A House Divided The divider of the Republican party is its front-runner, Mitt Romney.

WSJ ^ | January 5, 2012 | DANIEL HENNINGER

[woofie]

'A house divided against itself cannot stand," is attributed mainly to Newt Gingrich's and Barack Obama's favorite Republican, Abraham Lincoln, but its appeal to unity has been around since the Gospel of Mark. As is its habit, the Republican Party is trying to affirm this eternal truth one more time.

Much as it benefits the incumbent president, there is little point in not admitting the obvious: The Republican divider is the party's front-runner, Mitt Romney. This is the one clear message delivered the past half year by the patient people of Iowa.

Once all the other top-tier Republican presidential candidates chose not to run, the heavyweight Mr. Romney should have cruised well above the bench-warmers who opposed him in Iowa. It never happened.

Mr. Romney had already run in 2008's Iowa caucuses. You can guess what his vote percentage was in 2008. That's right, 25.1%, essentially what he got in his eight-vote win Tuesday.

Whatever time Mr. Romney chose to spend in Iowa this year, the voters knew him. Surveying the current edition of the Romney candidacy and charged with picking a GOP presidential nominee, Iowa's voters in their wisdom commenced a time-honored technique for finding a solution to a problem with no obvious answer: They threw every candidate against the wall to see if any would stick.

The dogged Rick Santorum stuck.

Two quick Santorum thoughts: What were all those debates about? And national security still beats isolationism among Republicans.

Beyond this, what Mr. Santorum's astonishing whip-hand run to a photo finish from the rear of the pack means is hard to know exactly, but the increasingly smug Romney campaign ought to give it thought. The implications of the Santorum run are both positive and ominous.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Romney is a democrat wearing a stolen “R”.

[woofie]

I think he is a run of the mill politician with good hair who said what he had to say to get elected Gov of Mass.....now he is saying what he has to say to win the Republican primary
Soon (if he wins) he will say what he has to say to win the Presidency

[EternalVigilance]

The nomination of Mitt Romney will be the end of the Republican Party. Take that to the bank.

[.30Carbine]

That Daniel Henninger sure can write! What a great way to approach the subject! Thanks so much for posting.

[Yorlik803]

Romney is overblown used car salesmen.
How this putz ever got this far is a statement on how bad the GOP has gotten.
McCain,Dole, Romney: The list goes on for a page.
And they never seem to learn.

[DaxtonBrown]

Great article by Henninger stating the obvious. We are at war with the Republican elite as much as with Obama. If Romney is the nominee it will happen through guile, strategery and lots of money, but he will have almost no support from the base. Pushing Romney over the line will be sepuku hara kiri for the GOP

[ballplayer]

Problem is it will also be the End of the Country as we Know it when the Marxist finishes it off with another 4 years. Case in Point look at what he Did Yesterday by Flouting the Constitution with the Recess appointments,and this with him still FACING reelection,what do you think he will do when he Doesnt have to face another election?

[ballplayer]

Problem is it will also be the End of the Country as we Know it when the Marxist finishes it off with another 4 years. Case in Point look at what he Did Yesterday by Flouting the Constitution with the Recess appointments,and this with him still FACING reelection,what do you think he will do when he Doesnt have to face another election?

[DoughtyOne]

When we’re talking about an eight point win, and the totals for Romney and Santorum were in excess of 30,000 votes each, I have a hard time describing Romney as the front runner, even if the statistical dead heat victory did somewhat warrant the term. It would seem more accurate to describe him as one of the front runners.

[nikos1121]

I’m almost at a point of thinking that if Romney gets the nomination, I will NOT vote for him. I think it would be better to have four more years of the idiot Obama, then have someone who truly can unite us.

Fact is, I can’t see a mojority of Americans voting in Obama unless there is a third party candidate of some value.

The Iowa caucuses brought out the guy’s true colors. It’s funny how McCain and Huckabee have forgotton what the guy is all about.

[nathanbedford]

Our problem in our quest to find a champion to oppose Obama is not Mitt Romney, he is articulating a well-established point of view of the Republican Party. His point of view is not my point of view because he is not conservative (even though he contrives to make his message sound conservative). But no one can deny that he is a viable candidate with a real chance to be nominated and, if nominated, he has a genuine chance to defeat Obama.

The real problem is Ron Paul.

There are really only two viable conservatives left in the race, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Unfortunately, after Paul and Romney are accounted their irreducible minimum percentage of votes in the primaries there remain only about 50% for Santorum and Gingrich to divide up. When we hear that 75% of the Republican Party by polls and in the Iowa caucuses repudiated Mitt Romney, we must understand that the Paul vote has nothing to do with Romney.

The Ron Paul vote is sui generis which means that it is an outlier, it is largely unaffected by current events, such as developments in Iran, indeed, Ron Paul's support is largely unaffected by any extraneous considerations except his conception of fiscal matters. His acolytes have seized on one elemental truth, the federal government has overstepped its constitutional bounds, it has violated the 10th amendment, as a result it has run up a debt which threatens the very existence of the Republic, and Ron Paul can rightly be heard to say, "I told you so."

Ron Paul has been exceedingly effective at moving the Republican Party to the right but he is and will be a singular failure at moving the country to the right. When the Democrats attempt to push the country to the left by explicitly telling people what they are doing they lose in landslides. Ron Paul says, "I want to enforce the Constitution" but people hear, "I am going to take away your Social Security check." The Democrats got smart, they run right and govern left. The Republicans have an advantage, the country says it wants a conservative view, the constitutional view, but the country actually tends to vote its purse. The electorate wants to hear conservatives preach constitutional purity but they want their Social Security check on time.

The Democrats win elections not not just by demagoguing the Republican's fiscal austerity but by supplying the rationale by which people can have their self-righteousness and their big government too.

One major way they do this by playing the race card. They deflect the issue away from our looming fiscal disaster and call their opposition racists. That ends the debate and the music plays on.

Their demagoguery is versatile and there is no question that Ron Paul will be painted to be such an extremist that he could not possibly win an election against Obama. Even a Republican with a good pedigree will have difficulty combating $1 billion worth of Obama demagoguery and the media's echo chamber. Ron Paul has no chance whatsoever.

The arithmetic in the primaries is inexorable. Romney maintains is 25% because he has won the electability issue. This is not to pass judgment on whether Romney's claim to electability is really viable, it is simply to identify the rationale for his support.

The challengers to Romney have not been able to shut down his campaign because of their own failings. Every one of them has put a foot down wrong and has been punished as a result. Cain has a zipper problem, Gingrich baggage problem, Bachmann a gravitas problem, Perry a goofus problem, and so it goes.

When one of the rivals sticks his head above the parapet Romney's satellite organizations kill them with negative ads. Because it is so difficult for the non-Romney candidate to gain traction when there is only 25% electorate available to him, Romney, with his money and surefooted campaign, remains the leader. If Mitt Romney has 25% and Paul 20 to 25%, and the challenger 25%, there is only 25% more from which to get votes if they cannot be taken from either Paul or Romney. Circumstances demonstrate that it is difficult to take votes from either the fanatics who support Paul or from the entrenched establishment which supports Romney.

The Paul votes for the most part are unaffected by reason and, shamefully, are unaffected by the stark truth that they might well hand the election to Barack Obama. Much less are they affected by the truth that they might hand the nomination to Mitt Romney. The latter would be a shame but the former would be a national tragedy.

Nevertheless, they remain adamant because they are self-righteous.

[Diogenesis]

People are human.
The challengers to saboteur and backstabber-by-surrogate Romney
have not been able to shut down
his campaign because of, not their own failings,
but the fact remains that MSM and Sharia and IAG support Romney.

We saw this before when ALL MSM time was devoted to ... Romney.

---

Proven-Failed Governor Mitt Romney should be NOWHERE near the Commerce Dept.

"As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.
* Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.
* Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.
* While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]

---

Alex Beam: “In truth, Ronald Reagan
and Mitt Romney have as much in common
as Cardinal O’Malley and Conan O’Brien.
Deservedly or not, Reagan earned a reputation for constancy.
Once he turned against communism, he opposed it big-time.
…. And our former governor? Inconstancy, thy name is Mitt!
A woman’s right to choose? Yes! No! Yes!
Are we in Massachusetts? Yes! Are we in Iowa? No!
Are we on TV? Whatever!”

[LibLieSlayer]

“Romney is a democrat wearing a stolen “R”.”

So are boehner, mcconnell and priebus... all “d”’s.

LLS

[SueRae]

Geez, this is like the Dem nomination process in ‘08 beween Hitlery and 0bama. It hasn’t worked out so well for their side, either, and the damage to the country (and its psyche in particular) continues unabated. But the Dem brand has been damaged. Other than those two front runners, who are their successors?

Should Willard ultimately prevail and drastic changes are not made within his likely one term, where are we in 2016?

Maybe both parties need to end ugly in order to rebuild. I’m lost...and ready for a bumpy ride. Thank goodness for Freepers in these times.

[LibLieSlayer]

Don't forget fraud... romney created 26 votes in Iowa to eek out a win... voter fraud... it is the progressive tool.

LLS

[LibLieSlayer]

I swear on my sacred honor that mitt romney will never see a vote from LLS EVER! I am also donating directly to candidates that are Conservative... the repubics cannot be trusted... and I have been doing so since 2008 (and before... before Sarah was chosen to run as VP).

LLS

[Diogenesis]

Willard cannot prevail because Americans
do NOT vote for dog abusers, flip floppers,
ineligible candidates (they have learned mucho),
and backstabbing cowards like Willard "Mitt" Romney.

And THAT is before you throw in Willard's BIG DIG
coverup, hard drive coverup, fake badges,
RomneyCARE, Romney vs. the Clerks, fake endorsements,
and now, possibly, a dozen fake votes.

[SueRae]

Yep, he makes me ill, too. Seeing McCain endorse him had me throwing things. I need a “news” sabbatical.

[j.argese]

The problem with Ron Paul is his followers, sheep who fancy themselves to be freethinkers, conformists pretending to be bohemians. Their 23% is Romney’s 23% with different wrapping.