Neither Gingrich nor anybody else with a day job realized the aggressiveness of Romney or how much he wanted the nomination and how much advance planning he had done. Santorum did, but since he didn’t have a day job either, he could afford to go and spend a couple of years canvassing the Midwest.
That was what enabled Santorum to get his early win, along with the fact that most GOP voters are not fiscal or political conservatives but social conservatives, and he was the one who decided that this would be his pitch (even though both Perry and Gingrich had longer track records as social conservatives). However, in the long run, Santorum and Romney shared the same big-government ideas, so while he may have forced Romney to make more socially conservative statements, his voters were voting only on that one basis and actually weren’t looking for a political or fiscal conservative.
So therein lies the problem. The fact is that GOP voters are little different from Dem voters; the soccer mom may want somebody who’s not a raving pro-abortionist, but she also wants a big-government “compassionate conservative.”
Whenever people got to hear Newt, they loved him. But he had no infrastructure here in Florida - even though thousands of people turned up for his talks and cheered all the way through, as opposed to hundreds at best for Romney’s talks (with no cheering!), you couldn’t even get yard signs for him. Romney, in the meanwhile (and Paul, oddly enough, who was very popular here), had been busy distributing yard signs for nearly a year in advance.
Should Gingrich have been ready for this? Probably, and in addition, I was not impressed by the people I met on his campaign, so he probably should have spent more time working on his infrastructure.
However, the fact that the “front runners” started finding ways to avoid debating him, and the fact that the press practically locked him out after he challenged them in SC, shows that they were aware of his campaign strategy, which was visibility, debates and ideas.
As for Rush, I attribute the first big anti-Gingrich wave to Rush’s stupid statements that Gingrich was anti-capitalist because he questioned Romney’s version of his past business history. Nowadays, Rush sometimes says things just to say them after a quick glance at a headline (or because he doesn’t hear a question very well and hasn’t understood it), but since the Dems and the GOP E were just looking for an excuse to get rid of the radical Gingrich, Rush gave them all the excuse they needed.
However, the fact that Gingrich is still in it shows that he still hopes to get a hearing. Remember, guys, this is about ideas and political track record, not about a candidates’s marital status, number of children, number of sick children, the physical appearance of his wife (as if anybody could be worse than Michelle!) or anything else.
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that anti-capitalist bit that occurred when he attacked Romney. I recall being angry about Newt saying those things myself.
I hadn’t considered supporting Newt by this time, I was still smarting over the destruction of Cain, so I criticized those comments myself, and it is possible that those comments did have some effect on his candidacy, but I cannot be sure.
By the time the FL primaries came around though, I softened my position on Newt realizing that none of our candidates are perfect, I had decidied that he had the best grasp of conservative ideas and should be nominated well before someone such as Romney.
Sadly, that was just about the time that all air left the Newt balloon.
Personally, I don’t care if he stays in or not. I’m going to vote for whomever the nominee is, as long as that person’s name is something other than Obama, my standards are not high any longer.
I don’t think we are going to win this, and I hope to High Heaven that I am dead wrong, but it really seems like the GOP does not have the answer to american communism, and it never will have it or anyone in it that will have it.
These communists are going to have to be defeated in the harshest possible manner such that anyone who even thinks of walking down this path anytime in the next 250 years will say Hell no, I ain’t walking down this path, did you see what happened to the last guys who tired this?
The GOP does not have the mettle, or anywhere even close to any mettle at all, to assist in such a necessary solution.