How Mitt Could Be Beat

“I don’t really care if Gingrich stays in it or not. He’s about to get the same voter treatment as Perry, Huntsman, and Bachmann got when they faltered; he’s going to be treated as a wasted vote from here on out.”

There’s a common flaw in Santorum supporters’ arguments about Gingrich. He didn’t decline in the polls due to family issues/bad marriages. He declined because of the Freddy Mac accusations and his own attacks on Romney that sounded like they were coming from the mouth of a liberal. The conservative base didn’t like that and I think Newt learned the hard way in Florida.

I would also like to add that Newt stated he’s working on a presidential version of the Contract With America! Should be interesting to see in the coming months...

No, I am fully aware of this but the delegate count is still so small that any one of them can still win the nomination handily.

The primaries and caucuses right now are little more than straw polls and Santorum is showing he’s capable of beating Romney. How many of those states has Newt beaten Romney?

>>He didn’t decline in the polls due to family issues/bad marriages. He declined because of the Freddy Mac accusations and his own attacks on Romney that sounded like they were coming from the mouth of a liberal.<<

Gingrich benefited from anger among the base that Romney has been “anointed” by the GOP establishment, and in SC, they got their first chance to make that anger obvious.

But Gingrich really is disliked by many women, especially Republican women, and that is simply a fact. Ask a few of them. They just don’t like him. Maybe it wasn’t his marriages (though that’s certainly the reason many of them state.) Maybe it’s just the way he starts whining when he’s forced to play defense. Reagan had a disarming sense of humor that served him well when he was being challenged; Gingrich’s attempts at humor come off more, well, snarky.

All of this matters and it’s why his “favorability” ratio is so much lower than Santorum’s. He’s going to have a very difficult time recovering from Tuesday’s results, in my opinion. Heck, for all his brains, why wasn’t he even on the Missouri ballot? He didn’t see the risk of letting Santorum run away with a southern state?

And don’t forget his opening salvo: calling the Ryan Plan “right-wing social engineering.” Chickens are coming home to roost in Gingrich’s case, and he’s loosed a lot of birds over the years.

Newt makes sense as a V.P. because that’s a great spot for a spokesman for the administration to be, someone who can sell the country on conservative policies in speeches and interviews. As President, people might not want him running around making speeches all the time. But with few official duties as V.P. he will be free to be out there educating the American public.

I disagree. The thing a V.P. must do is keep his ego in check and parrot the administration line. Newt is especially ill-suited for this as he seems to be led around by his own ego and spouts off ideas (some good, some odd) that seem to come out of left field and probably will force a president to backtrack on the nutty/unpopular ones.

Newt could have many good places in a cabinet however.

To emphasize a point, here is Newt vs. Romney mano-a-mano:

IA Romney 24.5%, Gingrich 13.3% (-12%)
NH Romney 39.3%, Gingrich 9.4% (-30%)
SC Gingrich 40.4%, Romney 27.8% (+13%)
FL Romney 46.4%, Gingrich 31.9% (-14%)
NV Romney 50.1%, Gingrich 21.1% (-29%)
MN Romney 16.9%, Gingrich 10.8% (-6%)
CO Romney 34.9%, Gingrich 12.8% (-22%)

Now, if you were a pollster, which result looks like the outlier? In every other poll, Newt loses to Romney and, in all but one defeat, loses to Romney by double digits. I’m also being kind by not including MO since Newt wasn’t on the ballot.

Let’s now look at Rick vs Romney - mano-a-mano:

IA Santorum 24.6%, Romney 24.5% (+ .1%)
NH Romney 39.3%, Santorum 9.4% (-30%)
SC Romney 27.8%, Santorum 17.0% (-11%)
FL Romney 46.4%, Santorum 13.3% (-33%)
NV Romney 50.1%, Santorum 10.0% (-40%)
MN Santorum 44.9%, Romney 16.9% (+28%)
MO Santorum 55.2%, Romney 25.3% (+30%)
CO Santorum 40.3%, Romney 34.9% (+5%)

Now, if you are looking at this like a pollster, you’d say this was almost a dead heat. Romney has won by some big margins but so has Santorum.

Now, there are still some holes for Santorum (he does worse in primaries, in non-heartland states and probably does better in “closed” primaries). But there is also room for optimism because he improves as more conservatives drop out and his positions stand out more from the others.

You may want to weigh this in terms of delegates (which is not unimportant) or capital (Romney dwarfs them both), but in terms of who can generate support to beat Romney, Santorum appears to be much more viable than Gingrich according to these results.

I won’t argue with most of your points. What I will say is “wait and see” because Santorum has plenty of embarrassing pork projects and stupid bills. The second Romney and the establishment see him as a threat they’ll hit him with everything they got!

Newt has a good hold on some future contests. Look at Georgia and Texas for example. One could make a very honest assessment that neither candidate should consider dropping out. There’s still a good bit of support for them out there...

Still, at least Newt and Rick have SOMETHING conservative about them. Mittens has NOTHING.

I’d rather have Newt than Biden or Quayle, that’s for sure. I really don’t think Newt will have a problem staying on message. Most likely he would be instrumental in crafting that message just as Cheney was. Any accidental deviations from the message if they occur are not going to be a big or serious issue. Even Cheney had to say he disagreed with Bush at some points, like on gay marriage.

A V.P. is also supposed to traditionally be the attack dog who gets his hands dirty in the battle while the top dog stays cleaner. Newt is ideally suited for that role like no other. Cheney showed that a V.P. doesn’t have to be liked, but just respected as someone competent enough to step into the role if he has to. That’s something Palin failed to sell the public on. Newt also adds brand name recognition to the ticket, which is valuable in today’s media environment.

Gingrich benefited from anger among the base that Romney has been “anointed” by the GOP establishment, and in SC, they got their first chance to make that anger obvious.

Totally bogus. If that was all it was, why didn't they pick Rick, the guy who actually had already won a state? It was Newt and Newt alone that sold himself that week and increased turnout a whopping 35% (all other states went up only 2-3% more or went down).

Why is liking the Ryan plan a dealbreaker for a conservative? What is it about the Ryan plan that is superior to Newt's Medicare plan and what makes Newt's plan unacceptable as you seem to imply it is? Be specific, please.

Rick isn't proven to have unstoppable momentum now any more than Newt was after SC or Mitt was after NH or FL. You can say Newt's not liked by women, but that wasn't true in SC, he won the women vote, even in the midst of the interview from his ex-wife when it was THE top story, as was his response to it.

There's one reason and one reason alone Newt dropped in the polls after SC. He was attacked by Mitt with half-truths and lies that made him sound horrible (who would vote for someone who they believed "resigned in disgrace?"), and Newt didn't respond forcefully enough, or couldn't afford to. External problems like that can be fixed going forward. Newt has indicated he's ready for it in the next debates.

The MO ballot deadline was back when Newt didn't have much money, so he didn't want to waste it on a beauty contest. Why is Santorum not on the Indiana ballot? Why is neither Santorum nor Newt on the Virginia ballot? If ballots are your criteria, then you can only endorse either Ron or Mitt.

I think we need a couple more contests and more hearing from Rick and Newt. I sense Newt might not be what the voters are looking for. I sense they went for him because at the time, before SC, he seemed like the best choice to knock the media’s ROMINEE down. It worked. SC broke the ROMINEE’s mo.

But when people took a long hard look at Newt Gingrich, they saw too much negative to stick with him. FL made the ROMINEE once more rise like a deflated Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon under the hot breath of the fawning media heads. This rising ROMINEE scared the Republicans in the last three contests, but they didn’t want wild card Newt, petulant Newt, remaking the country too much Newt. So they came out for a steady conservative they believe could well steward the presidency and the country according to conservative principles.

It make take a few more contests but if I am right, it will appear that Newt might have a decision to make.

There’s no valid comparison to be made based on your numbers. Only 1 of the 24 most conservative states has voted yet, and they have half the delegates. So far the trend is that Newt is the conservative choice, Mitt is the liberal choice, and Rick is the moderate choice (based on his compassionate conservatism, e.g. corporate welfare for the manufacturing industry that he feels pain for). We’ll know more after Super Tuesday when we see if Newt can retain the southern states or if Santorum can make a move there.

I agree that Rick seems more like the candidate less likely to change the direction of the country as compared to Newt. Which is exactly why Rick would be a worse President.

The funny thing is this could have been a great month for Rick Perry, since there are few debates. Rick just proved it’s a wide-open race which means suddenly it looks like we have too few candidates in the race for the first time.

I don’t see Newt as the “conservative choice” or Santorum as the “moderate choice”. Both have strayed off the reservation at times but I believe Santorum’s error were largely the desire to curry favor with Bush-Rove (i.e. the Specter endorsement, the drugs bill, etc.) He was trying to carry the water as his president had asked him.

Gingrich, OTOH, has never carried anyone’s water. He’s never been compelled to do anyone else’s bidding, not shown much capacity for it so I find the Scozzafava endorsement and the Pelosi commercial far more troubling because I saw no reason for Newt to do either other than for his own ego.

I couldn’t care less who someone chooses to endorse in a congressional race. Especially when it’s a man who spent 30 years in Congress doing absolutely remarkable things for the conservative movement. I’m sure Newt endorsed far more RINOs during the ‘90s because he thought they were the most conservative candidates who could win and was correct.

I also don’t care much what Newt did in the private sector and don’t believe there’s anything “unconservative” about believing in climate change. It’s a matter of interpretation of science or of personal opinion, it’s not a political issue to me. It’s also something that people are allowed to “flip-flop” on because the scientific evidence has changed greatly as well as our economic conditions. The idea that a 30-second ad that had no effect on anyone’s lives is a “serious matter” is totally laughable. And the idea that it has any impact on a man who arguably did more to advance domestic conservative policies in government than anyone in the last century is ludicrous.

Since when does someone “currying favor” with RINOs/political elites, etc. count as an excuse? That sure is a lame excuse, no different than Mitt Romney saying he had to pass liberal policies in MA due to the Democrat legislature. Newt campaigned AGAINST Bush, Sr.’s tax hikes, showing his incredible courage and commitment to fight for conservatism no matter what the elites say. That is what a true leader does.

Great verse :)
However my point to you would be that there are LDS members that are conservative. They don’t ALL support RINO Romney and we can’t afford to alienate them just because they have a completely incorrect view of who Jesus is.

Let’s welcome EVERYBODY to the conservative movement if they want to be a part of it!

“The funny thing is this could have been a great month for Rick Perry”

It would have... except that if Rick Perry had not dropped out and endorsed Gingrich the race would likely be over and Romney would be the presumptive nominee.

Conservatives owe Rick Perry a big “thank you” for that!

WATCH FOR THIS:

After Newt’s loss in Florida he stated he would be working on a presidential version of the “Contract With America.” I think this could be a game-changer for him.

My Prediction:
Watch for Newt to introduce this during his CPAC speech!

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