Posted on 02/08/2012 12:04:30 PM PST by red flanker
Beneath Rick Santorum's stunning three-state sweep on Tuesday stands another stubborn sign of dissatisfaction with the status quo: Republican turnout is down.
I'm talking embarrassingly, disturbingly, hey-don't-you-know-it's-an-election-year bad. It is a sign of a serious enthusiasm gap among the rank and file, and a particularly bad omen for Mitt Romney and the GOP in the general election.
Here's the tale of the tape, state by state, beginning with Tuesday night: Minnesota had just more than 47,000 people turn out for its caucuses this year -- four years ago it was nearly 63,000 -- and Romney came in first, not a distant third as he did Tuesday night. In Colorado, more than 70,000 people turned out for its caucus in 2008 -- but in 2012 it was 65,000. And Missouri -- even making a generous discount for the fact that this was an entirely symbolic contest -- had 232,000 people turn out, less than half the number who did four years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Tampa, Florida, I believe.
Exactly!!! It is a familiar pattern by now. Rominey can't win on ideas so he uses his super PAC’s to go nuclear negative on whoever happens to be taking his thunder away. The result is suppressed voter turnout. Yippeee, Mittens regains his top dog status but each and every time he loses more and more enthusiasm for his campaign. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.
I believe Newt also inspired massive increases in turnout in 1994 when Repubs retook the House. When he’s “on” there’s no one better. SC had 35% increase, all the others went down or had low single digit increases. His problem is when he is badly outspent and can’t get his message out, and a couple “off” debate performances in Florida. I think he’s going to get back on his game but he needs to find a way to defend himself on the cheap. In the general election he might be outspent, but not by the massive ratio he’s facing now, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem.
My take is that turnout is down because the base has been told that Romney is our candidate whether we like it or not and the GOP-E will see to it that he gets the nomination no matter what it takes. So why bother?
My hunch is that when it becomes clear to one and all that Romney is vulnerable, turnout will exceed all expectations as we work to get a better candidate nominated.
The convention ought to be very interesting.
That's the crux of it right there. After months of GOP candidates shredding each other 24/7 while watching 0bama's poll numbers rise with each passing day, along with the GOP estabs pushing the "let's-lose-gracefully-by-nominating-Romney" tact, why would anyone have any degree of excitement? The only ones excited at this point are the dems, as they can now envision reaching their holy grail of America's destruction.
I just early voted for Newt here in Ohio. I felt good about it. I’ll vote for our nominee regardless of who it is though as I seriously do not want to be listening to my liberal family gloating at the Thanksgiving table next year.
I LOVE A LOW VOTER TURN-OUT. Know why? Because that means that the uninformed, uninterested and uncaring stayed home and that’s a good thing because they don’t know s**t from shinola about what’s going on. GOOD!!! I don’t care if just 10,000 people vote.... Low voter turn-out, as a rule, benefits Conservative candidates.
HELL YEAH; ALL DUMMIES STAY FRIGGIN’ HOME!!!
Wrong, and then wrong, people could just as well have stayed home because they were happy with either one.
“Sarah Palin NOT running in 2012”
I just tweeted this and appealed to Gov. Palin to run. Otherwise, we conservatives are SCREWED.
The reason turnout has taken a dive is because — I hate to say it — all of the remaining candidates have serious flaws. Romney, as we all know, is a flip-flopping RINO. Newt is a loose cannon with a vindictive streak who has some ideas that easily could be categorized as Big Government. And Rick is a good social conservative who fully supported Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism” and was the GOP’s Senate liason with the lobbying community. No amount of whitewash is going to change any of that and it turns people off.
To be fair, we didn’t get that much new blood in there. Not to mention we don’t have the Senate. The House has passed bill after bill that has been shelved by Reid. Quitting the fight now is giving up in the 2nd quarter.
The only reason it was held was because the corrupt Democrat SOS would not let them cancel it because it would have saved the Republican party a couple of million bucks.
I agree.
(How long will the “powers-that-be” wait to have a “conversation” with Bishop Willard??)
“I just early voted for Newt here in Ohio.”
Same here in AZ for the 3 voters in my family.
the good news is nobody is likely to be all that close to sewing this up and maybe we can get someone that can excite the crowd in the picture.
None of the candidates is exciting the base with the exception of Newt in SC with those debate performances. It will interesting to watch whether Santorum can fire up the voters. He better work on his delivery if he wants to win.
Missouri had zero delegates awarded last night and whether you like them or not, none of these candidates are all that inspiring and our greatest enemy is the drive-by media and their silly and pointless debates (of which we’ve had about 10,000 at this point).
I hope your not implying that should people should "coalesce" around a candidate solely because he is a Republican? We've seen where that path leads...Dole, Bush Sr., McLame. Either the GOP pulls their head/s of their nether regions, or I believe there will be a lot of conversatives who will "abstain" from casting a vote for President.
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