Thanks. That answers my question, although that ad came out in mid-January.
Seems to me that he'd be running that ad, instead of the new one attacking Newt, if he really means to fight for our cause.
It's a good ad - right up until the end, when they show Rick at a campaign rally. The man looks stressed out and unhappy. Not like a winner at all. Very uninspiring. A little unsettling, even.
I’d prefer if a candidate did nothing but talk about what they will do, and contrast it with what their opponents say they will do. But virtually everybody else here seems very focused on past positions of other candidates, and it’s hard to see how you don’t run advertisements about what your opponents did in the past and still meet that desire.
If you believe that Romney has a ceiling when opposed by a candidate without significant negative baggage, politically the winning strategy may be to convince the electorate to support you instead of another candidate who has their own ceiling. I don’t know if that is really a winning strategy, but it might be.
But I don’t want you to think I endorse this ad, which I haven’t been able to watch (I can’t listen to it now). I don’t know if this ad will help Santorum where it is running. But for those who believe Santorum has a higher ceiling of support than Newt (I don’t know that, but I can’t refute it), getting people to let go of Newt and embrace Santorum may be the ONLY way to beat Romney.
One thing I’m sure of. If when this is all done, Romney has won, and Gingrich has lost, many of the people in this thread will blame former Romneybots, Santorum, the media, the GOP-E, and anybody else they can think of. They will not ever think back and wonder if those who supported Santorum were right, and Gingrich was never going to win — they’ll assert that Gingrich “could” have won if not for what everybody else did.
Anyway, I’m done in this thread. I think I’ve explained the pro-Santorum argument sufficiently, and I doubt I’m going to convince any Gingrich supporters to stop attacking Santorum and slandering him as some are here. It’s just the way some people here think arguments are won. Hard to believe it works for them in real life.