[Darkwolf377]

He's still up 2.4% nationally

I just clicked the link--1.8% nationally.

I don't think Newt can beat Obama. I wish I didn't believe that.

[Utmost Certainty]

Eh, Newt would make mincemeat of Obama 1-1. Under any circumstances where a decisive contrast could be shown between the two men, Obama would be irrefutably exposed as the incompetent pretender president he is.

Further, the only real way Republicans can win in 2012, is by articulating a vision consistent with actual American ideals and values, that inspires people to take seriously what these mean—i.e., we need ‘hope’ and ‘change’, except for real this time. Newt gets that IMO, far more so than any the others.

Above all, if Republicans fail to present an inspiring alternative to how life can be, the electorate will just apathetically tune them out. Languishing under 4 more years of Obama will seem more preferable simply because he’s a known quantity and because the other side wasn’t offering enough compelling difference to justify a shift, so why bother? At which point the war of ideas will be lost for the foreseeable future and the US will fade into a slumber of bureaucratic socialism.

[nathanbedford]

It seems me there are two schools of Republican thought about how to win national elections: the Ronald Reagan school and the Carl Rove school.

The Carl Rove school structures an election in a way similar to what Obama is doing this cycle, by paring down the electorate to 50% plus one vote in the electoral college. In the process Rove gave Bush (barely) two terms in the White House. The first term, you will recall, was one as a minority candidate because Gore actually exceeded him in the popular vote total.

In the 2004 election, Rove ran on the Iraq war succeeded in nationalizing the election on that basis and increasing Bush's popular vote and electoral vote count. Thereafter, and even beginning in 2004, Rove sacrificed the Republican hold on Congress to his minimalist approach to the campaign. In effect, Bush sacrificed the Congress to maintain the war.

The other approach was demonstrated by Ronald Reagan which is to dominate the game and attract the electorate to a new vision. That is what Obama did in 2008. It was so sweeping that the vast middle of America never looked behind the empty rhetoric of "hope and change" which articulated the so-called vision. But the principle remains, Obama swept all before him with his vision, however bogus.

I believe Gingrich is in the Reagan mold and Romney is in the Karl Rove mold.