Posted on 03/16/2012 2:20:05 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
It was unbelievable: After Newt Gingrich failed to win both Alabama and Mississippi in the GOP race for president, most members of the mainstream media and political strategists with whom I talked readily admitted, off the record, that he was the most qualified among the Republican candidates to serve as president.
Now these are objective pros that have been around presidential politics for years. I have no doubt they were telling me the truth because these folks only tell you this stuff when it is relatively clear that the candidate is no longer a viable alternative.
Best on foreign policy The Gingrich campaign is pushing the concept that, by staying in the contest, Gingrich could help take away enough delegates to deprive Mitt Romney the numbers needed to have the GOP nomination locked up by the time the candidates reach the convention in Tampa.
Obviously, as a friend of Gingrich’s, I am not going to argue with their decision to press forward. Their frustration is that their candidate knows more about foreign policy and defense matters in his little finger than the other two leading candidates know in their entire body.
It is likely they find it incredible that a man who could out-debate Barack Obama is now in this predicament.
But the reality is that no camp agrees with any other camp’s delegate math.
Romney, who has spent a fortune to amass his delegates, believes the numbers suggest that he will have no problem locking the nomination up by or before the last contested state.
The fact that Romney continues to gather delegates in areas he himself considers “away games” suggests that his staying power might just deliver a requisite number of delegates before the convention.
As for Santorum, his camp believes their best chance is for Gingrich to exit stage left and allow there to become a consolidation of “conservative” voters who, by their calculations, would leave Romney pulling his usual 35 percent in most states and give Santorum huge wins in critical upcoming contests.
That sounds great for Santorum, but it might not work out as planned. Unless Santorum received an outright endorsement from Gingrich, a portion of Newt’s votes might stray to Romney.
The truth is no one knows what will happen. But for my friend Newt there are certain things I hope will take place.
First, I hope that if the money starts to truly disappear, he will scale his efforts back appropriately. That does not necessarily mean leaving the race, but it does mean picking and choosing battles and making sure that the end result of those battles will not be disastrous.
The second thing I hope he will do is start to put aside any personal feelings he might have toward any of his fellow candidates. It appears he is well on his way as to Santorum. But it is also clear that the path toward a relationship with Romney seems rocky.
What Romney should do And really, who has the responsibility to repair that relationship? The answer is Romney.
If Romney’s math is right and he does get the GOP nomination, he is insane to believe that followers of Gingrich or Santorum will flock to the polls to support him. He would need Gingrich, Santorum, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann on his team to have a prayer of not repeating a “John McCain, Part Two.”
Oh, and add to that Sarah Palin, whose voice has only been made stronger in recent weeks.
No, I would not ask Newt to leave the race. I have seen his seemingly impossible schemes work too many times. But what I would ask of the other two major GOP candidates would be to show this man some respect.
He has earned it, and they will need him in November ... if not sooner.
Who better than Sarah & Newt to see through this mess.
The pigs opposing Newt know the truth.
That would be completely out of character for Romney. He has shown nothing but contempt for any other candidate who's had a chance of beating him somewhere.
If in fact obama does get re-elected I would place the blame on the Romney campaign of negativity, lies, and distortions with the Paul campaign contributing. Romney said the other day that Conservatives would fall in and vote for him, I guess he takes us for granted. I am sure that all his “Severly” Conservatives will be out working hard for him.
I don’t believe Romney has any core beliefs, principles or respect for anyone or the Governor’s office he held or the President’s office he seeks.
Oh, I must have read them then, LOL! I did, and you’re right. [smiles]
dforest is too stupid for me to spend any more time with. Sorry to be so blunt, but it is what it is.
A courtesy to ping those posters hom we mention explains my ping here. (therwise, dforest is in the freezer here.)
dforest is a downer, seemingly *for* no one with any zest of his own.
Therefore, let me step out here and apply to his posts (not to him, yet, but to his posts) as a perfect example of Wright’s fine quotation upthread; the one on RESENTMENT— for intellegence, accomplishment, and any attribution we visit upon Newt and his career.
It suits “df’s” his keyboard pathology to show up on Newt threads to peck here long enough to see if he can get anything to bleed, for his own entertainment.
These are the reasons why he has been in the freezer with me for days and days. WASTE OF TIME.
I think this works best if Newt endorses Santorum and Santorum says Newt will be his V.P and agrees to adopt some of Newt’s economic platform. They need to push themselves as a team. It’s my gut feeling that they’ll see their total votes after that equal what their combined vote is now and maybe even get bigger, since it will be a major media event, and might help them win frontrunner status and more of the confidence of voters.
These are two people who now cannot win the nomination straight-up and who MUST come together as a team at the convention to win it if they win it at all. Therefore there is no reason they should not team up AHEAD of time, especially when the math shows that would make them more likely to win. 2/3rds of the upcoming delegates fall under some form of winner-take-all rules (it’s only been about 40% up until now, and most under the less strict rules). Together, with all the votes going to one guy, it is simply a certainty they will get more delegates in those contests than they would by splitting the vote. Hard to say how many, but every single delegate counts now with Romney as close as he is to 1,144 once you add in all his guaranteed future wins.
Excellent post!
Maybe it is going to take another loss for you to realize that there is no way Newt is going to get the nomination. It isn’t possible. It is almost impossible now for Santorum too.
Romney just said he didn’t care if Newt stays in. Just heard that on the radio a minute ago.
Now what does that tell you?
Reality is the downer and there isn’t much that can be done about it now.
Resentment is a killer trait. The resentment of talent and intelligence and accomplishment can kill an entire society, since more folks have average or lower talent, intelligence and accomplishment than have high or exceptional levels of all of those.
Thus, if too many of the pedestrians resent the others, you guarantee your society has folks of pedestrian ability in jobs that require much more.
I stand by my points.
Newt is a leader and a President.
That won’t make him one in reality if he doesn’t get the votes, I fully understand.
Neither does that make Santorum the go to.
You are making him the mathematical, the technical go to.
But even you would have to admit, that alone cannot guarantee anything.
You don’t know what the various players will do or say or what will come up against them. You don’t know what Newt voters would do. You don’t know how to make silk purses into sows ears or how to hammer square pegs into round holes.
Newt should have never been left in the dirt by the roadside just because Romney virtually destroyed him in a few days, and Santorum was not the answer, then or now, against Romney, against Obama.
That’s what I see.
What you say is a valid scenario if you discount everything else.
I believe this article that you have kindly posted here clears the head a little and airs out my head for the state of the race, as it really is.
I have never been a Palin fan, back when she was all the rage, as I considered her to be grossly under qualified, thinking she was absolutely crazy to seriously think herself a president and overnight drop her life for the progressive peacock, John McCain, BUT, I never underestimated her ability to be a MOVEMENT
“candidate”, “personality”, “torch bearer” and friendly face to put on courage, liberty and freedom.
New is anything but underqualified, and I have softened to the theme that some hell could be raised and filled in the gaps for the other.
Newt is seen as the brooding intellect emersed in political savy, on a national and international scale, and in hand to hand combat to having successfully devoured the Democrat Party.
Sarah Palin translates to the heart with her ability to torch bear for all the shattered principles that Newt Gingrich would methodically resurrect.
A MOVEMENT is the ONLY way to divert collapse. These two individuals are the only ones on the scene who are of MOVEMENT caliber.
We have failed these many months to be MOVEMENT oriented confining ourselves to our keyboards and I believe we need to decide what a MOVEMENT is and what we can do to create one, and willing to take the heat such a thing will bring.
We have not much time and neither of our two heroes have offered to step out of the shadows of obviously safe and comfortable punditry and lead it. It would be painful for them to take such a risk, maybe dangerous, but making a few appearances in small venues and getting seven minutes on FAUX is just not cutting it.
Your insistence that I owe you or romney or even this country my vote... a vote for a baby killing progressive, socialist cultist... is insanity. One thing that you need to understand... millions of us despise the republican party of today... ALMOST as much as we do the dims.
We have never been more divided as Nation and the republican party has had their part in it... and the gop/e are entirely responsible for the division within the party... in fact... there is little to no difference between the leadership of the dims and the republicans. They are all corrupt, conspiring liars that hold Conservatives in contempt... if not in downright hatred.
LLS
Thanks to all...I think, since it sort of maybe implies I don’t know better than to post to dforest...for your commentaries.
I have been known to post purely for those who lurk and read. NOT for the purpose of validating another’s comments and not to waste valuable time.
Certainly not to convince the dforests out there of anything.
I pinged you, c. edmond, because you had been making some pertinent comments. Same applies to b9.
Thanks to you, RitaOk, for all YOU do for this cause.
Neither Santorum nor Newt strike me as team players, but for entirely different reasons.
Rick is on the record for cooperating, indulging and ingratiating himself with the Republican leadership, oblivious to the fact that he was not so highly regarded nor respected.
Newt is on the record for defying, thwarting and arm twisting those Republican pay to play types, and was therefore dreaded, cussed and plotted against, but he WAS respected by the GOP-E.
I see Newt willing to play now, having probably offered to play with the frat snot Rick months ago, seeing the writing on the wall, by way of his impeccable political instinct.
Rick has made a habit of doing only enough to get himself elected and flogged all things conservative to do it, never to bring them up on his own again, when in office.
I believe Rick will have to be mortally injured politically before his lightswitch snaps on to his need for Newt. Stubborn as Rick is, it will likely be too late then.
I am beginning to think our only chance is a rowdy media stealing hellfire missile launched by announcing a Newt Palin ticket! We need a MOVEMENT and there is no time left to peddle in peanuts it seems to me.
“Ain’t it awful” is a boring and non-productive course to take. We now need pitchforks.
You are dead on about those two people, Sarah and Newt.
The only way Sarah gets on the ticket is through a brokered convention, or be asked onto a ticket by Newt either before or after heading the ticket himself...the latter also through a brokered convention or a political miracle between now and then.
Both of them have indicated...Newt more than Sarah because he’s always being asked about it...that they will support the winner against Obama.
It so pains Newt to say that. He was asked point blank about Romney as a standard bearer, just recently, and he paused, then cryptically said “He’s better than Obama”.
Then the question was reworded and he was given a chance to alter his response. Another pause, then the same cryptic words, “He’s better than Obama”.
So I’m wondering, if a Movement, do you mean after Romney gets the nomination if he does get it?
Or do you mean leading up to the Covention, or at the Convention?
You are right on the movement. Rick and Mitt have done things very effectively - if by effective you mean beating Newt. Neither strategy has a snow ball’s chance in the General Election though.
Mitt: scorched earth advertising, using the nastiest ads and running the most of them, and not winning but causing Newt to “lose” votes. Everywhere Mitt wins is a depressed turn out. No new Mitt voters, just less Newt voters and less voters over all.
Rick: dink and dunk: like the “west coast offense” in football. Short little passes. Win a few thousand in a caucus here and there and claim they are “state wins” the equivalent of Florida or SC or so on. Let Faux News and others play long with you, so you can weaken Newt, because they don’t think you are worth taking seriously. Dink and Dunk, Minnesota Caucus, ND caucus, unofficial Missouri vote - 8 votes in Iowa - dink and dunk and before long- the idiot naive ignorant voter believes you are winning “states” for real.
It’s brilliant, but not at all translatable to a movement.
Newt is the only one in this race who can turn a liberal into a conservative with one answer, who can generate widespread passion, who can win huge turn out states. It will take all of that to win in November, and he’s the only one who can do all of that.
Dink and dunk nor scorched earth will beat Obama.
Hey girl, it is laudible to defend and debate. Your patience and willingness to engage tomfoolery is a lesson I could learn from you.
So long as you don’t let @$$&**!%s steal your joy. If you can do that and not be “downered” I applaud you. You see, I can’t do what you can do and I admit it and blew “df” off two trips down fog lane. For me, it was Dud City.
My post was meant as a heads up and nothing more.
I would never mean to offend you for dealing with BS, because sometimes you WIN. Love to you and apologies if my experience with this poster somehow discouraged your willingness to engage. You are competent to politic on any field around here.
Thanks, Rita.
A MOVEMENT of noise and protest and in-the-street barking, like blacks and Hispanics and unions do, with Newt supporters speaking loud and clear, and Palin out doing what she does best but willing to GET IN THE TANK for Newt now.
They need to announce a ticket and just be noisy about it. Otherwise both will see NO MEDIA COVERAGE again, maybe ever, but certainly for the rest of this primary leading up to convention.
Of course, tr, this means hellfire that either works or doesn’t, but to save the nation what are our choices??
We get Obama or RomneyBama for another FOUR is the risk.
Nothing is free of risk.
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