Posted on 03/07/2012 7:38:50 PM PST by Steelfish
What is it about that dang 3 percent that Romney beats Santorum by every state....yes Ohio was worse.
We have a spolier in the race, who ends up finishing dead last but allows Romney to pull squeaker wins in Alaska, Ohio, Arizona, Washington State; and Michigan.
I misspoke earlier today, it turns out Alaska doesn’t have a 20% threshold, so Gingrich will get a couple of delegates in Alaska.
Paul isn’t going anywhere.
No doubt and more than that many are beginning to question Gingrich's motives. Gingrich may be the smartest guy running so he has to see that his candidacy only serves to strengthen Mitt. I'd make the same argument to whomever was the least effective conservative candidate as of this date, March 7th. Today, that candidate is Newt Gingrich. If Newt doesn't concede and back Santorum before April it's game over. Mitt will win the Republican nomination.
here’s a previous discussion for those who want endless details about the minutia.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2855852/posts
and the link to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article that UPI mentions.
http://www.newsminer.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Romney+leads+Alaska+presidential+preference+poll%20&id=17763485&instance=alaska_news
The score was Romney 32%, Not-Romney 68%. Let’s take this fight to the Convention and let the Convention do what the Convention was designed to do - choose the nominee.
It would be fine if posters on here who are backing NEWT would say, in states where NEWT is not competing, please vote for RS. Especially if there is a threshold like VT and MA.
What happened to the STOP MITT movement? Did it become an ELECT NEWT movement? Before one can elect NEWT, we must STOP MITT. BEFORE.
there were 300,000 wasted votes in OH for candidates that did not meet the threshold. And who therefore got ZERO delegates.
300,000 who did not think about the rules. And of course there was the Santorum delegate fiasco in a few CD’s.
Much of rural Alaska, the Repub Party never organized to allow participation. They concentrate on Urban Centers. Support for Santorum is greater in rural areas, same as in other parts of the country. Repubs in my community requested they be included, just wasn’t in the cards to be.
Exactly. You would have thought that we would have learned from the 2008 primary that brought us McCain. Gingrich says all the right things and the little devil on my left shoulder would vote for him just to see the two or three debates between Gingrich and Obama but if Gingrich were the nominee the media would then decide that suddenly, debates aren’t really necessary because their internal polls show that voters are already aware of where the candidates stand on the issues or the President has too many real world global issues on his plate to get involved with what amounts to a media circus, blah, blah, blah... Or the MSM will pull out all stops to frame the debates to the President’s advantage. There will be an excuse, any excuse, to limit any face-to-face opportunities that would enable Newt to shine, I have no doubt about that.
But the bottom line is that in the eyes of the moderates and independents, Newt is still “Newt” and he has too much past baggage to attract them and the disenchanted Obama voters from 2008. And, like it or not, the Republican nominee will need as many of those voters they can get. Of the two conservative candidates, Santorum is unapologetic in his message (voters respect that), there is no major conservative policy advantage to be gained picking Gingrich over Santorum and Santorum is the more likeable option in the eyes of the independents and disenchanted Democrats.
I used to think of the Democrats as Jimmy Breslin’s Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Unfortunately, that title now better suits the conservatives in the Republican party. Here we go again. Thanks alot, Newt.
Palins state. Don’t leave that tidbit out
The last time that strategy worked will be the first time it worked. It’s 2012, no presidential candidate can win with a two month strategy.
We are being stuck in the back with a knife.
NO:
The convention is in August. You cannot put together a major national effort in 60 days!
Certainly not with so many Republicans afraid of their own shadows. We have the most beatable opponent in modern history and an electorate crying out for a Conservative leader - and the GOP is panicking its base into nominating our most liberal candidate.
Any good Conservative can beat Obama even in a short race, while the most attractive "moderate" will smell like a Democrat at the end of a long campaign. This might be our last real chance to turn away from the cliff, so we'd better get it right this time.
I don’t have the specific stats in front of me to back it up, but speaking as a former Alaska resident, it might surprise a lot of people that Alaska quite likely has more Mormons per capita than any other state besides Utah. I don’t say that disparagingly; the ones I met were great people. Just offering additional input to the story at hand.
Mormons in Alaska- wow! and no beer, no coffee?
Doesn’t matter what we think, this thing is headed to a contested convention. I went through this list and tried to estimate how many delegates Romney would get based on how things went in the states that already voted. In my estimation, he would have to overperform from here on out to get the 1,144. He might get close enough to that though that Ron Paul’s delegates would give him what he needed.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/republican_delegate_count.html
Dick Morris was on O’Reilly and said there’s a 40% chance this goes to a contested convention. He does not want that to happen so it’s not like he’s overestimating the possibility out of wishful thinking.
I have no idea if it helps or hurts win an election. I could see how it might help in one way. Obama and the dems would have to spend resources attacking any candidate they think might win up through August. Yet we could even pull out a surprise pick and undermine all that. If they waited to start their negative campaign, they’d have to rush it together in only 2 months. Meanwhile our party can spend all that time working on an anti-Obama campaign. Not to mention, we can have a SuperPAC not tied to any candidate, who starts preparing the anti-Obama campaign well in advance of the convention. Last few elections, the debates and world events defined the results more than anything, and voter sentiment was probably not set in stone until the month before the vote. Media moves a LOT faster now than it did 40 years ago.
Bottom line is we have a better chance with ABR than Mitt, so this is the far better option than handing Mitt the nomination early. Mitt appeals to the same demographics Obama does, which means it would be like nominating a black Republican and expecting him to win over 50% of the black vote. It simply wouldn’t happen. I suspect a whole lot of pro-life voters will refuse to vote for Romney out of conscience and just write someone in or stay home. I’m in Pennsylvania, I know pro-life voters, and they will not vote R if they believe the candidate is pro-choice. So Romney will lose a chunk of the base and then have to fight tooth and nail to make it up with Obama voters like the wealthy, women, highly educated types, etc.
Just look at Mitt, listen to him...it’s easy to sense in your gut that this is NOT the type of person who can ever get elected president. People who can’t connect emotionally with the public cannot win the presidency. It is extremely hard to form an emotional connection with someone who is fundamentally dishonest as Romney is. Dishonesty creates emotional distance. The public will never feel comfortable voting for him. There is an enormous amount of ill-conceived “strategic” voting giving him the nomination now. “Strategic” voting simply will not occur in November. It’s like giving Romney an artificial subsidy that, when removed, will cause his voting “income” to collapse. To base your vote in the primary on how you THINK someone you’ve never met will vote in the future is completely insane. You are bound to get a less correct result than if you simply voted on your instinct and heart. That’s what voters in November will be voting on, so the best predictor of what they will do is to vote in exactly the same manner they will. This approach to voting as amateur political consulting is destined to lead us to a historic and totally unnecessary defeat.
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