Posted on 01/22/2012 11:17:26 AM PST by Brices Crossroads
Not even 24 hours passed before the Establishment hive was out in force this morning, after Newt Gingrich's stunning decimation of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary.
Chris Christie said that Newt has been an embarrassment to the party. His political paramour, Ann Coulter (who endorsed Romney in 2008, then Christie this cycle, and now Romney again...three liberals in a row) deemed him the "least conservative" of the current field and the least electable, among other snarky and degrading comments I will not repeat. Paradoxically, She also repeated the old liberal saw that we need to reach to the middle to get the "coveted independents". Brit Hume pronounced how frightened the GOP Congress-critters were to run for election in 2012 with Gingrich at the top of the ticket and how they would move heaven and earth to prevent his nomination.
Just as Democrats will tell you who they fear the most by attacking that candidate, so will the Beltway GOP hive. They are apoplectic in their fear of Gingrich. The ink wasn't even dry in the papers recounting his unprecedented landslide in the Palmetto state before they pulled out the long knives.
Methinks they doth protest too much. In spite of their thinly veiled contempt for the voters of South Carolina, with its supposed rigid conservatism, South Carolina is far from the most conservative of Southern states. It is much closer to a bellweather of those states across the nation which are reliably Republican in Presidential elections as well as some (like Florida and Ohio) which generally go Republican but not always. Both Iowa (whose caucus is too lightly attended to tell us much) and especially New Hampshire, one of Romney's home states are far too likely to be Democrat states for them to be reliable predicters of GOP turnout or base enthusiasm.
As I have said in may previous posts, this will be a "base election". Whoever succeeds in motivating their base the best will win. If the South Carolina results tell us anything, they tell us that the base is fired up. South Carolinians cast 427,000 votes in the 2008 GOP primary. This year, they cast 600,000. Enthusiasm is way up among the base and this portends well for the GOP as long as it nominates a conservative. If the GOP nominates the liberal (Romney), as it did in 2008, the base will stay home and there will go the old ball game.
John McCain won the South Carolina primary over Mike Huckabee, 143,000 to 128,000 in 2008. Newt Gingrich got nearly as many votes (270,000 to 243,000) as the top two finishers last time. Gingrich got substantially more than McCain and either the number three finisher (Fred Thompson, who got 67,000).
In other words, the base is fired up about the election this year. Gingrich's victory was nothing short of breathtaking and it has scared the bejabbers out of the hive. They will use all means, far and foul, to try to take him down. The same tactics were used to dispatch Pat Buchanan in 1996 after he Placed second in Iowa and won New Hampshire. Buchanan was too easy to marginalize, his victories too narrow and his experience in running a national campaign nonexistent, making him easy prey to the hive's attacks.
Not so Gingrich. Gingrich has governed before and the sky didn't fall (In fact, the budget was balanced, taxes lowered and welfare reformed). His victory in South Carolina was the most lopsided in a contested primary since 1980, which will give him a real tailwind.
And, Mr Hume, he HAS run a national campaign before. In spite of your conversations with unnamed GOP Congressmen who (you say) are afraid of an electoral donnybrook with Newt at the top of the ticket, Gingrich was the face of, and ran, the 1994 GOP House campaign which (contrary to nearly all predictions) gained 52 seats and control of the Congress for the first time in 40 years. In spite of Clinton's landslide of 1996 (powered by the lackluster base turnout generated by the top of the ticket, the Mitt Romney of 1996...Bob Dole), Gingrich preserved the GOP House majority. Again, in 1998, Gingrich successfully defended the House majority during the turbulent period of Clinton's impeachment; In fact, Gingrich's 1994 majority lasted twelve years until it foundered on the shores of the big government Bush Establishment in 2006). I honestly don't know where Hume comes up with these hypotheses, but they certainly are not based upon any historical analysis. And since he lived that very history, as did most of us, I am forced to conclude that he is peddling propaganda for the Beltway hive.
Pay no attention to the hive. Or, I should say, pay attention to them. If they aim their attacks in a certain direction, and as their noise becomes deafening, I have one piece of advice. Ride to the sound of the guns.
Go Newt!
Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are skipping Florida since its a “winner-tame-all” election. Rick and Ron can not afford to spend time and money in a state that does not yield any electors to the runner-ups. Florida will be a head to head contest between Newt and Mitt. Not good for Mitt!
David Gregory on MTP today, discussing Gingrich’s win and prospects — utterly disconnected, surreal. You couldn’t hear more nonsense if you tuned into a chat on a madhouse porch. To think these people opine for a living — !
BTTT
I guess those bows and arrows at Little Bighorn threw him off.
RINOS running Alinsky playbook against Newt.
Just saw Coulter mocking and dismissive of Newt. This is of of the weakest performance by Coulter I have ever seen. She just seemed unhinged.
I likw Newts attitude but he was or maybe is an amnesty guy and global warming guy.
Hopefully is liberal oriented approach to his attacks are only theatre and he moves right.
I think Newt has proven that he knows how to “turn the canon” on the GOP-E so to speak.
Hi, exit. I believe we have our candidate...the one the Establishment appears to hate the most.
Even if I didn’t like Newt (and I do), I would almost be drawn to him by the identity and intellectual dishonesty of his enemies.
He clawed his way to power in Washington back in the 1990s, beating the Establishment choices and tweaking them quite often. No one handed him anything. Power isn’t something someone gives you Real power is something you take. Newt took power from the Establishment and he never said “pretty please” or “thank you”. This galls that gaggle of elitists.
Newt beat them at their own game in a national election. They are afraid he’s going to do it again.
Hi Half full. Newt looks like the one. Let’s hope he can really win one for the Gipper!
I always loved that quote from Barry Goldwater. The press was sure able to do him in. Reagan had the ability to get his message through that garbage. Newt has that ability too.
The people who want to vote for a Democrat won't settle for a Democrat-lite RINO, they will want the real thing. The Repubs can't win by offering somebody who does not fire up the base and makes them want to SHOW UP.
“The people who want to vote for a Democrat won’t settle for a Democrat-lite RINO, they will want the real thing. The Repubs can’t win by offering somebody who does not fire up the base and makes them want to SHOW UP. “
That is EXACTLY my point. And if people don’t want to believe that, they only have 2008 to look at. We ran the PERFECT candidate, based on ALL of the polling - a compromiser that “reached-out” to the opposition - who hated name-calling, who wanted the election to be only about “issues”.
...and we promptly had our heads handed to us. In fact, The Establishment has a lot of gall to try to make use REPEAT what failed 4 years ago. That fits the definition of insanity...except we’re treated as the insane ones.
after Newt Gingrich’s stunning decimation of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary.
“Decimation should be reserved for an extreme reduction in the number of a population: “Palin’s entry into the race decimated Bachmann’s support.”
The word originates from the Roman practice of executing 10% of its own troops who fail in battle, or require severe discipline.
Another bit of trivia about Custer:
During the CW, he was with a group of staff officers and a General when they came to a creek. The General wondered how deep it was and the staff sat there and dithered about it a few minutes. Custer got tired of it and rode out midstream where the water reached his hips. “It’s this deep.” he said.
John McCain won the South Carolina primary over Mike Huckabee, 143,000 to 128,000 in 2008. Newt Gingrich got nearly as many votes (270,000 to 243,000) as the top two finishers last time.
YOU would be better placed in Brit Hume's chair than Brit. You're doing the job he SHOULD be doing -- not just Brit, but any political journalist That old saying, "You report, we decide," is such a lie. If they were honest, their motto would be: "We report the parts of the story that will lead you to decide what we want you decide -- if we reported the whole picture, you might decide something else!"
Well done, Brices!
And GODSPEED NEWT GINGRICH.
Wow! Brices' post was great as it was -- and then you went and made it better!
Amen! "Ride to the sound of the guns!"
That’s an interesting tidbit, and tells a lot about the man’s personality.
I just happened to catch a PBS show about his life in the wee hours last night. I winked out before seeing it all, but I did catch the part where they talked about his life right after the Civil War.
Apparently, Custer wasn’t doing so well as a civilian, and was just about going bankrupt, when he got a telegram asking him to re-enlist to fight the Indians in the Dakota territories.
Unfortunately, he answered that call, and went on to commit some egregious horrors against the Lakota Sioux, which also led to his death at Little Big Horn. I think it was a sad chapter in our history, and blemished the name of a man who would have otherwise been well remembered.
That’s my take. Your mileage may vary.
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