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.
The formula necessary for that to happen in every success we have ever had is to lift up a candidate who embraces and excites all three pillars of Conservatism. Fame is fleeting. Critics charge, and Conservatives vote according to the RECORD.
That is why I asked for defense based upon on the RECORD, please. This is a tried and true test.
I am interested in her ability to simply embrace the three pillars of Conservatism, and yes, this is the first problem:
As a Social Conservative, she has wonderful credentials, she is undoubtedly Pro-Life, but does not believe in a Constitutional protection of Life. That is a HUGE problem.
If you'd care to reflect upon that, and ask yourself honestly if you really want to ask the Christian Right to back away from their single, most strongly defended principle, and do you expect them to cede that ground?
Stop "feeling" for a minute and analyze the impact of that upon turnout, MSM leverage, primary leverage by a spoiler, and etc.
Conservatism, as everyone here should plainly know, is about standing upon solid, unshakable, timeless, principles. Conservatives do *not* give them up, for anyone, or for any reason. Do not assume they will do so for Sarah Palin.
As someone on the fringe of this unfortunate circumstance, I heartily associate myself with these remarks. It was distasteful to the extreme. As for me, I handled it by basically telling the guy to leave me alone. I guess I don't have the patience for this kind of nonsense as 'mick' and 'GipperGal' but they should be able to engage the topic if they choose without the insults.
You are living in your own head, Palin is a superstar to the prolife movement. Those endorsements weren’t polite “we endorse the ticket” pronouncements, the pro life movement and those spokespeople are ecstatic over Governor Palin.
The Christian Right loves Sarah Palin so go look at your own “opinions”.
I used to be a staunch Republican. I have been let down so many times by the GOP that if it were a car, I'd set it on fire and push it over a cliff.
It is run by big money RINOs that only care about conservative ideas during election campaigns. The rest of the time, they don't give a crap what the grassroots conservative base thinks, just send them money. I am done with them.
I probably won't find a "better" team, but at least I'll be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning.
No, I am not. I am still in communication regionally in Pro-Life matters, in a Conservative, Evangelical Protestant based inter-organizational way, and fairly aware of norms in other regional areas by way of friendships maintained from when I could be more active...
The communications I receive suggest that leadership, desperate to have a say in the election, is a different thing than the grassroots, as is obvious in this election. Evangelical support was poor, to say the least. "Back-channel" excitement was nonexistent. Perhaps there was more support in more moderate circles, that could be, but I am not simply "living in my own head".
It is through those same avenues that I develop my opinion about the actual Pro-Life movement and about SP. Those I know personally, within my various spheres of community will not back up on the issue of Constitutional protection of Life, and will not support SP because of it. Their opinion is the aggregated opinion of millions.
Constitutional Protection of Life is the official stance of the Pro-Life movement, it is the official stance of the Republican Party, and it should be supported by Conservatives.
I would submit to you that this is the same "superstar" appeal that was supposed to bring a Fred Thompson administration- "Electability" by virtue of fame. But fame is fleeting. It is the record that stands.
If you would care to discuss the record, forge ahead. Otherwise, have a nice day.
The truth.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2140364/posts
If those are the choices, I’ll take Sara/Jindal 2012. Nothing against Mitt but too many of my fellow socons have issues with his faith, too many financial conservatives have issues with the job he did as governor.
Maybe he could be Secretary of the Treasury or something.
“I wish some of the political neophytes around here were more familiar with Reagan’s 11th Commandment.”
Did Reagan follow his own commandment in in the primaries of ‘76 or ‘80?
“I would submit to you that this is the same “superstar” appeal that was supposed to bring a Fred Thompson administration- “Electability” by virtue of fame. But fame is fleeting.”
Yeah the world famous Governor Palin that most of America outside of Alaska and the prolife movement first heard about 94 days ago.
Good luck with your efforts whatever they are, I’m still not clear on that, when you disagree with the prolife movement then you are on your own.
nah. they just send me money directly from the paychecks of all those people that discriminate based on case.
case redistribution is the 0bama plan.
I don’t care whether it’s a man or a woman, but we need Reagan’s determination to downsize the federal government by about 80%.
Then who will? Who is this Reaganite you’re talking about?
I never considered him sophisticated enough for such a thing.
Too many in the party hate Romney. And he has too much Wall Street to win over voters in a recession.
Too many outside of the party laugh at Palin or despise or pity her. Those late night comedians still have a lot of power in the country.
And Jindal still seems pretty slight. It may be hard to convince people he's not Dinesh or Ramesh or Jonah or some other "girly man."
This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.
Precisely my point.
Ping for Gov Palin.
If I was her advisor, I would have told her to say “Don’t ask me about political trivia, ask me about what my policy is, what my philosophy is, what my priorities are for governing,
if you want to know who is president of Georgia, use Google.”
However I am certain she will have plenty of time before 2012 campaign to bone up on national & International geo-politics.
Take your pick. Any one will do. If you want a good template, look to Duncan Hunter. Or Keyes. Or maybe DeMint.
The facts on that are undeniable, the 19th amendment doomed us, Switzerland has been on the same path since 1972, but you can’t undo it, you have to work with what we have and try to delay the collapse for as many generations as possible.
What is done is done and like a general you have to work within the reality and the time that you live in.
Thanks for the info; also the YouTubes. Quite enlightening.
Somehow, I missed a lot of campaign talk at that time. After so many political speeches, guess I turned off when I should have turned the TV back on.
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.