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Posted on 02/07/2012 5:08:04 PM PST by Anti-Hillary
Open for discussion.
let me be more crude and blunt so the readers can understand my point.
we consider the straw poll portion to be useless, filthy garbage. The delegates are what a caucus is about and the delegates are GOLD.
The Santorum people at your caucus did not successfully participate in the caucus which is why they won NO delegates.
So it is wrong to say a caucus is non-binding. The straw vote is what is non-binding because it is not part of the CAUCUS. It is not “non-binding”, it is crap. We know that the delegates would not and could not be bound by crap. Same in Iowa. Same every where.
Review: A caucus is about delegates.
The straw poll is not part of the caucus. It is a useless side-show that is crap.
Basically, you are just a weather vane.
You need to get a foundation that will stop your spinning in the wind.
Newt’s weakness is his occasional tendency to go “touchey-feely,” While Santorum’s weakness is that he greatly favors the establishment over the will of the people.
These differences are important, and make Newt a vastly superior presidential candidate.
.
Why thank you kindly. Great day to be alive.
Exactly. That is what I was trying to say too. I was just pointing out that the portion being reported - the preference poll - is non-binding - that the delegates were not bound by the poll, and thus the reported results don’t tell an accurate story of what will happen at the state convention where the national committed delegates will be selected.
Yes - delegates are gold- that’s where the action is. The folks who came to the caucus who wanted Santorum didn’t want to spend two Saturdays to go to the county and state conventions. Funny that a person who wanted a guy not on the ballot (Tancredo) was willing to spend the time and now her voice will be heard at the county convention. She was up for the state convention but in her speech deferred to other candidates as she was new to the caucus system. But, she could have been a state delegate if she had made a forceful case for herself (rather than for Tancredo IMO, knowing my fellow caucus goers).
which is why some of us think it is weird that of all people, Freepers are the political core believers and they are interested in a dozen or so straw votes at their site and do not report the delegates which are the only valuable thing coming out of the caucus.
I think if I went and read the paulista site they would all be talkin bout the delegates and not the breakdown of 12 romney 11 paul 4 newt 7 santorum which is so silly.
it is troubling that it has come to this.
Exactly. Which is why I’m so confused only weak candidates even bothered this time.
“Basically, you are just a weather vane.”
I don’t mind that aspersion. I’m not so committed to one candidate that I need to trash another good one. I would be completely satisfied with either Newt or Rick as the nominee.
I’m a Newb... lol... and I’m already being attacked for saying Rick would be a viable alternative. Some people have a slavish cultic devotion to their candidate. We’re supposed to be conservatives, not Ron Paul supporters! LOL
An overwhelming majority of Americans oppose gay marriage. A smaller majority (maybe 51%) oppose abortion. These are not losing issues for Republicans in the fall but they shouldn’t be the focus. They won’t be. Obama and his failed policies will be.
Please remember, Ronald Reagan was an actor before he became a politician.
Perfect delivery of perfectly memorized lines that sound good and look good, and doing it for so many years on the big screen and little screen that it becomes second nature for normal life, may be too high of a standard to ask anyone to meet who hasn't been a professional actor for most of their adult life before running for office.
Soooo, how many delegates were chosen? None? hummm.
Not only are out votes worthless but, they are not even secret when done in caucus. Anybody see a problem with this?
Its like watching the Superbowl and then finding out the GOP decided the Patriots won.
That's a valid question.
To a large extent, winning a general election means turning out your own supporters. Evangelicals, unfortunately, have really bad turnout percentages. Conservative Roman Catholics are often from demographic groups which are likely to vote Democrat if they don't have a key religious motivation to vote Republican.
On the other hand, most pro-homosexual and pro-choice people aren't going to vote Republican anyway, so nominating a candidate who has a decades-long history of being vilified by the homosexual and pro-abortion community has the advantage of turning out conservatives to vote. Annoying people who probably wouldn't vote Republican anyway isn't a major problem.
I realize there are economic conservatives who define “conservative” in terms that closely resemble libertarianism. Those people aren't going to like Santorum, and I understand that. For those people who think being conservative is being opposed to “government intruding in your bedroom,” Santorum’s opposition to gay marriage and abortion won't go down well.
My response to Republicans who think that way is to say that I respect their right to vote for Mitt Romney, but even Romney professes to believe the same things Rick Santorum clearly does believe. Also, Newt Gingrich is also pro-life and opposed to gay marriages. So if we're going to have a Republican nominee who claims to be pro-life and anti-gay-mariage no matter who gets nominated, why not nominate someone who excites the base and turns them out in large numbers — including the key demographic of ethnic blue collar Roman Catholics in the upper Midwest who will be key to winning the states we need to win the presidential race?
I'm not saying Newt Gingrich can't win those voters — he may very well be able to do so. What I **AM** saying is that I seriously doubt if Mitt Romney can do so.
Bottom line: Liberal left-wing attacks on Rick Santorum are likely to seriously backfire. If groups like ACT-UP and Code Pink are stupid enough to do protests at Santorum events, most of America will be so grossed out, and conservative Catholics and evangelicals so deeply offended, that the net result is a plus for Santorum.
You can tell a lot about someone by knowing who their enemies are. Santorum’s enemies are the right ones to have.
See Psalm 139:21: “Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?” I don't think that passage is appropriate to cite in very many cases, but with regard to homosexuality and abortion, it is.
I’ve seen non-actors do the same. If it comes from the heart you only need reminders.
Very interesting analysis. Nice to see something more than: “NEWT CHEATED ON HIS WIVES!!” “SANTORUM VOTED FOR EARMARKS!!”
You’ve informed my thinking on both candidates. More so on Santorum I think. I’m still a Newt guy and will remain so...and the more I think about it the more I have to admit to myself it’s just that I think he’s so damned smart.
I’ll make a less intellectual case: a football analogy. Baseball’s really my sport, but for this case football works better.
I view Santorum as the quarterback who can win the game for you if you have a good enough team around him. He won’t throw a lot of interceptions. He’ll make all the right reads. But you can’t put the game on his shoulders because he doesn’t have a big arm or tremendous creativity. Think Troy Aikman. Very good. Even a Hall of Famer. But no one thinks he would have won 3 titles if he had quarterbacked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Gingrich on the other hand, is Brett Favre. He’ll take chances, even make the occasional boneheaded play. But he’ll also make plays that make your jaw drop. You have to decide if the great plays make up for the boneheaded plays.
OK, probably a dumb analogy, but that’s kind of how I see these guys. I can live with either. But I think the conservative movement needs a Favre type right now more than an Aikman type.
Hank
Thank you for your note.
I am in full agreement that sound bites are not enough, and I respect Gingrich's success in being an intellectual college professor who somehow figured out how to appeal to Georgia rural voters who usually would be disposed to reject a “pointy-headed Yankee carpetbagger.”
I live in the Missouri Ozarks, having moved to the Fort Leonard Wood area after 9/11. Connect the dots. I have reasons to like what Gingrich has done in making conservative views intellectually respectable while appealing to a populist Southern mass audience. That's a really hard trick to pull off both tasks successfully at the same time.
I believe a reasonable conservative this year could vote for either Gingrich or Santorum. Both have problems. Both have benefits. I'm not happy with the entire Republican field this year — if we don't get our act together very soon, we're going to throw away our chance to defeat Barack Obama — and Romney is not the guy to do it.
“To a large extent, winning a general election means turning out your own supporters”
I wonder if this is really true. . . in this election cycle. Somehow I think we need more than just our own supporters to win this one. I like Santorum as much as I don’t like Newt. Better than any candidate running in terms of alignment with my own principles and politics. My worry is that the chances are dim that the dumbed down american electorate will click with him. Most certainly Newt has less than that chance.
Your analysis make perfect sense to me, but I just don’t see it played out in this culture of uneducated voters.
I think we agree more than we disagree.
Winning elections at the federal level or local/state races with well-known high-profile candidates requires two things: Turning out your own supporters and convincing undecideds and opponents to vote for you instead of your opponent.
A key problem is that if candidates do not excite and motivate their base supporters, they can't win even if they might be more “palatable” to moderates. The reality is there are lots of strongly conservative people who are considerably less committed to voting than they are to conservative principles. Within the modern Republican coalition, that's an especially serious problem with evangelical voters. Democrats have the same problem with ethnic minority voters, but by nominating Barack Obama, they turned out huge numbers of voters from a constituency that was virtually certain to vote for Obama.
In 2008, the Democrats changed the makeup of the electorate. In 2010, the electorate changed back to a more typical makeup, except that conservative “Tea Partiers” were more willing than usual to go to the polls because of anger over what Obama was doing.
It remains to be seen what will happen in 2012, and much will depend on who the Republicans nominate. If we nominate Mitt Romney, I believe we've thrown away our chance for a decisive national victory and could easily condemn numerous congressional and state candidates to defeat.
” . . . and convincing undecideds and opponents to vote for you instead of your opponent.”
This is where I get stuck. Right here.
I see your screenname says you've been here since 2005. I guess you missed when the vast majority of freepers did as Santorum did in 2008, and endorsed Romney over McCain in 2008 after Fred Thompson dropped out (I was in a tiny minority of those endorsing Huckabee, along with FR's founder, Jim Robinson)
I'd like to hear the Santorum bashers, who are attacking him for this, reveal who they endorsed in 2008 when it came down to McCain, Romney, and Huckabee.
I believe I smell more hypocrisy.
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