'Lock her up!' unites GOP -- July 21, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Alice Roosevelt Longworth would have loved this week’s Republican National Convention.

Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter had a throw pillow in her sitting room embroidered with the line: “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

Republicans in Cleveland richly rewarded viewers who wanted to hear nothing good about Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t just the wrong choice for president; she’s a criminal, they charged.

“Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” delegates at Quicken Loans Arena shouted, leaping to their feet and shaking their fists. And when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, indicted Clinton’s performance and character in his speech Tuesday night, the crowd bellowed “Guilty!” after each new charge.

Republicans will see how it feels starting Monday, when the Democratic National Convention opens in Philadelphia and attempts to turn Republican Donald J. Trump’s into Public Enemy No. 1.

Character assassination has a long, colorful history in presidential politics. A newspaper editor who supported Thomas Jefferson in the bitter election of 1800 wrote of John Adams that he had “a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force nor firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” 

But the sustained attacks on Clinton were a new level of mudslinging.

 

“She lied about her emails, she lied about her server, she lied about Benghazi, she lied about sniper fire – why she even lied about why her parents named her Hillary,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared.

The name claim stems from 1995 when the then-first lady said her mother always told her she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to conquer Mount Everest. But Clinton was born in 1947; Sir Edmund made the climb in 1953. Her presidential campaign conceded in 2006 it was just a “sweet family story.”

 

The GOP convention also showed rare disunity among the party faithful. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a former presidential contender, refused to attend, as did other Republican leaders. Some conservative delegates erupted in anger after party leaders stifled a rules change that would have permitted delegates to vote for candidates other than Trump.

On the convention’s first day, the chairman of the Virginia delegation and former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Ted Cruz supporter, threw his credentials on the floor and marched out.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who boarded the Trump train late, sounded plaintive as he tried to unify Republicans. Only with Trump and his running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence “do we have a chance for a better way,” he said. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

“Let the other party go on and on with its constant dividing up of people, always playing one group against the other, as if group identity were everything,” said Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012. “In America, aren’t we all supposed to be and see beyond class, see beyond ethnicity and all those other lines drawn to set us apart and lock us into groups?”

Cruz infuriated some delegates when he used his time at the podium Wednesday night not to endorse Trump but to give what sounded like his first presidential campaign speech of 2020. Delegates booed Cruz and shouted, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” as the presidential nominee walked in.

The most peculiar knock on Clinton came from former GOP presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson, who said one of Clinton’s heroes in college and the subject of her senior thesis was radical organizer Saul Alinsky. In the forward to one of his later books, Alinsky acknowledged Lucifer as the first radical organizer.

“So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?” Carson said. “Think about that.”

Clinton, perhaps previewing her attacks next week, insisted that Trump has nothing to offer the American people so he had to attack her. Trump’s “business model is basically fraud and abuse,” she said. “He talks about America First but his own products are made in a lot of countries that aren’t named America.”

At their convention, Republicans found one thing on which to agree: Hillary Clinton is their enemy. Democrats also agree on something: Trump is theirs.

Even before he endorsed Clinton, rival Bernie Sanders said he would work to defeat Trump. And when he finally did endorse her, Sanders said he wanted to make one thing clear: “I intend to do everything I can to make certain she is the next president.”

© 2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Super Tuesday voters could put brakes on Trump -- but will they? -- Feb. 25, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When Southern Democrats dreamed up Super Tuesday in the 1980s, they hoped to reinvigorate the party in the South by giving it clout in choosing the party’s presidential nominee.

Or as then-Tennessee Democratic Chairman Dick Lodge memorably put it in 1986: “When your dog bites you four or five times, it’s time to get a new dog. We’ve been bitten and it’s time for the South to get a new dog.”

Two years earlier, conservative Southerners, long fed up with Democrats’ presidential picks, not only rejected Walter Mondale and helped re-elect Ronald Reagan but also voted for Republicans for Congress.

Even the new dog couldn’t bring those voters back. They’ve been voting Republican ever since.

Today officials in both parties worry about the down-ballot consequences if insurgents Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders actually become their parties’ nominees.

Both parties are pinning their hopes on Super Tuesday, March 1, when more delegates will be chosen than on any other day during the primary season. Voters in a dozen states -- including Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia -- will cast ballots.

Big question: Will Super Tuesday help choose a widely acceptable nominee – or prolong the agony for the party establishment?

In 2008, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kept fighting after Super Tuesday’s 22 contests were inconclusive.

Today though, Clinton holds a commanding lead over Sanders in polls in Virginia and other Super Tuesday Southern states, where black voters dominate.

Among Republicans, Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa GOP caucuses, says Super Tuesday will be “the most important night of this campaign.” Rivals Marco Rubio and John Kasich also hope to break out and put the brakes on Trump.

Trump Fever, however, seems to be spreading. The billionaire businessman’s margin of victory widened from New Hampshire to South Carolina to Nevada. In Nevada, Trump won 46 percent of the vote, about the same as Rubio and Cruz combined.  Kasich and Ben Carson together didn’t reach 10 percent.

Super Tuesday was also more snooze than shock in 2012. President Barack Obama was running unopposed for re-election in most states, so all the action was on the Republican side.

Mitt Romney hoped to sweep Super Tuesday states and force his rivals from the GOP race. Romney captured 40 percent of the popular vote and about half the delegates – a performance seen as underwhelming and predictable, much like the candidate himself.

Georgia went for Newt Gingrich and Alabama and Tennessee supported Rick Santorum, who also won North Dakota and Oklahoma and came within a whisker of beating Romney in Ohio. Neither Gingrich nor Santorum was able to qualify for the ballot in Virginia, where Romney won.

“With No Knockout Punch, a Bruising Battle Plods On,” read a headline in The New York Times the day after Super Tuesday.

This time around, Trump -- endorsed by Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and son of the late televangelist – has surprised the establishment by winning support from white evangelical voters, who dominate the Southern GOP.

In Alabama and Tennessee, for example, more than 70 percent of GOP primary voters are white evangelical Christians, an analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia Center for Politics found.

In Tennessee, record numbers of Republican voters have turned out for early primary voting, which could bode well for Trump, although that’s uncertain as there have been no recent polls. Cruz and Rubio are also courting evangelicals.

In Virginia, while about 40 percent of the Republican primary vote is evangelical, 58 percent of voters are college educated, says UVa’s Skelley who suggests Northern Virginia voters could blunt Trump, and Rubio could benefit. Trump led in a Christopher Newport University poll of likely Republican primary voters in Virginia in mid-February.

The richest delegate states on Super Tuesday are Texas and Georgia, where Trump is strong. He and Cruz were neck and neck in the latest polls, released Thursday, while earlier Cruz had led handily in his home state. Trump leads by double digits in Georgia and Alabama, according to the polls.

Trump appears to have momentum, and the South is poised to solidify him as the GOP frontrunner. How ironic if Super Tuesday, which was intended to give Southern conservatives a moderating influence on presidential choices, made Trump unstoppable.

If that happens, the parties may want to get a new dog.  

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Hurray for long presidential campaigns -- Sept. 24, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Brandishing poll numbers that still show him leading the Republican presidential pack, Donald Trump said in South Carolina Wednesday, “If we could call for the election tomorrow…Let’s do it! Do it tomorrow!”

In his dreams.

You can’t blame Trump for wanting the voting over already.  The Trump surge was the story of the summer, but there are signs it may have peaked. He still leads in the polls but isn’t gaining. His last debate performance was just OK. There are empty seats at some of his events. He’s thin-skinned about Fox News and conservative pundits. He bristles at questions about details of his plans.

Time is on the side of those who are waiting for Trump to self-destruct. His campaign of cuts – Carly Fiorina’s face, Hillary Clinton’s shrillness, Marco Rubio’s sweat – is bound to wear thin.

Democrats just hope he keeps talking. Every minute the media covers Trump or Pope Francis or anything else is time not spent on the troubles facing Hillary Clinton -- her own sinking poll numbers, the emails, trust, women, Bernie Sanders and maybe Joe Biden.

In a new book titled “Unlikeable – The Problem with Hillary,” former New York Times Magazine editor Ed Klein says Clinton suffers with headaches, insomnia and depression. A Clinton spokesman said Klein’s claims are bogus.

Our much-maligned, seemingly endless presidential campaign season does work: It gives candidates plenty of rope.  In four months – only four -- voters will start having their say. The dates could change, but the Iowa caucuses are now set for Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire primary Feb. 9.

A disadvantage of the long campaign is the tight focus on the horse race. We know that poll numbers are not predictive; they’re a snapshot. But they’re news.

Trump may be a natural at campaigning, but even hot air balloons eventually come down. Yes, some mainstream Republicans fear that he could be a latter-day Barry Goldwater, who captured the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 only to lose 44 states that November. But he also could be a Rick Perry in 2011 or Rudy Giuliani in 2007.

In September 2011, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was leading in the Republican presidential race. Four years earlier, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani looked unstoppable.  

Each election cycle is different, so we can’t rely on past performance as a guide. 

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush looked strong early, but he may be a Bush too far. The outsiders – Trump, retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Fiorina – are big now, but will voters really choose another president who lacks experience governing?

The two 2016 Republican candidates who have left the stage – former Gov. Perry and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin – actually had governing experience, a liability in this year of the anti-politician.  

Perry probably thought the statute of limitations had run out on his gaffe during a debate in November 2011 when he could not remember the third federal agency he would eliminate as president. It hadn’t.

Walker’s star faded as Trump’s rose. At 47, Walker could run again. He made his departure seem ordained.    

“I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field,” he told reporters. “I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so that voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner.”

No one else seems so inclined. A Muslim civil liberties group urged Carson to give up his quest after he said that no Muslim should serve as president. He says he’s now raising money so fast it’s hard to handle it all. Carson since has retreated, saying he could support a Muslim president who put the Constitution before religion and rejected Sharia law.

The other GOP hopefuls are current and former governors and senators, able politicians who in most years would be contenders. Today they’re barely registering in the polls. But they’re hanging on, waiting and hoping that Trump’s train loses steam.    

The winnowing process has started and likely will last a while. We’ll all be better for the long, arduous, annoying way we choose our nominees for president. I’m just glad the election isn’t tomorrow.     

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Politicians need not apply -- May 7, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Republican Carly Fiorina has never held elective office, although not for lack of trying.

In 2010 the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard sank $5.5 million of her own fortune into her Senate bid in California against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer. Despite a Republican wave nationally, Fiorina lost.

So, when she announced her presidential bid on Monday, Fiorina tried to make a virtue of her inexperience.

“Our Founders never intended us to have a professional political class,” she said in a video. “They believed that citizens and leaders needed to step forward.”

Welcome to yet another presidential campaign in which amateur candidates hope voters will overlook their lack of political know-how, and no candidate admits to being a politician.

Fiorina isn’t the only GOP presidential candidate who’s starting at the top. Ben Carson, author and retired pediatric neurosurgeon, has never held or even run for office.  

“I’m not a politician,” Carson said Monday in Detroit, launching his campaign. “I don’t want to be a politician because politicians do what is politically expedient. I want to do what’s right.”

That may sound refreshing, but our political system often requires cooperation and compromise.

As the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee is no stranger to politics. After winning  the 2008 Iowa caucuses, he quit the race. He sat out 2012.  

When he entered the presidential contest Tuesday, Huckabee chided politicians, without mentioning any names, for the common practice of holding one office while seeking another, something several of his Republican competitors are doing.

“If you live off the government payroll and you want to run for (an) office other than the one you’ve been elected to, then at least have the integrity and decency to resign the one that you don’t want anymore,” Huckabee said.

Even seasoned politicians are distancing themselves from their calling. Bill Clinton amazingly declared in an interview the other day, “I’m not in politics.” Hillary Clinton has a resume as long as your arm, but her performance in office may be a liability.

The 2016 presidential race is starting to sound a lot like 2008, when another self-styled Washington outsider won favor.

Here’s Fiorina:  “If you’re tired of the sound bites, the vitriol, the pettiness, the egos, the corruption, if you believe it’s time . . . for citizens to stand up to the political class and say enough, then join us.”

And here’s freshman Sen. Barack Obama in 2008: “If you believe that part of the problem is the failed politics of Washington and the conventional thinking in Washington, if you’re tired of the backbiting and the scorekeeping and the special-interest-driven politics of Washington, if you want somebody who can bring the country together around a common purpose and rally us around a common destiny, then I’m your guy.”

Fiorina, likely the only woman in the GOP field, is positioning herself as the anti-Hillary, and Carson, likely the only black man, as the anti-Obama. Critics say neither has a chance of actually capturing the GOP presidential nomination.

That certainly will be true if they fail to land onstage at the Republican debates starting in August.  The Republican National Committee is working on the criteria for determining who will be eligible to participate.

In presidential politics, though, hope springs. The patron saint of long shots is Jimmy Carter. In 1974, Carter was such a confirmed nobody that when he went on the TV game show “What’s My Line?” not one of the panelists recognized him. He was governor of Georgia at the time. Two years later, he was elected president.

But Carter’s presidency was lackluster and Obama’s has suffered because he lacked the political skills to deal with the entrenched powers in Washington. Voters should remember that it takes more than a fresh face to get things done.

Hovering over the non-politicians is the specter of Herman Cain. The flamboyant pizza company executive and tea party darling surged in the polls of GOP presidential hopefuls in 2011, leading Mitt Romney by 20 points. Cain’s star plunged just as quickly, and he left the race amid charges of sexual impropriety.

No outsider wants to be the Herman Cain of 2016.   

© 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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