Heh.
[T]he Gingrich team was supposed to provide New Hampshire officials with a list of 40 committee volunteers who would represent the campaign as Republican National Convention delegates — but Gingrich’s staff couldn’t track down 40 willing supporters. Instead, they submitted a hand-scrawled, typo-ridden list of 27 people.
The question remains whether his weak campaign, his past or his crazy behavior will do the Gingrich campaign in. I stand by my prediction that Newtmentum! will throw an axle some time around Hannukah.
Then again, for Newt to collapse someone has to win. Until last week I still felt 100% that Romney would robot-walk his way to the prize, but there might be too much blood in the water now. Without inevitability on his side Romney just looks kind of pathetic and desperate. Mockery and pity have started to leak into even mainstream narratives about him, and those are death to a campaign.
I will not pretend to know what will happen when Newt implodes and leaves the race with a gaping hole. Maybe Santorum will be all over it. Or maybe (frightening as it might be) the GOP may give a second look to someone like Huntsman who can feed himself without help.
Then again, maybe I’m wrong and Newt will take it all the way. If so then keep in mind that Obama plays politics like a bullfight, gently leading his opponents in circles until they tire out and self-destruct. The last person he wants to face is someone with an even keel and a moderate streak like Huntsman or Romney. The opponent he really wants is an excitable firebrand with an easily pricked ego and moderate to low self-control. There are worse options for his team than Newton Leroy Gingrich.
dmsilev
Right now, on the NY Times home page:
Building a Better Mitt Romney-Bot
If that’s what his *supporters* are saying…
(In other words, Newt is a horribly flawed candidate. So is everyone else in this race in their own special way)
The Bearded Blogger
Come on Newt, get it together!
Napoleon
I think Newt is not going to explode before taking at least some of the early states. I have a feeling the “anyone but Mitt” crowd is going to ride this last “Not Mitt” like Slim Pickens on the bomb in Dr Strangelove.
Rafer Janders
I will not pretend to know what will happen when Newt implodes and leaves the race with a gaping hole. Maybe Santorum will be all over it.
I see what you did there.
carpeduum
I beg to differ on your last point. I don’t think the Obama campaign fears any of the candidates. Even Huntsman who may be the only one who can feed himself but has about as much charisma as an accountant on prozac. No way someone like that can go head to head with the likes of Obama.
Romney may be strongest in the polls but the vast majority of voters have yet to see the hours and hours of flip flop videos. So if anything a head to head against Romney will require less work because most of the video has already been produced.
Brachiator
Uh, that’s not the way bullfights work.
Since Obama doesn’t get to pick his opponent (as far as we know), his preferences really don’t matter. His reactions to the ultimate GOP nominee will be interesting.
Apart from all the empty speculaficating going on here, is there any reliable reporting on how the GOP inner circles are viewing the behavior of the various putative candidates?
Certainly, there has to be some Beltway pundit getting someone from the Republican National Committee, or a heavy hitting insider, drunk and noting the tales of woe.
dmsilev
Also, too, speaking of mockery and pity, an upcoming GOP debate will apparently be moderated by Donald Trump.
Remember, by the standards of some of the people who *could* have run in this race, Gingrich is at the helm of a smoothly running and well-tuned machine.
MikeJ
Hand scrawled, typo ridden?
geg6
@Napoleon:
I love you for that comment. That’s how I see it, too. And am I a really, really bad person because I am currently rooting for Newt to win and secretly think he very well might? I don’t know, but I do know that Obama is a very lucky man when it comes to his opponents and nothing could be luckier than to have to go up against Newt (well, Alan Keyes would be even better, but that’s not gonna happen, so I’ll take the next closest thing).
And Tim F.? I saw what you did there.
jah
some really crappy visuals in this post.
Mary
@MikeJ: I had the same thought.
The Other Bob
Is there a mechanism for the Republican Party to just throw up its collective hands and say: “We got nutin.” and just forfeit?
JGabriel
Tim F.:
Dare I hope that the mainstream media will, with more cause this time around, do to Romney’s campaign (if he wins the nomination) what they did to Gore in 2000?
.
Ugh.
I hear “Heywood Jablome” came it at #19…
Trinity
@Rafer Janders: euwwwwww
Bulworth
Grassroots!
geg6
@dmsilev:
I read that earlier today and had to check the website to make sure I wasn’t on The Onion’s by mistake.
Might be entertaining, though. I fervently hope that when someone of these clowns says something too stupid even for the Combover that he’ll point to them and say “You’re fired!”
Karen
Huckabee won’t endorse Romney. Fox doesn’t want Romney. How can it be Romney?
If the GOP is willing to overlook Newt’s affairs, three marriages and other baggage, it will take one super major fuckup, like Newt having a secret affair with Wendy Murdoch to shake their support.
Can anyone say, brokered convention?
Though it could be Ron Paul’s turn and Sarah Palin’s fans are trying to draft her to run. Ron Paul is the one who worries me if he’s the nominee since he has a lot of the same support that would go to Obama.
p.a.
maybe it really is time for zombie Reagan.
I was 5 in 1964. Wasn’t that the last time a convention really began with the decision in doubt? That would be awesome.
JPL
Huntsman vs Obama
Global warming… tie
Corporate tax cuts Obama win
Women’s rights Obama win
HealthCare ??
Tax cuts for 1% Obama win
Business exp. ???
Huntsman is good at shipping jobs overseas so I don’t see his business experience helping.
The candidate won’t be Huntsman imo.
r€nato
a lot can happen in the next 11 months, but I feel pretty confident that next November, Obama will win a 2nd term and that I’ll be gloating at the unhinged Obama-haters who have been gleefully predicting since November 2010 that he’ll be a one-termer.
The best thing that could happen to the GOP, would be to actually nominate Newt or Michelle or Perry. They would lead the party to a humiliating defeat at the polls, which might instigate the kind of soul-searching that could lead to them realizing how much it’s cost them to hitch their fortunes to the lizard-brain voting bloc.
Nominate Mitt, who could probably run a credible, non-embarrassing general election campaign, and when he loses they’ll predictably diagnose the illness as insufficient purity.
The Bearded Blogger
@carpeduum: It’s a weird trade off with the GOP: the smarter they are, the less they excite the base.
@Brachiator: I think it’s the GOP, not the dems, that use picadores.
Also, if there is a brokered convention, I think there is a good chance of a military man emerging as the nominee.
@JGabriel: Are the big oil companies and banks against Mitt?
r€nato
@Karen: FSM loves us, but can he really love us so much as to allow the GOP blood-letting and circular firing squads continue all the way into the summer? We can only hope.
BigSouthern
I don’t think even Romney’s that much of a threat. With the economy still running ragged and unemployment on a lot of people’s minds, how hard would it be to get some of the unfortunate folks laid off as the result of one of Bain’s leveraged buyouts in front of a camera talking about how Mitt would decidedly not be the solution to the current economic problem.
Tom Hilton
Didn’t he run against that guy last time?
Michael G
I still think there’s some crazy, last-minute convention overturn Hail Mary that puts JEB into this thing. Imagine how bonkers the media would go.
Jewish Steel
Did I not read earlier this week that Romney is tetchy and peremptory dude to deal with. I don’t know how even keel he really is.
The Bearded Blogger
@Karen: Ron Paul (who IS a nut) wants monetary reform. So no support from plutocrats, except if its for congress, so he makes the GOP look diverse.
wrb
Then Rick can slip right in.
The Bearded Blogger
@Jewish Steel: Yeah… his sense of entitlement might trip him over: “Hey, I already bought the presidence for chrissakes”
General Stuck
I agree with this take, but not on Romney having an even keel. Watching the guy, he seems quite plastic breakable at times, over reacting to perceived slights of a lack of fealty or respect. IOW’s, he has some fairly potent buttons to be pushed, where he starts squealing like a piggy. Obama is good at that sort of thing, as Hillary found out, and later Mccain. I won’t make any predictions either, out of ignorance to what the lizard brane is thinking in situations like these. But Newt’s rocket rise to the top, this close to the election, seems like wingnuts have made a majority decision. And it’s not like they didn’t know Newt was a vile critter and likely a poor choice to beat Obama. It is a statement, I think, on how much they loathe the choices they have in candidates, and that too many of them just can’t stomach Romney, even if he could win the GE.
Newt knows all the tunes, and reptilian/amphibious sweet nothings to whisper in your average wingnut ear, that currently is winning the day. But we shall see. Especially since they inserted rules to allow for a brokered convention, if it comes to that.
I was a wee lad for the 1964 GOP convention, but what I can recall, has some current echoes of republican angst of which road to take. And the only one so far, picking Romney, are the country club type goopers. And that is not enough to win the nom. It was the conservative wingers that pushed nutbag Goldwater on us all, and they are even more in charge of GOP primaries now, and they rightfully don’t think Romney is one of them, and don’t take to the flip flopping frankenstein like weasel he has fashioned his self into, in order to impress them. Business and the GOP money men want him, but their cash only goes so far in defeating true belief in a froth, once it rules the roost.
I’m going to the store in the snow.
jl
And why should not the 2012 GOP primary effort continue to be a chaotic shambles?
In the polls, I think Gingrich will have more staying power than his predecessors because his brand of pompous faux learned sophomoric innovative bafflegab can keep reality at bay for the GOP primary voting base for a longer period than the others.
If Newt takes a hit because he says something unpopular with the base (his recent comments that advocated a non fantastical non totally sadistic and counterproductive undocumented immigration policy being an example), he can immediately think up some exotic and aromatic and bloody read meat to throw out to distract attention.
Also too, BTW, I wish to correct a very serious error in a comment I made some time ago. I said that Newt looked like a cross between lumpfish and an obese mole rat. I got the lumpfish mixed up with the blobfish.
Newt looks like a cross between a blobfish and an obese mole rat. The only difference is that he has a smaller nose than a blobfish.
I regret the error.
Tim F.
@Tom Hilton: Major difference. McCain’s ego was titanic; Gingrich’s is more hindenbergian.
r€nato
@The Bearded Blogger: Ron Paul could conceivably run a credible ‘outsider’ campaign and even have a solid shot at beating Obama if he could keep the libertarian nutjob fanbois quiet… but the intense media scrutiny of a presidential campaign would likely lead to a Perot-ish flameout.
r€nato
@Michael G: Jeb’s a lot smarter than his dimwit brother. Not gonna happen. He’s waiting for 2016 when W will be a distant memory.
General Stuck
@jl:
That’s a pretty big error. What’s a lumpfish?
Snarki, child of Loki
@Bulworth:
Yeah, there’s that misspelling “M. Muose”, and put down “D. Duck” twice, when one of them should have been “Scrooge McDuck”.
Smell the Newtmentium!
JPL
@Michael G: Jeb’s wife would make it difficult for him to appease the base on illegal immigrants. The 27% want their fence and they want it now and they don’t want to pay for it.
JGabriel
@Brachiator:
Do you honestly think there’s a monolithic elite inner circle of the GOP in which all members hold the same opinions and motivations?
I think Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, the Koch Brothers, et. al., believe most of the same things they air or publish in their various media holdings. So, if you want to know what the GOP financiers think, just watch Fox News, read the WSJ, the Nat’l Review, and the various Koch-funded magazines that litter the right like dog shit on country trails.
.
FlipYrWhig
@jl:
“Shambles” in the original sense of “slaughterhouse.”
S. cerevisiae
The yahoos on Yahoo are absolutely convinced that Newt would destroy Obama in a debate, but as President Gore can testify you can win a debate and still lose favor with voters.
Personally I think Obama would get Newt so wound up he would burst into flames on national TV.
JGabriel
Tim F. @ Top:
The Romney — Brett Baier interview pretty much shows that Romney doesn’t have an even keel either.
.
FlipYrWhig
@r€nato:
I don’t think they’re capable of soul-searching. The last time they suffered a humiliating defeat, Goldwater ’64, they coated it in a shellac of optimism and came back with Reagan. They don’t know anything else. The reason for failure is ALWAYS insufficient purity. (And for Democrats, the reason for failure is always insufficient moderation. Que sera, sera.)
Tony J
Looking at this from outside, I can’t help but remember a few months ago when Perry entered the race and ISTM a – lot – of BJers were expressing concern that his brand of ‘Goodhair Bush’ Texan faux-manliness would enrapture The Village and give him a serious chance against Obama. A few commentators were adamant that Perry would run into a wall when his inability to form coherent sentences in any kind of debate became known to a wider audience, but there was still that frisson of fear going round that maybe, just maybe, the GOP had found a figurehead the MSM could fluff across the finish line.
Then Perry went splat into that wall,and we witnessed the Raising of Cain, driven by the refusal of most Republicans to consider voting for Willard, and their desperation for anyone else’s name on that ballot come next November. At no point before the last week had we heard anyone in Wingnutopia pounding the drums to summon that ‘True Conservative’ Newt Gingrich to battle. Before there was no one left on the Not-Romney bench but the fat kid no one likes even – they – considered him a joke.
Put it this way. If anyone here had been given a glimpse of the future around the time Perry entered the race and seen the Republicans less than a month before the start of their primaries seriously considering putting up Newt Gingrich as their Presidential candidate, wouldn’t you have thought “Oh, hell yeah!”?
The MSM fluffed John McCain like there was no end to his rooty goodness as well, but even with a lot more to work with they couldn’t convince a majority of Americans that this was the guy they needed in a crisis. Newt Gingrich is going to win more votes than McCain? I don’t think so.
patrick II
@jl:
Is that yours? Can I use it?
I especially like it in combination, “sophomoric bafflegab” flows.
Tom Hilton
@Tim F.: Ha! Stealing that (with attribution).
JGabriel
Tony J:
If Gingrich were to win the presidency, he would be the same age when he took office as … wait for it … Ronald Reagan!
There are many on the right who will see that as a: good omen.
.
Brachiator
@JGabriel: RE: Apart from all the empty speculaficating going on here, is there any reliable reporting on how the GOP inner circles are viewing the behavior of the various putative candidates?
Not really the point. I think that reporting about the reactions of any of the elite inner circles of the GOP is more informative than the navel gazing of Political Football Fantasy Leaguers.
Uh, no. This only tells me what the approved propaganda is for public consumption, not what is going on behind the scenes.
@S. cerevisiae:
It’s not just about “winning” the debate. The people who listened to the Kennedy Nixon debate on the radio thought Nixon won it. Those who watched Nixon squirm and sweat on the TV saw a candidate that they neither liked nor trusted. Similarly, Gore came across as stiff, wooden and plodding, negating the impact of what he said.
At the time, I noted to friends that Dubya was used to dealing with his brother Jeb, who everyone knew was smarter than he was. So Dubya came across as more at ease. Didn’t matter whether he was dumb as a stump.
mgordon
Santorum is bound to bubble to the surface.
jl
@patrick II: I think bafflegab is standard English. Amirite. Everyone uses it all the time, don’t they?
and, Hey, Stuck, who made me your ichthyologist, anyhoo?
You damn kids these days, don’t know what a lumpfish or a blobfish is? What is the country coming too? At least I know enough to mix them up, but I am old and mix things up. Though if Stuck keeps putting on airs, I can still kick him downstairs.
Jewish Steel
@patrick II:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bafflegab
Agree. That word is a winner.
Steeplejack
The Animals had a trippy, underappreciated take on the post title’s song. Friday sitar alert!
Essayist-Lawyer
Everyone else had had their turn. Why not Santorum? He could hardly be any worse than Trump/Bachman/Perry/Cain/Gingrich.
jl
@Jewish Steel: I tend to follow the lead of Talkingpointsmemo blog, which has a fined tuned sense for how to characterize the current political nonsense.
Just read the editor’s blog at TPM, kids, and yes, you too will soon be able to distinguish bafflegab from bamboozlement, and flim flam from con.
scottinnj
@JGabriel:
I wonder if Huntsman has been playing for ‘last man standing’ all this time ie it’s still a couple months until Iowa and NH. In otherwords play it cool and play it for the long run and let others rise and flame out. If/when his moment comes he won’t be going on about uz beki-beki-beki-stan, can talk in complete sentences, and won’t be whining about softball questions from a Fox news anchor. And if he peaks at the right time and pulls off Iowa then NH, he will get the air of inevitability and I think it could be over quickly.
I know I know spooky Mormon, worked for the evil Obama and been brainwashed by global warming crowd. But if he’s peaking at the right time, you know he will give the Bobo/Chunky Bobo crowd a hardon, and how could he be stopped?
Sometimes, it’s not that much more complicated than being in the right place at the right time.
Steeplejack
@Tim F.:
Phrasing!
wrb
@jl:
I think newt looks like a cross between a lumpfish and a blobfish
although me may have some mole rat back there, probably on his mother’s side.
patrick II
@jl:
I am old too, but had not heard that great word before.
@Jewish Steel:
I loved the definition of “bafflegab” in bafflegab.
AA+ Bonds
I’m really surprised by that TIME cover – I thought Klein was in the bag for Romney given his recent columns
Catsy
@r€nato:
See, I thought the same thing after Bush and the 2006 midterms.
I underestimated just how delusional the GOP as a whole had become, and how much their party has become defined by its unhinged insanity.
Instead, when Obama utterly destroys whichever lunatic they nominate in 2012, watch for the refrains of “he wasn’t
extremeconservative enough”.Remember,
conservatismcommunism cannot fail, it can only be failed.Zifnab
@FlipYrWhig:
Democrats have a hard time realizing when they’ve got it good. The nation, as we know it, had reached a kind of liberal zenith in 1968. And what liberals do? They rioted.
We see the same thing now. Liberals will tear each other apart for being “not liberal enough”. They don’t have patience. They don’t understand compromise. They aren’t willing to take baby steps.
That’s one thing conservatives were really good at all through the 80s, 90s, and 00s. One little chip after another at regulations and civil rights and taxes, until one day we all wake up and the walls keeping the crazy gun-totting nut jobs and the greedy assholes at bay have all come down.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@r€nato:
Not to mention Paul is getting old and frail. There have been already one or two weirdnesses from him like that second eye lid.
pragmatism
a recurring theme that i see on my facebook feed is that it doesn’t matter who the gopers put up, they will win in 2012. this is most commonly expressed as “a chimp would win against obama”. hmmmmmmmm i wonder what that implies…..
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@FlipYrWhig:
Amongst other problems, you need to already have a soul before you can engage in soul-searching. Assuming that the GOP as presently constituted even has a soul is, well, how do the lawyers like to put it, oh yeah: assumes facts not in evidence.
In parsing the phrase “The GOP…might instigate the kind of soul-searching”, it might be best to think of the process described as something more akin to body-snatching than soul-searching as the phrase is conventionally understood.
Rome Again
Well, if I can’t have Herman Cain, then okay. I really wanted to see the White Power folks have a shitfest when they didn’t have anyone to vote for. Besides, Herman is a party all by himself!
FlipYrWhig
@Zifnab: That’s usually where I come down too, but it is _also_ true that there has been a dire influence on Democratic politics from people like Evan Bayh “moving to the center” in ways that aren’t really “center” in left-right terms but that get mistaken for such. There’s a case to be made for claiming the center, but the center doesn’t have to be the most pro-corporate, lowest-tax position, not when the center–i.e., the median local voter–is actually less pro-corporate and believes in raising some taxes.
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Soul searching, coal searching, same difference. Deep in their hearts you’ll find a black, dusty, combustible rock.
Brachiator
There’s some crazy story in the LA Times about GOP focus groups trying to figure out why voters are just not into Mittens.
What is missing from this story, from the Times’ Washington Bureau is any insight on who hired the pollster, and what their concerns might be.
Chuck Butcher
I think what Tim F hits on is a bit of key to whether Newt sticks around – they’ve run through the ABMs. Nothing says they can’t go back to one of jilted – say Perry – but once dismissed as an idiot is hard to get past.
I have a hunch Newt would have to really step in the base’s Cheerios to get tossed now.
Not entirely unlikely…
Chuck Butcher
@Zifnab:
Does your political knowledge extend any farther back than 15 minutes and a lobotomized obligatory punch at DFHs? Fire up the way back machine and tell me what direction those baby steps have gone in over the last 40 years.
Please run out ACA and some other … stuff. Please, please inform me about where DADT came from in the first goddam place. Outcomes matter…
Too bad you don’t have somebody to proudly fly your {R} flag for.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re a mean one Mr. Gingrich
You really are a heel.
You’re as cuddly as a cactus,
And as charming as an eel,
Mr. Gingrich!
You’re a bad banana,
With a greasy black peel!
You’re a monster, Mr. Gingrich!
Your heart’s an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders.
You’ve got garlic in your soul,
Mr. Gingrich!
The Other Chuck
It absolutely boggles my mind why Huntsman hasn’t been propelled to the top. He’s a NotObama, which is pretty much 90% of what the GOP wants, and Obama would have a hard time painting him as any kind of extremist, since he appointed him.
That’s if logic and reason actually played a part in the Republican Party’s decision process … and if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.
The Other Chuck
@Rafer Janders:
I’d really really like to unsee what he did there.
Cat Lady
The gooper base as it turns out is not immune to all of the charges flying everywhere – in the MSM and from inside their bubble – that they’re actually stone cold idiots. That’s the last bastion of their identity to be breached (“our blacks” didn’t work out), so they’re going to overlook Newt’s moral, ethical and political failures and ride Newt’s “intelligence” over the cliff. He’s a nasty SOB, but they’re in the process of deciding he’s their nasty SOB, and maybe he calls Obama an uppity nigra somewhere along the way so there’s that to look forward to. Otherwise, they’re done and over.
feebog
@ Cat Lady:
I am already beginning to see a Newt/Obama matchup as a Wiley E. Coyote vs. the Road Runner cartoon. Newt just can’t help himself. He will see the box of Acme Dynomite and he will just have to light the fuse. It really will be only a question of when and how high he blows himself up.
sukabi
“gaping hole” and Santorum should NEVER be that close together in a serious discussion.
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Nicely done. That image, or Mr. Burns, is what I was picturing…
moops
@FlipYrWhig:
exactly. The explanations are ALWAYS the same. The Democrat loses because he didn’t punch enough hippies, and the Republican loses because he wasn’t REALLY conservative.
and once this message is “out there” yet again, pollsters find that same signal mirrored back to them.
So pointless and predictable.
SRW1
@dmsilev:
Isn’t it appropriate to have the GOP primary culminate in an episode of The Apprentice.
There’s gonna be a slight deviation from normal script though and the grand finale is going to be The Donald annointing one of the candidates with the words: “You’re hired”.
Eli Rabett
Barack Obama will be the Republican candidate (Well . . .)
SRW1
@Tom Hilton:
If you do so, the correct spelling is hindenburgian.
Turgid Jacobian
@Brachiator: @Brachiator:
Concern troll is concerned.
mclaren
GET A CLUE!
Romney is Mormon. The Christian evangelical fundamentalist base who make up Republican primary voters will not vote for a Mormon. Ever. Under ANY circumstances.
Romney will never get the nomination. He could put a gun to the head of every Christian fundamentalist Republican primary voter and tell ’em “Vote for me or I’ll blow your brains out,” and the voters would respond “Shoot me in the head. I’d rather die than burn in hell forever because I voted for a member of a satanic cult like Mormonism.”
Rick Taylor
Romney gets this reputation because most of the other potential Republican nominees are so unstable. But he started whining when he got some mildly challenging questions in an interview. Obama will unhinge him.