This of course is the elephant in the room. Gingrich can't beat Obama. Hell, as of yet he can't even beat Romney in a Republican primary...that is very worrisome.
Newt has a harder road to climb, but Newt is far better at winning over the unconvinced than Romney is.
Therefore in the general election, he has a better shot than polls suggest.
On the flip side he also has a greater propensity to shove both feet in his mouth.
I wouldn’t worry about the general at the moment since Gingrich has the ability to incessantly articulate his campaign in the general election against the Teleprompter-Obama who can’t argue his way out of a wet paper bag without help from his media clowns.
Obama chanting the empty line “Hope and Change” all the time for six months in a campaign is not going to work in 2012.
Gingrich can't beat Obama. Hell, as of yet he can't even beat Romney in a Republican primary...that is very worrisome.
Obviously Gingrich isn't trying to beat Obama at the moment. If he gets the nomination his strategy will change, and so too will the polls. But even then the polls won't matter much until sometime around September. So to me all the Obama vs whoever match-ups are nothing but red herrings. They mean no more than polls early on showing that Hillary and Giuliani would end up being the nominees for 2008.
As for Romney, it isn't just Romney that Gingrich is going up against but Romney + virtually the entire Republican establishment. If not for all his money and the establishment backing him, i don't think Romney would even be a factor at this point. With all that, he becomes a formidable candidate, just like Obama by himself would be nothing but Obama with a billion dollar campaign chest + the media backing is going to be tough for anyone to beat. Besides, who else is doing better than Gingrich? Santorum is losing steam and has never particularly stood out in any of the debates. So i don't see how he is going to get his momentum back. Basically he benefited from and continues to benefit from Romney training all his attacks at Newt, leaving Santorum pretty much unscathed so that he can continue to split the conservative vote.
We give too much power to pollsters. Especially with polls projecting something 11 months away in an age where you can see wide changes of opinion in just a week's time.
“That same poll shows Romney narrowly beating Obama in a head-to-head matchup, while Gingrich would lose 37 percent to 53 percent.”
This of course is the elephant in the room. Gingrich can’t beat Obama. Hell, as of yet he can’t even beat Romney in a Republican primary...that is very worrisome.
***
It’s still a conservative country.
It’s just a poll.
Don’t you realize that the conservative vote in the primaries is being split 3 ways, maybe even 4 if you count Ron Paul as a deficit cutter?
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Mitt Romney
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Favorable - 72%
Unfavorable - 14%
Haven't heard enough - 10%
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Newt Gingrich
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Favorable - 59%
Unfavorable - 29%
Haven't heard enough - 9%
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Rick Santorum
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Favorable - 59%
Unfavorable - 8%
Haven't heard enough - 33%
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Take a close look at which candidate has the highest negatives and which candidate has the lowest.