A very wise freeper had this to say about what's going on right now. It taught me a lot:
It’s Huckabee bullheadedly plowing ahead of Thompson by sheer belief in his own holiness all over again. The story always starts out the same: Conservatives get a credible alternative to the Establishment front-runner, and he starts getting attacked.
Then the SoCon who stayed under the radar (Huckabee then, Santorum now) becomes everyone’s plan B, because the guy who could have won (Thompson, Gingrich) was unloaded upon by the GOP-E money machine. Then the smug supporters of the upstart underdog all thump their chest and say “NO.....YOUR GUY SHOULD DROP OUT!!”
Then the vote is already split, the credible candidate becomes non-credible because of vote-splitting, and the upstart winds-up in second place because folks trying to beat the Establishment liberal switch to plan B because the smug voters of the only holy candidate make it loudly clear that they’re going to support the holy upstart candidate even if it means the Liberals win. It JUST KEEPS HAPPENING.
In reality, what needed to happen was for Santorum to drop out early, when it became apparent that there was someone who could lead Romney in the polls for a long time, and when it was clear he had a friggin’ LITANY of ballot and delegate issues. Even if it was not Newt at the time (heck, replace Newt with Perry), Conservatives should have united around a single candidate with a full organization and little to no ballot and delegate issues, and there SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A PLAN B. Conservative should have been forced to STAY united, learn to DEFEND their candidate rather than defect because the rich, Establishment Liberal was able to smear the credible Conservative with overwhelming cash.
If there had been no Santorum, Newt would be leading right now. He would be leading because we would have been united against Romney from day one, and there would have been no defections based on the fact that - by simply running under the radar - someone else rises because they haven’t been unloaded on.
We CANNOT keep doing this. We CANNOT keep Santoruming and Huckabeeing ourselves based on some sick notion of the holiness of a politician. We cannot keep some broke one-percenter in the race because they were able to show well in Iowa after living there for two years and facing almost no attacks because of their low polling. We cannot keep rewarding these guys for throwing Hail Mary passes when we have a chance to defeat the Liberals. No more “shoestring” campaigns, no more one-percenters who surge in time to do well in Iowa, no more long-shot dreams based on the notion that some candidate is the mostest Christianest candidate of them all.
No more Huckabees, no more Santorums. No more long-shots who surge in Iowa. Rule them out before they ruin another Primary season. Santorum was never going to get 1144 delegates - it was NEVER going to happen. The fact that people bull-headedly refused to waver from him KILLED us - and then they turned around and taunted Newt and Perry voters for voting for Santorum in desperation, citing the vote count as if nobody knows what was actually happening. No more Santorums, no more Huckabees. No more long shots, period. ~ TitansAFC
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2861639/posts?page=96#96
But, Newt is a “Big Government Conservative”, too! Where are the VIABLE “Small Government Conservative” candidates for ‘12 GOP POTUS? (RP is crazy, especially when it comes to his profound isolationism on all foreign policy issues.)
I don’t and did not support Santorum nor huckleberry, but both obviously are good men. The reason neither got further than disrupter position is neither have that ol “gravitas”, neither have a Presidential appearance.
I beleive Mitt and GOPe saturation bombing Newt put him in too negative a light, conservatives became desparate because they figured the saturation bombing would not stop and went into Plan B. Newt stood up to those incestant barrages better than anyone else. It almost has the feel of when Washington went to Valley Forge, our Army was in tatters, somehow (remarkedly by the sudden appearance of the smartest man in the room, Van Storben or whatever was his name) we came back from near death to prevail.