I also plan to vote for Bachmann or Santorum if they are still running by the time Illinois votes (even if they are in single digits and haven't won any states), simply because I would rather make a statement than stay home because the good guys have no chance. In 2000, I cast a token protest vote for Alan Keyes because my guy Forbes had dropped out and I didn't like Bush or McCain (though honestly, a Romney vs. Newt choice is so bad that Bush looks pretty darned good in comparison, even knowing in hindsight how lousy his second term was). I don't think Bachmann or Santorum is likely to get back in the game and pose a threat to the RINOs but I hope I'm wrong. Given how many ups and downs we've had, I certainly wouldn't rule out Newt returning to his previous place a single-digit late-nite joke when the primaries actually get underway.
Cain was my third choice so not much has changed for me as I always preferred Bachmann or Santorum over him (one of the reasons being Cain and many of his fans were far too cozy with Newt and fantasizing about having that scumbag on the ticket with him!), but since Cain was a good guy it really is a punch in the stomach to see him forced out of the race from a nonstop assault from the MSM. I think it's typical of Obama thugs in the Chicago machine and their fingerprints are all over this, right down to one of the Cain accusers living right down from Axelrod (if this is a coincidence, I'm an Eskimo) Obama's career has always been to quickly destroy any candidate would is making waves as a rising new star and stands a good chance to steal his thunder. Jack Ryan was thus "taken out" with the non-scandal of wanting to have kinky sex WITH HIS OWN WIFE, Sarah Palin was viciously attacked with all kinds of made up B.S. during the 2008 campaign like her youngest child "really" being her grandchild, etc., and now the attempt to paint Cain as Clintonesque. It just reinforces what I said about Rick Perry having no clue what's in store with him if he had to go up against the full force of the thugs in the Chicago machine, because he's used to running in elections where the Democrats don't even try.
Newt is old news, the Dems are practically licking their chops at the thought of him being the nominee and are holding their fire until he gets the nomination. I've ranked Newt worse than Romney not because I think he's to the left of Romney and an evil RINO, but because it would be suicide to nominate the guy. Run Newt, and Obama wins re-election easily. You heard it here first. Like South40 said, under no circumstances will I support someone who gives Obama a 2nd term. Newt's been out of office for years so he's polling "ok" now when many voters don't remember him and see him as little more than a well-spoken anti-Obama Republican, but the Dems have so much dirt on this guy they'll make him less popular than Darth Vader by November 2012. It's shades of arguing with Katherine Harris supporters during the Florida primary all over again. They'll tell you only RINOs hate their candidate, the GOP establishment is 'biased against' their candidate (even though their candidate IS a long time insider of the GOP establishment!) and anything that shows their candidate will get killed in the general is a 'MSM smear'
I hate to follow the herd mentality here but I agree with the freepers saying they choose to hold their nose for McCain in 2008 to support Palin and won't do it again in 2012. People can scream all they want about how refusing to support the GOP nominee helps Obama, we all know that unless you live in one of 12 or so swing states, your vote won't change the outcome of the election. If you live in Massachusetts, the state's electoral votes will go RAT on election day no matter who the GOP nominee against Obama is. The reverse is true if you live in Oklahoma. I will probably vote Constitution Party over Newt, even if picks a good conservative running mate Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan. I've had it up to here with these backstabbing scumbags in the GOP, plus a bunch of freepers who DEMAND I support their slimeball in November will never do likewise and support my candidate if their precious "tea party reformer" didn't win the primary. I know several Illinois freepers last year who openly trashed Bill Brady (the most conservative nominee we had for Illinois governor in 40 years!) simply because their guy didn't win the primary -- AFTER promising they would support the nominee as long as it was Brady, Proft, or Andrejewski. Screw these backstabbing freepers and they're "my way or the highway" mentality. I bet you a bunch of these Newt lovers accusing us of "helping Obama" would refuse to vote for Santorum or Bachmann over Obama, in spite of what they're saying now.
I agree that both Perry and Romney's supporters turned from me "eh, I not thrilled about your guy but I could stomach him" into a "I hate your guy's guts and I hope he loses and goes away", simply because of their lies and heavy-handed tactics of screaming "BIGOT!!!!!!!!" if you question their man. Newt's fans have used a couple of the same tactics but what really turned me from "Meh" to "Go to hell" about Newt's candidacy is Newt himself. I KNOW the "new Newt" hasn't changed and he's still an arrogant, self-serving narcissist who treats people like dirt because I WITNESSED him do so myself. There's some idiot Kirk fan on here who keeps accusing me of having a personal "vendetta" against Kirk because I bash the RINO scumbag (apparently he never noticed the anti-McCain & Graham posts are 10x worse than anything I ever said against Kirk), and I've told him over and over again I've never met Kirk but simply despise him because of his socialist record. Gingrich I HAVE met face to face and I have the photo of us shaking hands to prove it. I don't like Newt's record, and I don't like Newt as a person. Period. Character counts, and this man proved to me that he has none.
If I had to guess today, ultimate we will end up wit Romney as the GOP nominee. But that's not my fault. That's the fault of freepers who propped up one phony "conservative" after another on here and split the conservative vote so the decent candidates had no shot. Look at Donald Trump's fans... I thought they learned their lesson after his phony "campaign" for the GOP nominee was proved to a ruse all along, but this week they're out in force and claiming an Obama shill and must love the CNN debates if I think GOP candidates should stop groveling to this fraud. Incredible. Conservatives are their own worst enemy
BillyBoy, while I’m also sickened to see the nomination contest apparently turning into a Romney vs. Newt race (although there’s still time for Santorum to break through), I think that a better message to send would be “Romney [or Newt] almost beat Obama in Illinois” (and an even better one would be “he actually beat Obama in Illinois on his way to 400 electoral votes”). Voting for the guy running on the Constitution or Libertarian Party ballot as a “protest” gets us nowhere, and you should think about whether your actions would be all that different from those of sour-grapes Dillard supporters who voted third party rather than support Brady in the general. I think that, as a general rule, we should fight it out in the primaries, and then support the nominee in the general (unless it’s a Dede Scozzofava-type who is by no measure a conservative and there’s another conservative candidate with an actual chance at winning).
I understand that many conservatives take a different approach, and point out that going along with McCain after he won the 2008 nomination has not helped us to nominate a true conservative in 2012, but if the best conservative candidates don’t run, and the conservatives who do run do not have the type of profile or résumé that voters generally look for in a presidential candidate (and also prove themselves not to be good candidates due to inconsistent statements or lack of knowledge), it’s hard to blame the RINO establishment for Newt and Romney being on top of the polls. Had someone like Jim DeMint or Paul Ryan or Bob McDonnell run, we could well have a one-on-one contest of a true conservative against Romney, and while some conservatives would surely exclaim that “DeMint [or Ryan, or McDonnell] is a RINO!” because he voted for a certain compromise bill in 2008 or something and “the only acceptable choice” is the guy who has never held public office and thus has never had to make such choices (and does not have a long voting record in which one can cherry-pick one or two votes out of thousands cast in order to accuse him of being a liberal in disguise), we would all be too busy supporting the conservative over Romney to be talking about how the process is stacked against us or how we should vote for a third-party guy (who likely would prove to be not so great had he run in the GOP primaries and everyone got to know him—think of the outrageous policy positions that Bob Barr took by the time he ran with the Libertarians, plus the fact that he’s an ass) even if it made it easier for Obama to get reelected.
I, too, supported Alan Keyes in 2000, not as a “protest” but because I was convinced that he would make the best president among the candidates in the field. But had it come down to a Bush vs. McCain fight-to-the-death, I would have voted for Bush even had Keyes been on the ballot because nominating Bush instead of McCain was more important than making a statement. Of course, by the time my primary came along, Bush had the nomination safely at hand and I was able to cast my vote for Keyes without any apprehension. But for the 2012 nomination, I’m not convinced that the difference between Romney and Newt is large enough that I will vote for one in the primary just to stop the other, and I may end up voting for Santorum even if it’s a horserace between Newt and Romney. (But, to reiterate, we are not at the point in the primary season in which it is clear that Newt and Romney will be the two candidates left standing at the end, and there’s still time for Rick Santorum to post a strong challenge for the nomination.)
Just yesterday I told a liberal Republican friend of mine (who, not surprisingly, supports Romney) that it was ridiculous for the same RINOs who claim that “we need to support the nominee in the general, since it’s in the primaries where we should fight it out” to be saying that conservatives need to “get in line” and vote for Romney in the primary. Such RINOs are doubly hypocritical, since they’re often the first ones to vote for a third-party guy or a write-in (or even the Democrat!) when a conservative wins the nomination.
I believe that, while it is not illegitimate to point out during a primary how well one expects each candidate to do in the general election (and I do that all the time, usually by noting that if a RINO wins the nomination he can expect a reduced conservative turnout), it is beyond the pale to say (barring some extreme circumstances such as a DIABLO or a racist winning the nomination) “if my guy doesn’t win, I won’t vote for the nominee.” There’s a big difference between saying “if someone who does not excite conservatives wins, you won’t have as many conservative activists volunteering for the campaign, driving elderly voters to the polls, etc.” and “if that guy wins” (or, often, “if my guy doesn’t win”) “I will write-in Jesse Helms as a protest” (and, really, there’s no difference between voting for the Constitution Party candidate and writing in the name of a dead man). We should defend our conservative principles with all our might and fight for conservative candidates uing all means that are not illegal, unethical, unfair or disingenuous, but it should be beneath us to use electoral blackmail as one of our weapons, just as it is an indictment of liberals and RINOs that they so often resort to such blackmail.
And in the general election, we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good (or of the not-so-crappy) and vote in a way that increases the odds of the worst candidate winning. Speaking of the dilemma faced by pro-life voters in an election in which the two candidates with a chance of winning are one who is 100% pro-abortion and one who is generally pro-life but supports exceptions that violate pro-life (and, I would say, human) principles, Father Frank Pavone explained that when one votes for the 90% pro-life candidate one is not choosing “the lesser of two evils” (which would be unacceptable, since evil is never a legitimate choice), but is affirmatively choosing to *limit an evil* and thus choosing a good. http://www.priestsforlife.org/vote/voting-with-clear-conscience-interdenominational.htm#choose
Applying this more generally, voting for an 80% conservative (or even a 50% conservative) over someone like Obama (who is, at best, a 5% conservative) is not an endorsement of the candidates 20% (or 50%) liberalism, but a rejection of the 95% liberalism in Obama. I have serious doubts about what kind of president Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich will be, but I have no doubt that their judicial nominees will be far more conservative than Obama’s would be (even if Romney nominated liberal judges in Massachusetts, here he won’t have an 80%+ Democrat Senate to shoot down any non-liberal nominees). And when the GOP Congress approves a budget that cuts the size of government, Nitt Romgrich will sign it into law, while Obama would veto it. And despite their unprincipled positions regarding abortion, I expect both Mitt and Newt to repeal Obama’s executive orders on abortion as soon as one of them gets to the White House. I have no delusion that I will agree with everything, or even 90% of things, that Newt or Romney would do as president, but I am absolutely certain that they will prevent a lot more evil than Obama would.
So that’s my two cents on this topic. Sorry for the long post, but it’s certainly not a simple matter.