Ironically for anyone who remembers the 90’s, Newt Gingrich seems poised to play the role held in 2008 by his nemesis, Hillary Clinton.
After Iowa, the 2008 race was turned on its head, turning the establishment candidate into the scrappy underdog, and the young upstart into the favorite of both the elites and much of the grassroots. Subsequently, Obama’s failure to channel his momentum into a New Hampshire win meant a primary contest that went through three changes of season and seven months as Clinton doggedly stayed in the race, with sporadic but significant victories in Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio.
Electorally speaking, the Republicans may face a similarly zig-zagging primary process, given the structure of their primary elections calendar. As Gingrich’s star rises, particularly his significant coup with the New Hampshire Union Leader’s endorsement, Romney’s primary results may only be glancing blows instead of the needed knockouts. If Romney does not establish decisive wins within the first few primaries, the longevity of the Republican primary calendar means a grueling and potentially intriguing obstacle course race to the nomination. Delegate-heavy primaries like New York and California don’t take place until April and June, respectively (far later than in 2008). The gap in electorally significant contests between Florida on January 31 and Super Tuesday on March 6 will provide plenty of As Jon Ward and Mark Blumenthal reported at Huffington Post, “…the altered calendar will create the most spread-out contest since the 1970s…mathematically, it will be hard for Romney to argue after January and February that he is the putative nominee.”
But the spoiler role is about more than just riding out a long contest. True spoilers expose and exploit the intraparty fissures that turn elections into identity crises. Clinton’s prolonged candidacy became a microcosm for Democrats’ internecine conversations about race, gender, and age. Robin Morgan excoriated young Obama supporters for betraying feminism, who responded in kind, while Caroline Kennedy played ref and declared Obama the winner of the 60’s mantle. The long-running conversation exposed both the conflicts and the overlaps between the Democratic voter bases. The possibility for a similarly explicit showdown among Republicans gives this primary season some real zest. (Finally.) Though this contest may lack the visceral punch of the white-female-vs.-black-male, Gingrich and Romney slugging it out would mean a head-to-head matchup of the Reagen coalition’s two factions: social conservatives and economic conservatives.
As of now, Gingrich need only place within the top three in Iowa and New Hampshire to justify remaining in the race for months to come. Between the advantages of the primary election sequence and the fractured Republican base, with its appetite for a Romney alternative, in this case we may see that to the spoiler goes the victory.
