Posted on 01/13/2012 9:39:30 PM PST by Steelfish
January 13, 2012 Gingrich and Santorum Vie to Be the Conservative of Choice By RICHARD A. OPPEL JR.
DUNCAN, S.C. — Conventional wisdom dictates that for either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to vault past Mitt Romney and win the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21, they must handily win the vote of upstate social conservatives, like the ones who packed a high school lunchroom here Friday night. But if the reactions of the 500 or so people here were any indication, these voters remain split.
Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, asked the crowd to vote for him because he is the only candidate, he suggested, who can both outperform President Obama in a debate and provide a clear enough conservative break with Mr. Obama’s policies, making him a safer choice to win the general election.
“If Barack Obama, with the disaster he has been, can get re-elected, the level of radicalism he will impose in his second term will be beyond anything you can imagine,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Defeating him is central to everything we are doing.”
He added that if he won both this state and Florida’s primary at the end of the month, he would have the momentum he needed to win the nomination. And in what seemed to be a veiled swipe at the front-runner, Mr. Romney, he warned that conservatives might split their vote. If that happens, he said to applause, “we are going to stumble into nominating somebody that 95 percent of the people in this room are going to be very uncomfortable with.”
Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, likened himself to Ronald Reagan, and called on voters to make him the winner of their primary, as they did for Mr. Reagan in 1980.
(Excerpt) Read more at thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com ...
So, Newt is the only chance to stop Romney.
Santorum has no staying power.
Oh, and spare me with the Newt is the "only one who can win" garbage...if that were so, he'd be ahead of Santorum in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond. He wouldn't have had to back off of the ads he's running on Romney's Bain ties.
Newt's biggest obstacle is NEWT....While Newt and Perry were playing patty-cake with Slick Willard over class-warfare issues, Santorum was hammering point after point...
Rick Santorum: ‘There Are No Classes In America’
The Governor [Mitt Romney] used a term earlier that I shrink from, and it’s one that I don’t think we should be using as Republicans: “Middle class.” There are no classes in America. We’re a country that don’t allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. Maybe middle income people. But the idea, somehow or another, that we’re going to buy into the class warfare arguments of Barack Obama is something that should not be part of the Republican lexicon. That’s their job. Divide. Separate. Put one group against another. That’s not the language I’ll use as president."
Why have elections??? We could just ask you who won without leaving the house to vote! Newtie’s are getting as bad as Rove, Romney, and the Paultards....Newt’s not even in 3rd place, yet you’re already declaring victory.
"There are no classes in America. We’re a country that don’t allow for titles."
Obama's tactic 'class warfare' - is also his goal,- to eliminate the 'classes'. Starting with the 'middle-class'. To create a 'One class' Utopia. This is Progressives ultimate goal.
The problem is the system is rigged so that the frontrunner is crowned after 2 States.
Since the system is the way it is, the Conservatives must get behind a single candidate to defeat the handpicked candidate of the elites of the Party.
I don't like it either.
Rick has been lackluster for a while. Makes one wonder why he got in. Perhaps because his name kept coming up during the McCain disaster? At any rate, I think he would do well if in office, but he seems to want to be elevated instead of taking the time and effort to prepare for a real clawfest. I wonder how energetic he would be as the nominee - would he really take it to Obama or sit back and wait for folks to "come to their senses and vote for him"?
Newt Gingrich's 28-minute attack ad received four pinocchios for being dishonest. In his attempts to attack Mr. Romney, he's really just making attacks on the free enterprise system. He's trying to pretend that he isn't, but he's simply making distinctions without a difference. He's embarrassing himself and the entire GOP in the process. In the meantime, Mr. Santorum has had the integrity and the dignity to avoid making similar ridiculous comments.
Rick Santorum is having to live down previous opposition to right-to-work in a state that is facing the loss of many jobs to union interference. In addition, his record as something of a big-spending Republican will not fit well in a state that once elected spending hawk Mark Sanford, continues to elect spending hawk Jim DeMint, and in 2010 elected Tea Party spending hawk Nikki Haley. You can whine to your hearts' content about Governor Haley being a RINO for endorsing Mitt Romney, but her election through the Tea Party movement is a sign that South Carolina Republicans are not that friendly to a bigger spending Republican. Rick Santorum's other problem with consolidating the anti-Romney vote is that he's behind Newt Gingrich, so he'd be asking for more people to switch to come to him than would be needed for his people to switch.
Rick Perry's attempt to make an issue of "vulture capitalism" was as silly as Newt Gingrich's tantrum ads. One of his major donors left him for Mitt Romney's campaign because he made those silly attacks. In all ways, he's embarrassing himself and to some extent the party, but his money keeps him in the race.
One of these candidates may leave the race before Saturday, but none are showing any signs of being the one. Until we see those signs, we don't have a reason to believe that they won't all continue through South Carolina.
Newt Gingrich would like to believe that a win in South Carolina could lead to a win in Florida and enough momentum to win. That strategy has several problems. First, South Carolina, like Iowa, was a state that Mitt Romney never expected to win. Mr. Romney's being ahead now is a surprise, and a close second place for him still means that he's outperformed expectations. Secondly, Florida Republicans are trying to take South Carolina's place as the state through which the nominee must come. Many of them will be tempted to vote against the South Carolina winner just to break South Carolina's streak of picking nominees. That temptation will be particularly strong if a weak candidate like Newt Gingrich wins in South Carolina. Thirdly, Mitt Romney has planned for a 50-state campaign. Newt Gingrich has only been planning and organizing for impromptu campaigns set up by the momentum of the latest win. Even sweeping every state, no one can win enough delegates to win the nomination until late March or so. Newt Gingrich's angry elf routine is going to wear quickly on voters, and he hasn't shown the patience to stay on message and be positive for that long.
Rick Perry and Rick Santorum may have a better chance than Newt Gingrich does for this reason. Neither of them is quite as polarizing or uninspiring as Dr. Gingrich is when he's in angry elf mode. If one of them survives long enough to be the "not Romney" in March, he would have a much better chance than Newt Gingrich does.
Funny how it works that way.
Obama's tactic 'class warfare' - is also his goal,- to eliminate the 'classes'. Starting with the 'middle-class'. To create a 'One class' Utopia. This is Progressives ultimate goal.
Three New Deals - reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939
http://cloud.lib.wfu.edu/vufind/Record/2387751/Excerpt
"To what extent was the New Deal's effectiveness due to its ability to incorporate the very elements that rendered these regimes so popular--a new vision of the nation based on collectivism, on economic and social planning, and embodied both in a charismatic leader and in monumental public works? The features with which totalitarianism was later most closely identified--political pressure to conform, repression, state terrorizing of dissidents, secret police units, and concentration camps--were not the things that made these regimes desirable. The people were attracted by the feeling of being treated as equals instead of being ignored and by the sense that they no longer had to fend for themselves but, rather, could enjoy the protection, security, and solidarity afforded by the new classless community of the nation."
"I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman." - Franklin Roosevelt on Mussolini.
____________
SANTORIUM had already dismissed limited government in theory. Promoting his book, he told NPR in 2006:
"One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle. This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture."
No wonder Jonathan Rauch wrote in 2005 that “America’s Anti-Reagan Isn’t Hillary Clinton. It’s Rick Santorum.” Rauch noted:
In his book he comments, seemingly with a shrug, “Some will reject what I have to say as a kind of ‘Big Government’ conservatism.”
They sure will. A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, “individual development accounts,” publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in “every school in America” (his italics), and more. Lots more.
Rauch concluded,
With It Takes a Family, Rick Santorum has served notice. The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left, but from the Right.
At least Santorum is right about one thing: sometimes the left and the right meet in the center. In this case the big-spending, intrusive, mommy-AND-daddy-state center. But he’s wrong that we’ve never had a firmly individualist society where people are “left alone, able to do whatever they want to do.”
It’s called America.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/rick-santorum-v-limited-government/
“Bravo! Newt needs to get out.”
Absolutely! He needs to step aside for Santorum. Newt’s smart, and I’m sure he loves America, but he’s just not able to keep his temper in check, and he can’t help mouthing off before thinking through an issue. He’d be terrible. His arrogance and temper make him a loose cannon.
Newt has clearly been rising since he went to "angry elf mode." Ask yourself why. People are looking for a fighter to take it to Obama. Rick and Rick have a better chance? That's just embarrassing.
SHHHHH Don’t tell the MSM. (You are absolutely correct)
A moral Christian Family man is our only option, Rick Santorum. Do we really want a fip flopper who changes his mind on Global Warming, cheating on his wife after promising to be faithful, endorsing a vile suzzynova, and so many others. We have a once in a lifetime choice here and it is Santorum. You can trust him because he has been faithful to his wife and will be faithful to the American people. This guy has never lied to the American people. It is stunning. Why this good man gets bashed is revolting especially on this site.
Onyx? hummmmm. But Newt who has good points but was kicked out of the Congress by Republicans is better? Onyx we cannot be on different sides of this primary can we????? That is impossible. lol. I think it could be that we are in the situation of an embarrassment of riches. Too many choices which is unusual for us. Have a great weekend!
I agree. I can't see Santorum as president right now. Maybe in another 8 years. If he and Newt got together and ran as a team, they would beat Romney and Obama.
This election cycle seemed to have such promise 2 years ago but it sure is disappointing right now. We need a shake-up! I think Newt's the guy that can provide it, with the help of one of the Ricks.
Very telling. What sort of candidate acts like that?
Excellent post!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.