-—”Soc cons really messed this one up. Rick is so weak now, he cannot stop”-—
It’s Huckabee bullheadedly plowing ahead of Thompson by sheer belief in his own holiness all over again. The story always starts out the same: Conservatives get a credible alternative to the Establishment front-runner, and he starts getting attacked.
Then the SoCon who stayed under the radar (Huckabee then, Santorum now) becomes everyone’s plan B, because the guy who could have won (Thompson, Gingrich) was unloaded upon by the GOP-E money machine. Then the smug supporters of the upstart underdog all thump their chest and say “NO.....YOUR GUY SHOULD DROP OUT!!”
Then the vote is already split, the credible candidate becomes non-credible because of vote-splitting, and the upstart winds-up in second place because folks trying to beat the Establishment liberal switch to plan B because the smug voters of the only holy candidate make it loudly clear that they’re going to support the holy upstart candidate even if it means the Liberals win.
It JUST KEEPS HAPPENING.
In reality, what needed to happen was for Santorum to drop out early, when it became apparent that there was someone who could lead Romney in the polls for a long time, and when it was clear he had a friggin’ LITANY of ballot and delegate issues. Even if it was not Newt at the time (heck, replace Newt with Perry), Conservatives should have united around a single candidate with a full organization and little to no ballot and delegate issues, and there SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A PLAN B. Conservative should have been forced to STAY united, learn to DEFEND their candidate rather than defect because the rich, Establishment Liberal was able to smear the credible Conservative with overwhelming cash.
If there had been no Santorum, Newt would be leading right now. He would be leading because we would have been united against Romney from day one, and there would have been no defections based on the fact that - by simply running under the radar - someone else rises because they haven’t been unloaded on.
We CANNOT keep doing this. We CANNOT keep Santoruming and Huckabeeing ourselves based on some sick notion of the holiness of a politician. We cannot keep some broke one-percenter in the race because they were able to show well in Iowa after living there for two years and facing almost no attacks because of their low polling. We cannot keep rewarding these guys for throwing Hail Mary passes when we have a chance to defeat the Liberals. No more “shoestring” campaigns, no more one-percenters who surge in time to do well in Iowa, no more long-shot dreams based on the notion that some candidate is the mostest Christianest candidate of them all.
No more Huckabees, no more Santorums. No more long-shots who surge in Iowa. Rule them out before they ruin another Primary season. Santorum was never going to get 1144 delegates - it was NEVER going to happen. The fact that people bull-headedly refused to waver from him KILLED us - and then they turned around and taunted Newt and Perry voters for voting for Santorum in desperation, citing the vote count as if nobody knows what was actually happening.
No more Santorums, no more Huckabees. No more long shots, period.
This was one of the best posts I have ever read!
Oh, wow. I already read this twice, and will again.
But, more importantly, is there any going back now? Undoing what’s been done, and revamping and reigniting - or is it simply too late, too much damage done, too much of the powers that be now in the driver’s seat. I hope you will find the time to answer my questions, they are very important to me.
What an extraordinary post!! thank you so much!!
You got it, Titans. Agree on your perfect summation of this entire debacle.
It happens too often it's drags us down as a country and a people
to have the worse candidate representing our liberties. Conservatives have the best message.
I felt as you do about huckabee the spoiler. He wore his christianity on his sleeve and lied. He was not a good human being.
Santorum is a good human being and lives his beliefs. He fights for his child’s life, not for his child to escape punishment from dog torture. When santorum started doing well, it was because he was thought to be the bezt conservative in the race. And by non christians. Im jewish and so is mark levin.
I do not see the parallels you see. I thpught fred was the best at the time like i do rick now.
Now is our only hope to fight romney. Its not over. We must unite and show the poweers that be that we dont want romney.
What can be done about that though short of a mad scientist inventing a mind control machine? I only have two ideas.
One, the TEA Party on a national level organizes a SuperPAC and raises a ton of money for it. They hold their own poll of members before Iowa asking them to pick one candidate. Then they finance advertising for that candidate no matter what happens...unless they get arrested for murder I guess.
Second, a new way of voting, ranked choice or scored voting. Forms of this voting have been done on local levels. The voters’ second choice, third choice, etc. would all be counted on the ballot. Or you could simply put a Yes or No by whichever candidate you like or dislike. Or you could score every candidate by Strongly Approve, Approve, Disapprove, Strongly Disapprove, in order to get an “approval rating” for each candidate. When that’s counted up we’d have a much more accurate picture of which candidates people really like. At that point you could award winner-take-all to the top choice, or assign delegates proportionally based on how well they scored. All of this avoids the problem of two very similar candidates splitting the vote between a similar group of supporters.