When he takes the stage for yet another debate tonight Mitt Romney will face a new frontrunner: Newt Gingrich. Keep an eye out for what we’re calling The Reagan Gap.
Gingrich has gotten where he is on the strength of his performance on the debate stage — or, more to the point, his ability to use the debate as a means to mind meld with the GOP base. While Romney has held his own in the debates, he hasn’t been able to use the forums catapult past the less conservative-friendly bits of his image like Gingrich has.
Here’s one example of what that looks like. Gingrich, mindful of his audience and the self-proclaimed best debater in the field, has name dropped Ronald Reagan more than anyone else — a total of 21 times in debates so far, according to numbers crunched by the University Of Minnesota’s Smart Politics team.
How many times has Romney mentioned the patron saint of the conservative movement? A grand total of zero:
With Gingrich at the top of the polls, expect the debates to turn more acerbic (toward the media) and more academic. If the past is any judge, that means tonight’s debate — the second focused on foreign policy — will include a lot of talk about Reagan.
The past has come up many times in the GOP debates, which is what you’d expect from the nostalgia-loving conservative side of the political spectrum. But when presidents who came before Obama are discussed, none get more shoutouts than Reagan.
How much more discussion does the Gipper get than his predecessors? A lot more:
That breaks down to 53 mentions for Reagan “compared to 38 mentions for all other 42 ex-presidents combined,” the Smart Politics team reports.
And who’s dropping the names of past presidents the most? Why, Professor Newt, of course:
Does it matter how many times a person says “Ronald Reagan” on a debate stage? Maybe not, but it’s an easy way of understanding why Gingrich is winning the debates and Romney is just getting by. Where Romney often sounds like he’s rehearsing for debates against Obama that his team (and many observers) believe to be in his future, Gingrich is playing for the hometown crowd. And the polls show the hometown crowd is loving it.
Charts by Josh Petri
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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