Double Down: Game Change 2012

by John Heilemann

  Looking down from the stage, Newt saw the bodies rising from the back of the hall and rippling toward him like a wave. In his years at the intersection of politics and performance art, Gingrich had encountered his share of wonders. But he had never witnessed anything like the scene at Myrtle Beach—and he found it hard to imagine that he ever would again.

  • • •

  ROMNEY HAD NEVER SEEN anything like it, either. Afterwards, Stevens told Mitt he thought that Gingrich’s mau-mauing of Williams played to an ugly side of politics. Romney didn’t disagree, but he knew that Newt’s onstage fireworks exhibition was bound to affect the polls; on Fox News, they were already calling the debate a “game changer.”

  Mitt woke up grouchy the next day. On his schedule was an early-morning rally in Florence, a long bus ride away. Arriving at the Florence Civic Center, he found a cavernous room and a sparse crowd—space for a thousand, fewer than a hundred in attendance. Romney cooled his heels backstage as his traveling crew scurried to prevent photographers from capturing a bird’s-eye view of the embarrassing turnout. (A photograph in the next day’s New York Times testified to the futility of their efforts.)

  After his speech, Romney met the press by his bus—and was immediately hit with a question about his taxes. What was the effective rate he paid? a reporter asked. “It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” he answered, going on to explain that his income came mainly from investments. “And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”

  In Boston, Rhoades was monitoring the proceedings on a live feed, with a mounting sense of horror. Fearing that the tax questions would just keep on coming, he started frantically texting and calling the troops on the ground: Kill it! Kill it now!

  By Wednesday morning, Romney’s riches had eclipsed all else in the headlines and on the trail. The press seized on Mitt’s definition of “not very much” regarding his speaking fees: $374,327.62 in the past year. On Today and Morning Joe, Chris Christie was offering unsolicited advice: Mitt should release his tax returns, as Big Boy always had. Meanwhile, the fallout from Myrtle Beach was showing up in Boston’s internal polling—and starkly. When Romney had walked onstage that night, he was ten points ahead of Gingrich. Thirty-six hours later, he was narrowly behind.

  Romney would have a chance to stop the slide on Thursday, when the next debate was set to take place in Charleston. Instead, the dawn greeted him with another sharp stick in the eye: a call from Iowa notifying him that he was no longer the winner of the caucuses. After a recount, it appeared that Santorum had won more votes, though the situation was sufficiently unclear that the Republican Party in the Hawkeye State wanted to declare the contest a tie. Romney considered that ridiculous and called Santorum, leaving a message on his cell phone, conceding, “You came out on top, so nice work.”

  With Romney attempting to resist a downward spiral, Gingrich was joyfully hanging ten atop a breaker. That morning, Perry at last called it quits and tossed his support to Newt. Around the same time, ABC News put out word that it had snared a scoop: Newt’s second wife, Marianne, was claiming that in 1999, while he was engaged in his affair with Callista, he had asked for an “open marriage.” But that night on the debate stage, Gingrich spun the sewage into sunshine, lacerating the moderator, CNN’s John King, when the newsman led off with a question about the story.

  “The destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office,” Gingrich thundered. “And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”

  As Gingrich piled on the adjectives and the crowd went bonkers, à la Myrtle Beach, Mitt and Ann caught each other’s eyes and exchanged knowing nods. Yet another moderator giving Newt exactly what he wants, Romney thought.

  Mitt was waiting for the inevitable question about his taxes, having finally spent some time in debate prep rehearsing his answer. When King introduced the topic, Romney answered with more aplomb than he ever had before: “When they’re completed this year in April, I’ll release my returns in April and probably for other years as well.”

  But King would not let go. “In 1967, your father set . . . a groundbreaking standard in American politics,” the moderator reminded Mitt. “He released his tax return. He released them for not one year, but for twelve years. And when he did that, he said this: ‘One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.’ When you release yours, will you follow your father’s example?”

  “Maybe,” Romney replied with a forced laugh and a forged smile. The crowd jeered.

  Watching on Commercial Street, Rhoades couldn’t avoid the thought: We’re not going to make it to April. Unlike Stevens, with his what-me-worry optimism and ability always to find a pony in there somewhere, Rhoades was Boston’s designated realist and bearer of bad news. When potentially troubling stories flared up, Rhoades instantly placed them into one of two categories: they were either nothingburgers or shitburgers. To his mind, the tax-return dustup was inescapably the latter.

  Later that night, after the debate, Rhoades and White got on the phone with Mitt. Guv, this issue isn’t going away, Rhoades said. We need to lance the boil. With White in agreement, Romney relented, assigning his former Bain partner to oversee the readying of the release of at least one year of returns.

  The next morning, White assembled a small team in Boston to tackle the monumental task. Dozens of bankers’ boxes were hauled into a single office and put under lock and key. For the next seventy-two hours, the team was neck-deep in documents, combing through hundreds upon hundreds of pages. Most Americans had never seen anything resembling the Romney tax returns—the blindingly complex paperwork of extreme wealth. The members of the White task force were almost inured to it by now, having worked on Romney’s previous financial disclosure forms. Even so, they were stunned by the number of eyebrow raisers and potential political vulnerabilities that the tax returns presented. Every page raising an issue was flagged with a Post-it note. Soon enough, the room they were working in looked like a confetti factory.

  In South Carolina, the Romneys were reconciling themselves to what seemed a certain loss. Ann was more upset than Mitt at Newt’s efflorescence. She thought he was hotheaded, manipulative, impetuous, and immoral. That there was prejudice against her and Mitt’s faith among evangelicals was not news to her, but she took Gingrich’s surge as a galling reminder: the so-called values voters of South Carolina apparently hated Mormons so much that they preferred a serial philanderer.

  Mitt was less emotional than his wife, but not entirely composed. His schedule for the Saturday morning of the primary, January 21, included a meet-and-greet at Tommy’s Country Ham House, in Greenville. By sheer coincidence, Gingrich was expected to be there at the same time. When Romney learned this, he ordered his team to move up his arrival time, telling them, “I don’t want to see Newt Gingrich.” The press immediately tagged it the “Ham House Showdown” and declared Mitt the loser. On Romney’s staff, the humiliation was given another name: Hamageddon.

  Such apocalyptic phrase-making seemed all the more apt a few hours later, when the results of the primary rolled in. The trouncing Romney suffered was greater than expected: 40–28. It was also comprehensive, with Gingrich pummeling him soundly across the board: 42–26 with men and 38–29 with women; by nine or more points in every age cohort; by double digits in every educational segment except voters with postgraduate study (which Romney won by a bare two points); among both married and unmarried voters; among the poor, the middle class, and the rich; among Republicans and independents; among the very conservative and somewhat conservative; among voters most concerned about beating Barack Obama; among late deciders and early deciders; and, especially dramatically, among those for whom the debates were important.

  The sweep and scale of his loss took Romney aback. The political implications were all too clear. Ten days earlier, Mitt had seemed to be on
his way to a historic sweep. Now, after having the Iowa tiara snatched from his head and South Carolina blow up in his face, he was heading into Florida with just one notch in his belt. That so many voters—any voters, really—would pull the lever for Newt struck him as incomprehensible. What can they be thinking? Romney wondered.

  What Mitt was thinking was that he needed to reboot, and fast. A few hours after the primary results were in, he got on a conference call with Boston to discuss his tax returns. White’s task force walked everyone through the minefield of what they’d found: the offshore accounts, the IRA, the tax rates, the works.

  A plan was set for Romney to appear the next morning on Fox News Sunday and announce his intention to release his 2010 return and an estimate for 2011. They would do the deed on January 24, when Obama would be giving his State of the Union address, which might help to distract attention and lessen the media firestorm. Romney was quiet for much of the call, just listening to the task force and his media team hash it out, taking it all in. As the call was wrapping up, he thanked everyone—and then, in a tone of resignation, said, Well, I guess this is going to be a real shitburger I have to eat.

  Little as Romney relished the prospect, he realized that Rhoades and White were right—and even more so in light of the South Carolina loss. Gingrich is now the front-runner, Romney thought. He could be the nominee. To stop him, Mitt knew that Boston would need to be on offense, and with a vengeance. But as long as the tax-return controversy was out there, Romney would be playing defense.

  No one agreed more wholeheartedly with that than Christie. “End this stupid issue,” the New Jersey governor told Romney by phone later that night. Mitt, the cat’s out of the bag. You’re rich. Okay? Let’s use it as a strength, not as a weakness. You’ve been successful. You want other Americans to have the chance to be successful like you are. And by the way, you didn’t make your money by being an influence peddler on Capitol Hill like Gingrich made his money. So let’s start talking about that.

  “Get out of your crouch and kick the shit out of this guy,” Christie said. “That’s what you should do. He’s a joke. And you’re allowing him to be taken seriously.”

  None of this was news to Romney, but it was good to hear. The ten-day stretch between now and the vote in Florida on January 31 would be to Mitt what South Carolina had been to Newt: make or break. The next morning on a conference call with Boston, Romney was resolute.

  Guys, he said flatly. No messing around. We’ve got to shoot to kill here.

  • • •

  THE NEW, guns-blazing Romney hit the debate stage the next night, January 23, in Tampa, and encountered an exhausted and lethargic Gingrich, who suddenly seemed every bit his age. Mitt showed no mercy. He tore into Newt, attacking his character, raising questions about his ability to govern. On Freddie Mac, Romney took a cue from Christie and branded Newt an “influence peddler in Washington.” Cutting even closer to the bone was his denigration of Gingrich’s speakership. “The speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994,” Romney said. “And at the end of four years, he had to resign in disgrace.”

  While their man was letting fly in the debate, Boston was walking reporters through Romney’s taxes in preparation for their release the next day. The returns would show that Mitt had an effective tax rate of 14 percent for 2010, on $21.7 million in income, paying $3 million in federal taxes (after $3 million in charitable deductions), with roughly the same picture for 2011.

  The shitburger Romney had been expecting was duly served up by the press, which zeroed in on the special sauce of his Swiss bank account. In a heartbeat, the DNC put up a Web video—“What is Mitt Romney hiding? And where is he hiding it?”—that laid out a litany of abuses connected with Swiss-banking secrecy and featured audio of Malt explaining that the $3 million Romney had stashed at UBS was “a bank account, nothing more, nothing less. An ordinary bank account.”

  Much as the release of the tax returns delighted the Democratic opposition, it also sucked the air out of the issue in the primary—and allowed Boston to train its fire on Newt. The scorching assault was like Iowa times ten. Until now, the Romneyites had refrained from running negative ads against Gingrich, leaving Restore Our Future to do that dirty work. Now both the campaign and the super PAC unloaded on Newt from the air. On conference calls with reporters, Boston scratched and clawed at Gingrich’s claim of having been in the vanguard of the Reagan Revolution. A parade of establishment grandees—led by McCain and Dole—marched through Florida, dumping on Newt. The long-standing Rhoades pipeline to Matt Drudge became a viaduct; for several days, Drudge’s home page consisted of almost nothing but anti-Newt headlines linking to Boston-sourced nuggets. Taking the Hawkeye State psyops strategy to new heights, Romney surrogates started showing up at Gingrich’s events, providing a counter-narrative to reporters and occasionally even tangling with his press secretary as the TV news cameras rolled.

  On the debate stage again in Jacksonville, on January 26, Mitt reprised his Tampa takedown. Days earlier, Gingrich had visited the Florida Space Coast to talk some more about his passion for a lunar colony—over which Romney witheringly mocked him. “I spent twenty-five years in business,” Mitt said. “If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’”

  Once again, the angry teddy bear of the South Carolina debates was replaced by a sleepy, sedated beast. When he attempted to go after the moderator, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the ensuing ursid-on-canid action left Gingrich deflated as Blitzer calmly stood his ground. When Gingrich clipped Romney for having investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and with Goldman Sachs—“which is today foreclosing on Floridians,” Newt noted—a well-prepped Romney lowered the boom. “Mr. Speaker, I know that sounds like an enormous revelation, but have you checked your own investments?” Mitt asked. “You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

  Gingrich frowned. “All right,” he said meekly.

  Romney reveled in the post-debate commentary. Newt’s the pussycat and I’m the aggressor, they say, he thought. The press says I proved I’m tough. Mitt loved that. In Tampa, Gingrich had complained that the audience was too quiet; in Jacksonville, he whined that Boston had stacked the hall (which it had) and the audience was too loud. Romney found it hilarious, and vaguely pathetic.

  This guy is like Goldilocks, Mitt thought. Has to have everything just right—or he falls apart.

  • • •

  GINGRICH’S DISINTEGRATION LOOKED more like dismemberment two days after Jacksonville, when his bus pulled up outside the Centro Internacional de la Familia church, in Orlando. He was there for what had been billed as a Hispanic town hall meeting. Inside the church, there was row after row of vacant pews and forty-two voters. For an hour after the scheduled starting time, Newt and Callista remained cloistered on the bus. When they finally entered, it was announced that the event was no longer a town hall; the candidate would speak briefly, then take pictures with the scant few voters who’d turned up. Standing behind a Lucite lectern, Gingrich talked for a bare eight minutes and eleven seconds.

  The vertigo that Newt was experiencing was extreme. Coming out of South Carolina, he’d been greeted in Florida by massive crowds—six thousand in Naples, four thousand in Sarasota—and gotten news that Sheldon Adelson was bestowing another $5 million on Winning Our Future. Gingrich’s plan was to spend his week-plus in Florida talking about little except Romneycare and Obamacare. But the strategy was ripped up by the taunts of Team Romney, which provoked him into defensiveness and endless relitigation of issues that tormented him, especially the invective about how he exited his speakership under an ethical cloud.

  The “resign in disgrace” line echoed in Newt’s ears louder than anything else. His time in the speaker’s chair was the crowning achievement of his life. And here Romney and his lackeys were crapping all over it. To his
friend Vin Weber, the only Mitt adviser Gingrich really knew or trusted, he sent text after text, e-mail after e-mail, lodging fierce complaints.

  Weber thought Gingrich had a point. The speakership attacks were unfair, untrue, and, in fact, overkill. Weber was the rare Romneyite with a window into Newt’s psyche. He realized that killing Gingrich was necessary for Mitt to win. But there was a difference, Vin believed, between a dignified assassination and a public drawing and quartering. More than once, Weber warned Rhoades and others in Boston that some of their attacks were digging at Newt in a bad way. You’re at risk of making him not just mad but crazy, Weber said. And crazy people can be really dangerous.

  For Gingrich, the line between fuming and full-on berserk was thin—and a story that he read on January 29 threatened to push him across it. The piece was in that Sunday’s New York Times. Its headline read FACING SECOND LOSS TO GINGRICH, ROMNEY WENT ON WARPATH. The article chronicled in vivid detail Boston’s consultations the day after South Carolina, describing the Romneyites’ plan to “eviscerate” Gingrich in Florida by “mak[ing] Newt mad and Mitt meaner.”

  The word “eviscerate” seemed to flip a switch inside Newt and Callista. They repeated it over and over to each other: “eviscerate.” Everything they despised about Romney was embedded in that word: the premeditation, the soullessness, the malignancy, the arid amorality.

  That morning the couple attended services at the Exciting Idlewild Baptist Church, in Lutz, just north of Tampa, a megachurch so mega that it had its own Starbucks in the lobby. Afterwards, Gingrich stood in the parking lot with the media and unleashed a spree of rhetorical violence that made Weber seem prescient. Calling Romney a “pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, pro-tax-increase moderate from Massachusetts” using “money from Wall Street” to spread pernicious lies—“as big an outrage as I’ve had in my career”—Newt predicted that Mitt would be unable to secure the requisite number of delegates to claim his party’s nomination. “When you add the two conservatives together,” Gingrich maintained, referring to himself and Santorum, “we clearly beat Romney.” He vowed to spend the months ahead waging a “straight-out contest” that would go on all the way to Tampa.