Posted on 03/31/2012 12:43:50 PM PDT by PSYCHO-FREEP
By the time Mitt Romney arrives in Wisconsin Friday – his first campaign stop in the state before its GOP primary on Tuesday – his challenger Rick Santorum will have already become a familiar face. Mr. Santorum has been in Wisconsin since last weekend and has dined, bowled, and played shuffleboard with residents in every pocket of the state. He’s even tossed a football at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers.
Santorum’s once-generous lead in Wisconsin is eroding. In February, the former US senator polled at 34 percent among the state’s likely Republican voters, while Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, trailed far back at 18 percent, according to a Marquette University Law School poll.
Current Wisconsin polling shows Romney leading, 39 percent to Santorum’s 31 percent.
What happened? The easy answer is money. The Romney campaign is armed with seemingly unlimited campaign resources to flood local airwaves and phone banks, resulting in the candidate not necessarily having to step foot in the state until just before its voters head to the booths.
By early this week in Wisconsin, combined spending by the Romney campaign and Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney “super political-action committee,” totaled about $2 million in television advertising, much of it negative. By contrast, Santorum’s campaign had spent under $100,000 by last Sunday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Red White and Blue Fund, a super PAC backing Santorum, had spent about $300,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Yup, this is what I saw as well. Lots of people who thought Palin was going to run wanted Perry cut down to size because he appeared to be the only serious threat from the right. They assumed Palin would deal with Willard easily later on since he was a the RINO candidate and this was supposed to be a Tea Party primary. What these people missed was that Palin was never going to run. Had she not run her endless "will I or won't I run" tease campaign, Perry would have likely been spared a lot of venom on these forums.
With that said, nothing the Palin loyalists said did Perry in. Perry was the best candidate on paper, but he completely lacked the communication skills to succeed at the national level. Like them or not, Gingrich, Santorum and Romney are all capable off-the-cuff orators and in a primary with 20 debates Rick Perry simply couldn't compete. Maybe he will be better in a future run, but this time around his communication skills were insufficient to the task.
Incorrect. The delegate counts on that and other pages are estimates. Much of the actual selection process has not yet happened. The Newt followers were harping on this for a good while, until they saw it gained no traction for their man. Florida and Arizona are likely to end up having to go proportional; thank you Newt.
Since Romney (with massive plutocratic cash advantages to spew his lies and rank distortions as advertising) has trashed the entire conservative GOP field of other candidates for the payments to be made later to his benefactors who also finance the despicable strategies of the GOP leadership's in both houses of Congress, good luck on GOP congressional resistance to ANYTHING Romney proposes. Romney's liberalism will be "GOP policy" when it will usually be no better than Obozo's unless your Holy Grail is yet more tax cuts for plutocrats and removal of any and all regulations on megabusinesses and yet more subsidy for moving American blue collar jobs to Bangladesh.
If, God forbid, Mittwit were to be elected, he will run again in 2016 or choose another leftist quisling in GOP drag. The GOP will be as dead politically as its Whig and Federalist forebears for about the same reason: greed uber alles and to the exclusion of any other issues. Protecting Muffy's trust fund will be the Mittsters' overriding priority.
Spare me the rhetoric to the effect that Obozo's re-election (somehow unlike Romney's election) will cause a leftist takeover of the Supreme Court and other courts. Based on his track record, the spineless Massachusetts mushball will do no better. Remember those brilliant SCOTUS appointments by Republican presidents: Earl Warren, William Brennan, Potter Stewart, Herod Blackmun, Warren Burger, Lewis Powell, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sandra Day O'Kennedy, and David Swish Souter. Of these Anthony (Sandra Day O') Kennedy is the one genuine turncoat (when he chooses to be). He was thoroughly vetted as being as trustworthy as Scalia or Thomas but was reached by leftist professor Lawrence Tribe and sold out fatally on Webster vs. Planned Barrenhood which otherwise would have overturned Roe vs. Wade.
You will not see much resistance in GOP legislative ranks against Romney efforts favoring socialized medicine (denying constitutional 1st Amendment freedom to refuse to support baby-killing directly or indirectly to Roman Catholic and other churches as employers every bit as much and then some as Obozo has), elitist "green" everything, high gasoline prices by gummint policy, Cap 'n' Trade, other global warming fantasies, Envirowhackoism generally, playing Hamlet in foreign policy, failing to re-arm the military, baby-killing, gay everything, gun-grabbing, land-grabbing (from ordinary folks), class warfare from the top against normal Americans, and each and every other pantywaist elitist agenda and priority.
By comparison, Romney will make Dwight David Eisenhower look like a Bircher, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller look like a social and small government conservative, Nixon look scrupulously honest and idealistic, Ford look like a militant right-winger, Poppy Bush look like a common man, Bob Dole look like a relentless tax slasher, and make Republicans fondly remember Herbert Hoover as our greatest and most effective POTUS and make us remember whose election killed the GOP as an effective political party (to the extent that it may be called that at any time since the constitution forced the retirement of Ronaldus Maximus).
Power in the states depends on the state. It has been rather well proven that such power (at least for actual conservative goals) is rather hard to find or even to imagine nowadays in Connecticut, Illinois, Taxachusetts, California, Oregon, New York, Delaware, the People's Republic of Vermont, Maryland, and a number of other states. That does not count or recite all of the states where the GOP exists as the lifeline for GOP corruption, nor all the ones that insist on being what used to be called "post office Republican parties," that exist for occasional national patronage when conservative voters can be suckered into voting for accommodationist trash like Romney.
Is Santorum perfect? Hell no. Would I have been willing to support Gingrich if (and only if) he was the leading non-Romney? As the partially divine Miss Sarah would say, you betcha and I did when he was the leading non-Romney. Ditto Perry and Cain and Bachmann. I would not cast YOUR vote for crackpot Ron Paul, or leftist Jon Huntsman or for the thoroughly liberal (whatever lies he may be telling or the desired image of the week) Mitt Romney. I feel sure I am forgetting someone. I would have enthusiastically voted for Sarah Palin but she apparently saw what was coming and would not voluntarily subject herself and her family to being slimed by Mitt Romney and his pals, the big money guys whose corruption she interrupted in Alaska. Santorum is the closest thing to a viable non-Romney left. Paul is nuts. Gingrich now trails even Paul. We are down to Romney or Santorum. If Santorum is not the remaining preferable CONSERVATIVE choice, then the word "conservative" no longer has a meaning.
The conservative movement is certainly not and never has been a movement obsessed with the cause of corrupt zillionaires throwing temper tantrums to get control and lying their backsides off to pad their kids' trust funds. That last sentence is the left-wing propaganda notion of who and what conservatives are and not our definition of ourselves and it NEVER will be. Our movement is a far richer tapestry than mere obsessive greed whether Mittens and his cronies like that or not.
And for anyone salivating to whine against this post that it is "class warfare" (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) you may regard it as a defense against the class warfare perpetrated by the elitists who believe that the world should be ruled (not just governed) by those who own it without further interference from the peasants.
Excellent post. I am sure some lickspittle toady will be along shorty to correct you, and instruct you in how you should vote and think.
I did not know that. I thought he simply did not really want it. To be honest, THAT is the year I wanted Newt to run. Oh well.
“Hopefully we can deny Romney, and get someone better at the convention.”
He will viciously slander and undermine anyone who runs if he is denied the nomination.
See #143
See #143
Thank you!
Beats the hell out of what Bobo would do with a second term...
Despite your warnings, Santorum could still force an oc if we support him. An open convention is our last shot at a decent candidate and we should do everything in our power to get there.
I really think that the Obama administration is working to make sure that Romney secures the GOP nomination before the Supreme Court rules on Obamacare in June.
My guess is that Obama is going to offer to withdraw the federal mandateand substitute a call for state mandates, if the court will allow the rest of the law to stand.
A Romney advisor has said that their plan is claim that a court ruling against the federal mandate proves that Romney was right all along, that the state mandate is the only way to go.
It would be a win-win for Obamneycare, a real heads they win, tails we lose scenario.
The best thing that could possibly happen is to drag this primary out to the convention floor and force Romney to disown Romneycare or elect Rick Santorum.
I hate to say this,but Mitt Will get the nomination and he will lose the election because he cant compare or contrast against Ozero.
The people are wandering aimlessly.
Wisconsin Presidential Prognostications
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
That is a very interesting and plausible theory.
Ditto that.
I sadly must agree with you that Eddie Mitt Haskell will get the nomination and we will whipped in November. It would have happened with McCain, except for Sarah. She was probably a once in a life time phenomena. Won’t happen this time.
That's why we have to drag this primary out until the convention. It won't matter who wins the nomination after the convention because it will force Romney to the right on health care and it will prevent Obama from playing off of Romneycare until it is too late. Obama cannot call for the state mandate before Romney clinches the election because voters would turn to Santorum at the convention. No wants Romneycare, any more than we want Obamacare.
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