A lot hangs in the balance…
Win or lose… this is still far from over after Florida tomorrow. Newt should dig in for the long haul, and look ahead to caucus states, and Western states coming up.
However, losing Florida to Romney would definitely make a Newt nomination very difficult, though not impossible. On the other hand, even with Newt winning Florida, the road ahead is full of difficulty.
Romney’s well oiled machine, money, and GOP establishment behind him make it difficult to topple him from the front runner position.
Or so they would make it seem… really the biggest thing in Romney’s corner is the media. The media can easily make or break people (ask Dan Quayle). No amount of ad dollars can equal what the media can blast and re-blast for free. The Internet does little more than repeat it in different ways. Earlier, when Newt simply seemed like a worthy underdog who performed very well in the debates, the media had no problem reporting this. They also had no interest in a simple and boring knockout punch by Romney. They have an economic incentive to keep it competitive to sell more news, and an ideological (liberal) incentive to see the GOP candidates destroy each other for Obama. But once he took South Carolina by storm, all of this changed.
Suddenly he was way ahead in delegates, money and supporters were rushing in to Newt’s side, and he was the favorite in Florida as well (a huge winner-take all delegate state). The establishment and the media trembled…
A Same ol Candidate –
They can handle a Romney who will be no different than any other President, except by the makeup of his core supporters who must watch on as he betrays them (just as the left is mad at Obama, and the right was mad at Bush, etc)… but the thought of a true ideological conservative, a loyal lieutenant of the Regan revolution (Romney’s 90s political campaigns are full of anti Reagan comments), a bold visionary who is principled and will actually change the current establishment presiding over America’s decay, terrified them all. Newt’s irrelevant and checkered personal past made him an easy target for the media destruction…
Sure, the left wing media who deplores “family values” and supposedly has no problem with “modern” lifestyle personal choices, be it homosexual, serial monogamy or post-modern “free love”, suddenly ripped apart Newt for divorces and infidelity. The same media that laughs at “gun and bible clinging” middle America for believing in family values and going to church on Sunday. However, conservatives do like family values, and so the media is using them to destroy Newt. Now, it’s not any revelation about his past that is causing this, it’s the light in which it is being cast.
Voters in the Republican primary by now know Newt had an ethics fine in the 90s, and that he ended up resigning from the house. They know he is divorced and apparently had his share of running after the ladies. On the contrary, most don’t even know he was completely cleared of all those ethics violations which were highly political, (even the IRS after years of investigation cleared him of all wrongdoing). The more you know about his story in details, the better it sounds, it’s only the nasty sound bite “ethics violations, $300,000 fine, “ex-wife accusation” etc) that makes it sound much worse than it is. So if the voters already knew about this, and it’s actually not even as bad as it appeared to be back then, what’s the problem?
Well, the angle is not that people are changing their minds about what they think about Newt, rather the media is hammering in this concept of “electability”. If they make him crumble under attack, if the waves of attacks against his past are too much, it fosters the belief that he simply could not win against Obama, and so Romney is a safer choice.
“Electability”
This term is driving me crazy as the establishment and media day in and day out use it to force Newt supporters to not support him. “Don’t argue that Newt is wrong in his views, or that he doesn’t have the experience, intelligence and know-how to carry them out (since both those statements are false), but rather that he isn’t electable”.
This is taking advantage of the fear of the American people of a second Obama term; in order to switch allegiance to a candidate they like and trust less.
There are a few important answers to this absurdity. First, people are elected by voting for them. Newt is very electable if the same people who are being convinced he is not “electable” simply vote for him. So the very act of voting or not voting for a candidate is what makes them be elected or not (and hence weather they were electable or not to begin with), so it is nuts that people can be convinced to not vote for someone because he isn’t “votable-for”. Then as people believe it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Secondly, this is the entire point of a primary! It’s not the real election; you don’t “throw away your vote”. The point is that like minded individuals, (a political party) first chose among themselves the best candidate they think promotes those values and principles, in order to then together rally behind him as one in the real election.
All the Republicans will (virtually all) support Newt, or Santorum or Romney against Obama if they are the candidate. So the very point of the primary is to vote for who you really like, and not to vote for who you think others will like.
Most importantly however is what really is at the core of this “Electability” argument. The only thing really being said here is that Newt is too conservative, and so the liberals won’t vote for him and so Obama will win again. Therefore, vote for Romney who is more liberal, and so has a chance to win against Obama.
This is ridiculous, and would only makes sense if what we wanted as conservatives is a person named a “Republican” to win, instead of wanting actual conservative principles to be enacted for the good of the nation. If, in the real general election, the people will not vote for Newt because he is a conservative, and they want a liberal, then let Obama win again. How in the world is it helpful to offer “our liberal” instead of theirs just so that “we” can win. The truth is that this is not winning. If a Republican must become a Democrat to win, then he did not win, a Democrat did. A Democrat called a “Republican”.
This is not a basketball game where people should have blind loyalties to a color jersey, or the name “Republican” or “Democrat”. Supposedly, there are ideals behind these names, and those are the goals, for the good of the nation. My logic says I would much rather have Obama win again and be a liberal, continue to destroy the nation, until the people learn and are ready for a true conservative who can hopefully save it. If not, then they deserve the government (and fate) that they will have. But it is of no help to offer “our” liberal instead of theirs. The only thing that can happen then is that the continued decay will be blamed on a Republican instead of on a Democrat, leading to another true liberal and Democrat to win the next time. And this way, we switch off between “Republican” liberals and “Democrat” liberals in a silly game of whose “team” won the election.
The point of a party is to genuinely offer a candidate who represents its values and the point of the primary is to chose that one candidate and rally behind him (to not split the vote). The point of a part y is not simply to “win”. The country only wins if the right values lead it, not if the leader has the right party name title.
The only sound argument my opponents have is that Romney, even if more to the left than Newt, would be “better” than Obama, and so a better choice for the country is to elect a Romney, than to elect an Obama (by having voted for Newt in the primary). To this I say, there is a line each one must draw for himself, and it comes in the general election, where for the good of the country, most republicans would vote for a Romney instead of an Obama. Others might disagree due to some of the above reasons, but the place for that is in the general election. In the primary, it is silly to already be selling your vote out to others on fear. Be it Romney or Newt, I think either one has a fair chance of beating Obama as the GOP candidate in the general election. So the question is not can he be elected, but what will he do when he gets elected, and thus what was the point of electing him?
So the entire argument of electability is a fraud, an attempt to dissuade people of certain beliefs from exercising them for the fear that others do not hold them. The liberals will not vote conservative due to the knowledge others are conservative, so why should we? Let the liberals vote for whom they want, let them re-elect Obama if they want, but let them not turn us into their accomplices.
An interesting question then becomes, why are major GOP figures and the mainstream leftist media joining together in destroying Newt and terrified at his previous rise?
The answer is simple. There is a tiny group of Tea-Party-like conservative and religious folk who genuinely dislike Newt. They dislike him due to his family past, ethics problems; they dislike him for becoming a Catholic, some because he is a Southerner, and distrust him as a long time Washington “insider”. There is a another small but larger group that agrees with him, respects him, even admires him and his intelligence, but sees something of a “nerd” in him that bars him from “Presidentialness”. Newt does not have the “look” of a President. Some of the right wing bloggers who recently have turned against him are in this group. But both these groups are small, and are not responsible for the hysteria of attacks that have descended on Newt recently.
There are two larger groups who terribly fear Newt. The smaller one consists of GOPers who have fallen into the myth of electability. They fear voting for Newt, ensures or at least makes more likely, an Obama victory. These people tend to be more loyal to their party then their country (hence they tend to be GOP elite establishment figures).
But the biggest group exists in both camps (left and right) and actually fears the very real “electability” of Newt Gingrich. They fear that he might actually put into practice what we always preach. The leftists of course shutter at the possibility of the economy surging ahead like a tiger along with property values, jobs and profits if Newt unleashed the American entrepreneurial spirit from the shackles of government asphyxiation. If that happened, when could they ever regain their “gains” in social justice as they see it, painfully made over decades as they steer America away from its free origins to the all-caring all-knowing all-Just soup kitchen of the welfare state. One must understand, the left does not think right wing economics don’t work, but rather deep down inside they simply hate that it DOES work, and wish a different world where merits were not rewarded but dependency and need.
The Marxist motto “from each according to their ability and to each according to their need” obviously implies knowledge that there is ample ability… just that somehow it is owed by those who have it to those with need it. It is a fundamental core difference, and the left knows all too well, that Newt has the actual core beliefs, guts and ability to destroy much of their beloved welfare state. They fear the end of the beginning of American mediocrity instead of American exceptionalism. They fear the end of the attacks on Christian values in the US, they fear the victory of the West and friends over enemies, especially in the Muslim world, and all the “hubris” that they tried so hard to destroy, it will bring,…
That isn’t surprising, (and a paper on to itself) but the more shocking fact is that this similar phenomenon exists in the GOP as well. Conservatives in the establishment actually fear enacting what they preach.
It is easy to sit and criticize from the sidelines, as they all do about Obama, but sometimes men are afraid of the possibility of realizing their dreams. People who chose their party allegiance more by demographics, career choice, social groupings etc, have very deep rooted doubts about its truth, and facing dramatic change that will test it terrifies them. A similar (though by no means identical) example is how the Rabbinical establishment balked in 1967 at having anything to do with the liberated Temple Mount. For 2000 years Jews prayed and yearend to be there and be able to rebuild the Temple, but when the possibility was in hand, most preferred to simply keep praying.
Newt has not only the strength of his convictions, but the confidence in that they are right. This to many, is terrifying.
So what is there to do?
I do think there is a chance tomorrow’s race can bring in a surprise. No poll, the day before the South Carolina primary showed Newt at the 40% landslide that he won by. The polls all indicated a “neck-and-neck” race and most actually showed Romney ahead by a small margin (smaller than the margin of error). So, I am hopeful, and it is possible Newt can carry Florida the same way as well, but there is a difference…
The polls two days before are not showing them even, they are showing Newt 15 points down. So though I think it isn’t as bad as the polls show, it’s definitely a tough one for my friend here.
This is where Santorum has an opportunity to hit back. The establishment, the media, the pundits, the experts, they all say how Romney’s well oiled campaign machine, high level endorsements, vast amounts of money, organizational skills, professional campaign consultants etc etc have this wrapped up. The truth could not be further from the this, except for Rick Santorum. In spite of the GOP turning on Newt and supporting Romney, in spite of the millions of dollars, in spite of the TV telling you everyone loves Romney, they don’t! The only reason its even competitive between Romney and Newt is because Santorum and Gingrich are splitting the conservative vote.
Santorum has a chance to throw all that in their face, to save the GOP from a political opportunist moderate liberal, to shake up America, bring it back to its core… to prove all the media establishment wrong, simply by quitting (and hopefully endorsing Newt as well). Rick Perry did the right thing before SC, its time Santorum does so as well.
Santorum voters would overwhelmingly go for Newt if he wasn’t running. As the clear trailer in the race, it’s his time to go. I don’t particularly like him due to his personality and socialist union tendencies, but he is a principled guy, a passionate guy, a decent guy, intelligent as well, and at least socially a real conservative. He is much younger than everyone else, doesn’t really have the experience (yet) to be President, wasn’t in leadership positions or Executive positions, and it would be the right thing to do now to save the right wing and bow out for the good of the country.
Newt has 5 times Santorum’s delegates. Even at this low point in the polls, Gingrich has more than double (almost triple) Santorum’s votes in Florida, and there is no state nationally where Santorum leads (except maybe his state, PA). He is out of money, and be it Romney or Newt who wins Florida, it is hard to see him going on much further to any success. So though it is true that if Newt bowed out, Santorum would also do much better against Romney, that hardly makes sense. The younger, less experienced, trailing candidate should drop out rather than the one leading. Perhaps Santorum needs to run for Governor, take a senior cabinet position, Senate etc and another day it could be his turn, but just as Rick Perry as a patriot saw that he was doing no good splitting the southern conservative vote and dropped out BEFORE the SC primary, Santorum would be wise and patriotic to do the same thing BEFORE Florida one.
The alternative is betraying his own conservative constituents, and endangering the nation to another 4 years of leftist destruction, be it by Romney or Obama.
To their credit, older and more experienced people than Santorum had the gallantry to drop out and endorse fellow Conservative Newt Gingrich when they trailed behind, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. These were important boosts, but not enough. To make matters worse in Florida, Ron Paul is virtually absent so it works as if he had actually dropped out and endorsed Romney (since more of his Florida voters would be likely to vote Romney than Newt, though admittedly in more complex split).
Polls clearly show that Newt would easily beat Romney in a head to head GOP primary. So it is somewhat undemocratic that this is happening due to the 3 man race. The left wing of the party won in the same fashion last election in 08 in the form of McCain, as Huckabee and ironically Romney split the more conservative vote. If Santorum drops out, and Romney wins anyway, fine then at least his win was legitimate, but it would be terrible to nominate a GOP candidate far left of where 70-80% of the party would like.
Short of Santorum dropping out, a Rubio or Jeb Bush endorsement might help Newt in the 11th hour. They should join the likes of Fred Thompson, Herman Cain, Chuck Norris, Rick Perry, Pailin, Cheney (who have in common the ability to not fear the elite establishment), and back Newt. Though I know Jeb likes Gingrich, his family is very close to Romney’s and other establishment GOP figures, so I know it’s a tough one for him. The fact he has not endorsed Romney already says much. Even a last minute endorsement by Rush Limbaugh might be what is needed…
Historic moments are hard to come by, and easy not to seize. Rick has come to one now. Santorum must have the courage to overcome ego, overcome a selfish hope, and be a patriot. If he does, he may yet have the chance another day, if not, much as Huckabbe, he will be set aside as a clownish selfish candidate who gave the election to the left.
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