Tea Party Presidential Candidates Flash and Fade

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Home > Politics & Policy > Ken Walsh's Washington > Tea Party Presidential Candidates Flash and Fade

September 28, 2011 Print

Tea Party favorites for president aren't showing much staying power in the race for the Republican nomination because they come across as too harsh, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says.

"None of the Tea Party darlings has held up," Garin told me. "Being the Tea Party darling requires a level of stridency that can come across as not being presidential."

Garin has a point. The pollster, who advises many congressional Democrats and was a senior strategist for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008, notes that Tea Party activists were pushing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but she has faded in the polls and hasn't gotten into the race. Another favorite has been Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, but she is also dropping in the polls. The most recent favorite was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but his momentum has stalled.

[See editorial cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]

Garin says Perry is a good example of the flash-and-fade phenomenon. The Texas governor initially got positive news coverage but more recently he has been criticized for his stands on immigration and other issues and for a weak performance in last week's GOP debate. "The more Perry is out there, the less formidable he's going to be," Garin says.

Tags:Tea Party, politics, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, 2012 presidential election, Sarah Palin

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Tea Party Presidential Candidates Flash and Fade

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Home > Politics & Policy > Ken Walsh's Washington > Tea Party Presidential Candidates Flash and Fade

September 28, 2011 Print

Tea Party favorites for president aren't showing much staying power in the race for the Republican nomination because they come across as too harsh, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says.

"None of the Tea Party darlings has held up," Garin told me. "Being the Tea Party darling requires a level of stridency that can come across as not being presidential."

Garin has a point. The pollster, who advises many congressional Democrats and was a senior strategist for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008, notes that Tea Party activists were pushing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but she has faded in the polls and hasn't gotten into the race. Another favorite has been Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, but she is also dropping in the polls. The most recent favorite was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but his momentum has stalled.

[See editorial cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]

Garin says Perry is a good example of the flash-and-fade phenomenon. The Texas governor initially got positive news coverage but more recently he has been criticized for his stands on immigration and other issues and for a weak performance in last week's GOP debate. "The more Perry is out there, the less formidable he's going to be," Garin says.

Tags:Tea Party, 2012 presidential election, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, politics

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Twenty candidates to vie for Kyrgyz presidency

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By Olga Dzyubenko

BISHKEK | Mon Sep 26, 2011 5:17am EDT

BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan will choose its next president from a list of 20 candidates in an election next month that could expose divisions between the north and south of the volatile Central Asian state.

Official campaigning began on Monday after the Central Election Commission named its final list of candidates for president of the strategic country of 5.5 million people, which hosts both U.S. and Russian military air bases.

The October 30 vote, which some analysts say will need a second round, will pit current Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev against heavyweight rivals from the south of the country, where central government's grip on power is tenuous.

The election is the culmination of constitutional reforms introduced after the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010. Current President Roza Otunbayeva, who led the interim government that took power, will step down on December 31.

Two decades after independence from the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan, which borders economic powerhouse China and lies on a drug trafficking route out of Afghanistan, remains culturally and ethnically divided.

As well as divisions between the more developed north and poorer south, tensions persist between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south after the violent clashes that killed more than 400 people in June 2010.

The new model of government, which replaces nearly two decades of failed authoritarian rule, makes parliament the main decision-making body in Kyrgyzstan.

A fragile coalition government, led by Atambayev, is attempting to entrench the first parliamentary democracy in a region otherwise governed by strongman presidents.

But some politicians oppose this model of government. Those with links to the Bakiyev government have a groundswell of support in the ousted president's southern strongholds. Bakiyev himself is now exiled in Belarus.

Atambayev's main challengers, say analysts, will be two politicians who enjoy strong support from Kyrgyz nationalists in the south: Kamchibek Tashiyev, who represents the Ata Zhurt (Motherland) party; and Adakhan Madumarov, leader of the Butun Kyrgyzstan (United Kyrgyzstan) party.

STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL

The final list of candidates eliminated three quarters of the 83 hopefuls who applied to run for president, a group that had included retired army officers, scientists and the unemployed.

Most fell foul of the requirements to present at least 30,000 signatures, pay a deposit and pass a public Kyrgyz language test in a country where Russian is still the first language for many.

Kyrgyz television stations have been temporarily forbidden from transmitting foreign news broadcasts that could be seen to affect the outcome of the election. Most foreign news programs broadcast in Kyrgyzstan are from Russia.

In the first sign of pre-election maneuvering, a would-be contender effectively threw his weight behind Atambayev by withdrawing from the race shortly before the final list was published, despite having fulfilled the necessary criteria.

Ata Meken (Fatherland) party leader Omurbek Tekebayev, nicknamed "Father of the Constitution," explained his decision in a statement as a means of "consolidating and strengthening the unity of democratic forces." He did not mention Atambayev.

Should no single candidate win more than 50 percent of the vote, the two leading candidates will stage a run-off election after a minimum period of two weeks has elapsed.

"It's obvious that there will be a second round," said Alexander Kulinsky, spokesman for Tekebayev, before forecasting an Atambayev victory "by a whisker."

Political and military analyst Toktogul Kakchekeyev, however, forecast that Atambayev's experience in the current and previous governments could help him to emerge victorious in the first round.

Future presidents of Kyrgyzstan will be limited to a single six-year term, but will have the right to appoint the defense minister and the national security head.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has sent 28 long-term election observers to Kyrgyzstan and will dispatch a further 350 observers to monitor the vote.

(Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko; Writing by Robin Paxton; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Study: TV Morning News 'Dissing' GOP Candidates

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 A new study by a conservative media watchdog group finds that the big three TV network's morning shows are far more biased against the current GOP presidential field than they were to Democrats running in the 2008 election. What's more, the Republicans challenging President Obama are facing caustic questions and getting less airtime than Democrats did four years ago.

[Vote: Who is your pick for the GOP nomination?]

The key points from the Media Research Center's review of 53 weekday morning news interviews from January 1 to September 15:

By a 5-to-1 margin, ABC, CBS, and NBC morning show hosts employed an adversarial liberal agenda when questioning this year's Republican candidates.Four years ago, Democratic candidates faced questions that tilted more than two-to-one to the left, a far friendlier agenda for liberal politicians.In 2007, Democratic candidates were frequently tossed softball questions. This year's interviews with Republicans have been much more caustic, with few chances for the candidates to project a warm and fuzzy image.Four years ago, top Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were given massive donations of airtime by ABC in the form of "town hall" meetings on Good Morning America. None of this year's Republican contenders have been given a similar opportunity.

The study is due out tomorrow and was provided in advance to Whispers, It was written by Rich Noyes and Geoff Dickens of the Media Research Center which charts alleged bias of major TV networks. [See a collection of political cartoons on the 2012 GOP hopefuls.]

The study was conducted to see if the GOP presidential candidates were getting their fair share of airtime, media attention, and balanced questions. What the two found was something of a double standard when it came to how the network morning shows covered Democrats and Republicans.

On air time, for example, the GOP candidates are behind in total minutes than the 2008 crop of Democrats at this time. Rep. Michele Bachmann leads with 71 minutes followed by Tim Pawlenty at 42 minutes, Donald Trump at 39 minutes, Jon Huntsman at 26 minutes, and Mitt Romney at 21 minutes.

Also, the spouses and top aides of Democratic candidates got lots of airtime and feature stories during the last election. For the same period this election, said the center, "none of the Republican candidates' spouses or surrogates has appeared without the candidate, although Romney's wife, Ann, was included alongside her husband in NBC's May 31 profile, and ABC spoke to both Ron Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul, on January 5."

[Check out a slide show of 10 media commentators the left and right love to hate.]

When it comes to questions, the group found a huge bias. They counted 98 ideological questions, with 81, or 83 percent, from a liberal policy bent, to the GOP field. "Thus, instead of functioning as a surrogate for the Republican rank-and-file voter who probably won't get a chance to question a candidate, TV journalists used their time with the candidates to push a standard liberal agenda," said the study.

And to compare the last election and this one, 68 percent of the questions to Democrats in the period Jan. 1 to Sept. 15, 2007 had a liberal bent, while just 32 percent had a conservative tilt.

Finally, said the report, "Another difference between the networks' treatment of the Democrats in 2007 and this year's crop of Republican candidates—the tone of the questioning is far more adversarial this year. The Democratic front-runners four years ago were indulged with friendly questions aimed at creating a personal bond with voters."

For example, said the center, "In May 2007, NBC sent Meredith Vieira to New Hampshire to follow Barack Obama around for the day. 'Do you have a weakness on the campaign trail, anything that you have to have with you at all times? Stuffed animal?' (Obama answered that he liked 'a certain brand of green tea.') Vieira kept up the softballs: 'When your head hits the pillow tonight in Iowa, will you fall fast asleep, or will your mind be racing about the next day?...Do you dream of the White House?'"

[Book: Liberal bias distorts news media.]

The GOP candidates this time out haven't seen those kind of softballs. According to the group, "the questioning has been strictly business-like, and occasionally caustic. NBC's Matt Lauer asked Rick Santorum if it was fair to brand him an 'ultraconservative on social issues.' During Mike Huckabee's appearance on Good Morning America in February, George Stephanopoulos painted mainstream Republicans as a engaging in fringe behavior: 'It seems like Republican leaders have the hardest time in the world saying simply and clearly 'President Obama is a Christian and President Obama is a citizen. Get over it.'"

Corrected on 9/22/11: A previous version of this blog post misstated the percentage of liberally-biased questions Democrats received during the 2008 presidential election. It was 68 percent.

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Quotes from Republican candidates' Florida debate

RICK PERRY, TEXAS GOVERNOR
On Texas policy to give in-state college tuition fees to the children of illegal immigrants:
"If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children, because they will become a drag on our society."
On creating a better climate for small business:
"What we've done in the state of Texas over the course of the last decade is to lower that tax burden on the small businessmen and women, have a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable and sweeping tort reform that we passed in 2003 that told personal injury trial lawyers, 'Don't come to Texas because you're not going to be suing our doctors frivolously.' ... If it'll work in the state of Texas, it'll work in Washington, D.C."
Accusing Romney of changing positions on issues:
"I think Americans just don't know sometimes which Mitt Romney they're dealing with ... we'll wait until tomorrow and see which Mitt Romney we're talking to tonight."
On Romney's criticism of the Social Security government retirement system:
"Now, it's not the first time that Mitt has been wrong on some issues."
MITT ROMNEY, FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR
On immigration:
"We have to crackdown on employers that hire people that are here illegally. And we have to turn off the magnet of extraordinary government benefits like a $100,000 tax credit -- or, excuse me, discount for going to the University of Texas. That shouldn't be allowed. It makes no sense at all."
On whether he thinks Obama is a socialist:
"Let me tell you the title that I want to hear said about President Obama, and that is: former President Barack Obama. That's the title I want to hear.... What President Obama is, is a big-spending liberal. And he takes his political inspiration from Europe and from the socialist democrats in Europe. Guess what? Europe isn't working in Europe. It's not going to work here."
NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER
On what would happen if political gridlock in Washington continues:
"We might as well buy Greek bonds and all go down together."
GARY JOHNSON, FORMER NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR
On Obama's jobs record:
"My next door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this president.'
MICHELE BACHMANN, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM MINNESOTA
On the tax burden:
"Barack Obama seems to think that when we earn money, it belongs to him and we're lucky just to keep a little bit of it. I don't think that at all. I think when people make money, it's their money. Obviously, we have to give money back to the government so that we can run the government, but we have to have a completely different mind-set. And that mind-set is, the American people are the genius of this economy. It certainly isn't government that's the genius."
HERMAN CAIN, BUSINESSMAN
On which federal department he would eliminate:
"If I were forced to eliminate a department, I would start with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and start all over. It's out of control. Now, I know that makes some people nervous, but the EPA has gone wild. The fact that they have a regulation that goes into effect January 1, 2012, to regulate dust says that they've gone too far."
RICK SANTORUM, FORMER PENNSYLVANIA SENATOR
On immigration:
"Governor Perry, no one is suggesting up here that the students that are illegal in this country shouldn't be able to go to a college and university.... The point is, why are we subsidizing? Not that they can't go. They can go. They just have to borrow money, find other sources to be able to go. And why should they be given preferential treatment as an illegal in this country?"
(Compiled by JoAnne Allen)

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