Palin, Obama, Santorum, Romney: The pathway to victory or the road less traveled

Folks, we live in fascinating times, a time which I believe we are going to find it more and more difficult to find political consensus in.

Jack Cafferty of CNN is lauding CNN's new push poll of Obama's overall approval (50%) and that the Messiah will overmatch and outwit any of the GOP presidential candidates, whichever one becomes the nominee. He acted like the cat who had just swallowed the canary, he was beside himself, gloating from ear to ear.

Unfortunately some posters on the right-wing blogosphere have also adopted this negative narrative and posture as well, that our side has no hope in dethroning Obama in November. They see all the GOP candidates as fatally flawed or bewail the notion that the base of the GOP may reject Mitt Romney for a pretender to the throne named Rick Santorum.

Then you take the information from the 3 day Gallup daily tracking poll that shows over the last week (Feb 6-8) to Feb 16 (Feb 13-15)Obama's overall approval/disapproval has fallen from 49/45 to 43/48. Some people on our side are elated with the news and also realize that President Obama is virtually in the same political place and predicament that he was in on November 2, 2010--with an overall approval of about 45%-and we know what happened when the Democrats only received 44.8% of the vote back then--an electoral blowout, the likes that had not been seen by the GOP since 1938.

Then you have the folks on our side playing woe is me and knocking their head against the wall in disgust, that Rick Santorum has a strong possibility now of beating Mitt Romney in both Michigan and Ohio by coalescing conservative forces around, previously thought very improbable, thereby putting a serious dent into Romney's presidential aspirations and improving our chances the a conservative nominee will be chosen, with that improving our chances in the fall (Romney cannot beat Obama because of Romneycare and because he is weak). Instead they want Sarah Palin to advise conservatives to abandon this coalition, to again engage in vote splitting, the formula that brought us the likes of McCain in 2008 and will most assuredly bring us the likes of Romney in 2012 if he rises like the phoenix from the ashes after his defeats on Feb 28 and March 6 and comes back to win the nomination. Do you folks really want to face the dark prospects of a Romney resurrection so that an outside possibility of a brokered convention can be achieved? Romney must be taken down when our side has a chance to take him down, period. If we pussyfoot, we might not get a second chance to do so.

Some of us have become so obsessed with how terrible a nominee Santorum would be, nitpicking him to death, treating him worse than you would treat Obama, acting like he would be blown out like Goldwater was, whereas that is simply not in the cards (Obama is polling in the mid 40's not above 70% as LBJ was in 1964), while forgetting how disastrous a nominee Mitt Romney would be. Yes, Romney would keep the contest close, as the other candidates would as well, but with Obamacare off the table because of Romneycare, Mitt would have forfeited our ace in the hole and Obama is simply too cunning and glib and too well-funded to not to ride that "puppy" all the way to a narrow victory.

Then you have folks like me who attempt to stay fairly even-keeled and rational, who understand the lay of the land, and understand the overwhelming power of the media to craft a narrative or to impose disinformation and propaganda on an unsuspecting public, who understand the ups and downs of presidential politics while totally cognizant of the polling parameters of which the sitting President falls in between in the short-term and has languished there for over 2 and 1/2 years as well since July 2009, that Obama and his gang of cutthroats are now desperate beyond belief to put the coalition back together that helped bring Obama the WH in 2008 because his approval numbers with milennials, Hispanics and single folks (especially single white females)is down 10-15 points in each demographic since 2008.

How desperate must Obama be to pick a fight with the teachings of the Roman Catholic church over the issue of contraception and at the same time incur the wrath of the church hierarchy knowing there is a slight possibility that the GOP nominee may himself by a Roman Catholic? And some of us act, like at a 45% overall approval rating that Obama just ate our lunch or dealt our side a death blow.

Earlier this month PEW posted a poll that showed of white Catholics 42% now self-identify as Democrats and 49% now claim the are or lean to the GOP side. In other words Obama's efforts have not moved the needle one inch in a group he needs to win back. Like Rich Galen said today on CNN--this move was not about the proselytization of GOP or independent voters but an effort to re-energize the Democratic base. In Galen's words, nobody's mind was changed as result of the recent controversy concerning the Catholic church and contraception. A good number of non-white Catholics (Hispanics) and single white young women were never ours to begin with. That is why polls can be so important to separate the wheat from the chaff.

My position and that of many others is that the #1 political strategy of Obama and his cohorts in this election cycle will be to depress the turnout of white voters, especially white conservative voters in 9 months and his strategy to bring that off is as old as the hills-convince the voters on our side with the aid of media progressive saturation and propaganda and push polls that Obama is invincible or inevitable and will in all likelihood sail to an easy victory, to drain away the enthusiasm and passion from our side while the primaries proceed right up to the convention and then to convince GOP primary voters the WH would fear most going up against Mitt Romney in the general election and thus elevate Romney to the nomination in desperation, thereby depressing GOTV efforts in the fall and causing many conservatives and evangelicals to remain on their couch rather than to vote for Mitt Romney on Nov 6/2012.

A secondary benefit also could be that the Democrats could retain the Senate and take back the House because of low turnout on our side and maximum turnout on the other side due to Obama's superb organizational skills.

For those who shout bloody murder about Rick Santorum, do you really believe if he is at the helm, given his current massive support from conservatives, evangelicals and Tea Party supporters that the voters on our side will not come out in full force but instead that white conservatives are going to stay home in droves like they did 4 years ago with McCain? Folks I predict it will be like The Field of Dreams: Santorum will build a conservative vision for the future and they will come and that includes a massive amount of white female voters as well.

But I would prefer that Sarah Palin build the conservative vision of the future than Rick Santorum. (I am first a Palinista). Imho both would maximize white conservative voter turnout but Palin would be the superior candidate. But the looming political reality may NOT permit Palin to enter the presidential battlefield in overtime (brokered convention). If Santorum can in theory win the primaries in regulation time (before the convention), Sarah Palin, by her own words of Fox News yesterday, will NOT be a player in the arena to stop Santorum. She can only do so much watching from the sidelines.

Of course, I could be dead wrong and the votes of the delegates are indeed divvied up in such a manner that no candidate commands more than 50% of the delegates giving rise to a brokered convention, that all 4 candidates stay in the race to the bitter end right to the convention and that the party machine has not made side deals to ensure a nominee will be chosen before the convention. If this can be achieved, more power to Sarah Palin and her apparent strategy to avoid the marginalization and demonization of the battlefield and compete at a brokered convention relatively unscathed. But in football as in modern day politics,most games are settled in regulation time and not overtime. But anything is possible. Who am I to debunk the notion of a brokered convention? But all I am saying is that one should at least consider or entertain the possibility, however remote it appears now, that Rick Santorum could win the nomination in regulation time. Feb 28 and March 6 (Super Tuesday) will tell us more likely which road map the GOP primaries will take going forward: the road the ends with the coronation of either Santorum or even Romney before the convention or the road that takes us straight to Tampa and a brokered convention.

Note: I did not include Newt Gingrich in my discussion. Like many pundits I believe his campaign is over; he just hasn't figured it out or announced it yet.

I’m looking objectively at who can save our collective ass, and that isn’t Romney or Santorum.

Well I am looking at who can save us too and it isn't Newt, Milt and Paul in my book.

So why isn’t Santorum talking about the serious state of our economy?

America on Verge of Economic Collapse Because of Obama’s Cooked Reports
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2847936/posts

Your dedicated animosity against the conservative and freerepublic favorite is difficult to understand, it isn’t unusual with Santorum supporters, many of whom, are old Romney supporters.

That isn’t the case with you I don’t think, but it still gets to the Gingrich versus Romney argument.

If you are an old anti-Romney warrior, then you notice many of the old Romneybots now supporting Santorum with you and really despising Newt Gingrich, with you.

The old Romney crowd does not like Gingrich at all, Santorum they can accept, or hide behind, or even prefer this time, depending on the individual.

He is. You need to familiarize yourself with his stump speeches. He also is the only candidate that will field up to an hour of questions off the cuff from the audience afterwards to cover their concerns.

He just gave a couple speeches today in MI where he even called out Bush for giving Obummer cover for the GM bailouts and discussed the how income inequality is a good thing. Despite what is being pushed my the Hate Rick crowd, he has been covering more than Catholic issues on the trail. That is why he is moving past Milt in the polls and consistently gets high marks from people who claim an allegiance to the Tea Party.

PPP is about to release polling that shows Rick up over Milt in WA by 9%. That is big. Milt has been up there and no one has ever gotten above him till now.

I live in Washington, Laz. Santorum is not going anywhere in this state. He is dead meat.

Our Republican caucus means nothing. I’m not involved in it because it is meaningless.

Yesterdays FR favorite isn’t the same as today’s. Winning elections changes things.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2845965/posts?page=6#6

I have no dislike of Newt generally. I would vote for him if he was able to beat Milt, which seems increasingly unlikely now. I do find his supporters constant slamming of Rick baloney and I will fight on his behalf like I have done here at FR since he announced and I was the only one backing him. I don’t really care who else backs him and what their motivations are. Rick was my Senator for 2 terms and was a constant voice of values I believe in. He was a good Senator and will make a great President. Bank on it.

Looks like another state Rick will win in then. If you are going to let your favored candidate twisting in the wind while Ricks supporters show up, Newt has no chance but to lose another state. You fight like hell here where it doesn’t count so why are you not transferring that to help him out in WA? I sure am not sitting around hoping for Rick to win. I am doing something about it.

I agree with JR, now look at how you keep relentlessly attacking the candidate that JR has endorsed, then look at my posting history, you will notice very little of anything negative about Santorum, except what has just started to leak out a little in the past week or so about why the Santorum supporters are so incredibly hostile to Gingrich, the freerepublic candidate, that is related to our continuing anti-Romney agenda.

If you were strongly anti-Romney, and were on those threads, then you do recognize how many of the Romney crowd are now harshly anti-Gingrich, pro-Santorum posters.

You need to back off of Newt, you are even lying to make attacks on him.

You need to back off of Newt, you are even lying to make attacks on him.

I've made no lie. I even cited where my arguments come from. You can choose not to believe these reports, I do.

So you want to continue a harsh bashing of the freerepublic candidate.

You guys make it almost impossible to get past you to whatever there is to like about Santorum.

You seem personally determined to start a pissing war with the Gingrich supporters.

You guys make it almost impossible to get past you to whatever there is to like about Santorum.

Give me a break. Check out the next Santorum thread why don't you. Check out the seething anger we have had to put up with from the Newt people. Also why don't you be honest with yourself and reread this thread and explain to me how I started this? I was calling out a straight up slam from 2ndDiv about Executive Experience. You yourself stated that you were using your own definition for the topic arguing with me.

All I know is me having to try and counter your BS about Gingrich including the lies of him being a lobbiest.

Along with all the anti-conservative Romney supporters who are now strong Santorum devotees, (and still anti-conservative/Gingrich), we are seeing a ton of long time sleeper accounts coming alive to support Santorum and bash Gingrich.

Just like the Romney sleeper accounts of old, before he was forbidden here. I have yet to see a sleeper account come to life to support Gingrich.

Gingrich including the lies of him being a lobbiest.

Refute what I cited to you not using Newts explanation but an impartial 3rd party or stop calling me a lair. You are the one not defending your argument. Use Lie again and I am ignoring you fully in any further debate.

Your argument on Santorum people being Romney plants is BS. I am familiar with almost all of the people on the Ping and who have backed me up over the year pushing Santorum and none have been anything other that people who genuinely care about seeing Rick get into the WH. There a couple Cain and Perry people in there, but they are solid people. What you perceive is mistaken.

I was just about to print the post so I could read it later when I noticed the little ‘Note’ at the end.

Wasn’t about to waste any paper on it. Tired of people whose daily political position swings with the latest polls.
JB

I responded to you with an explanation for how Gingrich has proven himself a national leader of historical measure, not with an attack on Santorum.

I had to deal with the Romney as Executive nonsense, when he was a total failure at it. You keep lying about Newt being a lobbyist, and if you claim to not see a crossover from Romney to Santorum, then you make yourself unbelievable again. I sure recognize hard core Romney warriors among them, but then again, I was strongly anti-Romney, and fought them on long threads like this.

This sleeper account business is the new thing, they are ALL Santorum supporters.

Lazlo,

They are just lashing out because Rick is kicking butt and their guy is getting left in the dust. You would think they would be thanking Rick for kicking Romney’s train off the tracks. You will be called a troll or secretive Romneybot next. It has to be some conspiracy, it can’t be their candidate failing.

Seems like some of them hate Rick more than they do Obummer. It’s irrational.

Remember 2010? When much of the GOP leadership sat on their behinds and convinced each other Obama was too powerful to be defeated? Governor Sarah Palin ran around all over the country raising huge sums of money, fighting Obama and the Left, and generally supporting good Conservative candidates. And we had a huge win. Many others were involved too, but Gov. Palin was certainly instrumental in helping our side gain a whopping 600+ seats.

And still, much of the ‘smart GOP leadership’ won’t listen to her.

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