Posted on 02/18/2012 12:25:54 PM PST by OrangeHoof
I keep reading on FR that Rick Santorum is unelectable (although Rasmussen's latest poll has him just 6 points behind Obama in a head-to-head matchup) as they try to justify why they are supporting Newt Gingrich.
Santorum is definitely less well-known than the former Speaker, but that's the problem for Newt. He is well-known and not well-liked.
Talking Points Memo has a rolling track of Gingrich's favorable/unfavorable numbers in national polls. His favorables are now consistently in the 20-25% range since the Florida primary but his unfavorables have topped 60% in two of the last three polls (click link below).
http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/contest/us-favorability-gingrich
On 2/13, CNN had Newt with 25% favorable and 63% unfavorable. CBS/NYT has Newt with 16% favorable and 54% unfavorable. PPP has Newt with 24% favorable and 62% unfavorable.
Okay, these are all left-wing polling firms but is it wise to think they are all wrong? Even at his peak, Newt was 40% favorable and 47% unfavorable back before Iowa. Can we expect someone with such high negatives to beat Obama in the fall?
Now, the media and Mitt Romney are taking their shots at Rick Santorum but, for now, his polling is much better.
http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/contest/us-favorability-santorum
There have been five polls since February 12th and his favorables average 32.6% in those polls and his unfavorables average 35.6%. His favorables were higher than his unfavorables in two of the five polls and his margin of difference was never more than 10%. In fact, his worst showings are in the two openly Democrat polls (PPP and Greenberg) which likely oversample Dems.
Gingrich had all of the 1990s to be tarred and feathered by the media. Most voters know who he is and their minds are made up. Santorum, however, is a blank slate to many of them and he has his chance to make his case to America about whether he best represents their values over Obama's. It's probable that Santorum's negatives will go up as he goes through the vetting process and the media anal exam but his favorables are likely to climb too if he sticks to his message on freedom and fiscal responsibility.
Since the links didn’t come out:
Gingrich: favorable/unfavorable
http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/contest/us-favorability-gingrich
Santorum: favorable/unfavorable
http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/contest/us-favorability-santorum
What a great rebuttal! How about some facts next time? Or is that above your level of discourse?
How much money has it taken to get Newt’s unfavorables so high? Think about it and include Drudge.
I don’t know why, but your response is priceless. I laughed pretty good.
As one of the greatest, most effective leaders in conservative history, Gingrich got the full Palin treatment, I used to keep a collection of all the news magazines on my bar and I would splay them out when Gingrich came up during discussions, every one of them were like horror magazine covers, with Speaker Gingrich as the monster.
Those magazines were from the first 6 weeks of Gingrich becoming a national figure, they were his very first “introduction” to the public, they were not from a year or two down the road. After saturating the public with that poison, the media then started polling on the Speaker, and creating news on that negative polling.
We had never seen approval polling on Speakers before that I recall. How does a Speaker effect his national approval rating? He is only a Congressman, and the work he does as Speaker cannot move national polls up or down, he isn’t a President that can make dramatic national decisions, and disperse huge funds and make decisions to go to Mars, or invade a country.
Every true conservative is going to start out with terrible poll numbers with the general public, because until he becomes the nominee, he is simply a punching bag for the GOP-e and the media, and the Democrat party, but once the general starts, then suddenly the Republican Presidential candidate is on equal footing, suddenly he represents the Republican party, and 100s and 100s of millions of dollars will be spent to sell him to the public.
The window when it becomes about campaigning and mass advertising is the time when the old polling data becomes meaningless, because it is a several months window, when the conservative becomes equal with the media.
OK , YOU asked for it, here's your "facts":
I’m going with Santorum.
Oh yes, poor downtrodden Newt.
Gingrich ‘Deeply Upset’ That Scozzafava Endorsed Democrat After He’d Supported Her (ROFL)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2376848/posts
Newt: “I am, however, deeply dissapointed that she has chosen to back Owens over Hoffman.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2376172/posts
Jarrett: Dems want Scozzafava nod (Newt? Newt?)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2375959/posts
Right To Work Prez Calls Out Newt’s Hypocrisy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2375483/posts
Group Calls on Gingrich to Rescind Endorsement of Scozzafava
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374566/posts
Who Lied to (RINO) Newt Gingrich?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373633/posts
Newt Gingrich - “King of the RINOs”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373107/posts
Gingrich: A Vote for Hoffman Is a Vote for Pelosi
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373068/posts
Farewell To GOP’s Squishy Gingrich Wing
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2372160/posts
Are you kidding me?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2372078/posts
Gingrich calls GOP support for Hoffman a ‘purge’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371959/posts
Newt on Greta talking about Scozzafava
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371587/posts
Newt Gingrich: Doug Hoffman support a ‘mistake’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371188/posts
I am not going to trash either Newt or Santorum, but needless to say, Santorum has not been yet subjected to the full force of the Romney attack machine the way Newt was during Florida. After that happens (and you know it will), we'll see how Newt and Santorum's favorables and unfavorables stack up. Until then, it is pretty much pointless to try and look at such now as any kind of predictive indicator of Newt versus Santorum as the best choice against Romney and then Obama.
How much did obamney’s $18M spent on negative Newt ads contribute to unfavorable? How unfavorable is $4 and $5 gas which Newt will reduce to under $2.50? What’s favorable about obamney? Santorum has just started to be on the receiving end of obamney negative ads. Newt has the day one platform to start changing back everything the commie usurper put in place.
Apparently, so are many others.
That really is a lame line of attack on Santorum. The choices sucked across the board in 2008. I don’t begrudge anyone’s 2008 endorsement, given the options.
Santorum’s favorables are already higher than Gingrich’s and his unfavorables are at least 20% less. A lot can change between now and November but, at this point, I’d rather be rallying behind the conservative with 30% negatives than the one with 60% negatives.
*******************
I don’t care who has what numbers. I had wanted Perry as a first choice and Gingrich was my second choice. Perry stepped out, so that leaves me 100% behind Gingrich.
I do not like Santorum and I don’t care how good his numbers are or may get. For me, if Gingrich quits—I no longer support any candidate—I will only be voting against Obama.
He’s my third choice line in the sand candidate after Bachmann and Cain. I go no further than this.
After that, the GOP is on its own.
We’re well past the point where any particular President could resuscitate America.
They’re going to spend a billion dollars demonizing whoever is the eventual republican nominee.
The current numbers are just a fluke of how much focus fire they’ve gotten so far in the media.
It depends on when those endorsements came. Rick Perry endorsed the liberal cross-dressing, pro-abort Rooti Giuliani at a time when conservatives Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter were still in the race.
Really. Hunter had no traction and Thompson had no fire in the belly. We learned the hard way that both are fatal for a presidential candidate’s chances. Others might well have seen what we didn’t at the time.
14 in my family have decided on Santorum. They don’t trust the Newt.
I can answer that one.
Your average American would rather have an acknowledged, fallen sinner, a la Bill Clinton, than an uptight, preachy moralizer in chief, a la Jimmy Carter.
There are a lot of negatives for Newt. Liberals and non-thinkers will believe that he is a right wing extremist, because the media can make that case. He also has done a number of things to trouble conservatives. And there are those women problems, which will trouble women voters and the religious right, when they are reminded of them.
But I don’t think this is a good time for conservatives to be attacking Newt OR Rick. I’d like to see both of them stay in the race until we see what happens.
A few months ago, everyone thought that the others should drop out and make way for Cain. Where would we be now if that had happened? I assume that the motive of this thread is to remind the Newt supporters that they shouldn’t keep attacking, and even passing liberal lies about, Rick’s electability, because their guy is vulnerable to similar attacks.
And that, in your mind, is reason to endorse a cross-dressing, pro-abortion liberal? If so I couldn’t disagree more.
So when you hear the word "electable", think "loser".
As opposed to Mitt? Huck? RuPaul? The choices sucked. I didn't agree with the endorsement, but it wasn't like there was a clear conservative candidate with a chance in the field.
Evidence?
“For me, if Gingrich quits—I no longer support any candidate—I will only be voting against Obama.”
Which is how most people feel, and you know what that means? Whoever it is may get a vote but noooooo moola. Exactly what happened with McCain.
I can’t imagine someone who lived through the history making 1994 conservative revolution, forgetting that incredible national onslaught against it’s leader, Newt Gingrich, until Palin, we had never seen anything like it.
I still have boxes of publications and newspapers from the time, the rage from the left was terrifying, people died, were destroyed, the federal government was killing people and burning them out in the Midwest, and in what had previously been “flyover country”, the heartland.
The left was sending a message to middle America, that they were not outside the reach of Government and the new policies. Middle America was to be taught that their God, and guns, and tax complaints, and conservative rebellion would not be tolerated, the 1990s became a dark period of open war by the hard left as led by the Clintons, and the conservatives led by Newt Gingrich.
The media was as radical as it has ever been, and Newt as the opposition leader, was one of it’s biggest targets.
“Oh yes, poor downtrodden Newt.”
The problem with posting negatives about a candidate is that they are always in endless supply — for all candidates.
Newt’s record of achievement, for all his personal and political liabilities, blows his competitors’ achievements away.
Rick was just one of 100 senators. He often voted the right way but what are his biggest accomplishments and how do they stack up against Newt’s?
Rick sponsored a number of pro-life bills and was a leader in Congress for the fight for social issues. That’s good stuff and yes, I can vote for Santorum without holding my nose but how does that compare to:
Contract with America
Welfare Reform Act
Paying down the national debt by $400 billion
First tax cut in 16 years
Orchestrating the first Republican takeover of the House in 40 years
All done under a Democratic President.
That’s far more impressive in my opinion. Without going negative, what else has Santorum done that I am missing?
Convert me!
I hope Obama doesn’t know who his rival is until fall. That will make him nuts.
Some are saying the choices suck this year also. I'm beginning to sense a pattern forming here.
I think the problem is, the process as it currently works ensures that anyone qualified for the office is utterly unwilling to subject themselves to the process to win the office. That’s basically what happened with Fred, IMO.
Unfavorable/favorable ratings don’t mean much. The Pope probably has a high favorable rating, but wouldn’t be elected president. And Dick Cheney never had a high favorable rating, but people were confident in his ability to lead the country if he had to. People may “like” someone but not think they’d make a good president. No doubt by the fall, most people will still like Obama. They aren’t suddenly going to be convinced he’s the spawn of Satan. We’re not running a campaign on likability, we’re running a campaign based on who would make a better president.
Besides, poll numbers now mean nothing with regards to a November election. Where where Obama’s, Rick’s, Mitt’s and Newt’s poll numbers back in May, 2011? That was 9 months ago, and the election is 9 months from today. Why don’t you stop reporting the poll numbers from today and go back and report the May, 2011 numbers, since by your logic, the polls today must be exactly where they were 9 months ago.
My motive is to question why Newt supporters are so certain that Santorum can't be elected and their man can when the numbers would appear to be just the opposite. To beat Obama, at the very least, Newt would need to drop his negatives down to 45%. Perhaps he can do that but there's very little evidence that he can. He's only beaten Romney one time so far while Santorum has beaten Romney four times and is poised to do it again in Michigan.
I simply don't understand the venom thrown at Santorum when he is catching the party's attention while Newt appears to be fading.
When that word is uttered by the GOP elite and the media, I agree with you but I am neither and that wasn't the context I was using. On another thread, a Democrat senator complained Santorum was "uncompromising" which is just the opposite of your typical McCain/Romney/Rove RINO.
When I say "electable", I don't mean RINO. I mean "getting elected".
Of course, he has a better chance of beating Obama than Romney, which is what you meant.
That word "electable", however, is a RINO code word for cave, retreat, wimp out.
Bachman, Perry, Cain, Newt, Rick and heck even my second tier choice Mitt are all far superior to 0ero!
Part of it is presumably the delusion that attacking Rick will help Newt. I call that a delusion, because for the most part all that sort of negative approach will do in a forum like this is get people angry at Newt for having followers who do such things.
Part of it is the divide between conservatives and libertarians, which we have always had in this forum. I don't know how many times I have said that, if we want to win, social conservatives and libertarians need to work together. But there are a fair number of libertarians in the forum who just don't seem to get it. conservatives need to support the economic issues--especially now--and libertarians need to support the "social" issues, such as the right to life, decent marriages, and stable families. You can't have one without the other. But the libertarians just reply, "Ain't nobody gonna tell me what to do!"
Well, as we saw in 2006, if the Evangelicals or other members of the conservative coalition stay home, then you can kiss victory goodbye. You'll never have a stable society that allows, or even requires, baby killing and gay marriages. If you want to cut back big government and lower spending, you need to get the social conservatives on your side. And I will say that I think that's one area where the Catholic bishops, and many pastors, have gone off the rails. It's not Christian charity to build a big government that redistributes money from the productive to the feckless, and keeps more and more of that tax money for their own use.
Personally, I support most conservative social issues but I wouldn’t make them the boilerplate of my campaign. In many cases, it is Democrats and the media who bring up the topic in order to create wedges.
Were I running, I would try as often as possible to change the subject to the economy and Obama’s failure at it. That’s the #1 reason independents will cross over - it’s frustration with the economy and, frankly, any time spent on other topics is time wasted.
LOL.
The funds raised in these FReepathons go to pay our current quarter expenses. But we're also going to try to replace some of our older servers and failing equipment this year so we're going to add a little extra to our FReepathon goals. John is estimating ten to fifteen thousand to do this and I'd like to get it all in place and working before the election cycle is fully heated up, so we'll try to bring in a little extra now, if we can, and the rest next quarter.
Jim Robinson
Is your Church of Saint Pollster affiliated with Scientology? Its dogma seems similar and as credible.
They don’t have to follow my line of thinking. I’m not the person who generated these polls. I’d just like to see some acknowledgement that Santorum isn’t the unelectable one in the race as I so frequently see.
If Candidate A has 60% negatives and has won 1 primary out of 8 while Candidate B has 35% negatives and has won 4 primaries out of 9, why are the fans of Candidate A so sure that Candidate B is a loser and that Candidate A can win? If you took the names out of it and just viewed this as A vs B, you’d think either the fans of Candidate A are delusional or simply unable to process facts.
I guess it is asking too much for you to process the concept that Candidate A has been sujbect to the full force of the Romney slime machine while Candidate B has not yet been subject to such.
As such, it makes your analysis that of a partisan, not an objective observer. Which is why it is silly for you to whine about being attacked by partisans from the other side.
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