Us politics

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

Romney to win in Florida, but by how much?

From our UK edition

When this week began, Newt Gingrich was the clear favourite to win tonight’s Florida primary. He’d just beaten Mitt Romney by 13 points in South Carolina and two new polls put him 8 to 9 points ahead in Florida. Momentum was on his side, Romney was facing criticism over his tax returns, and he’d have two debates – his favourite campaigning medium – to press his advantage home. But – despite securing an endorsement from Herman Cain on Saturday – Gingrich now finds himself well behind Romney, and with just a 3 per cent chance of victory, according to Nate Silver’s model (above). Why the turnaround? Partly it’s down to advertising.

Saturday

Jonathan Mirsky

Fall from grace

From our UK edition

Barack Obama is not up to the job. That is Ron Suskind’s oft-repeated contention. The President, he states, compromised with, rather than curbed, failing American financial institutions, and has surrounded himself with warring staffers who are either no more competent than he is or, if expert, disregard his wishes. Following a picture caption that reads ‘Obama showed real weakness in managing his own White House,’ Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize winner, justifies his title: The confidence of the nation rests on trust.Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions: justly enforced laws, sound investments, solidly built structures . . . . Gaining the trust without earning it is the age-old work of the confidence men.

Friday

Jonathan Jones

Is Newt’s chance slipping away?

From our UK edition

Thanks to his spectacular surge last week, culminating in a big win in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, Newt Gingrich looked like he was back in contention for the Republican presidential nomination. Immediately, he took a commanding lead in Florida – which will host the next primary on Tuesday. And though Mitt Romney remained the clear favourite to go up against Barack Obama in November, Gingrich was still in the hunt. But this week – just when he was looking strong – it’s all gone a bit wrong for Gingrich. $13 million worth of ads from the pro-Romney Super PAC ‘Restore Our Future’ have dwarfed the $3 million spent by pro-Gingrich ‘Winning Our Future’, and they seem to have taken their toll on the former Speaker.

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade…’

From our UK edition

Newt channels JFK, sorta, in Florida last night: Although, sadly for moon colonists (and Jurassic Park enthusiasts), Romney has now pulled level with Gingrich in most of the Florida polling — and is now, slightly, the favourite to take next week's primary.

Jonathan Jones

Clegg echoes Obama’s message

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg, this morning, advocating closing loopholes for the rich to pay for raising the income tax threshold: ‘Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.’ Oh, all right, that wasn't Clegg. That was Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. But it's remarkably similar to what Clegg just said in his speech at the Resolution Foundation this morning.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Obama’s a hypocrite, but a slick hypocrite

From our UK edition

As Pete says, Obama fired some well-aimed arrows in the direction of Mitt Romney in his State of the Union address. But it was also a clear attempt to outline Obama’s re-election message, which would, I think, be the same no matter who he faces in November. The idea is to stress that Obama, unlike the corrupt Republicans who nearly bankrupted America, is a ‘fair shake’ candidate, who stands for hard work and responsibility. It is hypocritical rubbish, as I tried to point out last month. The idea of Obama as the straight-shooting, anti-corruption candidate is absurd. President Obama has proved to be a very different politician to the progressive champion whom liberals had fantasised about.

Peter Hoskin

Obama delivers his pitch for a second term

From our UK edition

A Romney-seeking missile. That was what much of Barack Obama's State of the Union Address amounted to last night. He didn't mention the Republican presidential challenger by name, of course. That would have been too obvious. But he did dwell on those sorts of issues around taxation and jobs — including his ‘Buffett Rule’, by which, we learn, millionaires should pay at least a 30 per cent tax rate — that have been causing Romney trouble. To underline the point that ‘a billionaire [should] pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes’, Warren Buffett's secretary was even among the Obamas' guests for the evening. Obama's ploy, when presenting all this, was to be upfront about his own privilege.

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

Romney’s tax returns provide ammo for his opponents

From our UK edition

Finally, grudgingly, Mitt Romney has released his tax returns for the last two years. After much um-ing and ah-ing — and a lot of prodding from Democrats, Newt Gingrich and the media – he has disclosed that he paid $3 million in tax on his 2010 income of $21.7 million, and $3.2 million on the $20.9 million he made in 2011. Romney hoped that releasing this information would allow him to move past the focus on his financial affairs, but his rivals – both inside and outside his own party — don’t seem prepared to let that happen.

Monday

Freddy Gray

Have American conservatives given up?

From our UK edition

That tubby, unlovable rogue Newt Gingrich is on a big roll. His poll ratings are surging ahead of the Florida primary next week. This despite the fact that almost everyone, even the good fellows at National Review, can see what a disastrous candidate he is. Gingrich has — this hardly needs saying — a terrible record in office, a long list of involvements in dodgy deals, an embarrassing private life, a dubious legacy as a man of ‘conservative principles’, and a deeply unpleasant face. (Sorry, but such things can matter in elections.) For a good run-down of his failings, see here. Or, as a sample, look at this image flying around the internet: No wonder the Democrats are upping their attacks on Newt’s rival Mitt Romney.

Sunday

Jonathan Jones

Gingrich wins South Carolina

From our UK edition

They said South Carolina would be Mitt Romney's big test. Tonight, he failed it. The networks have called the primary for Newt Gingrich, and CNN's exit poll shows him beating Romney 38-29. It's an astounding turnaround, considering that Romney led by around 10 points just a few days ago. The Romney campaign is already trying to claim it's not too disappointed by the result – that a few weeks ago they would have been happy with third place, that it's Florida that really matters. But the truth is, he's suffered a big upset. After it looked like he'd won Iowa and he took a solid if unsurprising win in New Hampshire, there was speculation he might sweep every state.

Saturday

Jonathan Jones

South Carolina could put Gingrich back in the hunt

From our UK edition

When the week began, the idea of anyone but Mitt Romney claiming victory in tonight's South Carolina primary seemed fanciful. He had a 10 point lead in the polls, giving him a 90 per cent chance of victory according to Nate Silver's model. Any talk of someone else winning sounded like the wild hopes of a media keen for the nomination battle to go on as long as possible. But no longer. As I said on Thursday, it's been a particularly bad week for Romney and a particularly good one for Newt Gingrich. Gingrich even managed to turn the one thing that seemed likely to halt his momentum – an ABC News interview with his ex-wife in which she claimed he had asked for an open marriage – into by far the strongest moment of Thursday night's debate.

Friday

Jonathan Jones

Colbert for Cain

From our UK edition

Herman Cain may have dropped out of the Presidential race weeks ago, but new ads are advocating a vote for him in South Carolina. These videos, including the one above, are being put out by the ‘Super PAC’ set up by satirist Stephen Colbert, the host of the Colbert Report famous for joking at George Bush's expense at the 2006 White House Correspondents' dinner. Super PACs — organisations which can raise unlimited sums from corporations and other groups as well as individuals, but are prohibited from coordinating with candidates or political parties — became a feature of the US political landscape in 2010, after a Supreme Court ruling made them possible.

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Newt’s good week might come to an early end

From our UK edition

video platform video management video solutions video player It had been a pretty good week for Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. He put in a strong performance in Monday night's debate, he got a near-endorsement from Sarah Palin (she said ‘If I had a vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I'd vote for Newt.’), a poll yesterday put him just 3 points behind Romney nationally, and one today shows him taking the lead in South Carolina. And he can expect to pick up a good number of Rick Perry's few remaining supporters, with the Texas Governor dropping out today and endorsing Gingrich. Meanwhile, things haven't been going so well for Mitt Romney.

Monday

Jonathan Jones

No more Mr Nice Guy | 16 January 2012

From our UK edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r8z0uag5mI So Jon Huntsman is dropping out of the US Presidential race today. Apparently a battle with Rick Perry for fifth in South Carolina didn't appeal. Even though he looked like the best bet to beat Obama, Huntsman was never likely to win the Republican nomination. When many Republicans were desperately searching for a more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, running as the more moderate alternative to Mitt Romney wasn't going to be a winning strategy. This year of all years, you couldn't see a man who had served in the Obama administration as Ambassador to China and who tweeted ‘I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.’ becoming the Republican nominee.

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

The Obama-Romney electoral map

From our UK edition

Of course, Mitt Romney hasn't secured the Republican nomination yet. But now that the bookies have him odds on at 1/9, it's definitely worth thinking about how he'd shape up against Barack Obama. Does he have much of a chance? Well, yes, actually. The head-to-head polls so far point to a close fight between Obama and Romney. And Obama's approval ratings and GDP growth forecasts — better predictors of the result at this stage — also point to a very tight election. It's shaping up to be one of those elections where the key to victory is not the national popular vote, but the Electoral College. It'll be winning each individual state, and its electoral votes, that matters. 270 is the target. The map above — which I produced at 270towin.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

The rise of the Ron Paul Movement

From our UK edition

Everybody knew that Mitt Romney would win in New Hampshire. But the real success story of last night is Ron Paul, who came second, with 23.5 per cent of the vote. In 2008, he came fifth, with just eight per cent of the vote. Santorum, Gingrich and other ‘anti-Mitt’ candidates have risen and fallen, but Paul, who has refused to attack Romney directly in recent days, grows stronger and stronger. The Paul campaign, as Grace Wyler reports, has been playing a long game. They have been focusing their efforts on states, such as Iowa, in which they can win substantial numbers of delegates ahead of the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August. The plan is to shape the future of American conservatism from there.

Jonathan Jones

Romney wins comfortably this time

From our UK edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lzNeRrD__o Last night Mitt Romney became the first Republican, excluding sitting Presidents, to win both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. And unlike in Iowa last week, his supporters didn't have to wait until the next day to start celebrating. The exit polls were enough for Romney to be declared the winner within an hour of the voting booths closing. And now, with 95 per cent of the votes counted, he's secured about 39 per cent of the vote – slightly higher than the share McCain received in 2008, and 16 points ahead of Ron Paul this time. Romney looks more the inevitable nominee than ever, and his victory speech (above) sounded very much like the start of his general election campaign.

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

What to expect in New Hampshire

From our UK edition

Tonight's New Hampshire primary is very unlikely to provide the sort of razor-thin margin we saw in Iowa last week. Mitt Romney looks assured of a comfortable win – Nate Silver's poll-based model (above) gives him a 98 per cent chance of victory. If one of the others did somehow beat him, it'd be the biggest upset of any modern US primary. The only real questions are just how comfortable it'll be (20 points? 30? or just 10?), and who will come second. The polls suggest the battle for runner-up will be between Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. Paul is the favourite to take it, but the momentum of the past few days has been with Huntsman. Santorum and Gingrich look to be within striking distance, but theirs will more likely be a fight for fourth.

Monday

Jonathan Jones

Romney hit from all sides on investment career

From our UK edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_evS-T-c35M I noted on Saturday that one of the main attacks the Democrats are employing against Mitt Romney revolves around his 14 years as head of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm which he co-founded. The argument is that Romney made a fortune as head of a company that was responsible for the closure of businesses and the laying off of thousands of American workers. Romney’s rebuttal is that this is how free enterprise works — in a debate on Saturday, he said: 'in the free economy, in the private sector, sometimes investments don't work and you're not successful...

James Forsyth

Obama enjoys the high life

From our UK edition

Amidst all the talk of Tony Blair’s post-office earnings, it is interesting to read in The Times of Barack Obama’s post-presidency ambitions. In Jodi Kantor’s new book on the Obamas, the president is quoted telling old friends of the couple that: ‘When I leave office there are only two things I want. I want a plane and I want a valet.’ Now, I am sure Obama made the remark half in jest. But it does show how quickly politicians become accustomed to the conveniences of office. Though in Blair’s case, his money-making seems to be motivated more by a desire to match the lifestyle of the global elite that he met in office and now spends so much time with.