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!
Feel free to ping anyone whom you think would be interested in this piece.
Thanks for the post.
It it time for a new tagline for me and I think I will use some of your post.
Ride to the sound of the guns
I had heard that before but did not know where.
Actually I looked it up at http://drrobertowens.com
and he says,”
He graduated with the highest number of demerits and at the bottom of his class. He was the poster child for graduating by the skin of your teeth. Yet he also became the youngest Major General in American History and the man General Sheridan believed did more than any other to win the Civil War. He was a fighting commander whose standing order in combat was, “Ride to the sound of the guns!”
Thanks
Ping
Glad you liked it. Conservatives need to coalesce in a hurry.
There’s only one party. True, it has two wings both mostly alike each other. Newt ain’t in neither.
The Demopublicans HAVE to take him out. He’s even talking about auditing the fed. He’s talking about a real investigation of Wall Street and the banks. My goodness! Can’t have that.
Were he to be the nominee I honestly believe they would consider assassination.
We have ourselves a fight on our hands. This shall be our finest hour because this one counts, and we’re all going to play like dolphins and fight like mountain lions. New-Time starts now.
Yes, Newt is our conservative warrior. He has been speaking out for freedom ever since he first went to Congress in the early eighties. He’s not a newcomer to the love of liberty, like some of the candidates. He recognizes how exceptional our American history is, how unique those founding fathers.
Well, Newt is an exceptional leader and we need to get behind him. We won’t get another one like him during this time of America’s crisis.
Newts primary victory in S.C. was pay back for the establishment and their henchmen AKA old media taking out Cain in the primary.
American are sick and tired of RINO’s and socialist picking their candidates!
The Tea Party is still a very powerful force the establishment has dismissed as “kooks” and are now going to pay for this dismissal!
Excellent!
The base is fired up!
Brit Hume's Newt-H8 (apparently because of the suicide of Brit's 28 yr. old son years ago) seems to be fueling his biased reporting. It's become obvious.
Britt Hume was pathetic last night. They have no clue how mad We the People are. We are mad about the deficit, we are mad about the down grade, we are mad about the jobless rate, we are mad about Romney/ObamaCare, we are mad about Keystone, we are mad about the EPA, we are mad about the Senate NOT having a budget in over 1,000 days. I can go on forever. And now Britt Hume wants the Massachusetts Obama Twin to win the nomination without a fight. NO, THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN. GO NEWT!!!!
To the World War 2 Bomber Pilots, the flack was always the heaviest when they were over the target. It’s how they knew where to fly to when they could not see the ground.
Just as Palin did for Alaska, Newt will do to Washington.
“Whoever succeeds in motivating their base the best will win.”
That is a ROCK SOLID rule, at least with the Republicans, going back to 1976. It also explains the panic by Democrats with Palin in 2008.
I posted this a short time ago on a different thread...note the pattern as to which of these Republican candidates motivated the base, and which ones won. It’s clear as day, yet our Establishment seems to (always) have a death wish:
Ford - RINO (loses)
Reagan - Conservative (wins, twice)
Bush (1988) - Conservative (No New Taxes), wins
Bush (1992) - RINO (gave us higher taxes after all), loses
Dole - RINO, never trusted by the base, loses
Bush (2000) - Conservative (while running), no so much after - wins
Bush (2004) - Conservative enough (while running), RINO after - wins
McCain - RINO, all the way - loses
So, how did the RINOs do and how did the Conservatives do?
And we’re STILL supposed to believe that we need Romney because he’s “electable”. This isn’t very hard to figure out...
Google ‘Brit Hume’s son.’
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