Posted on 04/13/2012 3:18:34 AM PDT by Josh Painter
Thad McCotter’s presidential campaign was a disaster. He finished last out of 10 candidates in the Ames, Iowa straw poll, despite being one of the GOP aspirants who bothered to show up. National surveys showed him taking about 1 percent of the vote. McCotter was the first major Republican contender to drop out of the race.
So what could McCotter possibly teach Rick Santorum, who suspended his campaign after a surprisingly strong second-place finish to Republican front-runner Mitt Romney? Plenty, as it turns out. Consider some of the reasons Santorum came up short.
The first problem that Santorum faced is that, like Mike Huckabee before him, he had problems reaching out beyond evangelicals. This shouldn’t have been the case, since Santorum is actually a practicing Catholic. But in many key states, Santorum failed to appeal to his coreligionists.
In Michigan, Santorum came within three points of beating Romney, the son of a former Wolverine State governor. While Santorum won the evangelical vote by 16 points, he lost Catholics by seven. In Ohio, a bellwether state that was decided by just one point, Romney beat Santorum among Catholics by a 13-point margin. In Illinois, Romney carried 53 percent of Catholics while Santorum took just 30 percent.
A conservative candidate who received a larger share of the Catholic vote could have potentially taken some of these states from Romney. Maybe some primary voters repeated former New York Times editor Bill Keller’s embarrassing mistake of labeling Santorum an evangelical rather than a Catholic. It’s also possible that somebody with a better mix of economic populism and social traditionalism — say, a Russell Kirk-quoting Republican from Michigan — could have beaten Romney in the large industrial states of the Midwest.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
But in many key states, Santorum failed to appeal to his coreligionists.
That’s because many of Santorum’s coreligionists don’t really believe all that religion stuff.
McCotter = union tool
There is not much to learn from a guy who sponsored and voted for Card Check. With the fight against government unions being one of the biggest domestic battles of our time, McCotter committed political suicide by supporting Card Check (something so obnoxious even George McGovern opposed and helped run ads against).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.