Deceptive campaign tactics often never “catch up” to the candidate.
Do you think Gingrich is going to suffer at all from his Robocalls which claimed that Romney forced Holocaust survivors to eat non-Kosher meals? There was no truth at all to that one, but it will be forgotten.
Is Santorum vulnerable to negative Ads? Maybe, maybe not. If it was that easy, no candidate would ever win. Some candidates are less effected by negative advertising. We’ll know if it happens.
In any case, if the claim is that while Gingrich has been destroyed by negative ads, so we can’t switch to Santorum because he could have the same thing happen to him, it’s not much comfort.
In Florida, if every Santorum voter voted for Gingrich, Gingrich would still lose. Santorum didn’t cost Gingrich Florida, Gingrich just couldn’t get enough votes.
Maybe Gingrich will come back, and if he does, there may be a time it is clear Gingrich can win and then the Santorum supporters may accept that. Arguing after a drubbing in Florida that Santorum has to quit for Gingrich, or trying to win Santorum freepers by slandering their candidate, don’t seem like winning lines of argument.
Give it a few days. See how things shake out. There’s a couple of caucuses this weekend, lets see who wins those. Lets see how Santorum does in the Missouri primary. Lets see if Paul can steal Maine from Romney. Lets see if Gingrich does better in the next few contests.
There’s not much comfort to be had when the entire party establishment, most of the conservative media, and the biggest Wall Street money around is backing Romney. Probably the only way Romney can be beaten is if the conservative side presents a united front. Santorum doesn’t have an argument for staying IN the race. He’s had enough chances now in enough different kinds of states and he’s shown that if he isn’t able to handshake every voter in a state, he can’t place above 3rd. If he stays in, he hands the nomination to Mitt. If he gets out, Newt has a solid chance. Not a guarantee, but Newt probably has NO chance if Santorum stays in, considering how favorable all of the “winner-take-all” states are to Mitt.
I don’t think all of Newt’s ads have been good. As I understand it they’ve disavowed that one. Since it was a low-profile ad, he won’t suffer much for it. Romney’s lies were out in front and spoken by him.
Newt’s campaign definitely needs work. Last weekend I e-mailed their web sites and told them not to back off the Bain stuff, because my analysis of the exit polls in SC showed that the Bain ad campaign was a major factor in Newt’s decisive victory there. The FL ad campaign painting Mitt as a moderate seems to have backfired, since Mitt decisively won the moderate and liberal Republican vote, and there appears to be far more of them in FL than I would have guessed.
The first step to beating back Mitt’s lies is to respond to them, which they seem unwilling to do over the air waves in actual ads. I e-mailed their web sites today to say they need to come up with a “biography” of Newt, maybe like that 15-minute Bain mini-movie. He’s got a great history as a Republican leader and clearly people don’t know about it since Romney’s lies were swallowed by so many.