was at odds both with longtime American tradition and with rising conservative concern over the growth and changing nature of what used to be called the underclass.

So: inept.

Advice? Treat the mistake as an opportunity. First, admit the blunder. A political communications expert would add, “And move on.” But don’t. Use this mistake, and others—”I like being able to fire people”—as the basis for a true, thoughtful and extended statement that will allow people more deeply into the mind of Mitt Romney. Call it “Let me tell you about my gaffes.” Use it to deepen people’s understanding of your views not only on poverty but on the whole American picture.

Three reasons to do this. First, the networks, in their Romney gaffe reels, will have to use some of the lengthier address for the appearance of fairness. Second, it’s good to dwell on this problem now because Democrats want it to go away. That’s because they want to bring it back fresh in the fall, when people have forgotten it. The third reason has to do with still-widespread conservative unease with what Mr. Romney really thinks and why he thinks it. He should set himself to giving a fuller picture of his thoughts.

[DINGBATS]

Which leads us to the Republican establishment, and how it feels about Mr. Romney.

That establishment is not what it was decades ago, when it was peopled by seasoned veterans who made decisions and got people in line. That’s gone. What has replaced it is a loose confederation of groups and professionals—current and former elected officials and their staffs, activists, the old party machinery, bundlers and contributors, journalists, radio and TV stars, mostly but not exclusively based in Washington.

The great myth of the election year is that they are for Mitt Romney. They are not. They are almost all against Newt Gingrich because they know him, they’ve worked with him. But they mostly do not love Mr. Romney.

The establishment didn’t get its candidate: Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush, John Thune or Paul Ryan, Haley Barbour or Chris Christie. It is, secretly, as bereft as some of the grassroots.

Why doesn’t the establishment like Mr. Romney? Because they fear he won’t win, that he’ll get clobbered on such issues as Bain, wealth, taxes. Because when they listen to him, they get the impression he’s reciting lines his aides came up with in debate prep. Because if he wins, they’re not sure he’ll have a meaning or mandate.

But mostly because his insides are unknown to them. They don’t know what’s in there. They fear he hasn’t absorbed any philosophy along the way, that he’ll be herky-jerky, unanchored, merely tactical as president. And they think that now of all times more is needed. They want to reform the tax system and begin reining in the entitlement spending that is bankrupting us. They don’t read him as the guy who can perform those two Herculean jobs, each of which will demand first-rate political talent. And shrewdness. And guts.

Mr. Romney doesn’t have the establishment in his pocket. He needs to win it. All the more reason for him to get serious now. If he is serious.

This is the authentic sound of the establishment: At a gathering in Washington last week, I spoke to a grand old man of the party who enjoyed high and historic appointed position. “Where is the Republican Party right now?” I asked.

“Waiting for Jeb,” he said. Waiting for rescue.

That’s what Mitt Romney’s up against, not Newt.

[DINGBATS]

But the big political news of the week isn’t Mr. Romney’s gaffe, or even his victory in Florida. The big story took place in Washington. That’s where a bomb went off that not many in the political class heard, or understood.

But President Obama just may have lost the election.

The president signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that says under ObamaCare Catholic Institutions—including its charities, hospitals and schools—will be required by law, for the first time ever, to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. If they do not, they will face ruinous fines in the millions of dollars. Or they can always go out of business.

In other words, the Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can’t be Catholic anymore.

I invite you to imagine the moment we are living in without the church’s charities, hospitals and schools. And if you know anything about those organizations, you know it is a fantasy that they can afford millions in fines.

There was no reason to make this ruling—none. Except ideology.

The conscience clause, which keeps the church itself from having to bow to such decisions, has always been assumed to cover the church’s institutions.

Now the church is fighting back. Priests in an estimated 70% of parishes last Sunday came forward to read strongly worded protests from the church’s bishops. The ruling asks the church to abandon Catholic principals and beliefs; it is an abridgement of the First Amendment; it is not acceptable. They say they will not bow to it. They should never bow to it, not only because they are Catholic and cannot be told to take actions that deny their faith, but because they are citizens of the United States.

If they stay strong and fight, they will win. This is in fact a potentially unifying moment for American Catholics, long split left, right and center. Catholic conservatives will immediately and fully oppose the administration’s decision. But Catholic liberals, who feel embarrassed and undercut, have also come out in opposition.

The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don’t want that. They will unite against that.

The smallest part of this story is political. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win.

They won’t this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states.

There was no reason to pick this fight. It reflects political incompetence on a scale so great as to make Mitt Romney’s gaffes a little bitty thing.

There was nothing for the president to gain, except, perhaps, the pleasure of making a great church bow to him.

Enjoy it while you can. You have awakened a sleeping giant.

This is the most volatile and tumultuous presidential primary race of our lifetimes. Look at these numbers. In June 2011, in South Carolina, Mitt Romney led Newt Gingrich by 15 points, 27% to 12%, in a Public Policy Polling survey. Two months later, PPP had Rick Perry leading Mr. Romney by 20 points, 36% to 16%, with Mr. Gingrich running third. In early December Mr. Gingrich vaulted to the top, leading Mr. Romney by 23 points (CNN). A month later Mr. Romney led by 18.

Last Saturday, South Carolina voted. Mr. Gingrich won in a 12-point blowout.
Jump to Florida. In late November, Mr. Gingrich led Mr. Romney by 30 points. (PPP). In mid-January, Mr. Romney led by 26 points (Sunshine State News). A week later Mr. Gingrich was back on top by nine (Rasmussen). This Thursday Rasmussen said Romney was leading Gingrich by eight, 39% to 32%.

This isn’t “different polls say different things,” this is tumult, and it’s left almost everyone in politics scratching their heads: What the heck is going on? An unusually high number of voters have reported making up their minds late, just before the voting. Never before have three different candidates won the first three races in a GOP nomination contest.
We are in uncharted territory.

[DINGBATS]

What it appears we are seeing is a new iteration of the age-old split between the grassroots and a perceived GOP establishment. It is like split between the Goldwater forces and the Eastern Rockefeller wing of the party in the 1960s. It is an update of the split between the Buchanan brigades and the establishment in 1992. It is the old True Conservative versus Ambivalent Accomodationist split.

Thursday’s debate: Romney had a better night than Gingrich.

Actually it’s more a wound than a split, and the only one who healed it in our time was Ronald Reagan. He did it in three ways. He did it by being definitive: We believe in this and this, not that. He healed it by winning: Two landslides told everyone in the party who’d resisted him what time it was. And he healed it by governing well: By 1989, everyone who’d fought him within the party had to look at the results of what he’d done—the comeback of the U.S. economy, the fall of the Berlin Wall—and admit that it worked.

The healing lasted roughly a quarter-century, until the second Bush administration, when everything began to come apart again. The GOP was now a party split on spending, immigration, a dozen other issues. It was rocked even more than it knew by the crash of 2008, and further sundered.

The question now is whether the old split, the old wound, is tearing open in a deeper and more definitive way, in the first real presidential contest since the great healing went fully by the boards.

[DINGBATS]

The issue of Ronald Reagan himself, in the Florida primary, has been a sideshow and mildly absurd. Newt says he is Reagan’s successor, that he helped him rout the Soviet Union and create 16 million jobs. The Romney forces say Newt attacked Reagan, called him a failure, he’s nothing like the Gipper.

Newt is not Reagan, Mitt is not Reagan, and, by the way, President Obama isn’t Truman. People are themselves. They live in the era they live in.

One way Newt is unlike Reagan is that Reagan was a constructive figure, not destructive. If Newt is the donkey who knocked down the barn, Reagan’s the guy who’d build it. He wasn’t driven by need, and anger wasn’t his fuel. He was equable, even-tempered, personally content. Martin Anderson always said Ronald Reagan didn’t need high office to feel good, Ronald Reagan dated Lana Turner. He already thought he was quite a fella.

As for the history, Newt was new to Washington and had been in Congress two years, a back-bencher, when Reagan was sworn in. He had almost nothing to do with Reagan’s achievements. He was a politician looking for attention. He talked a lot, took to the floor a lot, and was sometimes impressive. He was excited by C-Span: It showed America he was there. Usually he said things that were supportive of conservative aims, sometimes not; sometimes he lauded Reagan, sometimes not. Henry Hyde summed up the bopping of Newt’s brain with a uniquely conservative putdown: “Him and his new ideas—there are no new ideas!”

Mr. Gingrich in the 1980s was hungry and ambitious, and no one had prepared the way for him, which is actually his firmest claim on outsiderness: he was no fortunate son. He was on his own, self-invented; he made the mistakes young men make when no wise, sophisticated hand is available to guide them.

It was after Reagan left that Mr. Gingrich became a leader, spearheading the insurgency that resulted in the 1994 Republican takeover of the House. It was a breathtaking achievement. It was what inspired Nancy Reagan’s statement that her husband’s torch was passed to him. But he could not govern, could not build the barn, and was ousted four years later.

During those years he concluded the growth area within the party was a critique of Reaganism from the right, and sometimes the left. So that’s where he was. By the mid-2000s, when Reagans dominance as an iconic GOP figure was fully established, Mr. Gingrich was aligning himself with him fully and enthusiastically, in films and books. He is an entrepreneur; it was where the business was.

Mr. Gingrich does not disdain Reagan and surely never did. He says he loves him and he probably does, in the way that people come to love what they need to love. They come up with reasons!

But the point is Newt senses the lay of the land. If a new and modern strain of Rockefeller Republicanism looked like it was about to take hold, he’d see the virtues in that. Right now the growth area looks like it’s in opposition to elites and establishments. So that’s where he is.

[DINGBATS]

To Thursday night’s debate, the 19th of the primary year.

First, Rick Santorum’s mother for president—93 years old and she sprang from her seat beaming like the sun when her son called out her name.

It was a good night for Mr. Romney. He seemed stronger, more in command than in the recent past, polished. Actually he looked tall again. It was OK for Mr. Gingrich, no great moments—they’re almost expected of him now, especially when the audience is allowed to applaud—but fine. He seemed sluggish and off his game the first 45 minutes, but sort of caught up.

Mr. Santorum had a great night, scoring points on health care and South America, and giving a silent thumbs up to answer a time-wasting question. Ron Paul had three good lines. On his health records, he warned Wolf Blitzer: “There are laws against age discrimination.” On whether we should return to the moon: “Maybe we should send the politicians to space.” On the battle of the blind trusts he gave voice to the thoughts of a grateful nation: “That subject really doesn’t interest me a whole lot.”

Mr. Gingrich decried “the Romney attack machine.” Mr. Romney more or less let it go, which was wise since he’s got quite an attack machine there.

One senses Mr. Romney stabilized his situation. But who knows? The first big sound at the debate came from the audience. At first it sounded like boos, but it wasn’t, it was a chant. “Newt, Newt, Newt!”

We have entered a new phase, the Republican primary as John Grisham novel. Secret offshore bank accounts, broken love, the testimony of anguished ex-wives: “He wanted an open marriage.” A battered old veteran emerges from the background and, in his electoral death throes, provides secret information—“I’m for Newt”—that he hopes will upend a dirty, rotten establishment. A vest-wearing choir boy turns out to have been the unknown winner of that case back in Iowa. And all this against the backdrop of a mysterious firm that moves in and destroys communities—”When Mitt Romney came to town . . .”—while its CEO pays nothing in taxes.

If you are a Republican who hates a mess, or if you are a member of that real but elusive and hydra-headed thing, the GOP establishment, you are beside yourself with anxiety and unhappiness. You think: “They’re losing this thing! They’re going to limp out of South Carolina, they’ll limp through Florida, they’re killing each other and killing the party’s chances. How will they look by the fall? What are independents going to think of the guy we finally put up? We all know politics ain’t beanbag, but it’s not supposed to be a clown-car Indy 500 with cars hitting the wall and guys in wigs littering the track!”

There’s been a lot of damage. We lose sense of it in the day to day, but in the aggregate it’s going to prove considerable.

[DINGBATS]

Rick Perry didn’t have much of a following, but he had some points on the board, and a few points could make a difference. His endorsement of Newt Gingrich was timed for maximum assistance and maximum damage. As an early-afternoon story it might help diminish the impact of the revelations of Marianne Gingrich, whose testimony about her marriage to the former speaker would break on ABC that evening. Mr. Perry’s words of support would follow that story on all the networks, or be twinned with it. And the endorsement was given less than 48 hours before the polls opened in South Carolina, enough time to be fresh yet fully absorbed.

Mr. Perry’s speech was strong. He didn’t go out wan and sad but with impact, looking as if a burden had fallen away. It was a cliché within an hour, but only because it was true: If he had talked with that kind of fluidity, conviction and sincerity throughout the campaign, he’d be getting endorsements now, not giving them.

“I ran for president because I love America,” he said. “What’s broken in America is not our people but our politics.” Washington should be “humbler.” He has never believed “the cause of conservatism” is embodied in any one person. The mission for the GOP is “not only to defeat President Obama” but to elect someone who can make the changes that are needed. “There is no viable path forward for me,” but there is another candidate who is “a conservative visionary” who can “transform” our country. He’ll tell Washington interests “to take a hike.” He’s a conservative who means it. He’s Newt Gingrich.

This was a direct shot at Mr. Romney’s biggest vulnerability: Deep down, conservatives are not certain he is one of them. Deep down they’re not sure he has a deep down. While Perry was talking, a Rasmussen poll came out showing Mr. Gingrich in the lead in South Carolina for the first time in weeks. He had 33%, Mr. Romney 31%, Ron Paul 15% and Rick Santorum 11%.
Other polls have Mr. Romney in the lead, some solidly so. If Newt is rising, if he has real momentum, what are the reasons? One obvious answer: his strong debate Monday night. He was Good Newt—creative, bold, in command of the issues and of himself—and not Bad Newt, the whiny, slightly mad one. An obvious reason for Mr. Romney’s decline is the fallout from the attacks on Bain Capital, his old firm. Those attacks have not been ringingly answered, except by Dan Henninger in these pages. And there would be damage from the issue of Mr. Romney’s personal tax returns (why didn’t the Romney campaign see this coming?), the comparatively low income taxes he’s apparently paid, and revelations that he has kept offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. None of these issues has been answered or explained at any length, and all are good news for the Obama campaign, whose 2012 themes will center on the rich versus the rest.

It’s possible that a solid week of pounding on these issues is dinging the main argument South Carolina Republicans give for supporting Romney: that he is the most electable candidate.

[DINGBATS]

But everything shifts in this shifting race, and roughly a third of Saturday’s primary voters say they’re not certain how they’ll vote. And so a word on the Marianne Gingrich interview. Newt hit Mr. Romney hard on Bain, which became transmuted into a question of personal character, and now he is getting hit hard by his former wife. It has long been assumed within the political-media complex that the story of his second marriage is old news, that nobody’s interested. But to a lot of people—some of them evangelicals, some of them women, some of them young or newly interested in politics—it will be news. For them, the particulars of the story as she tells it have the potential to be explosive. The argument that Mrs. Gingrich already said most of it ago two years ago to Esquire is off point. She’s never said it on television, at a high-stakes moment, in her own way and in her own words. That will make it more compelling and dramatic. It will make it new. It is going to have an impact.

[DINGBATS]

We close with two thoughts, one bleak. This space has long supported the existence of the GOP debates. They’ve done their job of winnowing, showcasing candidates’ strengths, allowing them to shine if they’re capable of shining. They’ve toughened each candidate, preparing the winner to meet the president in the fall. He’s just endured three years of constant deference and soft questions. It will be interesting to see him get in the ring on fight night with a guy who’s been there for a year. But I didn’t understand how valuable the debates had been until a longtime GOP operative told me her view: “Without the debates we’d have nothing but the Super PACs.” Without them, most voters would have nothing but information filtered through media, and propaganda from Super PACs. This from a woman who’s exactly the kind of person who contributes to Super PACs.

The bleak thought: Mr. Obama this week blocked Keystone pipeline, a decision that means tens of thousands of jobs lost, new energy possibilities rejected. It is a decision so bad, so political, that it amounts to a scandal. But it just sort of eased through the news, blurrily. All the cameras were focused on the Republicans, who were distracted by their own dramas. They did not, together, in one voice, protest, as they should have. Keystone happened while they were busy looking like the Keystone Kops.

What’s happening out there on the trail is a great story. But it’s not a good story. And the past few days it didn’t feel like a story that was going to end well.

Columbia, S.C.

Newt’s a battering ram who’ll wind up in splinters, but he can do plenty of damage along the way. The candidate people immediately speak of here when talk turns to the GOP primary is a man named Romneybut. “I like Romney but I could change my mind.” “I like Romney but I like Santorum too.” People take a kind of chagrined pride in the state’s past reputation for crazed, malice-laden, bare-knuckle political brawling; they look away and laugh if you speak of Lee Atwater’s old charge that a Democratic candidate had a “psychotic neurosis” and received electroshock therapy “hooked up to jumper cables.”

But that was two generations ago, the old world. South Carolina’s modern now, fully wired, demographically on the move. They still open up the first meeting of the statehouse GOP caucus with unifying prayer—”My wife’s being operated on at 2 p.m. today, I’d ask you to pray that the Lord guide the surgeon’s hands,” “Bob Smith died in a car accident last weekend, please pray for his family”—but some people are looking down not only with reverence. They’re also checking their BlackBerrys.

No one knows what’s going to happen, because South Carolina takes pride in being prickly. They have a 30-year history of picking presidents, and nobody tells them who to pick. “New Hampshire thinks it’s independent? Our great-great-great-great-grandfathers fired on the flag!” That’s state GOP chairman Chad Connelly, sunny and garrulous. He’s building up excitement and running out of breath doing it. “This thing is wide open. It’s a battle royal. People are undecided. The debates will be decisive. South Carolina is the focal point of the world the next 10 days!” It is a great talent in life to spin relentlessly and not at all alienate the spinee.

All that said, if Mitt Romney wins here, he will win the nomination. And it’s likely he will win here—that Romneybut will become Romney. But it’s a real question how much damage will be done to him along the way.

[DINGBATS]

People don’t embrace Mr. Romney, they circle back to him. They consider him, shop around for something better, decide the first product they looked at will last longest and give value, and buy.
The non-Mitt candidates continue, fracturing the conservative vote. Because no one dropped out after New Hampshire, no consolidation of the non-Mitt vote can begin here and get in the way of the buying. Newt Gingrich, tops in state polls a few weeks ago, has damaged himself by the means and manner of his campaign. Rick Santorum will have appeal, but he’s voted against right-to-work legislation, and South Carolina is a big right-to-work state. Ron Paul will have appeal too, not only in the coastal cities but among active and retired military personnel, who’ve been fighting the wars the past 10 years.

Mr. Romney has the support of Gov. Nikki Haley, 39, an Indian-American who rose with the Tea Party and won after receiving Sarah Palin’s endorsement. She backed him early, to signal to her supporters that it was OK. In an interview this week, she said the issues are “jobs, spending and the economy. Everyone in South Carolina knows somebody who’s out of work.” State unemployment is 9.9%, higher than the national average. “I’ve killed myself to bring jobs here. I need a president I can work with.” “I don’t want anyone tied to Washington. I have a great respect for business people to create jobs and make tough decisions. . . . Romney can do that.”
Mr. Romney has national organization that he can plug in locally, and money. And now momentum, which will prove crucial.

The chief argument here for Mr. Romney has been that he is electable, the most rightward viable candidate. That was powerfully reinforced by his victory in New Hampshire. “If he has a 25% ceiling, how come he just won with 39%?” His victory speech, more like an acceptance speech, was powerful: he finally brought all the strands together. This is what my candidacy means, this is what I’ll do. That speech will have positive reverberations.

[DINGBATS]

South Carolina continues to evolve. Retirees from the North increasingly populate the coastal towns and cities. They are economic conservatives, sympathetic to business. The top of the state, the Greenville/Spartanburg area is heavily Christian conservative, but less so. “It was the knot on the Bible Belt, now it’s the knot on the fiscal belt,” says a Romney backer. International companies, and their networks of suppliers, have had an impact.

The evangelical vote is split, and the economic calamity of the last four years has, in a way, become a values issue itself. Efforts to help the poor and the unborn, to have and raise children, to keep families together, are not made easier by a stressed economy. Social and economic issues are blending.

This is what you pick up about Mr. Romney in South Carolina: He is presentable, electable and a businessman. He knows what a spreadsheet is. He made money. He can help set up the circumstances where everyone else makes money too. And he is a conservative. He has the vibrations of a Massachusetts moderate—Newt isn’t wrong about that—because he was a Massachusetts moderate. But now he holds conservative positions. He’s not going to change them again, because you get only one chance to change in politics, not two. He is, therefore, perversely reliable. He’s not going to get into the White House and announce: “By the way, I’m pro-choice again, ha.”

[DINGBATS]

The factor the media expected to hurt Romney—evangelicals will, en masse, reject the Mormon—isn’t likely. Part of the reason is the big blend: Bias feels like self-indulgence in a time of crisis. What could hurt him, what actually promises to, is the Bain Capital attacks, the half hour minidocumentary and the commercials derived from its message. The documentary is first-rate agitprop: Mr. Romney has a nice smile but in real life he’s a pious, new-class operator who swoops in, buys companies, breaks them up, lines his pockets, and calls it freedom. Might this gain traction in a high-unemployment state with a long populist tradition? I think so. You should see the faces of the people who talk about being laid off.

It’s not clear whether Mr. Gingrich will air the documentary in South Carolina. If he does, he’s going for broke.

Those who run Romney campaign would be fools not to answer it, quickly and substantively, not only with a defense of free enterprise but with a defense of Bain. Are claims in the ad not true? Say it. Is there a case that more jobs were created by Bain than lost? Make it—with workers in front of workplaces that now exist because Bain existed.

A full-throated, detailed defense of Bain that is also a defense of economic freedom and free markets might not only benefit Mr. Romney. It just might help valorize, or rather revalorize, the reputation of capitalism, which has taken a beating the past few years and not recovered. That, actually, might be a public service.

The Obama campaign wanted to launch its Bain attack in the fall. Mr. Romney can face the attack now, head on, and begin not inoculating himself from the issue but exhausting it.

Mitt Romney’s victory in Iowa is underappreciated. It was a well-run campaign and no one thought the day of the Ames straw poll, in August, that it would happen. The victory of Rick Santorum is a pundit-humbler: No one saw that coming even six weeks ago, except perhaps Mr. Santorum.

The Iowa results almost perfectly reflect the Republican Party, which, roughly speaking, is split into three parts—libertarians, social conservatives and moderate conservatives, who went for Ron Paul, Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney respectively. The three parts of the party have been held together by agreement on three big issues: spending (which must be cut), taxing (which must be reformed), and President Obama (who must be removed).

These three issues have force. Taxes and spending are the ties that bind, the top and bottom crust that holds the pie together. They’re the reason the party is still the party, and not the splinter groups. The third element, Mr. Obama, is this year equally important.

But there’s no denying the Republicans are in a brawl, and it is becoming ferocious.

In New Hampshire the question isn’t whether Mr. Romney is in the lead—he is, famously. A poll Wednesday from Suffolk University and WHDH-TV had Mr. Romney with 43%, trailed by Mr. Paul at 14%, Newt Gingrich at 9% and Mr. Santorum at 6%. The coming week will answer two questions and begin to answer a third. First, how committed to Mr. Romney are those who tell pollsters they support him? If less than firmly, the other candidates will succeed in doing what they’re trying to do, bleed his lead. Second, how much does Mr. Romney have to win by to be called the winner? Is 15 points enough? Twenty? If he wins by 10, did he “lose”? Third, how much damage is going to be done on the way to the convention?

Right now Mr. Romney’s taking a beating. He’s everyone’s target, and in a way that speaks of something beyond the usual campaign ferocity. There’s something else going on, a taunting: “If you’re so inevitable how come I’m not afraid of you?” Newt Gingrich, angry little attack muffin, called Mr. Romney a liar. A Santorum fund-raising letter this week called Mr. Romney a “bland and boring career politician.” A radio ad for Mr. Paul: Nominating Romney is “a recipe for defeat.” Newt, in an interview: “He’s not truthful.”

In a conference call in Manchester Thursday, Bob Smith and Bob McEwen, who formerly served as a New Hampshire senator and an Ohio congressman respectively, said Mr. Romney was unacceptable to 75% of the GOP. Mr. Smith associated Mr. Romney with establishment types who’d opposed Ronald Reagan: “He’s not a true conservative.” Mr. Smith said Newt has been called “unfit and unstable” by Romney surrogates, and that Mr. Romney had “mocked” the former speaker in Iowa. Mr. McEwen said Mr. Romney represents the “failed wing,” of the party: “A Massachusetts moderate is not going to make the clarion call.”

The campaign ads have been tough too, the best a refound commercial John McCain did in 2008, which calls Mr. Romney a “Masterpiece Theatre”-level flip-flopper. A question, however, is how much prime-time air time is left to buy on TV stations in New Hampshire and neighboring Massachusetts.

[DINGBATS]

Rick Perry, who’s not in New Hampshire, is a confusing guy. The night he tanked, as expected, in Iowa, he said he was going home to “reassess.” That made sense. His campaign hadn’t worked. It may work in four or eight years, but it’s not going to work now. So you go home, and you put some time into a serious, prepared speech about why you ran, what it meant, and why you’re leaving. It’s so good it makes everyone who wasn’t nice to you, including the press, feel bad. And you’re gracious, and you smile, and you say you’ll consider endorsing down the road, but now you’re going to go back to the work of the state you love. And then you make all the candidates come to you. And you greet them affably on the porch and sit down in white wicker chairs and have iced tea. And at the end, at some clever moment, you back the one you’re backing. By the August convention, you’re a new man. People are nice to you and you work very hard and very publicly for the party’s nominee and secretly hope he fails so you can go again in 2016 and get it right this time, and show your enemies.

Instead, Mr. Perry tweeted the morning after Iowa that he was going into South Carolina.

Maybe he is going to roar back down South, gut his way through and pick up the pieces when everyone’s battered. But maybe he’s not seeing that every few cycles the political gods choose someone who’s got everything—attractive, lots of money, a big state, a machine of sorts, or at least a bunch of operatives and hangers-on—and embarrass him. Just for fun. Because it pleases them. The most famous case was John Connally, also a Texas governor. Do not fight the gods! The gods are fickle! They change their minds! But only later.

[DINGBATS]

Rick Santorum has a lot going for him, most especially a deep identification with and caring for the working class, for the displaced and unempowered people who once worked in steel mills and factories and have seen it all go away. He is a Catholic who sees society not as an agglomeration of random Randian individualists but as part of a community, part of a whole. He cares about the American family and walks the walk. All of this has such appeal! His weak spots are supposedly money, organization, a flinty personality and past inflammatory comments. Fair enough. But his weakest spot is foreign policy, where he is not thoughtful but reflexively hard-line. It is one thing to say, as all candidates do and must, that America must be strong, well defended, ready for any challenge. It is another to be aggressive, to be too burly, to be all George W. Bush and no George H.W. Bush. I’m not sure that’s going to play so well in 2012 with New Hampshire Republicans.

We end with a New Hampshire memory and a thought on how time moves. In 1988, in the furious New Hampshire race between Vice President Bush and Bob Dole, stakes were high. Mr. Dole had taken Iowa; if he took New Hampshire he’d win the nomination. Mr. Bush needed a comeback or he was over. What a fight. The weekend before the voting there was a huge snowstorm, and the candidates and their operatives were marooned in hotel suites in Manchester, fidgeting. Lee Atwater, who worked for Mr. Bush, spent his days furiously phoning around for information. Between calls he’d phone his two young daughters. “This’s Daddy!” They’d talk for 45 seconds, an aide would tell him a congressman or governor was on the other line, and he’d abruptly ring off: “Daddy’s gotta go!” He’d talk to the congressman and then call his daughters again. “This’s Daddy! Whatcha doin’ now?”

This week I was talking to a South Carolina Republican activist, the state chairman of Students With Newt. She believes in him: “He’s the most experienced.” She is Sally T. Atwater, the younger sister of the children on the phone long ago.