Posted on 01/07/2012 2:20:03 PM PST by SeekAndFind
NASHUA, NH -- Just as in Iowa, Newt Gingrich's popularity has plunged here in New Hampshire. The former House speaker, who hit 24 percent in a Rasmussen survey in late November, is languishing at eight percent in the latest Rasmussen Granite State poll.
In the next primary state, South Carolina, Gingrich hit 42 percent in an NBC News poll in early December. Now, he is at 18 percent in a new Rasmussen survey.
The conventional wisdom holds that Gingrich fell as a result of highly effective attack ads aired in Iowa by rival Ron Paul and a super PAC working on behalf of Mitt Romney. Certainly those ads, which focused on issues like Gingrich's paid work for Freddie Mac and his global-warming partnership with Nancy Pelosi, did some damage. But talks with voters here in New Hampshire and with politicos in South Carolina suggest the ads are not what killed Gingrich. It was Gingrich's reaction to the ads.
Voters who once supported Gingrich but have now turned away from him say that his hot-tempered response to the ads, rather than the ads themselves, simply turned them off. "He's got a temper," said one Tea Party member at a Nashua coffeehouse Saturday morning. "I don't want a guy with a temper with his finger on the button." Other voters said Gingrich's ill-tempered complaints about the ads distracted them from the former speaker's message about jobs, the economy, and American renewal.
In South Carolina, Gingrich's decision to call Romney a liar did not sit well with many Republicans, including those who don't support Romney. "I think people saw him calling Romney a liar as just un-presidential," says one well-connected South Carolina political figure. "It just looked unpresidential."
As a political tactic, the brilliance of the Paul and Romney ads was that they provoked Gingrich to anger -- and into hurting himself. That allowed Romney supporters to follow up by accusing Gingrich of being in a state of perpetual anger, and therefore unfit for the presidency. "He's always angry," former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a Romney supporter, said Friday. "There's nothing new about that…This is the old Gingrich. There was a new Gingrich for about 11 microseconds, and now you're back to the old Gingrich."
Gingrich has also been hurt by a long gap between Republican debates. Gingrich rose to prominence in the GOP race because of his consistently impressive performances in debates -- and by his decision to focus his attacks on Barack Obama and not on his fellow candidates. But until Saturday night's face-off in Manchester, there has not been a debate since the Fox News session in Sioux City, Iowa on December 15. That's a long time for a candidate to go without being able to showcase his strength. During that time, Gingrich has fallen steadily in the polls.
Voters here and in South Carolina still have great respect for Gingrich and what he has accomplished in his career; no rival can match him. And voters wish some other candidate had Gingrich's debating talent; one Tea Party member said he would like to see a candidate with Romney's business acumen, Gingrich's debating skills, and Rick Santorum's integrity. But for many voters, in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and across the country, temperament is a threshold issue. If a voter determines that a candidate is too hot-headed, or in some way does not possess the proper temperament to be president, it ultimately doesn't matter what else that candidate does; he won't win the voter's support. And that is what has happened to Gingrich in the aftermath of the Iowa attack ads.
My fantasy too. I DESPISE Fox - seems like no matter when I do stop on that channel - someone is on there telling me Romney is the only one that can win. I watch MSNBC and CNN more than Fox (how many more bimbos can they pack into their shows?).
The left got their messiah in “The One” and now us on the the right demand our turn to have one. Since Romney and Huntsman are the only ones vying for the job of god, they have a head start, and every other candidate may have too many flaws for us. (Ron Paul appears to have been the victim of an alien abduction and some kind of mind altering extraterrestrial experience, which allows him to escape earthly reality. This is godlike enough for some. (RP call home.))
But when it’s all said and done, many Republicans just pick their candidate the same way they get a cold, it’s simply given to them. -sarcasm, sorta-
Newt expected to get a sympathy vote, after he was attacked in Iowa. It didn’t happen. He had a campaign war chest in Iowa, but chose not to use it.
As far as I know, no concrete evidence exists that Cain ever cheated on his wife. A collection of well-timed hearsay might work well for much of the electorate, but not for those with their wits about them. I spoke with a good friend who happens to be black and he based his easy willingness to believe the Cain slanders entirely on his view of black culture, with no foundation in specific, objective facts about Cain, and his certainty crumbled to nothing when I challenged it.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying Cain was perfect. I am saying that as an electorate we have lost so much of our critical thinking apparatus in the last thirty years that we are now way too easily led. The media pulls the ring in our nose and we follow it, then they pull us another way and we follow it. Rush and many other conservative thought leaders have labored hard and prevented an all out collapse, but the damage is severe, and this election cycle, even more than 2008, is shining a bright light on just how bad it is.
The knives will never come out for Romney because he has no chance of winning the presidency. And even if he did, he’s an Obama clone, so nothing would change and the GOP would be effectively neutered, so the left is probably actually rooting for Romney to win.
I don’t care about Cain’s wife; the problem was exactly the same as it was with Clinton, he lied about the whole thing. He even denied the settlements until it was proved that they existed, even though he had been questioned about them in 2004 when he ran for office then (and lost). In his defense, I think he never expected his candidacy to be taken seriously, and thus he wasn’t sure how to handle these things.
The problem is that right now we are not focusing on issues and who would be best equipped to deal with them. I don’t care how many times a candidate has been married or if he’s somebody I’d like to go out to dinner with. The only thing I care about personally is that he is somebody who seems to have the brains, conservative principles and drive to do what is necessary.
Obama has done a lot of damage to this country that simply has to be undone by an aggressive person with a program. So that’s what we’ve got to be looking for. (But not a nutbag like Paul, who actually is very similar to Obama’s extreme left, since extremes always meet.)
Did Cain lie? I don’t acknowledge this. I can be persuaded, so feel free to correct me if you think I’m wrong, or am missing some pertinent facts, but as an attorney, if I’m “prosecuting” Cain, I know I have to show by other than hearsay that he knew what he said was false when he said it (“mens rea”), if I want to prove a lie, and I can’t do that with the stipulated facts.
For example, if he says there was no settlement, but he was aware of the payout of a marginal severance package, is it a lie to say there was no settlement? If one is strict with the meaning of words, you don’t have a settlement unless you have a lawsuit ready for hearing. To my knowledge, that never happened. Therefore, no lie.
My theory on why he didn’t prepare for or respond to these things all that well? He is a computer/math guy, not a politician with years of experience being up to his elbows in other people’s dirty tricks. He never imagined his enemies willingness to use and the broader electorate’s willingness to believe a string of forcefully presented but unproven lies. He underestimated Axelrod and overestimated the rest of us.
Remember that the Alynski school of politics designs an attack at precisely that point where your opponent enjoys his greatest strength among his own supporters. People quote the “isolate” principle all the time but they fail to recognize it when it is used against them. Isolation comes when you take a target whose strength is integrity and “show” he has none, whose strength is family values and you “show” him to be a cheater, or not really prolife, who strength is intellect and you amplify some single mental error all out of proportion to reality. By this you separate, or “isolate,” the target from the one group that could give him strength. Now he’s a sitting duck. Very effective. Evil, yes, but effective.
Bottom line, for me, is any of these front-runners (including the “also rans” and the “almost rans”), with the exceptions of Paul & Romney, would be infinitely better than what we have now, but because we are so willing to believe what we are told, and so haphazard in our analysis even when we do “question authority,” that we can be bamboozled into chasing ourselves into a cage from which we will not be able to escape.
When Newt announced his proposal in a debate, he said he was "ready 'to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.'”
The morning after the debate, Gingrich was already swamped with accusations from a wide variety of quarters that he was supporting amnesty, for example, HERE, which is a typical example describing Gingrich's plan as about amnesty ("The plan seeks to break the political deadlock over whether to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants by splitting them into two groups.")
Sorry, but Gingrich knew VERY WELL that when he said what he said, how he said it, when and where he said it, that he was going to have to fend off accusations that his plan amounted to amnesty. He specifically said he was "ready to take the heat for that."
Then when his political opponents brought the heat, instead of accepting responsibility for explaining away the mess he himself made, he wails about how he's being lied about and it's so unfair.
It's not unfair and Gingrich knows it. He PREDICTED that his comments would be viewed as advocating a form of amnesty.
Whether his plan does or does not constitute amnesty is beside the point here. We are talking about political strategies.
Gingrich knowingly and deliberately made it VERY EASY for his opponents, from the minute he said it in that debate and forward (go back and watch the tape and read the threads about AMNESTY here on FR the next day), to characterize his position as allowing illegal immigrants a way to stay in the U.S.
Again, this is precisely what he claimed he was "ready to take the heat for."
Except he wasn't ready to take the heat. And he didn't go out there the day after the debate, and the day after and the day after, and make damn sure that HE explained himself again and again, if necessary.
Saying "Newt has a plan on his website" has zero impact on how politics gets done in the real world.
But the fact is that Gingrich proposed to allow at least some illegal immigrants to stay, be provided a "path to legality," which everyone knows then makes them, just by virtue of being here legally, eligible to apply for citizenship. Please check the voluminous FR threads on these points in the days after he made this proposal. These discussions about amnesty and Newt's proposal were not had by a bunch of Romney supporters; they were based on what NEWT SAID.
Gingrich made this mess and he didn't clean it up. End of story. So he had to pay the piper.
To go from that to crying that his opponents "lied" about the very thing he predicted they would say if he said what he said shows a shocking level of political incompetence (or delusions of grandeur). Gingrich would have been in a much stronger position to have simply said, "I said all along they were going to peg me as an amnesty supporter, but here's how my policy is not amnesty."
As it is: call the whhhhaaaaaaambulance.
Sorry, but you’re proving their point very well.
The more Santorum appears as the Not Romney AND the Not Gingrich candidate, the prettier his numbers will get.
Newt’s support was never deep.
But the presidency is not about debating.
Everyone surged, and everyone tanked!
He had no answers for his association with one of the Dems' biggest pet rocks.
Then the Freddie Mac officials got sued.
Then Gingrich said he'd be glad to release his Freddie Mac contract, but they wouldn't let him. Then Freddie Mac said he was more than welcome to release his contracts.
It won't ever end with Newt. Because Newt creates messes and then doesn't seem to know how to clean them up (even if that's possible).
Oh, like this one:
Climate scientist disowned by Newt Gingrich speaks out over book spat; Katharine Hayhoe says the dumping of her chapter from Gingrich's book following rightwing pressure came as a surprise (publication of the book had already been pushed to after the election).
This the Washington Post speaking, so it's, like, a good thing, you know.
Unfortunately, Cain started off denying something he had discussed only a few years earlier as a possible problem (the employment suits) and then went to half admissions and finally “recalled” the events in question once people emerged with documented witnesses.
I don’t care about his relationship with his wife; that’s their problem. But he should have been more honest. He probably didn’t expect to get that far and he also had a terrible campaign adviser or manager (don’t recall which) who most likely told him that the best approach would be a blanket denial followed by grudging admissions, ala Clinton. But the people who believed in him deserved better, I think.
In any case, there seem to be three left (leaving out Paul and Romney): Gingrich, Santorum and Perry. They all have their strengths, but I think the one who is most likely to get things done is Gingrich. I’d vote for any of these three, although I like Santorum the least simply because he doesn’t seem to have a lot of ideas and I honestly don’t think (based on his career as Senator) that he could get much done or would even try. However, he’d be better than Romney (and I think Paul will run 3rd party anyway).
DailyCaller The Daily Caller
Breaking: Casino magnate contributes $5 million to Newt Gingrich-affiliated Super PAC - http://thedc.com/zkOpoo
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ya think?
The more Santorum appears as the Not Romney AND the Not Gingrich candidate, the prettier his numbers will get.
.........
I like your theory and I agree that Newt’s problems are self inflicted.
However, I also agree that there is a structural problem similar to the one in 2008 in that there are two or three conservatives and only one liberal in the republican primary. therefor the conservative vote will be split—but not the liberal vote.
advantage liberal.
The more Santorum appears as the Not Romney AND the Not Gingrich candidate, the prettier his numbers will get.
.........
I like your theory and I agree that Newt’s problems are self inflicted.
However, I also agree that there is a structural problem similar to the one in 2008 in that there are two or three conservatives and only one liberal in the republican primary. therefor the conservative vote will be split—but not the liberal vote.
advantage liberal.
I think Santorum has pulled away from the rest of the pack. While a few will continue to support Perry as the conservative alternative to Romney and Gingrich, it seems to me that most of the support that will gravitate away from Gingrich, and perhaps even from Romney, has no place to go but to Santorum.
So, I don’t think there will be a huge problem with the conservative vote being split at this point in the race. I think it’s just a question of how many voters want to vote for someone who is Not Romney AND Not Gingrich. Those voters are likely to go to Santorum.
I had been saying if Santorum finishes a strong second in NH, then it will definitely be a two-man race going forward. But that may be the case anyway, regardless of what happens in NH.
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