At this point in time Gingrich staying in the race comes close to sabotage. Polls shows that he splits the Tea-Party and male vote with Santorum. He was a “spoiler” in WA, MI, and OH where Romney won with razon thin margins (just 1% in OH and 3% in MI). Carl Cameron on FoxNews reported on Super Tuesday night that the Romney camp is “happy” that Gingrich continues to stay in the race. And last night, John King of CNN used the electronic CNN Electoral Map to demonstrate a scenario on how if Gingrich were to quit even now, Santorum may be able to catch up Romney on the delgate count.
Gingrich, despite carrying baggage that is enough to bring down a fleet of commercial airlines, given his sky-high unfavorability ratings and unbridgeabl gender gap, especially with working women, is simply un electable and he is in it now for his own ego and in the process is wittingly or unwittingly engaging in conservative sabotage. There is no rational answer to any of the queries raised by AlwaysFrosty.
I saw the john king count with the map twice last night, and it is very telling. Also king is quick and smart, and didn’t sound too biased at the time either. In fact, CNN is far less annoying. They are not all about “how this is great for Romney” which is how fox views every story.
Anyway, if we don’t want romney, we need to urge Gingrich to step aside.
If anyone can find a vid (I tried and failed) of king and his scenarios, it would help those not convinced that newt is hurting our cause. It’s our only chance. Brokered convention will not happen, and with newt in, Romney is very very likely to win.
I just wonder if it was the other way around and Santorum won two states would the Newt people be so easy going about this.
Gingrich is the wrong candidate on three accounts with the last one being the driver of the other two.
1) Newt’s ideological infidelities and erraticacies on public positions have repeatedly taken a number of liberal turns: Global Warming, Individual Healthcare Mandate, Soft Policy on Illegal Immigration are some of the best and clearest examples of such. Some have said that these positions were forgivable as just political posturing. However Newt has never renounced his support for any of these hardcore liberal issues. Further, the very spectacles that he has been involved with on them have been high profile and damaging to the Conservative movements efforts to stop/block them in policy and public opinion as well as damaging to the Republican Party.
2) Newt’s personal infidelities and erraticacies, though easily forgiven in light of his renewed/reinvented commitment to God. (I say reinvented because I don’t doubt his original or current redeemed status with Christ. He was just showing why we all need Christ so bad. I am worse than he was.) Nonetheless, they drive away a significant portion of voters who will not return and vote for him ever. These voters are not going to be swayed by either reason or passion in defense of Newt or against Obama. Their numbers are large enough to turn this election and down ballot races over to Obama and the Democrats. Thus, he is not only unelectable he is damaging to efforts to take the Senate and possibly to keeping the House.
3) Newt’s ego which has caused and/or contributed to the previous two problems. He is convinced that he is always the smartest man in the room. Newt thinks he can manage both enemies and public opinion like some grand puppet master. He is dead wrong. While he has a powerful intellect and a studied mind often our opponents are able to outmaneuver and take advantage of Newt’s overreach. Newt’s overconfidence in his own intellect and personal abilities often turns to arrogance and errors in judgment. This kind of mistake and overreach which Newt has exhibited could have deadly or even globally catastrophic consequences in dealing with foreign affairs. What would been the result of Newt’s “I’m so smart that I’ll surrender that issue to you because I can gain it back later” style as compared to Reagan’s head-on no nonsense, calling evil evil, set the rules and go forward style in dealing with the Russians? Disaster, that’s what.
Thus either Newt has a proclivity to liberal issues or he is cynical to think that he can pretend to be liberal on certain issues because he feels that he can ride a superficial wave of public confusion on the issues. He is permanently wed to bad behavior in the public sentiment in a way that he cannot simply divorce and move on. He is hopelessly and caustically entangled in a host of liberal issues despite his admitted brilliance on other issues. Newt must get out or be completely exposed because he is not going to be the president or the nominee but he is going cause the nomination of Mitt Romney and possibly the reelection of Barak Hussein Obama if he does not get now.