“I’m Rick Perry, and I Approve This Ad”

A commercial break in Iowa can tell you a lot about the state of the Republican primary race. Political ads can drive changes in the polls, tarring a onetime frontrunner with allegations of malfeasance and impropriety, but they also serve as important gauges of the health of the campaigns. A confident candidate may not spend much money on an ad buy at all; Mitt Romney, whose nomination has seemed all but inevitable since he lost to John McCain in 2008, didn’t run his first ad until early December. Candidates at the bottom of the pack don’t purchase much television time either, though their silence is less a function of strength than a sign of financial weakness. Rick Santorum brags constantly about visiting all 99 counties in Iowa, yet he had little choice about his extensive road-tripping. He simply didn’t have a more efficient way to get his message out. The Times reports that Santorum “has only recently started advertising on television and his commercials are significantly less frequent than those of Mr. Romney or Mr. Perry,” though a new Super PAC has stepped in to argue on his behalf. For Jon Huntsman, even a last-minute infusion of cash from his multi-millionaire father wasn’t enough to tempt him into competing in Iowa: his close-to-broke campaign is putting all its eggs in the New Hampshire basket, hoping a decent result there will turn the contest in his favor.

Even more instructive than who does the advertising is whom is being advertised against. The candidate sitting at the top of the polls naturally draws the most fire. The Times observes that, while Michele Bachmann goes out of her way to discredit her fellow candidates, “they all but ignored her, a sign of what many Republicans here see as her fading fortunes after winning the Iowa straw poll this summer.” The more grenades lobbed Newt Gingrich’s way, the more convinced the former speaker becomes that he is the man to beat. Heavy spending by supportive Super PACs has allowed Mitt Romney to keep his own advertising mostly positive; Restore Our Future is running endless spots reminding voters of Gingrich’s $1.6 million Freddie Mac payday and his tete-a-tete with Nancy Pelosi. The obvious takeaway: Gingrich makes the Romney camp nervous in a way that vaccine-conspiracy theorist Michele Bachmann or Israel-denouncing Ron Paul do not. Tellingly, however, a Restore Our Future spot slated to run in South Carolina criticizes not only Gingrich but Rick Perry as well. Linguistically challenged as he may be, Perry’s appeal to southern conservatives, especially evangelicals, is undeniable. There’s little chance that Perry will win in South Carolina, but like Santorum and Bachmann in Iowa, he could play spoiler, sapping enough votes from Romney to put Gingrich over the top. Perry’s own advertising, which paints the Texas governor as the lone outsider among a crowd of Washington operatives, speaks to the shakiness of his candidacy. The candidate whose prospects were once bright enough to merit the coveted spot at Mitt Romney’s elbow in the Sept. 7 debate has been reduced to tossing bombs at the most small-time of competitors:

“If Washington’s the problem, why trust a congressman to fix it?,” an announcer asks as the ad shows pictures of Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. “Among them, they’ve spent 63 years in Congress, leaving us with debt, earmarks and bailouts.”

Rick Perry trying to match the poll numbers of Rick Santorum — who would’ve thunk it? In fact, Perry is one of several candidates aggressively courting Iowa’s evangelical community. The Times notes the dramatic change in atmosphere since 2008, when Mike Huckabee stoked controversy with an ad that appeared to feature a cross in the corner of the screen. This year’s religious references are anything but subliminal; in addition to Perry holding forth on how “there is something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school,” Gingrich offers Christmas greetings and nativity scenes, and even Ron Paul affirms his Christian faith. The Times writes that “the new, more pointed religious references reflect how campaigns are scrambling for support among evangelicals who are still divided over whom to support as the caucuses near,” and provides this priceless quotation from a Republican media strategist: “At this point in the game, the candidates in the GOP primary don’t have the time or the money for subtlety . . . . They will light a fire and stand by a burning bush in order to send a signal to evangelicals, ‘I’m one of you, vote for me.’ ”

Newt Gingrich’s advertising has largely tracked the roller-coaster of his poll numbers. Initially absent from the airwaves as his campaign — dogged by cruises to the Greek Isles and $1 million in revolving credit at Tiffany’s — limped into fall, Gingrich’s silence took on new meaning with his vow to “stay positive.” But positivity is a luxury afforded only to the frontrunner. Now that Gingrich’s popularity is seemingly on the wane, a nominally independent super PAC is making a million-dollar ad buy in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. While Gingrich adheres to the letter of his commitment by refraining from attack ads, he shows no such compunction about the words from his own mouth, telling CNN that Romney is “a moderate Massachusetts Republican who in fact is very timid about job creation.”

As the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus date nears, the advertising will undoubtedly intensify. The Washington Post reports that the chairman of the Polk County Republican Party called Tuesday for a moratorium on negative ads, saying that “they create deep rifts at the base of the party, which make it harder to pull the party together by the general election.” Really? After the Swift-Boat smearing of John Kerry and thinly-disguised racial attacks on Barack Obama, the 2012 race has thus far produced comparatively genteel criticism. Iowa voters are supposedly turned off by negative advertising, but Iowans are no more fragile or easily offended than the rest of our desensitized nation. Republicans lived through the first coming of Newt Gingrich, and I suspect the party is tough enough to make it through the second.

Rightward March!

An editorial in today’s Times, “The Race to the Right,” says nothing revelatory yet is nevertheless a valuable (and disturbing) reminder of the GOP’s success in shifting the political center dramatically rightward. Policies once considered the bedrock of moderation — progressive taxation, the separation of church and state — are now branded as steps on the road to socialism. Republicans have managed to reframe previously routine negotiations as opportunities to ransom the country’s financial stability for ideological priorities: a “balanced-budget” amendment, the Keystone XL pipeline, even a provision preventing Washington, D.C., from using its local tax dollars to help fund abortions. Suddenly, the question is not whether to cut spending, but by how much. (Would the patient like his arm amputated, or would he prefer the arm and a leg?)

The Republican primaries are a microcosm of the GOP’s new world order. The Times writes: “Candidates often move to the ideological edges to win a primary, because that’s where the primary voters are, but the frenzied efforts of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are particularly hard to watch.” Precisely because neither Romney nor Gingrich have the impeccable conservative credentials demanded by today’s Republican voters, “each has now adopted positions at the far end of the ideological spectrum.” Gingrich would send out the federal marshals to drag liberal judges before Congress to explain themselves, while Romney has maintained a drumbeat of falsehoods — Obama apologizes for America; Fannie and Freddie caused the financial crisis; Democrats favor “equal outcomes,” not equal opportunities — steady enough to make poor Paul Krugman reach for his blood-pressure medication.

The most interesting aspect of the Times editorial, however, is the observation that Gingrich and Romney have swung so far rightward because they “are competing with candidates like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann who have much longer and more consistent conservative records.” On its face, this is an obvious statement; the presence of candidates who see sharia law as a looming menace and gay rights as a threat to religious freedom is bound to drive the conversation to the right. Yet neither Santorum nor Bachmann — to say nothing of Rick Perry, who thinks “there’s something wrong in America when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school” — poses a credible threat to the two frontrunners. Both are polling in the single digits, a fact all the more remarkable given Bachmann’s first-place finish in August’s Iowa Straw Poll. What is easy to forget is that a primary race, unlike a general election, is a multi-candidate field. Romney isn’t just trying to out-poll Gingrich; he’s trying to prevent Santorum and Bachmann from peeling off enough votes to become spoilers. Die-hard conservatives are already more likely to gravitate toward Gingrich, so Romney can’t risk a situation in which Santorum or Bachmann, both evangelical favorites and Tea Party darlings, plays Ralph Nader to Romney’s Al Gore. In a very real sense, Romney is competing with not only Santorum and Bachmann but Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman (OK, maybe not Huntsman) and a potential Sarah Palin write-in as well. In the absence of this second tier of candidates, the two frontrunners could battle it out without being forced to throw red meat to the Tea Party. But because Iowa’s caucus-goers will be able to choose from an array of candidates who fall at every conceivable place on the conservative spectrum, Romney can’t rely on simply outdoing Newt Gingrich, whose ideological impurities include that moment on the couch with Nancy Pelosi and a $1.6 million payday from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The losers in this breathless game of conservative one-upmanship are not necessarily primary voters. Despite polls that consistently register a high degree of dissatisfaction with the Republican field, voters and caucus-goers could hardly have a wider variety of candidates to choose from: Libertarians have Ron Paul and his quixotic battle to “End the Fed,” while the three people in New Hampshire who laughed at Jon Huntsman’s Nirvana reference can cast lonely votes for the motorcycle-riding, Mandarin-speaking moderate. The real losers will only emerge in November 2012, when the general election arrives and voters face a choice between Barack Obama and whichever rightward-charging panderer emerges from the Republican primaries. By then, the real losers will be the American people.