Posted on 02/16/2012 11:57:28 PM PST by techno
Folks, we live in fascinating times, a time which I believe we are going to find it more and more difficult to find political consensus in.
Take today for example:
Jack Cafferty of CNN is lauding CNN's new push poll of Obama's overall approval (50%) and that the Messiah will overmatch and outwit any of the GOP presidential candidates, whichever one becomes the nominee. He acted like the cat who had just swallowed the canary, he was beside himself, gloating from ear to ear.
Unfortunately some posters on the right-wing blogosphere have also adopted this negative narrative and posture as well, that our side has no hope in dethroning Obama in November. They see all the GOP candidates as fatally flawed or bewail the notion that the base of the GOP may reject Mitt Romney for a pretender to the throne named Rick Santorum.
Then you take the information from the 3 day Gallup daily tracking poll that shows over the last week (Feb 6-8) to Feb 16 (Feb 13-15)Obama's overall approval/disapproval has fallen from 49/45 to 43/48. Some people on our side are elated with the news and also realize that President Obama is virtually in the same political place and predicament that he was in on November 2, 2010--with an overall approval of about 45%-and we know what happened when the Democrats only received 44.8% of the vote back then--an electoral blowout, the likes that had not been seen by the GOP since 1938.
Then you have the folks on our side playing woe is me and knocking their head against the wall in disgust, that Rick Santorum has a strong possibility now of beating Mitt Romney in both Michigan and Ohio by coalescing conservative forces around, previously thought very improbable, thereby putting a serious dent into Romney's presidential aspirations and improving our chances the a conservative nominee will be chosen, with that improving our chances in the fall (Romney cannot beat Obama because of Romneycare and because he is weak). Instead they want Sarah Palin to advise conservatives to abandon this coalition, to again engage in vote splitting, the formula that brought us the likes of McCain in 2008 and will most assuredly bring us the likes of Romney in 2012 if he rises like the phoenix from the ashes after his defeats on Feb 28 and March 6 and comes back to win the nomination. Do you folks really want to face the dark prospects of a Romney resurrection so that an outside possibility of a brokered convention can be achieved? Romney must be taken down when our side has a chance to take him down, period. If we pussyfoot, we might not get a second chance to do so.
Some of us have become so obsessed with how terrible a nominee Santorum would be, nitpicking him to death, treating him worse than you would treat Obama, acting like he would be blown out like Goldwater was, whereas that is simply not in the cards (Obama is polling in the mid 40's not above 70% as LBJ was in 1964), while forgetting how disastrous a nominee Mitt Romney would be. Yes, Romney would keep the contest close, as the other candidates would as well, but with Obamacare off the table because of Romneycare, Mitt would have forfeited our ace in the hole and Obama is simply too cunning and glib and too well-funded to not to ride that "puppy" all the way to a narrow victory.
Then you have folks like me who attempt to stay fairly even-keeled and rational, who understand the lay of the land, and understand the overwhelming power of the media to craft a narrative or to impose disinformation and propaganda on an unsuspecting public, who understand the ups and downs of presidential politics while totally cognizant of the polling parameters of which the sitting President falls in between in the short-term and has languished there for over 2 and 1/2 years as well since July 2009, that Obama and his gang of cutthroats are now desperate beyond belief to put the coalition back together that helped bring Obama the WH in 2008 because his approval numbers with milennials, Hispanics and single folks (especially single white females)is down 10-15 points in each demographic since 2008.
How desperate must Obama be to pick a fight with the teachings of the Roman Catholic church over the issue of contraception and at the same time incur the wrath of the church hierarchy knowing there is a slight possibility that the GOP nominee may himself by a Roman Catholic? And some of us act, like at a 45% overall approval rating that Obama just ate our lunch or dealt our side a death blow.
From PEW Research today:
Obama's approval/disapproval with white Catholics: 42/49
Earlier this month PEW posted a poll that showed of white Catholics 42% now self-identify as Democrats and 49% now claim the are or lean to the GOP side. In other words Obama's efforts have not moved the needle one inch in a group he needs to win back. Like Rich Galen said today on CNN--this move was not about the proselytization of GOP or independent voters but an effort to re-energize the Democratic base. In Galen's words, nobody's mind was changed as result of the recent controversy concerning the Catholic church and contraception. A good number of non-white Catholics (Hispanics) and single white young women were never ours to begin with. That is why polls can be so important to separate the wheat from the chaff.
My position and that of many others is that the #1 political strategy of Obama and his cohorts in this election cycle will be to depress the turnout of white voters, especially white conservative voters in 9 months and his strategy to bring that off is as old as the hills-convince the voters on our side with the aid of media progressive saturation and propaganda and push polls that Obama is invincible or inevitable and will in all likelihood sail to an easy victory, to drain away the enthusiasm and passion from our side while the primaries proceed right up to the convention and then to convince GOP primary voters the WH would fear most going up against Mitt Romney in the general election and thus elevate Romney to the nomination in desperation, thereby depressing GOTV efforts in the fall and causing many conservatives and evangelicals to remain on their couch rather than to vote for Mitt Romney on Nov 6/2012.
A secondary benefit also could be that the Democrats could retain the Senate and take back the House because of low turnout on our side and maximum turnout on the other side due to Obama's superb organizational skills.
For those who shout bloody murder about Rick Santorum, do you really believe if he is at the helm, given his current massive support from conservatives, evangelicals and Tea Party supporters that the voters on our side will not come out in full force but instead that white conservatives are going to stay home in droves like they did 4 years ago with McCain? Folks I predict it will be like The Field of Dreams: Santorum will build a conservative vision for the future and they will come and that includes a massive amount of white female voters as well.
But I would prefer that Sarah Palin build the conservative vision of the future than Rick Santorum. (I am first a Palinista). Imho both would maximize white conservative voter turnout but Palin would be the superior candidate. But the looming political reality may NOT permit Palin to enter the presidential battlefield in overtime (brokered convention). If Santorum can in theory win the primaries in regulation time (before the convention), Sarah Palin, by her own words of Fox News yesterday, will NOT be a player in the arena to stop Santorum. She can only do so much watching from the sidelines.
Of course, I could be dead wrong and the votes of the delegates are indeed divvied up in such a manner that no candidate commands more than 50% of the delegates giving rise to a brokered convention, that all 4 candidates stay in the race to the bitter end right to the convention and that the party machine has not made side deals to ensure a nominee will be chosen before the convention. If this can be achieved, more power to Sarah Palin and her apparent strategy to avoid the marginalization and demonization of the battlefield and compete at a brokered convention relatively unscathed. But in football as in modern day politics,most games are settled in regulation time and not overtime. But anything is possible. Who am I to debunk the notion of a brokered convention? But all I am saying is that one should at least consider or entertain the possibility, however remote it appears now, that Rick Santorum could win the nomination in regulation time. Feb 28 and March 6 (Super Tuesday) will tell us more likely which road map the GOP primaries will take going forward: the road the ends with the coronation of either Santorum or even Romney before the convention or the road that takes us straight to Tampa and a brokered convention.
The next 3 weeks will be history in the making, whichever way it turns out.
Note: I did not include Newt Gingrich in my discussion. Like many pundits I believe his campaign is over; he just hasn't figured it out or announced it yet.
By the way did Santorum do anything illegal?
And you mention corruption. Was Rick anymore corrupt than our current President. I don’t think so.
But if Santorum wins the nomination are you going to sit home? You’re not going to vote for Obama, are you?
Running the House, the second most important job in government? Seems like it to me.
Gov. Mitt Romney has bad executive experience. That’s worse than none. Try again.
AMEN
WELL SAID! Your whole post is terrific.
GO NEWT!!!
“Gov. Mitt Romney has bad executive experience. That’s worse than none. Try again.”
Mitt’s problem isn’t that he had bad experience. It’s that he hasn’t learned from his bad experience.
Okay. It consists of a 10 percent and 28 percent income tax. You still pay FICA under that. Corporate taxes are 17 percent and 0 for manufacturers (for his union buddies). Capital Gains tax remains, but he is kind enough to lower it to 12 percent. Social security he turns back the retirement age, promises something about “making sure social security money goes to social security”, and blah blah blah. It’s relatively untouched.
Newt’s is a flat tax of 15 percent. If you don’t like it, you can stay on the current progressive tax system. Corporate taxes are a flat 12.5 percent. This is for ALL businesses. There are no playing with favorites. Social security is privatized (at least for younger workers), which is an excellent first stem in abolishing it altogether.
Two of the biggest issues in the country... your guy simply doesn’t touch.
The progressive tax system should be the target of our collective energies. This punishment of the rich on behalf of the poor is, to its very core, aimed to keep us under lock and key to the progressives and their class warfare politics. The destruction of this system and eventually adopting a purely EQUITABLE system where NO ONE pays more or less would utterly cripple the left.
Social security is doomed and cannot be saved no matter how you play around with it. It must be phased out. I need not argue too hardly on that. The Chilean Model has been proven to work, and it is an excellent substitute for our current woes.
Newt’s plan doesn’t go as far as I want it to go. In my personal opinion, we ought to work to amend the constitution to remove the income tax altogether. A move to a pure Fair Tax is the way to go. Nevertheless, any step which undermines this is a step in the right direction.
Saint Rick doesn’t understand this. He actively has voted against it in the past (he voted against the flat tax). He has distorted it when Cain was running on 999 (which is derived from the fair tax), and he is utterly unspecific in the vast majority of his proposals.
I don’t want to return to an America where we are debating gay marriage every day, like we did during the Bush years. We need to move on from this and make some serious reforms the very system of the government.
Newt wins this because he is the most experienced political leader who isn’t afraid to embrace good ideas and campaign for them. We need a leader who will support us as we work to take back Congress and push through important legislation.
Santorum simply doesn’t have that background and hasn’t shown an interest in running on real issues. Sure, he bleats aout “lowering taxes”, removing Obummercare. Everybody wants to do that. The question is, how? Santorum doesn’t emphasize it because it really is only secondary to his campaign. Running on social issues is NOT a winner, and that is NOT going to keep our movement active once our main enemy is out of the way.
A speaker do not count as executive experience. They’re no different than other senators/congressman. They’re more like supervisors than a manager. Only someone who have been governor or run a business count as executive experience
That's the problem right there. Santorum is pretty much ONLY known as a social values warrior. With Rick, we get sermons on the evils of pornography, contraception, gambling, etc. These are not side issues for him, these ARE his main issues.
It would be one thing if Santorum were a well known champion of budget cuts, or reforming entitlements, or ending the influence of labor unions, or some sort of big, conservative theme the population would naturally associate him with because of his past. Unfortunately, with Rick, we get social/moral arguments - and that will be pretty much it.
And it's not as Rick can stay silent on these things, cleverly push these "personal view" issues to the background while marching forward on economic themes. Santorum can be baited into yakking about how terrible birth control is easily and at will - mostly because he's already said he WANTS to talk about these things as they relate to public policy.
Sorry, we are electing a President, not a priest. A campaign by sir stick-in-the-mud, charismatic as a tree stump Santorum droning on about pornography, birth control, whether women are better off at home or work, etc, will be a disaster. And with Rick, there is no way to avoid it. He may be able to slide through the GOP primary on this stuff because the base is so divided and Romney the chameleon is such a crappy candidate - but in a general election, Rick could well lose by the same 18 points or so he lost his home state by last time around.
This election should be about government failure, massive debt, the rapid expansion of the entitlement state and Hussein's otherwise awful stewardship of the nation. With Santorum we will be endlessly sidetracked on issues the public has long ago decided. Folks/women want birth control. It is what it is. The vast majority of people are fine with this. Only a tiny sliver of Americans want to hear Rick bleat on about how evil it is. Most people understand pornography is available everywhere and if they don't want to see it, they can just not tune in or go to those websites. There is no great outcry amongst the people to re-fight this ala Jerry Falwell of the 1970's. Yet Santorum won't be able to help himself because this is one of his big issues. Santorum would lose in a landslide of such scale he'd hand Obama exactly the absolute mandate we've all most feared. We'd remain locked out of the White House, lose our House majority and fail to regain the Senate - and the spillover effect in the states would be a nightmare.
If they’re “no different” than any other senator or congressman, why are they second in line, behind only the vice president, for the presidency? And governor or businessman is it, huh? How about a squad leader, platoon leader, officer on a naval vessel, company commander, squadron XO or division commander? Disaster relief, leading a church or training thousands doesn’t count?
Off year election not the same. Not even close. Intensity gap has flipped. You paint a rosey picture and say white vote needs 20 points. I would argue it has to be 65 35 to offset minority increases. Think what you will Dems are not staying home as they did at midterms.
I would like to believe you but the reality I see is much different.
Did Santorum ever do anything illegal? Yes. He founded a charity which didn’t register with the state of Pennsylvania as required under that state’s law.
Senator Santorum founded the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation, a charity that was actually a bit of a scam. In 2001, following up on a faith-based urban charity initiative around the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, Santorum launched a charitable foundation. While in its first few years the charity cut checks to community groups for $474,000, Operation Good Neighbor Foundation had actually raised more than $1 million, from donors who overlapped with Santorum’s political fund raising. Where did the majority of the charity’s money go?
In salary and consulting fees to a network of politically connected lobbyists, aides and fundraisers, including rent and office payments to Santorum’s finance director Rob Bickhart, later finance chair of the Republican National Committee.
This charity (2001-07), doled out just 36% of income as grants, far less than the 75% of responsible causes. It can only be coincidence the charity which spent most of its money on lobbyists, aides and fundraisers closed after he was defeated for reelection in 2006.
Note: my file on Santorum is now 24 pages long. This is really sad, and most Republicans are getting suckered into believing this man is decent.
I will not vote for Santorum. When a middle-class citizen is elected to Congress and returns home 12 plus years later a multi-millionaire, it is due to corruption in government.
We have to change Washington in order to get our nation back on the right track.
I am a Conservative Republican who will vote for all other Republicans down ticket, but not for either Romney (really a liberal Democrat), Santorum (corrupt), nor for Paul (a Libertarian).
Newt Gingrich has owned and operated three businesses.
Doing more research would help you.
An absolutely fantastic post. Any way you could get Rush to read it?
Kartographer...if you have access to a 'preppers' or 'readiness' ping list; you ought to bring Ann's 'Readiness' poster to their attention...it's hysterical!
****I did not include Newt Gingrich in my discussion. Like many pundits I believe his campaign is over; he just hasn’t figured it out or announced it yet.****
Piffle!!
From a mathematical and scientific perspective: Of the 44 US Presidents - 15 had last names which ended in ‘N’. Newton Gingrich was born ‘McPherson’ before his stepfather adopted him.
You cannot fight the inevitable. Newton will be the next POTUS based on the laws of calculus.
Bottom line Apollo is delegates and it looks like Santorum is going to end up getting the magic 1150 because of the states that are going for him. While Newt is in California, Santorum has been working in Michigan trying to fight off Romney. While Newt was in Florida, Santorum was in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado. I know that Newt has this vision thing going on how he wants the United States to be which I agree with him on, but his vision of this primary has been so questionable. I don’t understand why he is concentrating on one thing Super Tuesday. Sure it has 450 delegates but by doing this he is ignoring some very important states that is going to possibly carry Santorum through. Obviously Santorum is winning the vision game here.
I’m absolutely convinced that Newt Gingrich is the junkyard dog we need to rip Obama a new one and send him running back to his Chicago slime pit with his tail between his legs. Newt has plenty of DC experience as Speaker, executive ability from his many enterprises, and a silver tongue that’s razor sharp!
I would love to see Newt show this “passion” with Romney. I still can’t see how he can take out Obama if he can’t take out Romney. Romney sent Newt with his tail between his legs last debate. That cannot happen again.
O’rly?
Is that why Romney’s running away from the Georgia debate? Methinks you’ve got the wrong tail between the wrong legs.
If Romney was running away on Wednesday night I could see your point. We will see if Newt goes after Romney with a result of his “tail between his legs” on Wednesday. THis is going to be a big night for Newt. This will be Newt’s test and he MUST win. If he gives a performance like in Florida, I just don’t see how he will gain any traction.
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