Will the real anti-establishment candidate please stand up?
By Brian Schoeneman | Monday, January 23rd, 2012 | PoliticsNewt Gingrich is now claiming to be the “anti-establishment candidate.” That’s right, folks. The former Speaker of the House of Representatives, a 20 year veteran of Congress, is claiming to be “anti-establishment.”
What a joke.
On Meet the Press on Sunday, Newt amped up his establishment rhetoric, saying “the Establishment is right to be worried about a Gingrich nomination, because a Gingrich nomination means that we’re going to change things, we’re going to make the Establishment very uncomfortable.”
I hate the establishment vs. anti-establishment argument. In most situations, it’s complete nonsense, used only by those who are trailing in the polls, as noted by my colleague Jim Hoeft in the Daily Press last week. But for some, it seems to resonate. Despite the apparent potency of the argument for some Republican voters, at least in this situation, it’s a hollow theme.
It makes perfect sense that Newt would adopt the establishment vs. anti-establishment rhetoric – it fits completely into his playbook. That book, which is by now dogeared and cliched, has the candidate speak in semi-memorable soundbites that sound smart as you hear them but don’t stand up to more than a few seconds of serious scrutiny. This strategy was pointed out by the pure establishment, notorious RINO and flaming liberal Ann Coulter on Fox News this weekend.
Regardless of whether you think the establishment vs. anti-establishment argument is a good one – it isn’t, but folks are entitled to their opinions – Newt is the farthest from being an outsider of anybody left up on that stage. Does anybody honestly think Newt is the man to muck the stables of DC?
There’s really only one candidate in the race left who can honestly claim to be anti-establishment, and it’s not Ron Paul. It’s Mitt Romney. The man served one term as governor of Massachusetts, never held elective office before and has not held elective office since. He’s been out of office since 2007. He’s never served one day in Washington. He was never in the Republican leadership or had any high ranking positions in the RNC.
Ron Paul has spent 24 years in Washington – longer than anybody else on the stage, including Gingrich. While his ideas may put him outside the mainstream, that doesn’t make him anti-establishment. It just makes him really bad at legislating.
Rick Santorum is a former two term Senator and two term Congressman, with 16 years of experience in Washington under his belt. In the Senate he was Republican Conference chairman, the number 3 leadership position, behind leader and whip.
Newt is not the anti-establishment candidate. He defines establishment. He was Speaker. He ran the NRCC. He was in the leadership for much of his career. Nobody was more inside Washington than he was. He had 20 years to clean this town up, including 4 as arguably the second most powerful person in DC and he failed miserably. In fact, if anything, he made things worse, by destroying the collegial atmosphere that had characterized Washington politics outside the glare of the TV cameras and reporters notebooks for most of the previous two centuries. He made politics in Washington an “us vs. them” phenomenon and was the true originator of the “permanent campaign” mentality (frequently attributed to Karl Rove). He has caused lasting damage to the fabric of our politics. He argues that he wants to change Washington, but he already has – making it far worse than it ever was before. But that “change Washington” theme won him the Speakership and helped propel us to a majority in the House of Representatives.So it makes sense, then, that he’d try the same routine again. It’s never failed him in the past.
But it has failed America.
For those out there who like the establishment vs. anti-establishment argument, Mitt Romney, not Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich, should be your candidate.
Washington needs reform, especially after the damage the Obama Administration has caused. And much of that reform has to be in restoring competence to government, rebuilding trust between the parties, and a renewed focus on true bipartisanship – not the Democrats get what they want while Republicans get hosed style bipartisanship that has become the new definition of the word. That will take a fresh persepective and the only fresh perspective left on that stage is coming from Mitt Romney.
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About the author
A veteran political professional, long-time Republican party activist and attorney Brian W. Schoeneman has been offering his opinions at Bearing Drift since 2010. He serves on the Board of Virginia Line Media, LLC, which operates Bearing Drift and spends his days representing the U.S. Merchant Marine in Washington, D.C. He hails from Fairfax County, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and son.
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27 Responses to "Will the real anti-establishment candidate please stand up?"
If Newt is so establishment, why is the establishment attacking him?
(Ain’t it neat how I can deflate a 13-paragraph argument with a single sentence?)
If Gingrich is so establishment, why did the establishment throw him out in 1998 as he was reforming entitlements and balancing the budget (and before, I might add, the Bushies came in and started the country down a path that Obama has doubled and tripled down on)?
No matter how you slice it, Mitt is getting the establishment endorsements hands down. Does that make him the establish candidate? Brian, c’mon man. You know the answer. Do you think people who see that lily white Mitt is milktoast establishment are stupid?
“There’s really only one candidate in the race left who can honestly claim to be anti-establishment, and it’s not Ron Paul. It’s Mitt Romney.”
Dude, omg.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?cycle=2012&id=N00000286
Goldman Sachs $367,200
Credit Suisse Group $203,750
Morgan Stanley $199,800
HIG Capital $186,500
Barclays $157,750
Kirkland & Ellis $132,100
Bank of America $126,500
PriceWaterhouseCoopers $118,250
EMC Corp $117,300
JPMorgan Chase & Co $112,250
The Villages $97,500
Vivint Inc $80,750
Marriott International $79,837
Sullivan & Cromwell $79,250
Bain Capital $74,500
UBS AG $73,750
Wells Fargo $61,500
Blackstone Group $59,800
Citigroup Inc $57,050
Bain & Co $52,500
Let me rephrase the above comments:
If Mitt Romney is not the establishment candidate, then why have just about all major establishment Republicans endorsed him? John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee who practically screamed establisment, endorsed him. From day one, he was lauded as the “perfect” GOP candidate by the GOP and the media. I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve heard this from Romney supporters: “Well, I know he (flip/flops a lot, has the spine of a wet noodle, was almost as liberal as Teddy Kennedy, etc.), but he’s the best candidate to go up against Obama.” Says who? He’s not an extremely strong debater, he’s not a very effective campaigner, he doesn’t even have an “American success story” personal history-a silver spoon candidate who practically embodied Gordon Gekko. The one example that we have to judge him of in the public sector (his one term as Governor of Massachussetts) was by no means a strong reason to support him-when elected, he was a pro-choice candidate, supported civil unions, signed Romneycare (the model for Obamacare). In his Senate campaign in 1994, he laughed at the idea of a no-new-taxes pledge as a gimmick. However, in the 2008 election cycle, he was the FIRST candidate to sign the Americans for Tax Reform pledge. He ran the Senate campaign AGAINST the NRA (“I don’t line up with the NRA”)-before, in 2007, he got a lifetime membership.
Then, articles like this try to make the argument that Newt Gingrich, especially, is the “definition” establishment candidate. Now, it is obviously true that for 4 years, Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House. It is also true that he served in the House from 1979 until 1998. However, the argument that mere presence in Washington makes one “establishment” is absurd, in both Gingrich’s case and in Paul’s. Newt Gingrich perhaps first (certainly most famously) angered the wrath of the “establishment” when, as House Majority Whip, he refused to back up Bush (41) as he went to break his “no new taxes” pledge.
I think that story (related by Bush 41 himself while he attacked Gingrich) truly relates why Gingrich doesn’t qualify as “establishment”. The White House decided to renege on a campaign promise (no new taxes). In order to minimize fallout, Bush (and his chief of staff, Sununu-now a Romney surrogate) arranged for Republican leadership to come stand with him during the announcement. In Bush’s own words, “He told me one time later on, this is the most difficult thing I ever had to do.” He bucked his party and lobbied against it.
Continuing on, in 1994 everyone knows that Gingrich led the Republican Revolution, helping to take states that Republicans had NEVER competed in before, and retaking the House for the first time since Eisenhower. People have also heard that he faced a leadership challenge. What people HAVEN’T heard is that it wasn’t general House Republicans that tried to push him out. 4 House Republican leaders, including one appointed to his position by Gingrich himself, thought that Gingrich’s defiantly anti-Clinton public image would be a liability. Looking back, the four are a lineup of the “establishment” of their day. Armey, DeLay, Boehner (yes, current Speaker Boehner), and Paxon thought that Paxon would be a better Speaker than Gingrich. They planned on ambushing Gingrich and basically blackmailing him into resigning (they planned on threatening him with a choice of either resigning or calling a no-confidence vote). Were it not for Armey, who ended up letting Gingrich know beforehand, they’d likely have succeeded.
People also have heard that Gingrich was charged with ethics violations. They don’t seem to have heard that all 84 were filed by Democrats, and that 83 of them were thrown out. The one charge that he pled guilty to was for teaching a class under tax-exempt status that was alleged to have been for political purposes. However, Joe Biden can teach at public schools and it’s not a problem?
Coming up on next week’s radio show, why it wasn’t the dreaded establishment that tossed Gingrich out of the House in 1999, but his own band of revolutionaries…and old friends.
Kirwin, you know why “the establishment” is attacking him – he is a very flawed candidate who has critically damaged American democracy and not only will he not win against Obama, he will lose us seats in the House and may damage our efforts to take back the Senate.
There are 300+ folks in Congress who have to run for reelection and I have not spoken to a single one who wants to run down ticket from Newt Gingrich.
Mitt is not a DC candidate. Yes, he has support from DC, but that’s because he’s got the best chance of winning in the eyes of people who have to win elections to keep their jobs and who know all of the candidates intimately. That doesn’t make him establishment. That makes him the choice of folks who care most about who can best beat the Democrat. Does that make him establishment? Only if you define establishment the way Jim does – anybody who will likely win the election/nomination.
If you want to be 100% fair, all of our candidates are establishment candidates. You can’t run for President without having insider support. Even Ron Paul has it.
And as has been noted elsewhere, “the establishment” didn’t throw Newt out – it was his fellow Revolutionaries who recognized that it was probably not a good idea to have a serial philanderer leading the charge to impeach a serial philanderer.
Brian: I thought your descripiton of Newt was fairly apt. If anyone in the Republcian race is a creature of Washington, it’s obviously Newt Gingrich.
Now, is Mitt Romney anti-establishment? No, but he’ll pretend to be on TV if there are any votes in it.
Obviously the guy who is anti-establishment is the guy who’s spend his entire career in Congress tilting at windmills, Ron Paul.
Since when did it become a sin in the GOP to be the establishment candidate, anyway?
This entire “establishment” versus “anti-establishment” argument is a canard. Can anyone reliably define either term? And even if you can, does any politician remain “anti-establishment” once he begins a term in office? How does any member of Congress remain anti-establishment in the face of the seniority system, committee assignments, and pork barrel appropriations? Is Ron Paul anti-establishment after 35 years in Congress or, as Brian S. points out, just a really ineffective legislator? (Speaking of which, is publishing racist material under your masthead anti-establishment and, if so, is that a positive thing?) Was Jimmy Carter anti-establishment or just an incompetent toad? Carter had no Washington experience and look how well that worked out.
I think that it is a very sad state of affairs in our republic when candidates for our highest office try to garner votes by campaigning against the very system of government that they seek to lead.
Its almost humorous to watch Romney’s folks here and elsewhere spin in the wind coming up with excuses and slanders towards the SC voters if not for the implied threat to offer less then their full support to the eventual GOP nominee if its anyone other then Romney…….
Yes, and it is even worse that candidates who are elected to office work in office against the system they are supposed to be leading. Frankly, the last bunch of representatives elected to the House appear to me to be doing all they can to make our government and our nation fail. Now I know they don’t think that, but as a moderate, centrist business person, I am far more interested in pragmatic reform and quality performance than in fighting over social issues, we need a leader, and followers, who will keep their eye on the ball and stop getting sidetracked on these personal and emotional issues. Education, work force, security, infracture, and economic development. These are not republican nor democratic issues, they are the crucial issues of our time. Get busy, and get this done.
Mike,
In an almost perverse way, I much prefer that the Republicans in Congress distract themselves with meaningless social issues that the Federal government has no legitimate role in, such as abortion, gay marriage, and pirated movies. That is far better than the last Democratic Congress that concentrated on tripling the budget deficit with passage of the largest entitlement program since the Great Depression, with nationalization of the auto industry, and with spending $280,000 of taxpayer money to create each new job under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Who is slandering South Carolina voters? They have every right to vote for whomever they choose.
My point is strictly about Newt and his messaging. He’s not an outsider. He’s not anti-Washington. He’s not anti-establishment. He’s everything that the folks who want an anti-establishment candidate hate.
That’s the joke.
@Brian Kirwin. Touche! And why do some of the editors of BD keep piling on Newt but can’t find one single thing that makes them skittish about The Cardboard Candidate? My goodness, as we all WELL KNOW, Newt isn’t even on the ballot in Virginia.
In terms all this Revisionist History floating around and passing as knowledge, I’d highly recommend that Brian S. and others of that ilk read Susan Molinari’s 1998 Book, *Representative Mom* and in particular the chapter titled “Newtonian Politics* where she goes into ALL of this in candid detail. As most of you know, she is the now the wife of Bill Paxon, but was a top player in the GOP Congressional Caucus when all this went down.
I find all the current GOP candidates make me shake my head at the things they say and all the baggage they bring with them to the table. Frankly it looks like a lot of self-serving ego maniacs who will say or do anything to get a vote.
Sad when Newt looks like the best of the lot…
Brian, It was just referenced at the debate and its listed in Romney’s Wikipedia bio (I can’t find it at the RGA or Romney’s campaign site) that Romney actually did head up the Republican Governor’s Association. Although Wikipedia is what it is, I have to assume that the Romney Campaign would have had it scrubbed by this time if it wasn’t true…..
As McDonnell also heads up the RGA and has just endorsed and worked for Romney, I’m not even sure why you thought saying he never headed up the RGA would add to your case for him, but there it is. It appears that your assertion is incorrect unless someone has an update.
Whit. Don’t recall anyone bringing up RGA, but in terms of the WIKI bio, it also says this:
“Political observers, public opinion polls, and the results of the early caucuses and primaries consistently place him among the front-runners in the race.”
Hmm. But as you say, Wikipedia “is what it is.”
And tonight’s debate wasn’t dullsville and kindergarten, I don’t know what was. Made me want to vote for Ron Paul, who is the only one who showed any sense of humor.
Brian, I’m amazed at the utter vitriol leveled at Gingrich by you and others these days. I remain undecided but hopeful one of our candidates will eventually shine or perhaps a deadlocked convention find a good conservative candidate.
Unfortunately, you, Coulter, Gov. McDonnell and the rest of the so called insiders are clueless as to what the rank & file are looking for. Coulter’s absurd support for the “conservative” Christie and Romney (most conservative one in the race???!!!) is beyond laughable and her credibility destroyed.
So too is Bearing Drift with its endorsement of Romney, who, while possibly yet an electable candidate, is not in any way a true conservative or agent of change.
Sadly, neither are most “establishment” Republicans; thus, Senator DeMint stays on the sideline.
Not since ole Calvin Coolidge have insider Republicans supported a competent conservative winner for the White House. Instead, the establishment has loved progressive losers like Landon, Willkie, Dewey, Nixon, Ford, Bush I (1st election owed to Reagan), Dole & McCain. A truly amazing line of eastern establishment (mindset) liberal losers.
Eisenhower was a winner but a moderate pursued by both parties. Reagan busted the Ford/Bush hold and lost his legacy by giving us Bush as VP. Bush II, well, he was a progressive winner, and we all lost under his poor leadership. So now we’re back with the big government/pro- gressive Republicans trying to tell us how to vote and who to support….Romney. I remain very unconvinced by Mitt despite voting for him in the 2008 primary.
It’s past time the party leadership listened to the base and put forward candidates who would really rein in & reduce government and let liberty, not government centralization and power thrive. We don’t want your solutions, just do like Coolidge and Harding who presided over good economic times (& a very strong recovery in Harding’s case).
Any more articles like this, and I’ll just check out of reading BD, there’s not much really conservative to be found here. PS I will do like my 3 college aged kids and vote Paul in the primary to do my part to upset the VA Republican Party establishment. They really have made themselves look stupid this time around.
This is what I don’t get – nobody is telling you who to vote for or how to vote. You make that decision. I’m explaining why I think Newt is worthless and why I’m supporting Romney. If you disagree with that, so be it. I am just another rank and filer, I just happen to write for a blog.
Ideology is, in my opinion, a poor reason to vote for someone. At the end of the day, these jobs require certain skills and not everyone has them. I could care less whether a candidate is ideologically pure – I want to believe and feel comfortable that they can do the job. That they can manage the government – that they can govern at all.
Their stance on abortion has little to nothing to do with whether they can properly manage one of the largest bureaucracies in the world. Whether or not they can come up with good zingers does not tell me that they have the judgment necessary to make tough decision about sending our troops into harms way. I don’t need a politician who can inspire me with lofty rhetoric. I just want the trains to run on time.
Newt can’t do that. He’s never been able to do that. Santorum has never demonstrated any kind of ability in that regard either. And Ron Paul has never once explained how he gets any of his crazy ideas enacted into law. Romney is the only man on the stage who has convinced me that he has the judgment and the ability to govern as President. That’s why he has my support.
If you have different criteria for choosing the President, so be it. That’s your prerogative. Nobody is telling you how to vote.
Brian, splain how Romney or any of them beat Obama. Not from your view but looking down from 30,000 feet.
Turbo, here’s how we win: We need to hold all of the states that McCain won in 2008 and we need to pick up Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio and two of three in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. Those are all states we won in 2004. Those are the battlegrounds.
Romney may do better in Michigan, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I also expect PA to go blue again, as will Iowa. But the rest are all in play. They also are states, other than Virginia, where unemployment is pretty high.
If the economy is still struggling and national unemployment is above 9% or above 9% in the battlegrounds, Obama will have a tough time being reelected regardless of who is running against him.
But from a 30k foot level, our nominee is going to need to be organized, raise a lot of money, be gaffe or relatively gaffe free and focus on our core message of job growth, cutting spending, keeping taxes low, reforming regulations and repealing Obamacare. If we do that, we’ve got a chance to win this.
It’s still very uphill, but I think it’s winnable.
here is a transcript of the of debate last night that pertains to Brian’s assertion that Romney has never had a national political profile, specifically with the RGA. I cross referenced several transcripts.
GINGRICH: Wait a second, he just went on and on and on. He is a terrible historian. The vote on the ethics committee was in January 1997 and I asked the Republicans to vote YES to get it behind us. We took control of the House in 40 years and the Democrats were bitter. The only thing we did wrong was that I didn’t pay one fine but then I paid it and I wanted it behind us. We had four balanced budgets after that vote. You ought to do is stop and look at those facts. We won the House for the third time in 1998 but the margin was not big enough. In 2006 when you chaired the Governor’s association we lost governorship so as a party builder I have the record and you don’t…..”
so yes… it appears that Romney did actually head up the RGA and was not very successful it appears… ouch. Will you now revise your post?
Okay, sure. What’s the point though?
[...] revisionist tendencies and to bring to light how ridiculous much of what he has been saying is. I noted last week how his anti-establishment rhetoric was nonsense, and I’ve pointed out before the damage he [...]
You tried to make a point that Romney has no national political ties… it weakens your argument
OMG, I had to put on my hip-waders to get thru this BS.
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