Playbook 2012_ The Right Fights Back (Politico Inside Election 2012) - Mike Allen [23]
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“Why am I here?” Congressman Ron Paul sometimes wondered as Romney, Perry, and the others tangled in the early autumn debates. Paul’s Libertarian philosophy won pockets of strong support around the country, and in national polls he often stood just behind Romney and Herman Cain. But the mainstream press ignored him as a candidate who could not win, in large part because he favored dismantling vast chunks of the federal government. The low moment had come in August, when he had nearly tied the winner, Michele Bachmann, at the Ames, Iowa, straw poll. Paul was exhausted, determined to get home to Lake Jackson, Texas, where he lives in a comfortable house with biking trails and a well-stocked library. “I’ve got to go home now,” Paul said to his handlers. In a phone interview with us in early November, Paul replayed the dreary conversation: “They said, What?” Paul recalled. His longtime aide, Jesse Benton, wanted to “put out a feeler,” to see if Sunday shows wanted to interview him in light of his surprising success. “Well, all right,” Paul said. A little while later, Benton returned, looking “a little chagrined.” The press secretary said, “I guess we can go.” Not a single news organization wanted to interview the candidate. “They don’t want to interview me?” Paul asked. He tried not to feel hurt and looked forward to getting home for his bicycle ride. Bachmann appeared on five network news shows the next morning.
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Rick Santorum was visiting Adams, the smallest of Iowa’s ninety-nine counties, looking for voters anywhere he could find them. Late on a raw early November night, he stopped in at Kay’s Kafé in the town of Corning and found six patrons watching the last game of the World Series on TV. Into the bar walked Joe Klein, the Time magazine columnist. “I had no idea he was going to be there,” said Santorum. “I just thought, How weird is this?” A couple of patrons said to Santorum, “You got my vote. If anybody comes to Corning, you’ve got my vote.” Despite eight town meetings that day, Santorum did not have a drink—he does not even touch caffeine.
His relaxation is Fantasy League Baseball. At a candidates’ forum in Iowa, in the middle of a Newt Gingrich speech, the camera caught him surreptitiously checking his tablet to see how his team was doing. We asked Santorum if the process is humiliating. “It’s humiliating if you’re not humble,” he answered.
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Herman Cain seemed to be having a good time. The former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza had jumped into national prominence by running for president. Improbably, by late October “the Hermanator” led the race for the Republican nomination in some national polls, and trailed Romney by only a point or two in others. To be sure, Cain seemed more like a protest vote than a real choice. At a focus group conducted by pollster Peter Hart for the Pew Charitable Trusts, voters were asked to think back to their fifth grade experience to describe the candidates. Asked to choose from a list of adjectives, the voters described Romney as “pompous” and Perry as “the bully.” Cain was called “the kid everyone respects.” A little taken aback, Hart asked, “Do you think this person could be president of the United States? Is anybody willing to raise your hand and say, I would be comfortable if he became the next president of the United States?” Not a hand went up.
Still, people seemed to like Cain’s cheeky bluntness. When other candidates attacked his 9-9-9 flat tax plan (9 percent flat income tax, 9 percent corporate tax, 9 percent national sales tax) as politically impossible, a revenue loser, and a burden on the poor, Cain just shrugged and kept on smiling and joking. He may have been a little weak on the facts—he apparently was unaware that China possessed a nuclear arsenal—but he had a simple, clear slogan (“9-9-9!”)