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Business English: The rise of Newt Gingrich and the 'elite media'
Controversial presidential candidate catches pundits off guard by climbing to the top of the pollsNewt Gingrich entered the Republican race for the presidency with enough personal and political baggage to break the back of any aspiring candidate for public office. A few weeks into the campaign, the former house speaker took on more water, when all but one of his top staff resigned, horrified the candidate would take time off the trail for a cruise in the Greek Isles.
How, then, has Mr Gingrich managed to shoot to the top of the polls of Republicans competing to take on Barack Obama in 2012? Especially after a career which has seen him: resign from Congress under an ethics cloud; have two messy divorces replete with tales of infidelities; pocketed millions for lobbying in Washington for causes he otherwise has condemned; reversed course radically on two issues which have become sacred ground for conservatives - climate change and healthcare; and stir up the Tea Party base by insisting many illegal immigrants deserved the right to US citizenship.
It is not only pundits who wrote him off months ago who have been caught flat-footed. "Unless the Tea Party is completely hypocritical, they cannot support someone who took more than USD1m from Freddie Mac (the scandal-stained mortgage provider)," Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator told the Fox network, adding: "You can cheat on your wives, but you can't cheat on your wives and run to be president of the United States."
One factor behind the surge of the shop-soiled veteran is the search among a large section of the base for anyone but Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whom many Republicans consider a closet liberal. This conservative caravanserai has seen Republican voters get behind multiple other candidates, from Texas governor Rick Perry to African-American businessman Herman Cain, before one-by-one they crashed and burnt.
A large part of the explanation for the Gingrich resurrection, however, might be contained elsewhere - in how he has handled the media, or to put it more accurately, manhandled them. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late senator, famously said that everyone was entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. In the 21st century US media market, that is no longer the case.
Cable news, the prime source of information for voters in the Republican primaries, provides both facts and opinions tailored to its audience. It is one of the reasons why so much US political debate these days, inside and outside Congress, has become a dialogue of the deaf.
Fox News on the right has been far more successful at this game than its liberal counterpoint, MSNBC, perhaps because the Murdoch network has managed to tap into a larger audience alienated from what else is on offer.
Mr Gingrich has jumped on this bandwagon with aplomb, winning the greatest applause for his attacks in Republican debates on the media for its "arrogance", "stupidity", "ignorance" and "shallowness". After being written off so early, Mr Gingrich is entitled to some revenge now that he is momentarily on top. He has also been helped by his intellectual flamboyance in the debates when so many of his rivals have floundered.
But the larger point about how a whole section of the electorate has switched off from the so-called "mainstream media" - now a ritual term of abuse on both the right and the left - holds.
When Mr Cain was accused by no less than four women of sexual harassment, much of the conservative commentariat considered he had no case to answer, merely because the allegations were sourced to alleged liberals.
Likewise, Mr Gingrich has been able to fob off legitimate questions about differences between Republican rivals merely on the basis that the "elite media" (more swear words) is trying to "divide" the party.
Republican hardheads who have had to run campaigns appealing beyond the base, such as Karl Rove, George W. Bush's former political adviser, never bought into the media conspiracy theories that buttressed Mr Cain against his critics.
Mr Gingrich is appealing to the base now. But his very success is why Mr Romney, who is turning out to be the tortoise in a field of hares, is still the best bet for Republicans in the end.
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The Financial Times, 20.12.2011
© 2011 The Financial Times,
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