The individual who is in charge of polling analysis for (I Believe) Weekly Standard is periodically interviewed on FOX and makes what I view as the telling point.
The assumption is that people who vote against Romney in the primaries will unite behind him in the general against the greater negative of Zero.
Unquestionably that is true for a large segment of the approximately 60% of the primary voters who do vote against Romney. But, as the analyst regularly points out there is a hard core of at least ten percentage points of that vote that will not vote for Romney under any circumstances and his view sees the no Romney vote as closer to sixteen to eighteen percentage points. In any kind of election that translates into at least five to nine percentage points of margin against the Republicans.
The problem is worse. Many of that five to nine percentage points will not even go to the polls. Thus not only does it beat Romney, it also tips the close races down the ballot against the Republicans.
Not only can Romney not win, he will help defeat many Republicans who might otherwise have been elected.
Why is that? Romney is at best, a status quo candidate and the Country cannot survive with the status quo so why vote for him—take Obama and begin the liquidation of the United States.
Who instead? None of these four candidates is really a legitimate Presidential contender with the possible exception of Gingrich.
Gingrich has proven to be incapable of managing a policy making political effort. He had several opportunities and muffed them all. He wants to take credit for the Clinton balanced budgets but those were not negotiated priority budgets and were the work of Rubin and the financial policy managers engaged by Clinton.
I would vote for Gingrich if it were a choice between him and Zero but many will not.
Neither of the other two have the personal force or intellectual swat to do the job.
I have just finished reading Glen Beck’s “On Being George Washington”—whatever you may think of Beck, the book is a masterpiece. However one of the central messages is that Washington was a man of committed personal faith—God prospered him as a leader.
As bleak as things looked from time to time, he persevered because he knew God would provide.
Now you may or not be a Christian—you are certainly free to believe whatever you choose. But to me, this looks like the period from 610 BC to 586 BC in Israel—God judged Israel by removing its leaders.
Well said and accurate.
The assumption is that people who vote against Romney in the primaries will unite behind him in the general against the greater negative of Zero.