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Sunday, February 12, 2012

Florida Republican debate: Where and when to watch

Debates matter. That was one of the major takeaways from the South Carolina primary, which Newt Gingrich won handily on Saturday.

Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reacts to a question at the start of the Republican presidential candidate debate at the North Charleston Coliseum in Charleston, S.C., Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. (David Goldman - Associated Press)

With the primary shaping up to be more competitive than it seemed just a few weeks ago and the winner-take-all Florida primary just eight days away, Monday and Thursday night’s debates will matter quite a lot.

Here are the details you will need to tune into Monday night’s Republican Candidates Debate sponsored by NBC News, National Journal, and the Tampa Bay Times.

The debate at the University of South Florida in Tampa, will air on NBC at 9 p.m. ET in the place of “Rock Center” and will be livestreaming on NBCNews.com, NationalJournal.com TampaBay.com.

As usual, The Fix will host a live chat throughout the debate starting at 8:30 p.m. and Felicia Sonmez will live-blog all the events starting around 8:30 p.m. in Election 2012.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former U.S. senator Rick Santorum (Pa.).

Rock Center host Brian Williams will host his second debate of the 2012 cycle. National Journal’s Beth Reinhard and the Tampa Bay Times’s Adam Smith will also question the participants.

@NBCPolitics is using #FLDebate on Twitter.

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Presidential debate fatigue: How many is too many?

Florida, Florida, Florida: A Sunshine state political primer

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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

South Carolina Republican primary (live updates, photos, video)

Since 1980, the winner of South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary has gone on to win the GOP presidential nomination. That means the stakes are particularly high tonight, and the conventional wisdom that Mitt Romney is his party’s inevitable nominee could be shattered in a matter of hours.

Join as we liveblog the day’s proceedings, and make sure to refresh this page for the latest. And don’t forget to head over to The Fix where Chris Cillizza, Aaron Blake and Rachel Weiner will also be hosting a live chat with readers as tonight’s results roll in.

2:51 p.m. | Voter turnout mixed amid South Carolina storms
The South Carolina State Election commission has posted anecdotal voter turnout reports for counties across the Palmetto State, where thunderstorms have made for a soggy election day. We checked in on the counties that might offer an indication of how the primary will end up (according to our friends at The Fix), and reports were mixed:
• Beaufort - no reports
• Greenville - “Heavy in precincts where expected (traditionally heavy Republican precincts)”
• Horry - no reports
• Lexington - “Mostly light, but steady in some precincts”
• York -“Some precincts heavier than 2008, 18-20% at 1:30 p.m., others have been moderate”
Check out The Fix’s full list of five counties to watch in the South Carolina primary.
1:20 p.m., Sullivan's Island, S.C. | 'I think we've reached a point where we need someone who's mean'
At Sunrise Presbyterian Church in Sullivan’s Island, S.C., Jean and husband Harold Wade both said they liked Mitt Romney but thought Newt Gingrich would make a better match against President Obama and didn’t want to see the race end after South Carolina.
“I want to keep things going for a bit,” said Jean Wade, 82. “There’s more that needs to be said. ... I don’t know that Newt can sustain this. But while he’s in it, there’s going to be a lot more that gets said and a lot more explained about why Republicans are different than what we’ve got.”
“I think Mitt Romney is a good man,” said Harold Wade, 85, who retired from a landscaping business he owned. “But I think we’ve reached a point where we need someone who’s mean.”
“What we need is someone who’s got some brains,” he added, explaining his support for Newt Gingrich. “And we need someone with some guts.”
Joe Schill, 70, a retired Bell South worker voting at a church in Sullivan’s Island, said he was a long time supporter of Gingrich’s – and while he doesn’t have a flattering opinion of any politician, he said Gingrich is better than most.
“Newt is down-to-earth and tells it like it is,” he said. Romney, on the other hand, “is a silver tongued devil.”
Jim Near, 56, a Realtor and meteorologist from Mount Pleasant, said he voted for Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), after feeling torn between Paul, Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
Romney, he said, never entered the equation.
“He’s too slick for me. Too polished,” Near said. He said the image was bolstered by Romney’s responses this week to questions about whether he would release his tax records. “It’s that slickness. We all pay taxes. There should be no issue there. His responses were no good.”
In the end, he feared Gingrich had too much baggage and did not believe Santorum could win.
“Ron Paul seems the most honest. He’s not trying to portray himself as anything other than who he is,” Near said.
— Rosalind S. Helderman
1:06 p.m. | Crisis averted at Tommy's Ham House
Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were on a collision course Saturday morning, both in the polls and on the trail: the two presidential hopefuls had somehow managed to schedule campaign stops at the same popular breakfast venue at the same time, 10:45 a.m.
Would the two engage in a campaign-trail confrontation? A ham house showdown?

Mitt Romney supporters hold up pro-Romney and anti-Newt Gingrich signs at Tommy's Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C. (The Washington Post/Philip Rucker) As it happens, tensions were defused after Romney showed up 45 minutes earlier than expected, greeting diners at Tommy’s and then hopping into his campaign bus before Gingrich had even arrived.
But that didn’t stop Gingrich from having a little fun at Romney’s expense. The former House speaker poked fun at Romney’s northern roots by noting that New England clam chowder was not on the menu.
12:45 p.m., Mount Pleasant | 'It's okay to be successful in this country'
Danny Causey, who has run a popular neighborhood barbershop in Mount Pleasant for decades (walls and ceilings covered with pennants, autographed photo of Strom Thurmond on the wall), says that his clients seem more unsettled in their choices than in any election year he can remember.
“It’s kind of difficult this year. Everybody I talk to, they want to, they want a change from the president we got. They just don’t know which way to go,” he said. “Some of the ones they like the best, they think they don’t have a chance.” So he senses a shift toward Mitt Romney among his customers.
E.P. Chiola, who was coming out of his polling place at a beachfront Presbyterian church on Sullivan’s Island, said that “of all of them together, the one to give them the best battle up there is Gingrich.”
Chiola had originally thought he would vote for Rick Santorum, but after getting at least 20 phone calls at home, changed his mind.
“The more I thought about it, the more I decided I’m looking for a good fight,” he said.
Michael and Elizabeth Ricciardone, a hospital administrator and a retired college professor, said coming out of the school where they voted in Mount Pleasant that they had decided long ago to vote for Romney and never wavered. Key factors are his business know-how and character, they said.
“It’s okay to be successful in this country. Redistribution of wealth is not in my vocabulary,” Michael Ricciardone said.
— Karen Tumulty
By Felicia Sonmez and Natalie Jennings | 03:00 PM ET, 01/21/2012
© 2011 The Washington Post Company

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Saturday, January 28, 2012

House Republican Conference holds more somber annual retreat

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House Republican Conference holds more somber annual retreat

Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Paul Kane,

BALTIMORE — Far removed from last year’s celebratory victory lap, a humbled House Republican Conference has hunkered down for its annual policy retreat with a somber, businesslike tone, hoping to smooth the frayed tensions from last month’s payroll tax dispute.

The lawmakers, who are scheduled to meet over the course of three days at a harbor-front hotel in Charm City, are getting a nonstop dose of the same message: “Unity, unity, unity,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) said Friday morning.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Republican candidates are glum and glummer

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Republican candidates are glum and glummer

View Photo Gallery — ?In December, the GOP presidential candidates turned their attention to Iowa and saw the field grow smaller as one candidate suspended his campaign.

Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Melinda Henneberger,

Have you ever seen a glummer or grouchier bunch of presidential aspirants than the current GOP crop? You’d be working those frown lines, too, I guess, if you thought, as Rick Santorum does, that this year’s race will decide “whether we will be a free people.” Or believed, as Michele Bachmann told Sean Hannity on Monday, that Iran might go nuclear before Inauguration Day.

Of course, Ron Paul is as cataclysmic as ever — promising prunes for everybody if he’s elected: When he puts the federal budget on a trillion-dollar diet, “people say everybody will suffer,” he tells supporters. But “they should have to suffer.” Perhaps it’s understandable, as The Washington Post’s Nia-Malika Henderson wrote this week, that Paul’s apocalyptic message is newly popular in a country exhausted by years of war and financial struggle. On Tuesday, Paul practically dared Iowans to throw away their caucus-night votes, admitting that even he doesn’t see himself as president. You know a guy is hard to please when he’s down on Abraham Lincoln. (Abe dragged us into a “senseless war,” in Paul’s view, and ruled with an “iron fist.”)

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A interactive look at the schedule through Super Tuesday and an analysis of where candidates are focusing their efforts.

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The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach looks back at some of the game-changing moments from past New Hampshire primaries and how the small state plays a big factor in presidential primary elections. (Jan. 5)

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Read more on PostPoliticsRomney edges out Santorum for the Iowa winPerry to reassess campaign after poor showingSantorum hopes to keep spark going in N.H.View all Items in this Story

Paul looks to capitalize on top-tier Iowa finishRomney leaves Iowa with same old problemsGingrich lags behind but prepares to storm onIowans gather in schools, churches to voteIs Iowa harbinger of the super-PAC era?Obama warns Democrats to gird for 'battle'Republicans running for commander in griefThe Take: Two key questions go unansweredLive blog from the Iowa caucusesMilbank: Santorum's closing argumentIn Iowa, Santorum counting on bonds with votersRomney's religion still a sticking point for votersElection 2012: Latest updates from Iowa

But Paul isn’t the only candidate hawking “midnight in America.” The notion that the sunniest guy always wins probably will still hold true — but the fact that charisma-challenged Mitt Romney is that guy threatens the cliche that voters go for the candidate with whom they’d most like to have a beer, or at least can stand to watch on TV without having to lower the volume.

Santorum spent months trying to guilt Iowans into supporting him. Not without reason, he seemed aggrieved during candidate debates, using some of his precious airtime to complain about receiving no airtime. In interviews, he grumbled about not being interviewed. He’s right that Iowa voters have known for some time that he is more conservative than Romney and more accomplished than Bachmann or Rick Perry, yet he wasn’t their first choice, or their second.

“I was the skunk at the garden party,’’ he says of his time in Washington, on account of his opposition to abortion rights. He frequently uses martyrdom language, saying he has bullet scars to show for his battles on behalf of conservative principles. This “too pure to win on the world’s terms” ethos is deeply ingrained in conservative culture, not to speak of Catholicism. But martyrs do not get invited out a lot; now that Santorum is on top, will he be able to adjust?

In the last day alone, he called Paul “disgusting,” and Newt “Keepin’ It Positive” Gingrich called Romney a “liar.” This joylessness is catching, too; a Perry ad likening Santorum’s behavior to that of a pig at a trough riled even the the unflappable Greta van Susteren. On Monday, the Fox News Channel personality told Perry pointedly: “That’s very curious you say your friend Rick Santorum. .?.?. One of the things your friend Rick Santorum has gotten is an ad from your campaign that’s headlined ‘Why are the pigs so happy?’ I don’t make references to pigs about friends.” (Perry’s attempt to pretend this was a compliment was funny, though: “In Iowa they love pigs,’’ he insisted.)

Gingrich, who has a long history of bomb-throwing and umbrage-taking, had pledged to stick to the high road but rethought that strategy after being bashed by a bunch of negative ads; when his head stopped spinning, he whined that Romney ought to call off the PACs with which he is not allowed to communicate. For good measure, he called his rival a big ol’ faker who has replaced the “real Mitt’’ with “a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points.’’

(Unlike Perry, Romney didn’t give a “Who, me?” response, but laughed and said welcome to politics. Also welcome to life after the Supreme Court decision named after Citizens United, the outfit that produced Gingrich’s John Paul II movie.)

Both Santorum and Gingrich have cried in public recently — Santorum when discussing his newborn son Gabriel, who survived only hours in 1996, and his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, who has the genetic disorder Trisomy 18; and Gingrich when speaking about his late mother, who he said suffered from bipolar disease and depression.

This year, those candidates who do have a more traditionally upbeat presidential demeanor have gone nowhere or have been to the mountaintop and fallen off; Jon Huntsman never caught on, Perry came off as hapless, and Herman Cain proved that sunny only goes so far.

Not just the American but the global economy has been through one crisis after another in recent years, and the “hope and change” message that resonated in ’08 wouldn’t have the same power today, no matter who presided over the past few years.

But as angry as voters are, and as much as they say they want to be leveled with, they still want reassurance in a leader, too. The Republican nominee, whoever he or he is, will not win independent votes with surliness and name-calling; that’s what Super PACs are for.

She the People is a new Post blog written from a woman’s perspective. It is anchored by political reporter Melinda Henneberger, founder of Politics Daily and its Woman Up blog.

More from PostPolitics and She the People:

Santorum hopes to build on his strong finish in Iowa

The dark side of Mitt Romney’s close finish in Iowa

Disenfranchised in Des Moines: who gets left out of the Iowa caucuses?

Are Iowa caucuses a harbinger of the super-PAC era?

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