You're on to something important here.
If the leaders of the moderate wing of the Republican Party decide to “create a monster” by boosting Rick Santorum on the grounds that Romney can't win, they could easily get much more than they bargained for.
If the moderates are forced to compromise with us on an acceptable candidate, we as conservatives win whether we're social conservatives, military conservatives, or economic conservatives. A President Santorum will know he needs economic conservatives to run the country, and he's already got years of experience on the Senate Armed Services Committee and having a father work as a career VA psychologist, so he's already supportive of the military conservative agenda. Forcing the moderate wing of the Republican Party to compromise with conservatives on an acceptable candidate is not a bad thing — and I think there's an excellent chance Gingrich could be a devastatingly effective president of the Senate in a VP role, especially if the Democrats keep control.
Imagine Gingrich gaveling down Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and using parliamentary procedure from the chair to tie Reid's agenda in knots. Gingrich has a long history as a bomb-thrower in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. That could end up being a good thing by breaking up the collegiality and running the Senate the way he did the House during his time as Speaker.
I am supporting Rick Santorum because he's the last social issues conservative left. He's not my first choice, but I can live with him, and I can also live with Newt Gingrich because I think he means it when he says he understands the importance of social conservatives to the Republican Party. I also **REALLY** like Gingrich's views on Islamofascism and the need for a moral foundation to fight people who have declared holy war on us.
The people who think Gingrich doesn't care about religion need to read more about what Gingrich thinks. If we elect a President Gingrich, I think there's an excellent chance he's going to end up declaring a de-facto crusade on the Islamofascists, and that's not a bad thing in my view. Read carefully what he's said about the Roman Catholic Church being the only religious institution in history with a successful track record of fighting Islam — I don't agree with Gingrich (actually, Calvinists in Hungary did a pretty good job of fighting Islam, and Reformed Christians were doing successful missions in the 1800s in the Middle East long before oil was discovered there) but Gingrich's views on a religious role for the United States in a worldwide conflict with Islam should scare the leftists ten times more than Santorum’s focus on abortion and gay marriages.
54 posted on Monday, February 13, 2012 10:52:51 AM by cookcounty: “West Michigan is a pocket of the country that is VERY VERY conservative. Way back in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson clobbered Goldwater in a 60%-40% landslide, Ottawa County had its own landslide, 60-40 for Goldwater. It’s also crawling with tons of social conservatives... benefitting Santorum. Romney may have been born in Michigan, but he was in the Detroit area, outstaters barely know him. And his Dad was Governor in ancient history, the mid-1960’s, a generation and a half ago.”
Cook is right.
Besides Michigan being the home of the original suburban Detroit “Reagan Democrats,” who tend to be Roman Catholic or evangelical and are good pickups for Santorum, West Michigan, where I am from (born and raised in Grand Rapids), is the denominational home of the Christian Reformed Church, as well as a major center of the midwestern and more evangelical wing of the Reformed Church in America and a number of smaller more conservative denominations. It's also the home of Cornerstone University, the college of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, a strongly fundamentalist denomination, and has a significant number of large evangelical megachurches and pentecostal/charismatic churches.
The CRC and RCA have serious liberal problems in their denominational operations, but that doesn't mean the people are politically liberal. It typically takes about two generations for liberalism to percolate down into the pews and wreck the social attitudes of the people, and that hasn't happened yet.
When Jerry Falwell came to West Michigan about a decade ago to speak at an Amway convention, Falwell said Grand Rapids is probably the most conservative large city in the United States. That should give an idea how an unquestioned Bible Belt evangelical leader viewed West Michigan, and while there are definitely disturbing trends going on, the direction of the CRC and RCA synods haven't yet wrecked the people's personal faith and socially conservative views. That's coming — look at the fight in Holland, Mich., over a gay rights ordinance — but it's not there yet in the Republican primary. The nut case leftists have generally been honest enough to join the Democrats, leaving the Republican Party still fairly evangelical in its core voters.
60 posted on Monday, February 13, 2012 10:59:18 AM by conservaterian: “GREAT News! But can someone please tell me how the hell Mitt beats Newt among Tea Partiers and Evangelicals??? How does Mitt get ANY votes from Tea Partiers and Evangelicals?”
I can't speak for secular conservative Tea Partiers (most Tea Party people I know are social conservatives, they just don't make that their main focus) but with regard to self-identified evangelicals, it's the family values issue that's killing Gingrich.
I am spending a bunch of time on Calvinist forums where I am personally known trying to make a case that Gingrich and Santorum are both acceptable candidates. (And yes, that's a significant part of the West Michigan electorate.) )I spent a bunch of time Saturday arguing with an intelligent Ron Paul supporter who considers Gingrich to be utterly unacceptable because of moral background issues. For him, it's Paul first, Santorum possibly, but Gingrich never. For other people, they'd say Romney first, Santorum or Paul possibly, but Gingrich never. I disagree, but unfortunately that's the sort of thing I'm having to argue against, even in my own local church.
Arguing for Santorum isn't that difficult, but arguing that Gingrich is acceptable is a real problem. I'm having to spend a lot of time pointing out that the Reformation would never have succeeded without the help of a number of Protestant monarchs and lesser nobles whose personal lives were a horrible mess but made the decision for pragmatic rather than principled reasons to support Luther, and to a lesser extent, Calvin.
We have a real problem in evangelical circles. I'll almost certainly support Gingrich if he's the nominee, but it's going to be a hard fight to avoid losing voters who won't vote for Obama but may stay home.
Here's what I meant to say: “Imagine Gingrich gaveling down Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and using parliamentary procedure from the chair to tie Reid's agenda in knots. Gingrich has a long history as a bomb-thrower in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, that could end up being a good thing by breaking up the collegiality and running the Senate the way he did the House during his time as Speaker.”