The Hill Pundits Blog — April 5, 2012

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/220165-will-ron-paul-go-totally-in-the-tank-for-mitt-romney

Will Ron Paul go totally in the tank for Mitt Romney?

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/politics/mitt-romney-wins-big-in-wisconsin-maryland-dc-040412

USNews and World Report. Thomas Jefferson Street Blog. April 3, 2012

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/Peter-Fenn/2012/04/03/mitt-romneys-troubles-will-follow-him-to-the-convention

Mitt Romney’s Troubles Will Follow Him to the Convention

April 3, 2012

OpEd Column in The Hill  —  April 4, 2012

http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/219813-general-election-taking-shape

General election taking shape

By Peter Fenn – 04/03/12 07:41 PM ET

A month ago Gallup had Mitt Romney defeating President Obama in 12 battleground states 48 percent to 46 percent. This week it had Obama leading Romney 51 percent to 42 percent in those same key states.

Election 2012 has been far from a stable, predictable, ordinary contest, what with super-PACs, six different GOP front-runners and primary debates galore, not to mention an economic roller coaster.

The question now, as the primary season draws to a close, is, are we settling in to a race that has started to gel? Are patterns emerging and images solidifying in voters’ minds?

As many of us know from experience, a month can be an eternity in politics. But there is a sense that the narrative of an Obama-Romney contest is taking shape.

The Romney campaign would like to see a situation in which it can, as aide Eric Fehrnstrom put it, “hit a reset button … almost like an Etch A Sketch … shake it up and restart all over again.”

But the better analogy in politics these days, where everything is out in the open and most of it is on celluloid, is a modern-day white board written on with indelible magic markers. Romney and Obama have filled up their white boards, or had them filled up for them, and it is very hard to erase the impressions.

The latest polls show some very interesting developments as we move to a general-election match-up. The electorate is far from happy about Washington, politicians and the general direction of the country: advantage Romney. But they also see serious improvement. Six in 10 voters in critical battleground states, according to Quinnipiac, believe the economy is recovering: advantage Obama.

And the biggest development of late has been the major move of women against Romney and against the Republicans. According to the new Gallup poll, women under 50 now support Obama by 2-to-1, 60 percent to 30 percent. As recently as February, the numbers were 50 percent to 44 percent.

Most believe that the reigniting of the 1960s culture wars by Republicans has moved women voters and scared them. The attacks on Planned Parenthood and the debate on contraception have been a disaster, and Romney has jumped into this quicksand. His tendency to pander to the far right of the party and to make comments about defunding Planned Parenthood, supporting legislation that is anti-contraception and going after gay rights has cemented voters’ view that he is a throw-back to that bygone era of the 1960s.

In voters’ minds, this is all settled law — the culture wars are over, the “Mad Men” attitude toward women is long past. Romney is in danger of becoming Don Draper in this campaign —

handsome, smart, but very hard to trust and even harder to put in today’s world.

Romney has a very difficult time connecting with working-class voters — accounts in the Cayman Islands and in Switzerland, supporting tax breaks that allow him to pay a 13.9 percent rate in taxes, claiming that he didn’t make much from speeches ($374,000) does not compute. All of this has a certain Don Draper-slickness to it that turns off voters, especially women.

He might need an Etch A Sketch to get himself out of the Don Draper character, however. By Election Day there will not be a voter who has not seen his 180-degree switches on abortion, gay rights, Planned Parenthood, healthcare — just name an issue. Women, even more than men, will question his honesty, his lack of conviction, his willingness to change positions more often than a weather vane in a Massachusetts hurricane.

By contrast, polls show that Obama has held up under the most difficult of times. Voters like him and they trust him. They want more to be done, they are frustrated with the gridlock, they want him to be stronger. But they believe in his policies of fighting for the middle class, taking on the unfair tax breaks that Romney and his cohorts take advantage of year after year.

The images are beginning to gel, and writing new things on that modern white board or erasing old impressions will get increasingly harder to do.

The Hill’s Pundits Blog  —  April 2, 2012

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-a-budget/219577-the-ryan-secret-plan

The Ryan ‘secret plan’

By Peter Fenn – 04/02/12 03:45 PM ET

Richard Nixon campaigned on a “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam many, many years ago. It is still secret, very secret. Actually, it did not even exist.

Paul Ryan has a secret plan to attack the nation’s debt and balance the budget.

Just as with Richard Nixon, it doesn’t exist.

He puts cutting Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security “on the table,” along with just about everything else except defense. But he wants to cut taxes by extraordinary amounts right off the top: $4.6 trillion by lowering the rates and another $5.4 trillion by extending the Bush tax cuts (that have worked so well!).

That is a cool $10 trillion in tax cuts. There aren’t even close to enough cuts to make up that loss of revenue over the next decade.

So here is Ryan’s dirty little secret recipe — he will “close loopholes” to recoup that money, sprinkled with a secret sauce known as “economic growth.” Right.

So what is he proposing to make up the difference? He won’t tell us. He won’t spell it out. He won’t even give us an idea of his secret plan.

There are over 170 different tax breaks out there. Which ones will Ryan go after? The big ones for Americans, like the mortgage interest deduction? The deduction for medical insurance? For retirements and pensions? For state and local taxes paid? For taxes on homes? For charity?

He won’t tell us.

The fact is that the top five deductions account for 50 percent of the revenue loss, the top 10, 70 percent, and the top 20, 90 percent, according to a Congressional Research Service report of March 22, 2012. The top five deductions reduce revenue by over $570 billion a year.

Folks, the problem is that these are not deductions for corporate jets or other easy cuts, these are the programs that help people. Ryan won’t propose a plan, except to call them “loopholes.” This is disingenuous and wrong.

This is a secret, ideological budget, not an honest, real budget — and Paul Ryan knows it.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/mornings/political-strategists-peter-fenn-jim-innocenzi-talk-whats-next-in-gop-primaries-032112

The Hill’s Pundits Blog  —  March 19, 2012

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/216721-ron-paul-and-newt-gingrich-mitt-romneys-new-bffs

Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich: Mitt Romney’s new BFFs!

By Peter Fenn – 03/19/12 01:52 PM ET

Who would have thought? Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are Mitt Romney’s secret weapons. After all they have been through this past year, all the primary fights and negative ads, all the debates, all the stated desire for a non-Romney candidate, these two are delivering the nomination to Romney on a silver platter.

The numbers are pretty clear now — Santorum cannot win the nomination while the two of them remain on the ballot; he might not be able to win it anyway. Santorum had a shot to stop Romney over these past two months if he was able to go mano-a-mano, but the two stubborn egos, Newt and Ron, would have none of it.

Now, if you look at tomorrow’s Illinois poll numbers, you can see the demise of the Santorum campaign. In four surveys, Public Policy Polling, Rasmussen, Fox and the Chicago Tribune/WGN, the combined percentages for Gingrich and Paul total from 19 percent to 22. That is very consistent. And that is enough to make sure that Romney has a pretty good chance of beating Santorum.

The anti-Romney vote has always been very serious and substantial, among the more conservative voters, young people, evangelicals, under-$100,000 Republicans. The more it is split, the better for Romney, obviously.

With a victory for Romney in Illinois and with the two also-rans and their super-PACs keeping on keeping on, it sure looks like the train has left the station for Romney.

We knew Paul was pretty much in the tank for Romney, but who would have predicted that Gingrich would join him as a Best Friend Forever? Politics, indeed, makes strange bedfellows.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/mornings/political-strategists-peter-fenn-and-jim-innocenzi-discuss-santorum-and-romney-031412

USNews and World Report.  Thomas Jefferson Street Blog.  March 14, 2012

What the South’s Scary Republican Electorate Says About the GOP

March 14, 2012 RSS Feed Print

There has been a lot written about the make-up of the Republican primary electorate in 2012. By now, it has become clear how very conservative they are, how many of them are evangelicals, how social issues motivate many of them, and how truly angry they are at President Obama.

As I have written before, this is not your mother’s Republican Party.

But the latest polls by the reputable and respected Public Policy Polling group in Tuesday’s primary states of Alabama and Mississippi tell a pretty disturbing story. They surveyed 656 likely Republican voters in Mississippi and 600 in Alabama this past week.

In Alabama, 45 percent described themselves as “very conservative” and 36 percent as “somewhat conservative”; in Mississippi, those numbers were 44 percent and 34 percent respectively. Not a huge shock there.

In Alabama, 68 percent describe themselves as “Evangelical Christian.” In Mississippi, that percentage was 70 percent. Again, not that surprising in the deep South.

But here comes the more disturbing news: In Alabama, 60 percent do not believe in evolution. In Mississippi, the figure is 66 percent. 

When it comes to interracial marriage, 29 percent of Republican primary voters in Mississippi believe it should be illegal. In Alabama, 21 percent think it should be illegal.

Now, both of those last two answers would really mean turning back the clock!

And on Barack Obama’s religion, in response to the straightforward question, “Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim or are you not sure?”  the answers are scary. In Alabama, 14 percent say Christian, 45 percent say Muslim, 41 percent are not sure. In Mississippi, 12 percent say Christian, 52 percent say Muslim, and 36 percent are not sure.

Several years ago we saw disturbing numbers on the Muslim question, but there has been enough publicity, enough coverage, enough debunking of the false accusations, that one would think that people would have moved on. Not so.

Why do the most engaged voters in Republican primaries seem to hold views that are outright false? Is the hatred of Obama so visceral that they will believe anything that comes across the Internet? Are their views reinforced by friends and neighbors? Do they simply not believe any facts when they are presented?

The truly scary thing is that though these numbers are from two states, this is looking less like an aberration. The Republican primary voters over the last few decades have become increasing more radically conservative, the delegates to the conventions more far right, the Republican Party more rigid. It was impossible for Sen. John McCain to nominate a Tom Ridge or a Joe Lieberman as vice president—too pro-choice. The platform at each convention has become more conservative, especially on social issues. The no-tax pledge has become a needless straight-jacket, yet signed by virtually all Republicans in Congress.

But, these two polls show a remarkable closed-mindedness when it comes to issues of race and religion that many thought were settled with open-mindedness. Apparently not.

• Read the U.S. News debate: Will the Culture Wars Benefit the GOP in the 2012 Election?
• Check out U.S. News Weekly: an insider’s guide to politics and policy
• Follow the Thomas Jefferson Street blog on Twitter at @TJSBlog. 

The Hill Pundits Blog  —  March 14, 2012

Advice to Mitt: Lose the Levis

By Peter Fenn – 03/14/12 11:25 AM ET

OK, grits and “y’all” didn’t work for Mitt in Mississippi and Alabama. Nor did outspending Santorum by as much as 10 to one or having the entire establishment in Mississippi behind him. Nor, of course, was it that helpful to Mitt to have Gingrich siphoning off a third of the very conservative votes in those two states. He still couldn’t win.
But there is another problem.

Mitt’s trying too hard. Trying too hard to be folksy and one of the gang; trying too hard to “connect” with “regular folks.” The way to connect, I hate to say it, is not to show up every day with the same style of freshly pressed tight Levis, with the same checkered dress shirt. (I hope Jeeves isn’t ironing those for him!)
All Mitt is missing is the hard-hat and the lunch bucket. Come on, stop already. (Plus, there are a lot of us “middle-aged” men who can’t believe there is no paunch, just a little of that “weight shift” visible. Darn you, Mitt, you look too good!)

Seriously, when voters see the same picture of Romney on the evening news playing the informal, workingman role, they know he made his living in suits. They know he is a very buttoned-down guy. They know he is richer than rich. Don’t be something you are not. If you want to be informal, just lose the tie, wear slacks, be yourself.

Maybe it was OK in Iowa or New Hampshire a few times, but really, out there in Jackson again with the Levis and talking grits — doesn’t work.

Voters associate all this now with a lack of genuineness, a certain phoniness, a person who is not comfortable … surely not as comfortable as he is trying to look.

By overplaying the jeans thing he has created a caricature of himself and, along with his flip-flops and misstatements and putting his finger up to the political winds, he has eroded his credibility as a presidential candidate.

Lose the Levis, Mitt, and stop trying so hard.