The Great Debate

Is Mitt Romney the last true believer in austerity?

Nicholas Wapshott

May 24, 2012 11:54 EDT

There is something oddly retro about Mitt Romney. He appears to have sprung from a nostalgic fifties “Hairspray” world where women sported beehives and cars had fins. Nor has his economic thinking kept up with the times. Although he backed Obama’s $787 billion-dollar Keynesian stimulus, as soon as the borrowers’ remorse that sparked the Tea Party took hold, he turned on a dime and embraced austerity and paying off the national debt.

As he declares on his website: “The only recipe for fiscal health and a thriving private economy is a government that spends within its means.” He signed the “cut, cap and balance” pledge that will tie his hands if he makes it to the White House. Not trusting himself, perhaps, to remain fiscally continent, he favors an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, obliging Congress to put balancing the budget before all other measures. He would cap federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, a feat that would entail about $500 billion in cuts. On day one of his presidency, he says he would send Congress a bill that would cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent.

His proposed economies include (his estimates in parentheses): repealing Obama’s healthcare plan ($95 billion); privatizing Amtrak ($1.6 billion); reducing federal payments to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Legal Services Corporation ($600 million); eliminating family planning subsidies ($300 million); cutting foreign aid ($100 million); capping Medicaid (more than $100 billion); replacing only half those who leave the federal workforce ($4 billion); ending the Davis-Bacon Act ($11 billion) and paying federal employees lower wages ($47 billion); and that old elusive crowd-pleaser, reducing waste and fraud ($60 billion).

For good measure, he has further manacled himself by putting his name to the Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge that would prevent him raising taxes. If you thought George H.W. Bush’s “Read my lips. No new taxes” was rash, Romney has gone one further. Not only has he solemnly promised not to raise taxes in any circumstances but he will make the George W. tax cuts permanent, end capital gains taxes for those earning less than $200,000, and abolish estate taxes. By now, even Harry Houdini might be excused for feeling a little constricted.

The problem with the draconian austerity package Romney has in mind come January is that it is likely to tip the fragile American recovery into recession, as similar measures have done in Britain and, save Germany, in the euro zone. In the past, Romney has pointed to Europe with distaste, as if it were Soviet Russia. Obama’s public spending, he said, “takes us down a path to becoming more and more like Europe. And Europe doesn’t work in Europe.”

He is right to be wary of Europe’s example, but for the wrong reasons. The fiscally conservative policy of the euro zone, the product of a conservative alliance between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, insists on governments paying down deficits quickly, even though, for countries like Spain, Italy, and Greece, this means perhaps a decade of penny-pinching, high unemployment, low growth and short rations.

The result, as predicted, has been a revolt against austerity at the ballot box and a rise in extreme politics. In recent elections, the Greeks and French have seen small radical parties trounce their moderate rivals, prompting political turmoil that is frightening away investors. So far, 11 European governments have fallen thanks to austerity, the biggest shock being Sarkozy’s ouster by the Socialist François Hollande.

The gay-rights cause Obama can actually do something about

Ben Adler

May 9, 2012 18:54 EDT

On Wednesday, President Obama declared his evolution complete. In an interview with ABC News he said: “At a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

Gay-rights groups rejoiced; conservative groups scolded. But what the president thinks about gay marriage is, ultimately, symbolic. There is a different issue on which Obama could achieve real, tangible results for gays and lesbians, and gain electoral advantage over Mitt Romney: employment discrimination.

Obama has already done everything he can on gay marriage. His administration has declared the federal law banning gay marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), to be discriminatory and declined to defend it in court. He has extended spousal benefits to the domestic partners of federal employees. Marriage laws, on the other hand, are written at the state level. Even a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, which Romney supports and Obama already opposed, is not actually signed by the president.

Meanwhile, it is still legal in 29 states to discriminate against gays and lesbians in hiring and firing employees, and in an additional five it is legal to discriminate against transgender people. There has been a Democratic bill floating around Congress called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would extend the federal protections of the Civil Rights Act to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Thus far Obama has said he supports the legislation, but has not called much attention to it.

Instead he’s spoken out on gay marriage, which may come with some political costs in November. It is preposterous to assert, as many political pundits do, that black voters will be receptive to attacks on Obama over gay marriage. Polling shows blacks have become roughly equal to whites in their acceptance of gay marriage. Obama enjoys high approval ratings among black voters, and they agree with him more than with Romney on every other issue. They are also accustomed to voting for more socially liberal politicians, just as wealthy pro-choice Republicans have accepted that they must vote for anti-abortion-rights candidates.

But perhaps it could hurt Obama at the margins among certain key demographics that lean against gay marriage, such as working-class white voters in the Midwest or Mexican-Americans in the Southwest. Meanwhile Democrats in socially conservative states who face a tough re-election fight, such as Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), are surely seething at the attack ad Obama just handed their opponents.

The real reason Romney is struggling with women voters

Amanda Marcotte

May 9, 2012 10:18 EDT

Back in February, things started to look dire for the Romney campaign’s ability to attract female voters. Every day brought another story about Republican attacks on reproductive rights: attacks on insurance coverage for contraception, transvaginal probes, all-male panels called in Congress to discuss contraception, attacks on Planned Parenthood’s funding, and the candidate himself increasingly afraid to say a positive word about contraception when asked directly in the debates. A gender gap opened up between the candidates in the polls, with Obama outpacing Romney with women by 19 points. The Romney campaign responded by trying to change the subject, to jobs and the economy. But if Romney wants to close the gender gap, he should rethink that strategy. After all, the polling data suggests that his stance on economic issues – specifically the size of the safety net and amount of economic support the government provides to citizens – is what’s really hurting him with female voters.

The real war between the sexes may not be over feminism or sex so much as whether or not our tax dollars should go to social spending. Research conducted by Pew in October 2011 showed women support a strong, activist government in much larger numbers than men. On the question of whether the government should offer more services, women said yes by 9 more percentage points than men. The gender gap on social spending remained when pollsters asked about specific interest groups. Women wanted more spending on the elderly than did men by 11 percentage points, more spending on children by 10 percentage points and more spending on the poor by 9 percentage points.

Female voters respond much more strongly than male voters to government providing pragmatic solutions and real-world support for ordinary citizens, which helps explain why women flock to Obama and to the Democrats in general. In fact, with college-educated white voters, the gender differences are nothing short of astounding. In this group, female voters prefer Obama 60 to 40, and male voters prefer Romney 57 to 39.

As the lingering downturn puts economic issues front and center in the election, a ballooning gender gap was entirely predictable. Voters cite healthcare and economic issues as their top concerns, and with all the discussion of the student loan crisis of late, that will likely become part of the larger concerns about jobs and the economy. Knowing this, Romney wants to keep talking about these issues.

Support for healthcare reform remains low, at 43 percent, but as the public learns more about what the Affordable Health Care Act provides, the polling numbers have been creeping up a bit. With female voters, the uptick has been swift, with 47 percent of female voters supporting the new law in late March, 10 percentage points up from November. Student loan debt is another issue where women lean more to the left than men. In a recent Daily Kos/SEIU poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, more women than men – by 6 percentage points – supported legislation to keep student loan rates low, a policy that, because of congressional Republicans’ protest, voters strongly associate with Democrats, not Republicans.

Not that reproductive health issues don’t matter to female voters, but women voters have a more expansive view of what meaningful contraception policy looks like. They don’t just want the government to protect the legal right to use contraception; they also want it to enact policies that make sure birth control is affordable for all women, regardless of income. Fifty-five percent of women cite government contraception policy as an important issue for them, compared with 35 percent of men, according to Gallup. By requiring insurance companies to cover contraception and by protecting Planned Parenthood’s funding, the Obama administration appealed to female voters’ preference for a government that offers services as well as ensures reproductive rights.

Larry Summers is playing economic Jeopardy

Glenn Hubbard

Apr 27, 2012 12:09 EDT

Editor’s note: This op-ed was originally published at the Financial Times in response to the recent piece by Lawrence Summers for Reuters. It has been republished, verbatim, with the FT‘s permission.

Larry Summers’ considerable intellect suggests that he would be an excellent contestant on the popular game show Jeopardy. Of course, on the show, the question offered by the contestant must match the answer on the board. Summers and I disagree on the answer that matches the question “What is President Obama’s budget?” Let’s see why.

I asked two questions in an op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. (Neither question was addressed by Mr Summers, or in the simultaneous parallel critiques offered on the airwaves by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee). The first question was whether the tax increases on high-income individuals proposed by President Obama (the Buffett rule, higher taxes on dividends and capital gains, a higher top marginal rate, and so on) raised enough revenue to materially offset the country’s large budget gap or higher federal spending under President Obama. The answer, using revenue estimates from the Treasury Department and spending estimates from the President’s budget is ‘No’. The second question was what that spending growth implied for future tax rates. That is, if federal spending as a share of gross domestic product was to increase permanently as the president proposes, by how much would taxes need to rise? Answer: a lot and for everyone. This simple thought experiment presumes that we will not ratify permanently larger deficits.

Without addressing these questions, Mr Summers proposes a different one. President Obama’s budget is supposedly fiscally sound because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the budget would stabilise federal debt as a share of GDP for a short while. Yet, let’s look at what the CBO said. First, while the CBO shows the debt-to-GDP ratio stabilizing for a period of time – at an uncomfortably high level – in the budget window, it is not stable in the long run. Second and more importantly, in its April 20, 2012 report, the same CBO that Summers cites so selectively observed that the permanent deficits in the President’s budget would reduce the level of economic activity. By CBO’s estimate, under the President’s proposals, the CBO estimates for the 2018-2022 period, that the nation’s real output would be between 0.5 and 2.2 per cent lower compared to what would occur under current law. This adverse effect would grow in the future, as deficits continue to mount.

The President’s budget has met with little success in Congress. The 2013 budget was voted down in the House of Representatives, 414-0. The Senate did not bring the 2013 budget to the floor, though the 2012 budget was voted down in the Senate, 97-0.

And Mr Romney? The Romney budget proposes to reduce federal spending as a share of GDP to 20 per cent (its pre-financial-crisis, long-term average level) by 2016. It is ironic that the administration has criticised Mr Romney for specific cuts (for example, block granting the Medicaid program), while Mr Summers now argues the plan is not specific. Mr Romney is also the first candidate to propose specific ways of slowing the growth of Social Security and Medicare, a subject not mentioned by the president. And Mr Romney’s call for fundamental tax reform – reducing marginal tax rates accompanied by reducing tax expenditures to be revenue-neutral and distributionally-neutralcaptures the spirit of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission, which was both appointed and ignored by President Obama.

In a ‘Final Jeopardy’ round, if the answer is long-term fiscal sustainability without large, across-the-board tax increases, the question cannot be “What is President Obama’s budget?”. There are important debates to be had over policy – Mr Summers is right that this is a “very consequential election”. But we first must make sure that we agree on math. Fortunately, the concept that permanently higher spending eventually requires taxes to match is not a controversial one to most Americans. And, at the levels of higher spending proposed by President Obama, higher taxes on the well-to-do won’t fix the gap.

Romney should be proud of Massachusetts health law

Deval Patrick

Apr 12, 2012 14:17 EDT

It’s been six years since Mitt Romney signed the Massachusetts healthcare reform law. That law was a framework for change, a values statement about what we believe in Massachusetts: that health is a public good and that everyone deserves access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.

Six years after its passage, our experiment in universal healthcare is working, expanding coverage while helping to control costs. Mitt Romney should be proud of the law he signed. As the one responsible for implementing it, I know I am. Here’s why.

More people have health insurance in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country: 98.1 percent of our total population. Of our children, 99.8 percent are covered. While the number of people without health insurance in America grew from 2006 to 2010, more than 400,000 people in Massachusetts gained coverage.

This isn’t because government took over. Massachusetts healthcare reform, like the national Affordable Care Act, takes a hybrid approach to increasing coverage, encouraging people to get health insurance in the private market and subsidizing the cost for those who can’t afford it. Here again, it is working. More businesses offer their employees private healthcare today than did before the law was signed. The 77 percent of Massachusetts businesses that offer their employees private insurance is well above the national norm.

Most important, people in Massachusetts are healthier and getting better care. Over 90 percent of our residents have a primary care physician, and 4 out of 5 have seen their doctor in the last 12 months. Preventive care is up: More people are receiving cancer screenings, more women are getting prenatal care, and visits to emergency rooms have decreased. After we expanded coverage for smoking cessation programs, 150,000 people stopped smoking, and a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research documents improvements in physical health, mental health, functional limitations and joint disorders as a result of the law. While everyone is better off, women, minorities and low-income residents saw the biggest health improvements. I have met individuals whose lives have been saved by the access to good care our model made possible.

Massachusetts healthcare reform has proved to be cost-effective as well. An independent analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation estimated the law was responsible for about a 1 percent increase in net state spending. Spending on our uncompensated care pool – those who receive medically necessary care they can’t afford – is down significantly since the law passed. Today, the Massachusetts Health Care Connector – our version of the “exchange” created by the Affordable Care Act – announced that it will provide private health insurance to more people than ever next year, at an average per-person cost 5 percent lower than last year, the second year in a row of premium decline. Growth in premiums throughout the market has slowed from an average of about 16 percent two years ago to less than 2 percent today.

For these reasons and more, healthcare reform remains popular in Massachusetts. More than 60 percent of our residents support it. They know it is working for them.

How Ron Paul may have won — and lost — Maine

Amy Fried and Michael Socolow

Feb 16, 2012 13:38 EST

Washington County, Maine, is the easternmost point in the continental United States. This region of rocky shores and pinetree forests is populated by proudly independent — and defiant — citizens.

The Republicans in Washington County have supported such radical and underdog candidates as Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan in the past.

Too bad they didn’t get to participate in the Maine caucuses last weekend.

Due to a snowstorm, the Republican party in Washington County (and in various locations in neighboring Hancock County) was forced to reschedule its caucuses for this coming weekend. Yet despite not having results from these precincts, Maine Republican Chairman Charlie Webster declared Mitt Romney the victor in the Maine caucus. Romney, Webster reported, earned 2,190 votes, while Ron Paul finished second with 1,996 votes.

According to the Associated Press, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party, Chris Gardner, a Romney supporter, called state party leaders and expressed his “complete and utter dismay.” Washington County Republican leaders, who moved their caucuses to this coming Saturday after snow made it difficult to meet last weekend, will convene these postponed caucuses this Saturday, and County Chair Gardner is hoping that state party officials will change their mind and accept the results.

He shouldn’t hold his breath.

What is American exceptionalism?

James Ledbetter

Jan 23, 2012 15:30 EST

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, although they spend a lot of time these days at one another’s throat, appeared on the night of the South Carolina primary to agree on at least one thing: Each believes in “American exceptionalism,” and, they say, Barack Obama does not. Gingrich has already devoted an entire book to the topic, and in an interview with my colleague David Rohde, a top foreign policy adviser to Romney made it clear that American exceptionalism is a theme that Romney intends to stress throughout the campaign.

It’s easy to see that these candidates view their own ideas about American exceptionalism as a strong opportunity to contrast themselves with the incumbent. It’s harder, though, after sifting through the various ways the term is used, to establish what it actually means. Far from being a simple concept that one can easily endorse or reject, American exceptionalism is a loose skein that uneasily unites many different strands of thought, faith and ideology.

Like so much in the discussion of American history, the phrase is often traced to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But that doesn’t explain much, because when de Tocqueville wrote that “the position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional,” he was referring primarily to the development of a practical — as opposed to literary or artistic — worldview, stemming from the American landscape and the lack of an aristocracy. More to the point, Gingrich seeks to ground the term in the American Revolution: “The ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and the unique American identity that arose from an American civilization that honored them, form what we call today ‘American Exceptionalism’,” he wrote in A Nation Like No Other, published last year. But that explanation, too, is inadequate; after all, the authors of the Declaration of Independence went out of their way to universalize the values underpinning the American experience (“when, in the course of human events…”), not to cleave that experience off from the rest of the world.

Rather, the faith in the uniqueness of the American experience is best found in its Puritan heritage, the belief that God made a covenant with the founders of America and intended to use American civilization as an example for the rest of the world. In a much-cited speech, Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop referred in 1630 to his colony as “a city on a hill” that could serve as a beacon to the world. But grounding American exceptionalism in religion creates multiple conceptual minefields. For one, the early colonies were not really bastions of liberty; in addition to their slaveholdings, they were, as Gingrich acknowledges, governed like “a theocratic dictatorship.” For another, an appeal to the supernatural puts the idea of American exceptionalism on a similar plane with, say, the Jewish concept of being the Chosen People or the ancient Chinese idea that their country is at the center of the universe — which is to say, there is nothing exceptional about thinking that your civilization is exceptional. Nonetheless, the idea that the United States occupies a privileged and arguably unique place in history is critical to understanding the phrase “American exceptionalism,” from the Manifest Destiny period to the present day.

In the 20th century, American exceptionalism took on a particular meaning in political theory. Typically, it was used to explain why the United States — unlike nearly all developed nations — had never developed a significant working-class political movement. Curiously, although Gingrich and Romney are principally using it in the context of American foreign policy, that usage is of fairly recent vintage. It is also where the meaning of the term is probably the muddiest and does not make as neat a litmus test as Gingrich and Romney seem to want. One can believe that the foundation of America in ideas of liberty and self-governance — rather than in ethnicity or royal domain — makes the United States “exceptional” and yet still be deeply skeptical about America’s use of force abroad. Instead, what Gingrich and Romney appear to be advocating under the name of exceptionalism is either American unilateralism — the idea that the United States has a right and/or obligation to act in the international sphere even if all other countries and multinational institutions don’t join in — or American infallibility — the idea that nothing the United States does in the international arena is ever morally unjustified.

On such subtopics there is robust debate, particularly since 9/11. The Canadian scholar and politician Michael Ignatieff has identified three problematic areas of American exceptionalism in the international realm. These include American exemptionalism, the idea that prevailing international standards don’t apply to the U.S., particularly in the ratification of human rights conventions; double standards, the idea that rules will be ignored or enforced depending on the U.S. perception of its interests; and legal isolationism, the notion that legal findings outside the U.S. should have no bearing on how American judges rule and think.

Here is where Gingrich and Romney probably see a place they can sink their teeth into. It is nearly certain that current or former members of the Obama administration have publicly taken positions against “American exceptionalism” if it’s defined as unilateralism, infallibility, exemptionalism, etc. The political hope is that such parts can be made to stand for the whole and thus used as one more way to call out Obama’s supposed patriotism vacuum.

The GOP’s hunt for Latino voters

Stephen Nuno

Jan 18, 2012 16:47 EST

Jon Huntsman suspended more than just his campaign this week. He also put an end to any hope the GOP had of making strides in the Latino community.

And despite the stereotypes, because of the Obama administration’s policies, there really was hope. The administration has increased the number of deportations to nearly 400,000 people a year since taking office, according to ABC News. Likewise, in Secretary Janet Napolitano’s annual report to Congress, she describes the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to be at “record highs.” President Obama’s first term has featured twice the number of deportations as George W. Bush’s by instituting a systematic approach to immigration enforcement not seen since the infamous days of “Operation Wetback,” a program in which President Dwight Eisenhower deported over a million Mexican nationals, among them American citizens.

One might think this would be an opportunity for the GOP to make inroads with the Latino community, but the Republicans seem confident they can sit idly by as Latinos simply run into their arms. The GOP claims economics are Latinos’ most important issue, but with over half of Hispanics within a generation of the immigrant experience, migration is also a profound issue (and one with profound economic consequences). And on that issue, most of the GOP candidates have done little to distinguish themselves.

But Huntsman was different. He was perhaps the only candidate who managed not to offend Latinos throughout the primary. Huntsman rightfully saw the wall on our southern border as repugnant to American values. By arguing for tough border control, yet also supporting in-state tuition for the children of unauthorized residents, Huntsman was able to conceptually distinguish the dangers of an unmanaged border from the benefits of those who came in search of a better life.

Huntsman also comes from the same Utah Mormon milieu that produced the Utah Compact, a set of principles endorsed by civic and business leaders, and the LDS Church, that asks politicians to “adopt reasonable policies addressing immigrants in Utah.” The Utah Compact also opposes a policy that unnecessarily separates families, a significant acknowledgement of the harm our immigration laws do to Hispanic families.

Perhaps most important, Huntsman differentiated himself from other Republicans as the only cosmopolitan who was comfortable with diversity. A former ambassador to China, he has direct experience with diversity in languages and customs. As a person fluent in Chinese, he saw diversity as an advantage rather than a threat. Latinos are familiar with the benefits of bilingualism, and as we continue to engage and compete in a global environment, it will become increasingly important to the success of our economy.

But now the remaining candidates only inflame the underlying hostility against minorities in the GOP’s base. To make strides with Latinos, they’ll have to counteract that and support a more humane approach to immigration. And this is not just about making friends — it’s about winning elections.

from David Rohde:

Yes, we’re creating jobs, but how’s the pay?

David Rohde

Jan 5, 2012 17:50 EST

Update: The December job numbers released this morning continued the same trend described in yesterday’s column. Of the 200,000 new jobs created last month, 78,000 – or nearly 40 percent -- were in transportation, warehousing and retail, sectors known for low pay and seasonal hiring. In a far more positive sign, manufacturing gained 23,000 workers in December after four months of little change. A vast expansion of that trend would benefit the middle class tremendously.

WASHINGTON -- Between now and November, middle class Americans are going to hear an enormous amount of bragging about job creation.

Mitt Romney will tout his role in the creation of Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino's, three firms that he says created 100,000 jobs. Barack Obama will say 2.9 million jobs have been created since March 2010, and highlight a surge of 140,000 new private sector jobs in November.

The central question for middle class Americans, however, is: What quality of job is being created? The November job surge, for example, occurred primarily in retail, leisure and hospitality, sectors known for low wages. The other high-growth areas were professional services and health care, where higher education is a central determinant of income. Manufacturing and construction, one of the few areas left in the American economy where members of the middle class without elite educational pedigrees can find strong wages, were moribund. The following chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down the numbers.

In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, Republicans and Democrats both recognize the problem. After years of Democratic politicians complaining about a lack of social mobility for Americans, The New York Times reported this morning that Republican candidates are complaining about the problem as well.

Presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America,” according to The Times. Wisconsin Congressman Paul D. Ryan, a leading House conservative, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”

Gingrich’s anger management

Michael A. Cohen

Dec 15, 2011 10:11 EST

By Michael A. Cohen

The views expressed are his own.

WINDHAM, N.H.—Newt Gingrich is flying high these days – on top of national Republican polls and currently leading in three of the first four Republican primary and caucus states. He hasn’t been this relevant in American politics since Bill Clinton sat in the White House and Titanic was the biggest movie in America. But while the new Newt is clearly enjoying himself, seeing him on the campaign trail brings back familiar glimpses of the old Newt, defined far more by his acid tongue than he was by his policy acumen.

On Monday night, Gingrich took his frontrunner status on the road to New Hampshire, where he spoke at a packed town hall in Windham to crowds that were as ecstatic for him as they would have been for Leo and Kate. More than a thousand Republican partisans were there to greet him. What they got was the sort of grandiose ideas and red-meat political attacks against liberals – and in particular President Obama – that have been the hallmark of Gingrich’s political career, the key to his recent political rise, and perhaps his best hope for winning the Republican nomination. In a year in which Republican voters are angry with Obama and angry with Washington, all the GOP wannabes are cultivating conservative ire – but no one quite does it as effectively and as gleefully as Newt.

For Gingrich then, New Hampshire is a win-win state. The state is generally seen as Mitt Romney’s fail-safe; the place where he must—and should be able to—win in order to keep his election hopes alive. Moreover, the state GOP tends to be less socially conservative than their Iowa brethren; more attuned, it seems, to a Romney rather than Newt candidacy. Nonetheless, Gingrich’s numbers in New Hampshire are beginning to tick up, becoming Romney’s top rival and within shouting distance of first place. If he loses, the world won’t come to an end – and if he wins it could be the killer blow to Romney’s campaign. All the more reason, it seems, for Gingrich to play up his frontrunner credentials and critique Romney.

Ironically, however, Gingrich opened the proceedings by calling on Romney to end all negative campaigning. He even pledged that he would tell all his supporters to refrain from such behavior unless attacked – and such a letter was drafted by the Gingrich campaign and sent out yesterday. The tactic of decrying negative campaigning is Frontrunner 101 – if your opponent can’t attack you, he probably can’t beat you either. Of course, as these things go, this call for a cease and desist came less than ten hours after the former Speaker said of Romney that “he’s earned money bankrupting companies and laying off employees over the years at Bain.” Clearly for Gingrich some habits die hard.