Quick Candidates Condition Round Up...(PT 2)

[Lord Jim]

Isee Sue's polishing up her new stand-up routine this morning...

He loses NH and he is done, because he doesn't have a prayer in SC.

I agree, and I'll go beyond that. If he wins in New Hampshire, and after losing in South Carolina he takes another shelacking in Florida, he's finished.

Romney desperately needs to turn things around in Florida. He's made some progress; the latest poll (NBC News/Marist) has him trailing Newt by 15; he was down 22 and 23 points in the previous two polls.

Mitt's got three things going for him.

The first is that a huge percentage of likely GOP participants are saying that they could still change their mind. (The latest numbers in Iowa say that two thirds of likely caucus goers are saying this, only three weeks before the caucus.)

The second is Gingrich himself. He can always implode at any time. (Peggy Noonan recently characterized him as a guy, "walking around holding a hand grenade with his finger on the pin saying 'watch this!'")

The third thing is that because of the fact that this year the GOP has gone away from winner-take-all in the large states for delegate selection, it could make more political sense to hang in longer then one might otherwise (collecting delegates along the way) waiting to see if the second thing will happen.

[Scooter]

He is going to be called "Brokeback Rick" until he dies.

The music used in the ad is also pretty much a rip off of Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland, who was not only gay, but also a card carrying member of the Communist Party. Whoever created that ad must have had help from Michelle Bachmann's husband.

[Sue U]

Whoever created that ad must have had help from Michelle Bachmann's husband.

[Sue U]

Isee Sue's polishing up her new stand-up routine this morning...

C'mon, Jim, you have to admit that this has been a truly hilarious campaign so far. Serious policy and sober consideration are totally out the window. We're all just in it for the laffs at this point.

[dgs49]

FWIW, I think the ten thousand dollar bet was just one more thing that is going to siphon a couple votes away from Mitt. He is a guy who looks like a Country Club Republican - out of touch with anyone who actually works for a living - and this ill-considered gesture just seals the deal for anyone still on the fence. Normal people don't do such things. The better gesture would have been "Betcha five bucks..."

The specific issue was not semantics, but close to it. Romney is basically stating that he never advocated for a NATIONAL individual mandate, although he supported the mandate that now applies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (aka, "The Peoples' Republic of..."). I personally don't understand why Mitt has not focused on this point - States' prerogatives versus Federal edict - but I'm quite certain he spends half his time responding to the infinite varieties of this one question.

And anyone with a memory longer than six weeks knows that many reputable and conservative Republicans were willing to accept the concept of a personal health insurance mandate at the time when Hillarycare was being debated, although the details were never ironed out. Our hysteria about personal mandates now is nothing but political bullshit.

Attacks against Newt - even well-documented, valid attacks - are not going to do him much harm, for two reasons. First, he is glib enough to defend himself deftly against any and all of them, and second, even his supporters recognize that he is, to be blunt, an asshole who has had rather grotesque errors of judgment as recently as last week. His gaffe (def: Truthful statement; better left unsaid) about "Palestine" being a made-up country and a made-up "people," is giving people on all sides of the issue cases of apoplexy.

I'm "afraid" Newt's nomination is now starting too look as inevitable as Mitt's did 6 weeks ago. The only other viable candidate appears to be Rick Perry, and I think Republican primary voters - consciously or subconsciously - see him as a lovable Texas Lightweight similar to Bush43, and they are not interested in going down that road again.

As George Will points out in his op-ed piece this week, the biggest danger to the Republicans now appears to be a third-party run by Ron Paul, which could siphon off just enough votes to allow Barry to cruise to victory next year.

[Scooter]

C'mon, Jim, you have to admit that this has been a truly hilarious campaign so far. Serious policy and sober consideration are totally out the window. We're all just in it for the laffs at this point.

You know that they all must be high on some sort of mushroom when Republicans start calling each other racist, and Gingrich is labelled a "progressive":

Glenn Beck said on Friday that Newt Gingrich is such a "progressive" that any supporters of his who oppose President Obama are doing so because of Obama's race.

Beck has been vocal about his dislike for Gingrich, and he hosted the GOP presidential frontrunner for a notably tough interview on Tuesday. On Friday, he appeared on the Fox Business show "Freedom Watch" and hammered Gingrich even more.

Calling him "the only candidate I cannot vote for," Beck dubbed Gingrich's support for Theodore Roosevelt "ridiculous," and said that he had issued a "challenge" to any Tea Party supporters of the former House Speaker.

"You read this guy's record," he said. "You read his words...see what he believes. This man is a progressive. He knows he's a progressive. He doesn't have a problem with being a progressive. So if you've got a big government progressive [in Gingrich] or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this Tea Party. Is it about Obama's race? Because that's what it appears to be to me. If you're against him but you're for this guy, it must be about race."

[Andrew D]

Why should anyone care about the Iowa caucus(es)?

A minuscule fragment of the electorate, not representative even of the Reuplican party:

As I've mentioned before, Iowa GOP voters are more conservative, (particularly on social issues) than Republican voters generally, and Iowa GOP caucus goers are even more conservative than that....

Historically the Iowa caucuses have not been a great predictor of the GOP nomination in years where the nomination is being genuinely contested....

Mike Huckabee won them in '08, and you may recall that in '88, George HW Bush finished third behind Bob Dole and Pat Robertson.... ...

(Italics in original.)

Why should the choice of the Republican nominee be so strongly influenced by the loony fringe of the Republican party? (Reportedly, two of the last four winners of the Iowa caucus(es) went on to win the Republican nomination.) Why are the non-loonies in the Republican party not up in arms about it?

Maybe the loony fringe is not so fringe after all ....

[dgs49]

Actually, the level of interest in Iowa is based on having a large cadre of "political" writers and an army of politically-minded readers who have nothing more interesting to focus on at this time. Nobody really gives a shit what the farmers in Iowa think.

[Sue U]

Nobody really gives a shit what the farmers in Iowa think.

Really? Then why all the pandering to the corn lobby? Or is Newt just lying for expedience and his own political gain?

(BTW, the comments to the linked article are interesting in showing what the conservative readership of NRO thinks about the Newtster. Even the WSJ thinks he's an unprincipled lout.)

[Gob]

I love American politics!

[Gob]

Mr Gingrich, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and a former speaker of the US House of Representatives, first set out his position on the Palestinian people in an interview with the Jewish Channel.

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire," he said.

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic," he added.

He also said President Barack Obama's Middle East policy was "out of touch", and the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, and Hamas, which governs Gaza, had "an enormous desire to destroy Israel".

Mr Obama has sought to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and said there should be a Palestinian state with borders based on those prevailing before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, adjusted to account for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the US, EU and Israel.

Then in a televised debate on Saturday, Mr Gingrich defended his claim that the Palestinians were an "invented" people.

"Is what I said factually true? Yes," he said. "Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists."

Mr Gingrich later sought to clarify his position, saying he supported the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a negotiated settlement

Dear, dear, dear, a potential US president with such ....forthright... views on Palestine....

Now who would vote for such a fucking lunatic?

[Scooter]

Having a potential US president say that Palestinians should exile themselves to other parts of the Arab world, as if they haven't lived in what is now Israel for millenia, is going to be of no help whatsoever.

[Lord Jim]

No, not helpful....

What pissed me off was that during the debate he tried to liken his comments to President Reagan's absolutely accurate characterization of the Soviet Union as an "Evil Empire"...

Mr. Reagan was correctly characterizing the behavior of a regime ...

Gingrich, on the other hand, was sweepingly smearing a whole people as "terrorists"....

Huge difference....

[Sue U]

As they say on another site I frequent, when watching the GOP Kavalcade of Kooks train-wreck: "The schaden freudes itself."

[Lord Jim]

On the other hand, we have Barack Obama, who actually managed to say this on 60 Minutes last night with a straight face:

Asked by interviewer Steve Kroft whether he had made too many promises to Americans during his hope-and-change campaign in 2008, Obama insisted that he “always believed that this was a long-term project.”

The president said he knew that “reversing a culture here in Washington dominated by special interests would take more than year, more than two years, more than one term, probably take more than one president.
”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html

I'm sorry, could someone please refresh my memory? Just when was it that Barack Obama, in nearly three years as President has attempted to do anything to "reverse a culture dominated by special interests"?

I must have been absent that day....

[Scooter]

DO IT!!!!

NEW YORK – Real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump on Friday said he was unsure if he would still host a Republican presidential debate, which now has only two participants.

Trump also issued a statement saying he still might run for the White House as an independent if he does not approve of the eventual Republican nominee.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has surged to the front of the Republican field in recent weeks, and former Senator Rick Santorum are now the only candidates planning to participate in Trump’s Dec. 27 forum in Iowa.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Texas Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Representatives Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann have said they will not attend the debate, throwing the event into question.

Several of the Republican candidates have met with Trump in hopes of winning his support but many party members worry the showboating Trump, star of NBC’s “The Apprentice” program where he is known for his catch phrase “You’re fired,” could make the debate all about him.

Trump, who is promoting his latest book, said some Republican candidates want assurances from him that he will not mount an independent run once his reality TV shows completes its season at the end of May. But, he said, “I must leave all of my options open.”

Earlier on Fox Business Network’s “Imus in the Morning”- show, Trump was asked if the event will go ahead and replied, “I don’t know. I have to look into it.”

Earlier this year Trump flirted with a run for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination and was derided for pushing a discredited charge that Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama might not have been born in the United States.

Although the resulting publicity yielded significant support for Trump in some polls, he never mounted an actual campaign and critics suggested it was all self promotion.

Trump eventually decided not to pursue the Republican nomination but recently has said he still might run as an independent.

“It is very important to me that the right Republican candidate be chosen to defeat the failed and very destructive Obama administration,” he said in statement Friday. “But if that Republican, in my opinion, is not the right candidate, I am unwilling to give up my right to run as an independent candidate.”

The debate will be sponsored by the Newsmax website (oh yeah, that's sure to give it credibility) and broadcast on the Ion cable television network. It comes at a time when Americans are busy with holidays but less than a week before the key Jan. 3 caucus in Iowa and the first primary in New Hampshire on Jan. 10.

[Gob]

Trump's hair for Pres!!

[Scooter]

I think Trump's hair will be First Lady.

[Gob]

[Lord Jim]

I'm "afraid" Newt's nomination is now starting too look as inevitable as Mitt's did 6 weeks ago.

All the more reason not to assume it's going to happen...

With so many people in the early states saying they may change their minds before they vote, the situation remains very fluid....

There isn't a single candidate in this race (except of course for Ron Paul) who can count on his or her supporters to stay with them.

The latest poll in Iowa shows that Gingrich may be faltering:

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Romney and Gingrich Lose, Paul Gains In Recent Iowa Poll

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have lost ground in the latest Iowa poll while Texas Congressman Ron Paul gained traction.

A new poll conducted by the American Research Group of likely Iowa caucus goers released yesterday reveals Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul tied with Mitt Romney for second place with 17 percent of the vote.

Newt Gingrich suffered the greatest plunge in recent polling numbers where he fell from 27% in November to 22% in the most recent December poll.

Mitt Romney's polling numbers have been steadily declining since his 21% high in September which fell to 20% in November and now holds at 17% in December.

Ron Paul's polling numbers have seen just the opposite during the same time period (12% in September, 16% in November, and now 17% in December).

The poll is significant because it shows Gingrich losing momentum as fast as he gained it when Herman Cain dropped out of the GOP race.

More:

http://government.brevardtimes.com/2011 ... ns-in.html

This is about half the lead he's had in recent previous polls. Maybe the focus on his character problems in last Saturday's debates and the negative advertising in Iowa is starting to take a toll....

Anybody willing to put any money on how this will ultimately shake out, especially when you throw in the additional wild card of the elimination of the winner-take-all primaries, should have their head examined.