Romney loses Florida watch the establishment go into panic mode. Losing South Carolina and Florida proves that he cannot win the south. Those in the know feared that the evangelicals, independents and women would not go for Newt. Well, looks like that was a pile of horse hockey. The know it alls had it backwards. They won’t go for Mitt.
First, even in the **BOB JONES UNIVERSITY** precinct in South Carolina, Gingrich lost by only 15 votes to Santorum, and won by large majorities elsewhere in the most conservative parts of one of our most conservative Bible Belt states. I frankly can't explain what happened in South Carolina, but Gingrich won big, and if that keeps up he's going to prove to a lot of evangelical leaders that our people are willing to vote for him.
Here's an interesting analysis by Dr. Oran Smith, President and CEO of the Palmetto Family Council in South Carolina, documenting that many of South Carolina's most conservative Christians voted for Gingrich:
As Jim Robinson has already pointed out, in Florida, a winner-take-all state, it looks like Santorum has done the right thing by participating in the debates but otherwise mostly backing off and trying to avoid being a vote-splitter who can't win and would only enable Romney.
It's too early to call for Santorum to drop out after only three elections. Also, as AMorePerfectUnion, sasportas, and marygam have pointed out, Gingrich has a history of being fairly volatile and since his rise back to prominence is rather recent, we'd better have a backup candidate in case something new blows up in what has been a chaotic election. The RINOs seem to have Mitch Daniels as their backup; why shouldn’t we have one whose name is actually on ballots?
I hope Jim Robinson is right and Romney drops out, not Santorum. Romney is a businessman, after all, and he's probably motivated less by ideology and more by bottom-line issues. Sooner or later he's going to either decide he's throwing good money after bad, as he did in 2008, or he's going to decide he can win this thing and pour in even more money.
I like the idea of a Gingrich-Santorum-Paul race. That would be a real debate between people who hold traditional conservative, social conservative, and libertarian views, without the RINO and semi-liberal influence. While I think Gingrich would probably win that race, we'd see a lot of social conservatives who are now voting for Gingrich to stop Romney decide they'd rather back Santorum as their first choice. In any case, it would be a race between two real conservatives and Ron Paul's libertarian views which are wrong but need to get rebutted.
But what if Romney doesn't drop out?
Those of us who are social issue conservatives need to face reality. Granted, only three states have voted so far, but if the South continues to vote for Gingrich, it's going to become obvious that our people are more interested in defeating Romney than electing a social issues conservative.
Conservative Christians have a bad history of demanding perfection in candidates, backing a guy who votes the right way but can't get enough people to vote for him, and then losing races by splitting the vote and enabling a RINO or a liberal because it takes 50 percent to win elections in America. That doesn't get our guy into office and mostly gets fellow conservatives mad at us.
It's looking more and more as if our people are voting for Gingrich despite what our leaders are saying. I'm going to take a great deal of criticism in my own circles for saying this, but I think it may be time for Florida evangelical leaders to encourage a vote for Gingrich since Santorum has no chance in that state due to its winner-take-all rules, and then decide on a state-by-state basis depending on how delegates are allocated whether it makes more sense to back Gingrich or back Santorum in each individual upcoming state.
Both Santorum and Gingrich have a solid track record on social issues. I think it's possible to vote for either candidate in good conscience. I know there are people who strongly disagree with me on that, but I believe stopping Romney with his record of flip-flopping on baby-killing needs to be our most important goal in the next few months.
This election has been such a crazy roller-coaster that it's probably premature for Santorum to pull out. But what's the long-term for Santorum? I don't see how he can win the primary this point unless some new crazy thing happens in the election, though I'm probably voting for him (and in my state Gingrich didn't make the ballot so I don't really have a choice). I hope Santorum gets either the vice-presidency or a significant cabinet spot in a Gingrich cabinet, or that Longbow1969 is right and he goes back to Pennsylvania and wins an election.
When this election is done, we're going to have some long, hard work in our churches. This election is exposing some serious problems among conservative evangelicals, but we can't get those problems fixed in the short time we have left until the primary season is over.
88 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:41:41 PM by ought-six: “There is no way and no math that will get Rick Santorum to the nomination. He has some good qualities, but he needs to bail and let Newt pick up most of his flock.”
75 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:31:35 PM by PapaBear3625: “If Newt loses Florida, he’s in trouble. If Newt wins Florida, then I can see him winning Super Tuesday and racing for the nomination. A lot is riding on his Florida performance.”
24 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 7:25:49 PM by Jim Robinson: “And I like the idea of defeating Romney here and now in Florida. If Romney loses Florida, he’s done. Santorum has already admitted he’s abandoning Florida, but he shouldn’t drop out. He should just recommend to the Florida voters (like Sarah did in South Carolina) to vote for the leading conservative in the race (Newt in this case) and deprive Romney of the win and the delegates. After losing to Gingrich in South Carolina and Florida, Romney will either drop out or be dumped by the establishment or go down in flames later, then it’ll be a two man race between the two conservatives, Santorum and Gingrich.”
90 posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:44:21 PM by Jim Robinson: “Romney loses Florida watch the establishment go into panic mode. Losing South Carolina and Florida proves that he cannot win the south. Those in the know feared that the evangelicals, independents and women would not go for Newt. Well, looks like that was a pile of horse hockey. The know it alls had it backwards. They won’t go for Mitt.”