“Why was it completely possible for Newt to suddenly jump to the front after languishing, but impossible for Santorum to do the same? He was actually coming on pretty good in South Carolina before Newt’s ex-wife attacked him, and Newt won the wife-nagging sympathy vote.”
Because Newt has follow through with his speeches and the fact that he pushed for Contract with America all the way until it was signed into law by a Dem prez. All Santorum had to do was cast his vote.
Not to pick nits, but you do know that the “contract with america” wasn’t a contract, didn’t pass, and wasn’t signed by anybody, right?
It was a set of 10 principles, a few of which made it into bills, and a couple of which did get signed, while most did not.
Anyway, it’s not going to be decided by comments here. If Newt has staying power, the polls will turn around and he’ll win. If not, he’ll keep slipping in the polls and will lose.
We’ve already lost Perry too early. We need Santorum in the race so if Newt self-destructs by making up friends, by using liberal arguments, or for any other reason, we’ll still have SOMEONE to vote for other than Ron Paul.
One thing I think people are missing. Before the “non-Romney” choice became clearly Newt, a lot of people were on the sidelines, clearly NOT supporting Romney. Newt scares some of them enough that they came out FOR Romney. If Santorum had been the one to take the lead, I doubt HALF those “establishment” people would have spoken against him and for Romney.
Newt is the one candidate on our side that actually pushes some people TO Romney. That’s not a reason to oppose Newt, obviously. But it’s a reason to at least be prepared for Newt to collapse, and for us to need another candidate in 2 weeks. I wish that other candidate was Rick Perry. (If Perry was still here instead of Newt, my Governor wouldn’t have endorsed Romney for example).
But it’s not Rick Perry, so Santorum better stick around. Sorry that this “splits the vote” — clearly though there are a lot of conservatives who hate Gingrich enough that they would rather split the vote and vote for Santorum, KNOWING that helps Romney.
If every conservative currently supporting Gingrich voted for Santorum, it would do the job just as well as having all Santorum supporters vote for Gingrich. The argument seems to be that since fewer have to switch if Santorum quits, he should quit. But what will Gingrich people argue if by next week Gingrich isn’t polling so well?
I guess Perry could always jump back in. He is on the ballot already.