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Annoy liberals and the GOP-E,
Vote for Newt & Support Free Republic!
Posted on 02/14/2012 6:00:37 PM PST by Steelfish
Time for Newt to Do the Honorable Thing By DAVID CATRON on 2.14.12
Gingrich can perform one last service for the GOP, drop out and endorse Santorum.
About a week after his surprising victory in the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich did an interview with ABC News, most of which he devoted to complaints about the tactics Mitt Romney was using against him in Florida: "We have not been as effective in telling the truth as he has been in running ads… which have had to be pulled because they were so inaccurate." His most notable remark, however, was a thinly veiled hint that Rick Santorum, who at that time had failed to gain any momentum from his caucus win in Iowa, should drop out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination: "The conservatives clearly are rejecting Romney. He is nowhere near getting a majority.… The fact is, when you combine the Santorum vote and the Gingrich vote... the conservative combined would clearly beat Romney."
Santorum failed to heed the former Speaker's suggestion, of course, and it's unlikely that he regrets that decision. He has since won three more upset victories in Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota. Santorum now ranks second in delegates and trounces Mitt Romney in the latest national survey conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP): "Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP's newest national poll. He's at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul." PPP has thus anointed Santorum the "consensus conservative candidate."
Meanwhile, Gingrich has floundered. He has not merely failed to add any fresh victories to his single South Carolina win, his showings in the most recent state contests correspond with the percentage he received in the PPP poll.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Enlighten me please. How coud this possibly be the “most notable” comment from Newt and specifically, how could it even remotely be interpreted as a “thinly veiled” hint that Santorum drop out.”
“conservatives clearly are rejecting Romney. He is nowhere near getting a majority.… The fact is, when you combine the Santorum vote and the Gingrich vote... the conservative combined would clearly beat Romney.”
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Rush and Mark Levin are going for Santorum. Sarah missed her chance of not jumping in. Her’s is now (unfortunately) a faded star.
The survey also shows Santorum beating Gingrich by large margins among “very conservative” Republicans as well as Tea Partiers and Evangelicals.
Even more ominously, PPP speculates as follows about the nature of the GOP race absent the former Speaker: “If Gingrich dropped out 58% of his supporters say they would move to Santorum, while 22% would go to Romney and 17% to Paul. Santorum gets to 50% in the Newt free field to 28% for Romney.”
And it gets worse. PPP released a survey yesterday showing Santorum pulling ahead in the upcoming Michigan primary, with Newt coming in dead last. “Rick Santorum’s taken a large lead in Michigan’s upcoming Republican primary. He’s at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich.”
You keep slamming Gingrich, and now you want to go after Palin?
You might just get some of us here started to focus on Santorum.
Many of us have not been doing the kind of research that we have done during the years on Mitt Romney, but with you hammering Gingrich AND Palin, you are very likely to stimulate a Santorum anal probe and constant discussion of those findings, that you would not like to see.
No slamming anyone- just laying down the facts as they are today. I too once stood up and applauded for Gingrich. But that was then, this is now. We need to follow the ground game and not simply hew to “our” guy.
Fine, you want to take on Gingrich and now Governor Palin, then it seems there is no reason to lay off Santorum, or Romneylite as he is thought of here.
Any candidates people who want to attack Palin are revealing themselves as less than conservative.
Newt should NOT drop out or even indicate that he might. The road is long and he has the sort of political stamina that I think Romney and Santorum lack.
Newt is a lot of things, but he is by far the best candidate (since Rick Perry) that we have in the race. If y’all want to back someone who will know what to do on day one in the Oval office, support Newt Gingerich. There is no time for training wheels.
I agree, Gingrich is a conservative warrior, and a conservative who has earned his place in the history books.
“If there’s one thing I learned from Santorum backers, it’s that we need both candidates in the race in case one of them collapses for good.”
I agree. Romney’s slime machine has a lot of money. But it will be taxed handling both Santorum and Gingrich. Eventually, one will become the conservative choice. But we need to wait and see how Santorum will stand up to 65 negative ads by Romney, most containing lies and distortions, for every one ad Santorum can run. It’s pretty easy to run up the negatives on an underfunded candidate like Santorum. Romney’s philosophy seems to be, “I may have high negatives; but I’m going to make sure that if you don’t nominate me, no one else can beat Obama either. So you’d better nominate me.”
Ironically, the only candidate Romney won’t slime is Obama. Of course, you could run truthful negative ads about Obama all year long and never run out of material starting with Bill Ayers, stop at the disaster Zero has engineered in the middle east and the gross spending, and ending with Obama’s explicit hostility to Christians. Romney won’t do that either.
The R establishment is desperate to avoid an election that is about issues. Romney is the guy for that. Were it about issues, then there would be pressure on them to deliver.
Catron and Hillyer are the most anti-Gingrich writers at the Spectator. Aaron Goldsteion and Jeffrey Lord have been pro-Gingrich.
Not “American Spectator”, just “Cantrell” writing in American Spectator.
As I said long ago with Rick Perry — when it’s time for a candidate to drop out, it won’t matter, because they will be polling in single digits anyway. That’s how they know.
In the meantime, we aren’t doing winner-take-all yet, and Gingrich is staying out of Michigan, like Santorum did in Florida. Hopefully, with better results — a Romney loss in Michigan would be a big deal, more important than his loss in South Carolina (where he was expected to have a hard time).
After that, it’s gloves off for Super Tuesday, and then we’ll see which candidate the voters have decided is the “conservative alternative”.
The one disaster would be if 3rd parties start running attack ads against Santorum in Michigan, and end up helping Romney win that state. But I wouldn’t expect any conservatives to do that.
Hear, hear!
If you can explain how beating Romney in Michigan “helps” Romney, go right ahead. Sounds like an excuse to help Romney win by giving him Michigan, and momentum.
No mention of Ron Paul dropping out I see.
Sarah hasn’t missed anything. She has wisely avoided endorsing any candidate yet, only going to far as to direct the voters in South Carolina and Florida to vote for the guy best able to beat Romney there, to keep the race going.
Why should she endorse Santorum? He’s up in the polls now, but he might falter. And if he does, maybe Gingrich will be the first candidate to really come back after fading away — we don’t have anybody else, so one of these two better stick it out.
It does seem that some people have forgotten what the goal was when they picked Gingrich (because he looked like he could beat Romney), and now they seem to think the most important thing isn’t beating Romney, but rather clearing the field for Gingrich to make a comeback.
But I don’t think that is a prevailing view, just a few vocal ones. Most are urging that both candidates stay in the race now, to keep up the attack on Romney and Obama.
The goal is to get to where every state has either Santorum or Gingrich on top of Romney. Hopefully, we won’t forget that.
National Reviw and American Spectator must be in cahoots with the elite Repub. establishment that we want to defeat. If Todd and Sarah Palin want Newt, he must be doing something right. Go Newt!!
I have seen this list since you began. You had Newt winning Colorado, Minnesota and a few others that did not happen. So you believe that Santorum is not going to win another state? Really? Why not try to present a list that is realistic. It would definitely be more helpful than the guessing game you are providing us.
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