Commentary: ‘Gingrich Would Be The Easier Opponent For Obama’
This commentary was written by Spiegel journalist and author Charles Hawley, writing under the German news magazine’s column “The World From Berlin”, which includes editorial comments by various German news organizations. Mr. Hawley’s column, and the commentaries, which were posted on Spiegel Online’s edition for Monday, January 23, 2012, follow:
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich scored a surprising victory over Mitt Romney in South Carolina on Saturday. But that is bad news for the Republican Party, say German editorialists. Gingrich, they argue, is deeply flawed, and he is exposing Romney’s problems as well.
For U.S. Republicans, it all comes down to who has the best chance of beating President Barack Obama in a general election contest. And until Saturday, it seemed that most had resigned themselves to the belief that Mitt Romney, the decidedly uninspiring multimillionaire former head of private equity firm Bain Capital, would win out over the decidedly immodest, once-disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
But in South Carolina, the playing field tilted in Gingrich’s favor after Republican voters there handed him a decisive victory in the state’s primary. Gingrich ended up with 40 percent of the vote to Romney’s 28 percent. Neither Rick Santorum nor Ron Paul could keep up.
The result seems already to have ushered in a new, more combative phase in the campaign. Gingrich has relished in his demands that Romney, finally, make his tax returns public — which the Romney campaign has finally decided to do, even going so far as to admit it had been a mistake to wait so long. And Romney’s campaign has responded by demanding more information about the ethics investigation into Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House in the 1990s.
Romney has also charged that Gingrich, who did some consulting for the government-backed mortgage bank Freddie Mac, was a peddler of influence and a “failed leader.” Gingrich, meanwhile, has sought to tap into the strong vein of knee-jerk anti-centrism by saying that Romney’s record as the centrist governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 indicates that he is little more than a liberal in conservative clothing.
Either way, the Saturday result means that Republicans will now have to steel themselves for what could end up being a long, drawn-out battle similar to that endured by the Democrats in 2008 when Obama edged out Hilary Clinton. German editorialists wonder whether Gingrich might be easier to defeat for Obama than Romney.
Conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
“If the primary in South Carolina indeed carries the weight that people say it does, then the result from Saturday is a defeat for the Republican party leadership. It wasn’t their favorite, Mitt Romney, who won in the socially conservative state, rather the former speaker of the House of Representatives and Clinton opponent Newt Gingrich…. The campaign is now likely to become a tough, ideological battle. And Obama will see his chances of re-election increase.”
“Even if Romney is able to come back, the first primary in the South has shown that the former governor of Massachusetts is not a celebrated hero with the full backing of an enthusiastic party. The conservative, populist grassroots, which seeks confrontation with Washington and a fight with Obama, cannot warm to Romney. The Republicans are split. Should the party choose Gingrich — compared to whom John McCain looks like a well-behaved moderate and George W. Bush looks like a centrist — America’s future looks murky.”
Left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
“It is not surprising that Mitt Romney, who is considered a ‘moderate’, experienced his first real defeat in South Carolina. The degree to which the ultra-conservatives supported his competitor Newt Gingrich is, however, astonishing.”
“Gingrich may have organized the ‘Republican Revolution’ in Washington in the 1990s, but his resume stands in sharp contrast to those things that the Tea Party grassroots find good: He is, at the moment, on to his third religion and his third wife. He attempted to push President Bill Clinton out of office for infidelity at the same time as he himself was cheating on his wife. He has earned significant amounts as a lobbyist.”
“Yet, as if none of that had happened, Gingrich was able to pose as a purist of right-wing morals in South Carolina…. His success not only shows that the Tea Party is alive and well and that the Republican establishment must deal with that fact. It also shows that, for the radicalized party grassroots, it only matters what a candidate says, not how he acts.”
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
“The true victor of the Republican primaries so far has been Barack Obama. No matter which Republican candidate is chosen to challenge the incumbent in November elections, he will be even weaker than thus far anticipated. The Republican Party leadership will do all it can to prevent Newt Gingrich … from becoming the nominee. But South Carolina made it clear that both possible candidates present the Republicans with an enormous problem.”
“The results of American presidential campaigns depend in large part on the passion with which party members knock on voters’ doors, put up signs and pass out pamphlets. Mitt Romney may be more acceptable to the moderates. But there is a threat that large numbers of Republicans will simply stay home for lack of enthusiasm.”
“Gingrich would be the easier opponent for Obama. But at the same time, Romney has lost much of his ability to frighten the Democrats.”
Financial daily Handelsblatt writes:
“The Republican Party allowed itself a bit of balsam for its soul this weekend. In South Carolina, voters were guided by emotion and passion instead of rationality.”
“Despite all of the conservative euphoria over the 68-year-old Gingrich’s surprising victory, it remains unlikely that the former speaker of the House of Representatives will become the Republican presidential candidate. Gingrich lacks organization, money and discipline. And Gingrich is laden with past burdens — which may make him human, but which also make him extremely vulnerable in a duel with Barack Obama.”
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