Posted on 11/30/2008 2:59:10 PM PST by lewisglad
The Battle for the GOP Is On - Palin, Romney or JindalNovember 30th, 2008 By: Michael van der Galien | Tags: Leave a comment | Trackback The latest polls of Republican and all voters indicate that the conservative Republican base favors candidates voters in general do not think too highly of.
For instance, 24.4% Republican voters want Governor Sarah Palin to be the Republican candidate for president in 2012. Only 13.4% of all voters agree.
At the same time, Governor Mitt Romney ranks second among all voters, six points behind Palin, but leads among all voters (be it barely).
Among conservatives, both represent an entirely different faction: Palin is the Christian conservative while Romney is the darling of (elite and well educated) fiscal conservatives. These two battled it out earlier this year with fiscal conservatives favoring Romney, Christian conservatives supporting Governor Mike Huckabee, and the party ending up with Senator John McCain as the compromise candidate.
A compromise figure not able to make life truly difficult for now president-elect Barack Obama.
Most remarkable about the figures, however, is that there is a third candidate who does relatively better (meaning: smaller gap) among all voters than among Republicans: Governor Bobby Jindal. Jindal has quite a low profile nationally, yet he already ranks third in both categories. When all voters are included, the gap between him and Romney is only 1.2%, which is remarkable.
Huckabee fares less well; he is fourth with only 9.7% among Republicans and 8.0% among all voters.
This while Huckabee was the favorite of the Christian conservative base.
So what happened to Huckabee? Palin. Although Huckabee could count on the support of Christian conservatives during the primaries, they all flocked to Palin during the general election campaign. Palin became their candidate, their darling even. The defeat made her more not less popular among this group of conservative voters for they consider her a martyr.
The above means that the Republican Party could very well nominate a person who is deemed anti-intellectual, simple, naive and overly socially conservative in 2012 or that the war between the fiscal conservative and social conservative base will continue with at least one side staying home on election day, thereby ensuring Obama a second term.
That is, unless Palin can improve her image, studies hard and convince libertarian and fiscal conservatives that she is more than just a socon (unlikely). Or if Romney will succeed in courting Evangelicals and convincing them that either his Mormon faith should not be a problem to them (unlikely) or that his faith and their faith teach the same basic principles and values (less unlikely, but not altogether likely).
Of course there is a third option, an option I consider most likely and, especially, most in the interest of the Republican Party: that conservative voters will agree on a compromise candidate who endorses conservative views in most ways. In other words, a person who is a convinced social conservative (yet not overly so, for it would make it easy to destroy a candidate who is as socially conservative and as vocal about it as Palin and Huckabee are), who also has a track record of fiscal conservatism and who sympathizes with many libertarian policies.
At this moment, it seems to me that neither Huckabee nor Palin nor Romney fit the bill (although Romney would certainly be a better choice than the other two). Jindal, however, does.
For Jindal, 2008 and especially 2009 offer a tremendous opportunity to raise his profile nationally, to court conservatives of all stripes and to implement policies rooted in conservatism. He will have to use his time in Louisiana in order to show voters that conservative policies work and improve their daily lives. He he has already done so to a tremendous degree, but the most difficult times are ahead of him. The recession is likely to worsen in the coming months with Americans in all states suffering financially. Jindal will have to control the damage and improve his state at the same time.
I’d like to see how any other Republican stands up under the same media knee capping that Sarah Palin endured. No one would have been able to keep smiling and keep standing after having such slim poured on them day in and day out. The worst they could do was the non-issue of “Troopergate”, which she has been completely cleared on by the state’s personnel board. And, let’s not forget her “crime” in purchasing a used second hand tanning bed. Oh, yeah, when the governor’s mansion was being re-plumbed, she charged the state lodging per diems and stayed in her Wasilla home rather than having the state pay more money to put her family up in a hotel or rental apartments. And then there was the “crime” of the RNC stylists who purchased $150,000 worth of clothes. All of it was bs. All of it is proof that these people want to destroy this woman’s future before she has the chance to come back and run on her own for higher office. And sadly many “conservatives” are only too happy to play along in the devouring of our of their own.
Don’t underestimate him.
Palin 100%
Now that's my dream ticket!
Romney the RINO I can do without.
These people want us engaged in internecine warfare and they want us to start it right now.
I am not going to help give them what they want.
I will take Sarah over any of the above. Give her four more years of executive experience and she will be head and shoulders above any of the rest.
Palin will have their goose and leave a dime for change
with the gizzard.
She outclasses all of them.
And they want to be rid of her for that reason.
Ain’t gonna happen folks!
Too Quayle-ized, Too Compromised, and Too Soon. Not much of a choice.
Newt.
Not as long as long as he is a global warming nutjob.
Otherwise, she will remain the political equivalent of Minnie Pearl.
That kind of shit sells pretty well, though, in some markets. It even sells somewhat here at the FRee Republic where it should be pulled from the shelf.
That's a "codeword" from the last campaign and it usually has to do with the fact she didn't kill her, or her daughter's babies.
That's hardly a moderate point of view.
Do we have a list of "a$$wipez" where we can keep track of these pukes so that no one posts them here.
As the 22nd most significant source of news in the United States, I think we owe it to ourselves and our readership to DENY them access to people who are leading lives not worth living (such as appears to be the case with Michael van der Galien)
I don’t think he is. Not sure what he was doing with that. The global warming hoax is crashing now anyways. Four years from now it will be totally discredited.
24.4% Republican voters want Governor Sarah Palin to be the Republican candidate for president in 2012. ———— Only 13.4% of “all voters” agree. .............. Oh Yeah, When only 13% of the MSM “all voters” agree then we know we got a good one. I question the 24.4% too, I think they got it backwards, its probably more like 44.2%. Bottom line, the condition of the economy will decide the next election.
I wish some of the political neophytes around here were more familiar with Reagan's 11th Commandment. Nothing good comes from tearing down the other folks on your team. Make the case for your candidate.
Palin, Jindal, Sanford, Steele. These are the new Republican generation and do we ever need them.
“...and the party ending up with Senator John McCain as the compromise candidate.”
That is BS - We had McCain forced upon us by a bunch of liberals who voted in our primaries for the Republican “they” preferred to run against their party.
First order of business here is that we make sure that ONLY Republicans vote in the Republican primaries - otherwise it just doesn’t matter and our candidate will NOT represent Republicans.
Gov. Palin, at this moment in time, has been defined by the MSM. That is her public personna. It must be changed during the next two years for her to be an effective candidate in 2012.
Romney and Huckabee had their chances. Neither appeals to the broad majority of Conservatives.
Sarah Palin has a once in a political lifetime opportunity to go for the nomination in 2012 and has the time, four years worth, to set it up. Reagan tried in 1976 and missed; he had four years to set up for 1980, and WON!
Smart Conservative folks out there should be lining up to support Gov.Palin. She is the future of our party because she can bring people, who normally wouldn’t vote Republican, on board. She has a record of doing just that in Alaska.
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.