Posted on 02/13/2012 8:12:57 AM PST by TexasFreeper2009
Rick Santorum's taken a large lead in Michigan's upcoming Republican primary. He's at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich.
Santorum's rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum's becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support.
Santorum's winning an outright majority of the Tea Party vote with 53% to 22% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich. He comes close to one with Evangelicals as well at 48% to 20% for Romney and 12% for Gingrich. And he cracks the 50% line with voters identifying as 'very conservative' at 51% to 20% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich.
Santorum's benefiting from the open nature of Michigan's primary as well. He's only up by 12 points with actual Republican voters, but he has a 40-21 advantage with the Democrats and independents planning to vote that pushes his overall lead up to 15 points. Santorum is winning by a healthy margin in every region of the state except for Oakland County, where Romney has a 40-26 advantage, and the area around Lansing where Paul actually has an advantage at 30% to 27% for both Romney and Santorum.
(Excerpt) Read more at publicpolicypolling.com ...
Yes, and Rick Santorum won 4 states, out of 5, in a blue/purple district/state.
Rick said he endorsed Specter because he thought Specter would have the best chance of winning (and Specter DID do very well in that race), and Rick wanted the Senate to have the majority so they had control of the Judiciary Committee.
Rick said we wouldn’t have Alito if it weren’t for Specter. Specter was the head of the Judiciary Committee, as you probably know.
Some of our fellow FReepers seem to go on a witch hunt to find weaknesses, but if ONLY they at least found out the reason WHY Rick did what he did.
Nobody is perfect, but I can understnd Rick’s logic for endorsing Specter.
I love Palin, and she endorsed McCain, and I like Newt, and he endorsed Dede, the RINO. But yet that is ignored.
Well, I hope you are right. But I don’t think so. Good luck.
I got ya. I think you just said everything that needs to be said. You stopped. Got it. Closed minds are the worse. Good luck. I will vote for Rick if he makes it to the general, but get back with me after the election.
Its over for Newt. Newt, please drop out.
1. His charity Operation Good Neighbor (2001-07), illegally never registered with PA, doled out just 36% of income as grants, far less than the 75% of responsible causes. I'm sure it's coincidence the charity which spent most of its money on lobbyists, aides and fundraisers closed after he was defeated for reelection.
2. His "leadership PAC," "American's Foundation," was worse--just 18% went to candidates, well below similar PACs.
3. The $500,000 mortgage for his Leesburg mansion came from a private bank run by a big campaign donor. By all appearances, Santorum was not eligible for the closed program.
4. Santorum bilked a Pennsylvania school district out of $72,000 to pay for home "cyberschooling" of five of his kids ... in Virginia.
5. As the third-ranking Republican, he worked closely with House majority leader Tom DeLay, now felon, on the "K-Street Project" to grow ties between the GOP and major lobbyists. Twenty-three of his own staffers landed well-paying jobs at lobbying firms. When he was fired by the PA voters? Santorum turned to lobbyists.
6. This supporter of Medicare Part D was so important to this culture of crony capitalism, an internal memo at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline said his loss "creates a big hole that we need to fill."
7. Before anyone heard of Solyndra, Santorum was securing $100 million federal loans for a coal-to-liquids plant that was never built. The project's lobbyist was PA's top GOP power broker, Bob Ashner, and paid nearly $1 million.
That's seven places just to start. Besides his unheard of 18-point loss for reelection, putting electability in question there's his hypocrisy of campaigning on requiring health insurance in 1994, on his public tort reform position vs. his testimony in his wife's own legal case, his "problem" with working women, his union pandering and more.
What has this failed lawyer and career politician really done; what specific reforms does he propose?
We all know what Romney is.
Newt's vetted for more than a decade.
Can you honestly say you know all there is you need to know about Rick Santorum?
Don't fall for his "family values" cover story.
Rasmussen has Mittens up by +15 with an overall average of all the other polls of +7 for him. PPP was the only poll that had Santorum up.
This is not good.
An ARG poll has Santorum up by 6. Also, the two polls on RCP that have Mitt up by 15 were taken well before Santorum’s big week and subsequent surge.
Good! and if you really are a Conservative teen, kudos to you for “getting it” at your age.
I was a conservative teen (16 to be precise) when I registered nearly 11 years ago. I’m still a conservative, but now a twenty-something.
Give it up already. You sound like a big nag.
read chuck norris’s column in wnd re; Santorum. If you still think that Santorum should be nominated than you are the hypocrite. Go newt.
Touche! That “he’s not electable” garbage drives me NUTS. NO ONE can predict electability reliably.
2 more polls out today show Santorum in the lead, and Santorum just took the lead on RCP nationally.
I don’t and it would be pretty dated if I did. I do regularly send the Navair ping list to my alternate for such emergencies.
You're on to something important here.
If the leaders of the moderate wing of the Republican Party decide to “create a monster” by boosting Rick Santorum on the grounds that Romney can't win, they could easily get much more than they bargained for.
If the moderates are forced to compromise with us on an acceptable candidate, we as conservatives win whether we're social conservatives, military conservatives, or economic conservatives. A President Santorum will know he needs economic conservatives to run the country, and he's already got years of experience on the Senate Armed Services Committee and having a father work as a career VA psychologist, so he's already supportive of the military conservative agenda. Forcing the moderate wing of the Republican Party to compromise with conservatives on an acceptable candidate is not a bad thing — and I think there's an excellent chance Gingrich could be a devastatingly effective president of the Senate in a VP role, especially if the Democrats keep control.
Imagine Gingrich gaveling down Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and using parliamentary procedure from the chair to tie Reid's agenda in knots. Gingrich has a long history as a bomb-thrower in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. That could end up being a good thing by breaking up the collegiality and running the Senate the way he did the House during his time as Speaker.
I am supporting Rick Santorum because he's the last social issues conservative left. He's not my first choice, but I can live with him, and I can also live with Newt Gingrich because I think he means it when he says he understands the importance of social conservatives to the Republican Party. I also **REALLY** like Gingrich's views on Islamofascism and the need for a moral foundation to fight people who have declared holy war on us.
The people who think Gingrich doesn't care about religion need to read more about what Gingrich thinks. If we elect a President Gingrich, I think there's an excellent chance he's going to end up declaring a de-facto crusade on the Islamofascists, and that's not a bad thing in my view. Read carefully what he's said about the Roman Catholic Church being the only religious institution in history with a successful track record of fighting Islam — I don't agree with Gingrich (actually, Calvinists in Hungary did a pretty good job of fighting Islam, and Reformed Christians were doing successful missions in the 1800s in the Middle East long before oil was discovered there) but Gingrich's views on a religious role for the United States in a worldwide conflict with Islam should scare the leftists ten times more than Santorum’s focus on abortion and gay marriages.
54 posted on Monday, February 13, 2012 10:52:51 AM by cookcounty: “West Michigan is a pocket of the country that is VERY VERY conservative. Way back in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson clobbered Goldwater in a 60%-40% landslide, Ottawa County had its own landslide, 60-40 for Goldwater. It’s also crawling with tons of social conservatives... benefitting Santorum. Romney may have been born in Michigan, but he was in the Detroit area, outstaters barely know him. And his Dad was Governor in ancient history, the mid-1960’s, a generation and a half ago.”
Cook is right.
Besides Michigan being the home of the original suburban Detroit “Reagan Democrats,” who tend to be Roman Catholic or evangelical and are good pickups for Santorum, West Michigan, where I am from (born and raised in Grand Rapids), is the denominational home of the Christian Reformed Church, as well as a major center of the midwestern and more evangelical wing of the Reformed Church in America and a number of smaller more conservative denominations. It's also the home of Cornerstone University, the college of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, a strongly fundamentalist denomination, and has a significant number of large evangelical megachurches and pentecostal/charismatic churches.
The CRC and RCA have serious liberal problems in their denominational operations, but that doesn't mean the people are politically liberal. It typically takes about two generations for liberalism to percolate down into the pews and wreck the social attitudes of the people, and that hasn't happened yet.
When Jerry Falwell came to West Michigan about a decade ago to speak at an Amway convention, Falwell said Grand Rapids is probably the most conservative large city in the United States. That should give an idea how an unquestioned Bible Belt evangelical leader viewed West Michigan, and while there are definitely disturbing trends going on, the direction of the CRC and RCA synods haven't yet wrecked the people's personal faith and socially conservative views. That's coming — look at the fight in Holland, Mich., over a gay rights ordinance — but it's not there yet in the Republican primary. The nut case leftists have generally been honest enough to join the Democrats, leaving the Republican Party still fairly evangelical in its core voters.
60 posted on Monday, February 13, 2012 10:59:18 AM by conservaterian: “GREAT News! But can someone please tell me how the hell Mitt beats Newt among Tea Partiers and Evangelicals??? How does Mitt get ANY votes from Tea Partiers and Evangelicals?”
I can't speak for secular conservative Tea Partiers (most Tea Party people I know are social conservatives, they just don't make that their main focus) but with regard to self-identified evangelicals, it's the family values issue that's killing Gingrich.
I am spending a bunch of time on Calvinist forums where I am personally known trying to make a case that Gingrich and Santorum are both acceptable candidates. (And yes, that's a significant part of the West Michigan electorate.) )I spent a bunch of time Saturday arguing with an intelligent Ron Paul supporter who considers Gingrich to be utterly unacceptable because of moral background issues. For him, it's Paul first, Santorum possibly, but Gingrich never. For other people, they'd say Romney first, Santorum or Paul possibly, but Gingrich never. I disagree, but unfortunately that's the sort of thing I'm having to argue against, even in my own local church.
Arguing for Santorum isn't that difficult, but arguing that Gingrich is acceptable is a real problem. I'm having to spend a lot of time pointing out that the Reformation would never have succeeded without the help of a number of Protestant monarchs and lesser nobles whose personal lives were a horrible mess but made the decision for pragmatic rather than principled reasons to support Luther, and to a lesser extent, Calvin.
We have a real problem in evangelical circles. I'll almost certainly support Gingrich if he's the nominee, but it's going to be a hard fight to avoid losing voters who won't vote for Obama but may stay home.
You haven't heard me disagreeing with you.
I'm fairly sure that with his track record of winning elections (until the last) under difficult conditions in a Democrat-leaning state, we won't find any wild surprises about Santorum.
But if they're there, we need to know... RIGHT NOW.
Santorum has only done well since the Catholic vote was mobilised.
It’s almost as if Obama has helped him....
But of course Obama knows he can beat Santorum. Anyone can.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.