Posted on 01/25/2012 5:10:13 PM PST by TitansAFC
Sen. Rick Santorum has no viable path to victory and brings no new issues or ideas to the table. He no longer serves a purpose, or has a justification to remain in the race.
Santorum has no viable claim that he is more conservative or more electable than Gingrich. He has no viable claim that he will be better in raising money, in organization, or would do a better job as president. There is simply no path for him. Further — despite winning Iowa, Santorum lost badly in NH and SC, and has no means to complete in FL. It is time for him to leave.
The Santorum campaign probably thought, prior to SC, that it had a chance to win values voters. SC results show that those voters went to Gingrich over Santorum, despite an all-out values attack against Gingrich. SC should have put an end to that thinking. There simply is no path for Santorum.
It is time for him to drop out. Hopefully to support Gingrich. It is best for Santorum to quit while he is in a respectable position. Now is that time.
I like having the insurance of him in the race as a “just in case”.
I think that line says it all. IF you’re for Newt then be for Newt. There’s this bandwagon out there that talks about the guy imploding. They said the same thing wishfully about Palin.
I’m sick to death with the negative Ann Coulter thinking that is all over athe place now. Newt is running against the idiot Romney, Santorum and Paul plus the republican party and the democrats.
Oh and the media would love to see him implode. They throw something up there every day to make us believe he has.
Here is an NPR article with a "Listen" link to the radio interview. The quotes follow the one minute mark in the audio.
I have never been able to take Santorum seriously as a candidate. It just seems too obvious that he will not win the nomination.
Santorum isn’t the principled conservative though. I just can’t stand why this keeps getting repeated. He ran as a moderate Republican in PA! And the way he’s been sliming every conservative who has had a moment at the top of the polls is disgusting. I honestly don’t see the appeal of Santorum unless the people who are feeling the appeal haven’t been paying attention or know nothing about him.
When looked at from this perspective, Newt with his bimbos has more honesty and integrity than Santorum does with his righteous sweater vests and suitcases filled with family photos!
You guys are ridiculous, and I hear your crap every election. Every damn election the impossible candidate has his dreamers here telling us why his splitting the cote is okay and that the guy who has a chance sto win should be the one who drops out.
Keep buying your lottery tickets, Kevmo.
You folks do more actual harm to the Conservative causes than the RINOs, and you do so with a smug sense of piety.
Thanks in advance for Romney.
I DID miss that... I don't spend much time in "this community" anymore.. since, it seems to have mostly devolved into a society for PURGING anyone who's not idealogically "pure"... whatever the heck that means.
I'm sorry though... I was never "down with Newt". Don't get me wrong.. I like a LOT about Newt. He's the best speaker remaining.. by far. And, he has the comabtiveness to take on the media... but, that's not good enough. Newt was a poster child for the effectiveness of Alinsky style tactics. He WAS driven out of office, in disgrace... not because of the ethics charges (which, were 99% bogus).... but, as the result of hypocrisy and negative branding. Face it: Newt was the FACE of "evil Republicans". I don't want to go back and try to re-argue the same issues from the mid-80's and 90's. We lost the argument then... it won't be any better now.
With Newt, EVERY DAY someone will be bringing up "new" (old) charges.. and, we (he) will be constantly defending 'what Newt said'... His recorded statements are extensive.. and, often highly controversial. I'll support him if nominated... but, I don't think any of us will enjoy that ride.
It's the lead article on Drudge... alongside three other articles now of Newt trashing Reagan.
Just great stuff... :-(
You guys are ridiculous, and I hear your crap every election. Every damn election the impossible candidate has his dreamers here telling us why his splitting the cote is okay and that the guy who has a chance sto win should be the one who drops out.
Keep buying your lottery tickets, Kevmo.
You folks do more actual harm to the Conservative causes than the RINOs, and you do so with a smug sense of piety.
Thanks in advance for Romney.
***
Really. It’s SO inane, I can hardly stand it. What gets me the most is that the folks who are SO against abortion will be the very ones to give us the LEAST pro-life GOP candidate who will then usher in the most EVIL, DICTATORIAL, PRO-DEATH regime EVER TO operate in history!
PLEASE, Santorum voters ... it’s ok to stand by your principles, but youv’e got to LIVE to fight the fight!! At this point, you can kiss your cause goodbye! And kiss a lot more unborn babies goodbye as well.
Thanks. I clicked over and read the Abrams National Review hitpiece on Gingrich, and upon honest analysis, I did not see anything “devastating”, or new, or that would prevent me from voting for him in the primary and even working to get Speaker Gingrich nominated and elected President.
Here is why. Abrams in defending the State Department and Reagan era policies that preceeded the fall of the Soviet Empire, makes the claim that the amount of funding wrung out of a reluctant democrat congress to fund the proxy wars against the commies was brilliantly also the exact minimum amount needed to be responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union. Abrams implies Gingrich, a young firebrand congressman at the time who was actually arguing for a MORE aggressive approach, was “insulting” Reagan and “his top aides” (Abrams?). Abrams also takes full credit for whatever unspecified benefit may have accrued to the United States for the fall of the Russian Empire, while vilifying the young congressman, not for voting for President Reagans policies regularly, which he did, but for not being unquestioning in his duty as an elected official to authorize funding for and examine if what Abrams was doing with the money would actually work. So Speaker Gingrich, raised a duck-and-cover kid, but voting the right way on the issue as a congressman, had over-estimated the strength and under-estimated the fragility of the Communists. That’s a reason to never vote for Speaker Gingrich in a primary? Yes, the older Reagan was correct in the amount of force it would take for the Soviet Empire to begin to crack. It did not take as much as Gingrich thought. That’s not a reason to never vote for Speaker Gingrich in a primary.
As regards the surge, I’ve never had it explained to me exactly why our troops were so understrength in the first few long YEARS of the occupation and why Bush went along so long losing our guys one by one, ignoring his own party’s calls for a surge - but I know Gingrich had nothing to do with that mistake. I could go on, but Limbaugh just came on and I need to monitor his daily attacks on Gingrich.
I think so, but it is up to him.
I try to give you a rational explanation for why "this community" has coalesced around Newt Gingrich, and that's your response?
Well, la dee freakin' da. If Free Republic is too "devolved" for your dainty elite sensibilities, why don't you take a hike? Just purge yourself and save Jim Rob the trouble.
I give you a rational response explaining why I am not coalescing around Newt, and THAT is your response? That I should kick myself out to save Jim the trouble? Wow... Things haven’t changed here much. :-D
A schoolyard taunt? Fine. Have a nice whatever.
He might not endorse anyone if he drops out, but Romney isn’t on the menu.
Whatever, Santorum needs to go bye bye, or be linked to mittens forever
Let me first say... If you think Rush is making "daily attacks on Newt", then you must be a paid Newt supporter. I hear at least part of Rush every day... If anything, Rush gives MORE support to Newt than to any other candidate.
As for article... it's a LOT worse for Newt than just saying he was upset that Reagan wasn't doing MORE to stop communism. Newt was mocking Reagan. He was predicting failure for policies that worked... and, suggested that the Soviets were "superior" to the West in vision. ??WHAT??
The thing that bothers me the MOST about this article is.. it's yet another example of things Newt has said, on the record, that come back to haunt him. There seems to be an endless supply of these.
Reagan had a tough time fighting Congress... in these examples, Newt was clearly NOT helping.
And we hear your crap every election as well. How’s Newtie-boy doing in polls, and at Intrade? If he gets trounced, will you be asking him to drop out? NO. The reason isn’t due to him being the most electable conservative, it’s the same reason we had so many tootyfruityrudybots several years ago pushing the ‘inevitable’ candidate: you agree with him.
What taunt? I simply repeated your logic?
Newt's belief in Man-Made global warming is enough reason for me to look for someone else. For me, personally... that is one of the MOST important issues.
Are you .... ok?
That's fine. I'll just let myself out the side door here. Bye now.
“Let me first say... If you think Rush is making “daily attacks on Newt”, then you must be a paid Newt supporter. I hear at least part of Rush every day... If anything, Rush gives MORE support to Newt than to any other candidate.
No, I am not a paid Gingrich supporter and that lie is the first indication - but that accusation right out of the box makes it clear you are a full-fledged Romneybot. Limbaugh has been in his full subtle attack mode on Gingrich ever since Gingrich became a threat to Romney. Of course Limbaugh can’t go very far, because his audience is conservative and knows Romney is a progressive pretending to be a conservative, so his attacks on Gingrich have to be quite nuanced, deniable, and nearly subliminal. There have been other threads on this topic for days now.
“As for article... it’s a LOT worse for Newt than just saying he was upset that Reagan wasn’t doing MORE to stop communism. Newt was mocking Reagan. He was predicting failure for policies that worked... and, suggested that the Soviets were “superior” to the West in vision. ??WHAT??”
Baloney. The National Review Abrams Attack has also FAILED. Since you claim to be a conservative talk radio listener, Didn’t you just hear Mark Levin’s defense of Gingrich on this very point? Mark Levin was there, part of the Reagan Administration, Mark Levin is a Santorum supporter, and even Levin couldn’t stomach the lie that Romney-supporting National Review article is pushing. If you did not hear Levin’s defense of Gingrich last night on the Abrams false accusations, just go listen to the first hour at marklevinshow.com. and you will learn something.
“The thing that bothers me the MOST about this article is.. it’s yet another example of things Newt has said, on the record, that come back to haunt him. There seems to be an endless supply of these.”
The endless supply of progressive and liberal and anti-Reagan things said and DONE - comes from Romney, not Gingrich. The endless supply YOU are talking about is an endless supply of words taken out of context, and twisted to feed the endless supply of Romney negative advertising dollars. Thanks to the internet, Romney’s lies and garbage attacks are not working.
“Reagan had a tough time fighting Congress... in these examples, Newt was clearly NOT helping.”
Too bad for you I actually read the hack Abrams’ article and noticed how he had selectively lifted even Gingrich’s single words, short phrases, and quotes and strung them together out of context them to paint the false picture of the Gingrich-Reagan relationship.
Perhaps Romney and National Review and the whole Romney-supporting establishment is not as smart as they think they are and the 80% of the party that consists of conservatives are not as dumb as they think we are.
“Reagan had a tough time fighting Congress... in these examples, Newt was clearly NOT helping.”
Too bad for you I actually read the hack Abrams’ article and noticed how he had selectively lifted even Gingrich’s single words, short phrases, and quotes and strung them together out of context them to paint the false picture of the Gingrich-Reagan relationship.
First, even in the **BOB JONES UNIVERSITY** precinct in South Carolina, Gingrich lost by only 15 votes to Santorum, and won by large majorities elsewhere in the most conservative parts of one of our most conservative Bible Belt states. I frankly can't explain what happened in South Carolina, but Gingrich won big, and if that keeps up he's going to prove to a lot of evangelical leaders that our people are willing to vote for him.
Here's an interesting analysis by Dr. Oran Smith, President and CEO of the Palmetto Family Council in South Carolina, documenting that many of South Carolina's most conservative Christians voted for Gingrich:
As Jim Robinson has already pointed out, in Florida, a winner-take-all state, it looks like Santorum has done the right thing by participating in the debates but otherwise mostly backing off and trying to avoid being a vote-splitter who can't win and would only enable Romney.
It's too early to call for Santorum to drop out after only three elections. Also, as AMorePerfectUnion, sasportas, and marygam have pointed out, Gingrich has a history of being fairly volatile and since his rise back to prominence is rather recent, we'd better have a backup candidate in case something new blows up in what has been a chaotic election. The RINOs seem to have Mitch Daniels as their backup; why shouldn’t we have one whose name is actually on ballots?
I hope Jim Robinson is right and Romney drops out, not Santorum. Romney is a businessman, after all, and he's probably motivated less by ideology and more by bottom-line issues. Sooner or later he's going to either decide he's throwing good money after bad, as he did in 2008, or he's going to decide he can win this thing and pour in even more money.
I like the idea of a Gingrich-Santorum-Paul race. That would be a real debate between people who hold traditional conservative, social conservative, and libertarian views, without the RINO and semi-liberal influence. While I think Gingrich would probably win that race, we'd see a lot of social conservatives who are now voting for Gingrich to stop Romney decide they'd rather back Santorum as their first choice. In any case, it would be a race between two real conservatives and Ron Paul's libertarian views which are wrong but need to get rebutted.
But what if Romney doesn't drop out?
Those of us who are social issue conservatives need to face reality. Granted, only three states have voted so far, but if the South continues to vote for Gingrich, it's going to become obvious that our people are more interested in defeating Romney than electing a social issues conservative.
Conservative Christians have a bad history of demanding perfection in candidates, backing a guy who votes the right way but can't get enough people to vote for him, and then losing races by splitting the vote and enabling a RINO or a liberal because it takes 50 percent to win elections in America. That doesn't get our guy into office and mostly gets fellow conservatives mad at us.
It's looking more and more as if our people are voting for Gingrich despite what our leaders are saying. I'm going to take a great deal of criticism in my own circles for saying this, but I think it may be time for Florida evangelical leaders to encourage a vote for Gingrich since Santorum has no chance in that state due to its winner-take-all rules, and then decide on a state-by-state basis depending on how delegates are allocated whether it makes more sense to back Gingrich or back Santorum in each individual upcoming state.
Both Santorum and Gingrich have a solid track record on social issues. I think it's possible to vote for either candidate in good conscience. I know there are people who strongly disagree with me on that, but I believe stopping Romney with his record of flip-flopping on baby-killing needs to be our most important goal in the next few months.
This election has been such a crazy roller-coaster that it's probably premature for Santorum to pull out. But what's the long-term for Santorum? I don't see how he can win the primary this point unless some new crazy thing happens in the election, though I'm probably voting for him (and in my state Gingrich didn't make the ballot so I don't really have a choice). I hope Santorum gets either the vice-presidency or a significant cabinet spot in a Gingrich cabinet, or that Longbow1969 is right and he goes back to Pennsylvania and wins an election.
When this election is done, we're going to have some long, hard work in our churches. This election is exposing some serious problems among conservative evangelicals, but we can't get those problems fixed in the short time we have left until the primary season is over.
88 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:41:41 PM by ought-six: “There is no way and no math that will get Rick Santorum to the nomination. He has some good qualities, but he needs to bail and let Newt pick up most of his flock.”
75 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:31:35 PM by PapaBear3625: “If Newt loses Florida, he’s in trouble. If Newt wins Florida, then I can see him winning Super Tuesday and racing for the nomination. A lot is riding on his Florida performance.”
24 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 7:25:49 PM by Jim Robinson: “And I like the idea of defeating Romney here and now in Florida. If Romney loses Florida, he’s done. Santorum has already admitted he’s abandoning Florida, but he shouldn’t drop out. He should just recommend to the Florida voters (like Sarah did in South Carolina) to vote for the leading conservative in the race (Newt in this case) and deprive Romney of the win and the delegates. After losing to Gingrich in South Carolina and Florida, Romney will either drop out or be dumped by the establishment or go down in flames later, then it’ll be a two man race between the two conservatives, Santorum and Gingrich.”
90 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:44:21 PM by Jim Robinson: “Romney loses Florida watch the establishment go into panic mode. Losing South Carolina and Florida proves that he cannot win the south. Those in the know feared that the evangelicals, independents and women would not go for Newt. Well, looks like that was a pile of horse hockey. The know it alls had it backwards. They won’t go for Mitt.”
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.