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.
Thanks for your concern.
Speaker is not considered Executive Experience by definition. It doesn’t have the same authority or responsibilities.
If any Speaker of the House has demonstrated Executive leadership while gaining and using that position to nationalize elections, and herd cats, advance their entire party, and create history, it was Newt Gingrich.
We saw what we saw there, and regardless of what the normal definition of speaker may be or not, In Gingrich’s case, it showed the nation that he was a true executive leader.
Romney demonstrated the opposite in Massachusetts, the definition fit his job title, but he did not display executive talent in his failed roll as political leader.
You cannot just say someone has a quality that they don’t. Newt may have done a good job managing things in the House, but by no generally accepted definition does he have Executive experience. I don’t believe he is claiming he does. Officially Milt is the only one with Executive experience of the 4 candidates. Private Sector and Governmental.
What were the three businesses? How many employees did each have? What was these businesses annual gross?
Running around as a Lobbyist or setting up a Corporation for tax reasons with a hand full of assistants does not constitute having Executive experience. If that were the case, Joe at Joe's Pizza Shop would be an executive.
Newt was never a lobbyist. He owned businesses and employed a number of people.
(excerted from Wikipedia)
Businesses
After leaving Congress in 1999, Gingrich started a number of for-profit companies:[98] Between 2001 and 2010, the companies he and his wife owned in full or part had revenues of almost $100 million.
According to financial disclosure forms released in July 2011, Gingrich and his wife had a net worth of at least $6.7 million in 2010, compared to a maximum net worth of $2.4 million in 2006. Most of the increase in his net worth was because of payments to him from his for-profit companies.
Can you name the companies and what they did? As this is described, it looks like a tax situation to handle revenues for his book writing, which is the only thing he can point to doing since he left office other than the lobbying gig for Fannie and Freddie. That is why his wife is on the records for these “Companies”.
No one is, unless you lying about Gingrich being a lobbyist falls under that.
The history making radical leader, Newt Gingrich, did not "manage" the Republican house, he created it, and then was it's Executive Warrior Chieftain, the leader of the right, and the only opposition to the Clinton 1990s, the warrior who took over the Reagan torch.
Romney was in a defined executive position in government, and he failed dismally, he clearly has no political leadership/executive skills, something that Gingrich will go down in the history books for having in spades.
Your attempts to glorify Mitt Romney as the true and only "executive" primary candidate is a failure.
Never have I read a bunch on nonsense. "Executive Warrior Chieftain"? What is that? We are talking about Executive Experience by the common definition. Like it or not, Mittens is the only on who passes that test for those who have a need for it. Claiming your guy has it just because it makes you feel good or by some outrageously strained measure is silly. No one but a few people here are claiming he has it including Newt himself.
As for the Lobbying, some of us don't buy the story that those entities hired Newt to be their Historian. It doesn't make any logical sense. That is why he has a hard time defending it.
I’m not doing your research. Sod off!
Because I already did. There are no real companies. One was a Lobbyist firm that is involved with Health policy. Thomas Sussmann, the guy who worked at that thing, let the cat out of the bag last month on what it was really about. This is why Newt isn’t able to counter Mittens argument that he is the only one with private sector business experience. If Newt also had Executive Experience, he would shut down Milt in a second.
You’re just ticked off because Santorum is a liar, a hypocrite and one corrupt politician.
I am a conservative voter in a primary and choosing who to support for President, I am judging executive TALENT, and EFFECTIVENESS as it serves my conservative goals, not by a typical job definition.
You make a passionate defense for Mitt Romney, but he is a failure as a political executive, he was weak, disastrous, ineffective.
Speaker Gingrich displayed effective leadership, he moved a nation, changed history, he was a “Executive Warrior Chieftain” who proved that he can move mountains, and he did that against a very powerful two term President and 3 term Governor, and the full force of the national media.
Then explain that up front. Words mean things and picking an argument with me over your own impressions when I am purely dealing with facts surrounding the definition of a term does not make sense. My comment to 2ndDiv last night was to point out that Newt doesn't have this quality as understood by general terms just like Santorum, who he was slamming.
BTW, you should know by now I am a solid Santorum guy, not Romney. Just look at who is sprinkling the Pings on Santorum threads.
LOL. Why would I be ticked off when my guy is beating Milt like a drum in the polls, both nationally and in important state contests? On the other hand, your anger at Rick seems to be stemming from the fact that Newt isn't panning out as the smartest man in the room judging by the disarray his current campaign is in.
You aren’t dealing with facts, you are the man lying about Newt being a lobbyist, and telling us what a great executive leader Romney was as governor.
If you look at post 48 again you will see me mocking your use of the defined “executive” by countering your Romney claims.
I would say that Gingrich is the candidate with the most demonstrated executive political leadership in this race, by a huge margin.
Quote where I praised Milt in any of my posts. You can't.
On Newt Lobbying, he did it. There are articles everywhere about what these companies actually did by people who worked there. Thomas Susman was a lawyer hired by Newt. Why wouldn't I believe what this man has to say on the subject? He worked there. On Newts lobbying, read this article by a Right Wing writer at a Right Wing source. Companies that hired his firm admit why they did it.
http://nation.foxnews.com/newt-gingrich/2011/11/21/newts-lobbyist-problem
You have to have a total suspension of disbelief to go along with Newts reasoning on this. Call me a liar all you want. Newt did try to convince people and outfits to do things while being payed to do so. What does that add up to in your book?
Romney, Santorum.
One of them actually is Romney, the other is merely a fan who wanted him for President in 2008, and who is on Romney’s list of veeps.
We know that Romney is the second choice for Santorum voters and that Newt is the man that most of them hate the most.
It is amazing how with Santorum people it so often becomes a Romney versus Gingrich battle.
Laz! Of course Rick Santorum is doing well; he hasn’t yet been broadsided by the Democrats, who I suspect are holding their fire. The reason?
They’re using him to draw most Republican attention, that of social conservatives, using contraception and sterilization as bait. This is of zero concern if SCOTUS upends Obamacare. Rick Santorum predictably grabbed the issue and is foolishly running with it.
“It’s the economy, stupid!” Remember that from 1992?
The Democrats are drawing Republican attention from the real problem; Obama is destroying the United States economy.
It isn’t who has more business experience or who is more pious that is important this national election.
What is important is who in the past thirty years has done more to overhaul government and perpetuate the Reagan Revolution of smaller, more efficient government.
The Democrats and corrupt Republicans (the political whores) in Washington are terrified of Newt Gingrich, because he has promised to change Washington, D.C.
Newt gave us the Republican majority, the Contract with America and completed 2/3rds of his agenda while in office. He resigned when so many of his colleagues rebelled against his proposed budget which would cut a billion dollars out of it; they saw their gravy train leaving Congress, and wanted Gingrich out!
One of those involved in the coup to throw out Newt was Rick Santorum, who entered Congress as a middle class Rep and left a multi-millionaire.
This isn’t about “liking” one candidate over another. This 2012 national election may determine whether this nation survives, or not. I’m looking objectively at who can save our collective ass, and that isn’t Romney or Santorum.
Wheres that happening exactly? Most of the time Santorum people like me need to defend him from the irrational slams on this thread. That is why I jumped in here last night.
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