Voters say Santorum can't beat Obama

I have doubts about whether Santorum can win. I have more doubts about whether Gingrich can win. And I have plenty of doubts about whether Romney could win.

Yes, welcome to GOP POTUS 2012. And if there are legitimate 'doubts' about each of the candidates, why not get behind the one candidate who has the proven leadership, conservative accomplishments and ability to fight 0bama tooth and nail in the general ...

Newt Gingrich: An American 'Churchill' - the right man, in the right place, at the right time!

There’s no point in “getting behind” any of the candidates. Why choose one, only to have them get crucified by a bad debate, or get run out of the race because of “girl problems”, or have them simply fade away into obscurity?

And why belittle people who decide they happen to like ONE of the candidates, when there’s no reason to think another candidate would actually be more likely to win the election?

At this point, I’d rather help candidates who get unfairly attacked, then decide to embrace a single candidate, and trash all the others simply because they are beating my choice.

I might feel different if, back when we all started, everybody was pining for Newt Gingrich, and had only given up on him because he wasn’t gaining traction; or if everybody had really liked Santorum before and simply didn’t think he could win. But the fact is that NEITHER of these two candidates could buy a vowel here at FR a year ago.

The whole Gingrich meme: “who has the proven leadership, conservative accomplishments and ability to fight 0bama tooth and nail in the general ...” is largely an invention to help justify having to settle for one of the last candidates most people REALLY wanted to have to support this cycle.

I know some people claim that’s because people simply didn’t “look closely enough” at him, but in my opinion that’s also an excuse for changing your mind because you are forced to — like people will make excuses for a car that is an obvious lemon once they purchased it and can’t change their mind.

But you can believe that a web site full of well-connected highly motivated politically-experienced, historically-savvy conservative activists were all intensely naive about the history of Newt Gingrich, until 2 months ago — if that makes you feel better about your choice. Just please realize how that sounds in the cold light of day.

I thought Charles post made a lot of sense.

Oh thank goodness. Then you can explain it to me .... since all of this seem like a bunch of contradictions:

There’s no point in “getting behind” any of the candidates ...why belittle people who decide they happen to like ONE of the candidates

What does Chuck want me to do? Get behind one or not ... if there's no point?

why belittle people who decide they happen to like ONE of the candidates ... the fact is that NEITHER of these two candidates could buy a vowel here at FR a year ago

If I thought about this longer, I might feel belittled.

The whole Gingrich meme ... is largely an invention to help justify having to settle for one of the last candidates

Now I know I feel belittled. And it ain't no invention, even though Chuck feels so.

The whole Gingrich meme ... an excuse for changing your mind because you are forced to

Last I looked we have three to choose from at this point (LRon does NOT count), so who cares who my first choice was. Newt is now superior ... by far

a web site full of well-connected highly motivated politically-experienced, historically-savvy conservative activists ... were all intensely naive about the history of Newt Gingrich

So which is it? Experienced and savvy ... or intensively naive?

I hope this was clarifying. Since I'm still very confused by what Charles wanted to say.

I’ll work backwards from the end. The last statement is a counterpoint, and your “confusion” about it is actually your realization of the contradiction.

There is a subset of Gingrich supporters who claim that the reason nobody liked Gingrich in May, but everybody does now, is that he has all these great qualities, but nobody knew about them. You’ll often see this as “I didn’t like Gingrich, but then I started researching him, and it turns out ....”

Now, I can certainly believe that there were a few people, probably youngsters, who had no clue about Gingrich, and just ignored him because everybody else here ridiculed him all the time. But the argument is that he is now supported by 60% of the site (maybe 70% now), because they all suddently realized how great a conservative he is.

But that makes no sense, because this site is populated by the smartest, most informed political junkies. There’s no way a large portion of the site was unaware of what Gingrich did when he was speaker of the house. I understand the political purpose behind claiming that this was a new revelation, and only a fool would claim this was “lying” rather than political posturing. But what it isn’t, clearly, is a widespread revelation of the “true Newt Gingrich”.

There CAN be revelations about politicians — when we have no need to know them. A lot of people here didn’t know Sarah Palin — but if you look back, you’ll find that a LOT of people DID know about her, well before she became the VP pick — because people here are tied in.

So when I say that it is absurd to argue that the savvy people were intensely naive, and you say it confuses you because people can’t be both, that is the point. They weren’t naive, they knew exactly what Gingrich was, but now they want to justify having to push Gingrich as the last man standing, and it sounds better to argue that we were all too stupid to know how conservative he was, than to admit we are supporting him because we don’t have any better choices available anymore.

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