I was just talking to a friend of mine about how I hoped that this Republican primary went long enough that Chuck Todd et al. got deep into the demographic weeds. Remember “Obama is weak among northeastern albino ethnic men, he’ll never win the general”?
Tonight, we got I-4 corridor, space community, Cuban-Americans, the panhandle is Newt Gingrich territory, pretty sweet stuff.
Also too, pretty good Gingrich speech. Saul Alinsky, check, soshulism, check, telemprompter, check, White House czars, check. Got to say, though, stay away from Corps of Engineers and 8 years, WWII 3.5 years. Too high-brow.
What do you think, can Newt win enough born-again, lesbian security moms to win this one?
JPL
no
Mark S.
The nomination? Yes. The general? No.
Go Newt!
WereBear (itouch)
I question regional differences here: aren’t Republican primary voters all unhappy in the same way?
Yutsano
Florida is IIRC a closed primary state. That could cause enough of a dose of teh cray for Newton to pull it off.
galileo126
Before you start talking about lesbian moms… The GOP only dislikes male homosexuals. As for lesbians, thou shalt not speak of such awesome sexuality.
Fucking losers… I swear.
General Stuck
Yes, but he will have to run buck naked through the Garden of Eden.
Martin
Which Republican is going to carry San Francisco? I really need someone to figure that out for me.
JPL
I actually read the post a few times and still say no..in fact I say HELL NO..
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Mary Cheney truly holds the fate of the nation in her talons
Martin
The GOP doesn’t have any security moms any longer. They’re all security grandmoms.
Dems should propose new voting laws prohibiting anyone who obtains a majority of their income from the federal government from voting (presumably due to conflict of interest) and watch the GOP spin themselves into a gas over that.
Countme In
Given the correct and shallowest spin, Pol Pot could win this primary.
Things are fluid, said the victims of the volcano in Pompey.
barath
The danger with Newt is that he’s a BS-spewing machine. He can just keep churning out meaningless BS attacks, BS ideas, BS scandals, etc. He’ll keep the media busy reporting on that nonsense in a general election, and they’ll dutifully transcribe what Newt says and then ask the Obama campaign to respond to every little piece of nonsense. That’s a more powerful weapon in the general than people give Newt credit for.
Romney on the other hand would just repeating his stump speech over and over and the media will get bored and start running Romney-is-Gore articles.
And even the big money establishment types will come around on Newt once they remember that he always sells himself to the highest bidder.
Baud
I think the key demographic group in this election will be racist soccer moms.
Skippy the Wondermule
If Newt can sew up the leprechauns, he’ll have a real chance at winning. He’ll lose the gnomes and fairies, but did he ever really have them?
Angry DougJ
@Skippy the Wondermule:
They’re socially liberal, fiscally conservative
Cat Lady
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
This electoral process isn’t about politics as much as it is putting America on the couch. I’m glad Obama has what the Buddhists call a stable mind. We’ll need it.
Svensker
Newt is starting to scare me a bit. He seems to be connecting in a gut way with blue collar folks and disaffected folks who aren’t doing great economically. An appealing demagogue in hard times makes me nervous.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Svensker: Spoken like someone with historical perspective.
Emma
@barath: You are underestimating the Chicago machine. Not to mention Obama’s ability to work his enemies into a frenzy and then calmly walk over them.
Svensker
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Well, when a woman in Florida said she liked Newt because of his family values, I got nervous.
barath
@Svensker:
Exactly. Once the big money guys come around on him and make him a deal he can’t refuse, they’ll happily ditch Romney and pour hundreds of millions into Super PACs. In the general they don’t need Newt’s favorables to go up. They just need Obama’s to go down.
So with the media covering every Newt spewage (like they did with Palin, we should remember), hundreds of millions of Super PAC money pummeling Obama day and night, and a lackadaisical electorate, things could get ugly, and all it’d take is a wrong turn in Europe or some news event to put Newt in the oval office.
barkleyg
“WWII 3.5 years.” Check!
King George’s War in a country the size of California 10 years
CHECK!
Anya
@Svensker: I am with you. Let’s hope the general election voters are much saner and better judges of character than the GOP voters.
barath
@Emma:
I’d agree with you in a different media environment. But we’re in an environment now where so much money can be spent driving up President Obama’s negatives that Newt can probably come within two swing states of Obama. All it’d take is an event—which there almost always is every year—and if it breaks the wrong way for Obama at the wrong time, that’s the ball game. Those are some dangerous odds.
Spaghetti Lee
I think there’s some unwarranted fretting going on around here. Gingrich is surging right now, I think, because GOP primary voters are looking for someone, anyone, other than Romney. Gingrich excites them because he’s fiery and gives off the appearance of being formidable (stupid person’s idea of, etc.), but the flipside to that is that he’s easy to deflate. Also, if Newt’s got fake dirt on Obama, then Obama’s got a whole dump truck full of real dirt on Newt.
Anoniminous
Florida is going to be interesting.
The last PPP poll (released Jan. 16) put Romney in a large lead BUT the Romney campaign leaked Jeb Bush was going to endorse tonight or tomorrow and now he ain’t.
Monday’s episode of Get These Assholes Off the Stage (aka, “GOP Presidential Candidates Debates”) may very well decide the contest and Romney has yet to show any prowess at such things.
Anya
@Spaghetti Lee: He should just sic bubba on him. I am sure he knows where all of bodies are buried, plus he has a score to settle with Newt.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spaghetti Lee:
Indeed. The cartoon character voters of GOP SC might look the other way at confronting your wife with a request for an open marriage as your banging a staffer, but I don’t think a lot of other Americans will. Particularly when he was doing it while tut tutting about Bill Clinton’s little affair with Ms. Lewinsky.
The vermin of the Village knew about that, at the time, too, and because it didn’t fit in with the Broder Narrative, they conveniently refused to report on it.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@galileo126: No, no, they like “lesbians”, not lesbians.
Elie
@Anya:
You are forgetting, but I will remind you when it happens again, that Newt always loses control and ends up in the ditch. He is manic. He is not organized and is incapable of sustained, self discipline.
Watch. Always. In the ditch… He cannot help it. He has a brain chemistry problem (in my opinion)
General Stuck
@Anya:
Newt has a better chance of exciting the base, and that is important, but his history as speaker, is not lost on swing voters, who remember and despise the man. There is a reason why in current polling against Obama he doesn’t get much over 40 percent. And with such a public high profile name recognition, there really isn’t a lot he can do to change that perception. And while he has the greater potential to excite the GOP base, he also will likely excite more dems in turn, to scare our slackers into voting this time.
I would rather have faced Romney because he hasn’t been thoroughly vetted like what happens in a GE, and am confident he has a shit pile of wealth and business related skeletons in his closet that would destroy him in this particular pol environment.
But Newt and his big problems with indie swing voters and firing up the dem base, not to mention his pension to go extreme in his rhetoric, does have the potential of making this election a dem tidal wave that would seal the trend the country is moving more into a progressive mindset. It is what happened after the Gilded Age and Robber Barrons, and could well happen again. I don’t think Mitt would surrender that much of the swing vote to Obama and dems. But for either, I think so long as the economy sputters along in the right direction, it will be Obama’s election to lose.
lamh35
I really wish people would quit with calling these voters GOp/Repubs/gingrich and Obama must appeal to just “blue collar workers”. Let’s be clear that what you mean iss exactly what Hilary C was roundly criticized for saying…ur saying that Newt will appeal to white blue collar workers. It’s kills me when some people leave out the white part of the blue collar argument.
Just say it. Newton speaks the language that “white blue collar” voters may want to hear.
Anya
@Elie: I am sure you’re right. Also, too, his yelling at the media schtick may be getting a little stale.
Donut
@Svensker:
I might agree with you but for the facts that Newt cannot win over a majority of women, nor Latinos.
General Stuck
@General Stuck:
Mercy, that should be penchant
mclaren
@General Stuck:
Tertiary syphilis will do that to ya.
mclaren
If Newtie can convince American voters that Obama’s daughter wants to be a thesbian and that Obama himself masticates at the dinner tables, he’ll have it locked up.
…Not.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
You oughta know
Egg Berry
@Anoniminous:
I thought it was an episode of Where’s a Well-Placed Asteroid When You Need One?
Donut
@General Stuck:
All these freakin people posting on Cole’s blog who are anal about their language usage, and he won’t fix the damn edit button.
You hear me, Cole – fix it.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Cat Lady: +1 for quoting my favourite Stones tune
shortstop
This year’s GOP primary schedule means that only 15% of delegates will by decided by the end of February. There’s a long way to go yet, and nobody’s wrapping it up in Florida.
FlipYrWhig
Everyone who recognizes the name Saul Alinsky and guffaws at TelePrompTer gags was never a gettable vote in the first place. Gingrich is the Glenn Beck candidate.
Shawn in ShowMe
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/01/21/they-dont-look-real-to-me-in-fact-they-look-so-strange/#comment-2999541
@barath:
We’re also in an environment where unemployment is trending downward, the stock market is trending upward, Colbert is the most likable GOP candidate and the Prez singing Al Green is a downloadable ring tone.
Jeezuz man, what about the red states that become swing states if Noot wins the nomination? It works both ways, you know. Noot is probably the only white man in the GOP clown car that could lose Texas to a black man.
jl
@Donut: Some one call Cole’s mom, she will make him get on fixing the blog. I think Cole is out shopping for snow booties right now.
Anya
@General Stuck: On one hand, I agree with you. That’s how I see it as well — it’s hard to believe that Newt’s ugliness will be sustained through the GE. Also, agreed that Dems who’s apathy handed the house of representatives to the crazies in 2010, will be energized, specially anyone who’s old enough to remember the Contract on America. I can also see a scenario where the indies find Newt’s racist dog whistle and general nastiness repulsive.
On the other hand, while I understand what you’re saying, I still think the American electorate can easily be manipulated, and with an assist from the MSM, a Gingrich win is a scary possibility.
mazareth
Is it just me, or is Newt traveling Lee Atwater’s language back towards the more concrete?
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
Just substitute “food stamps” for “forced busing,” etc.
JasonF
@WereBear (itouch):
As Tolstoy observed, all happy Republican primary voters are alike; each unhappy Republican primary voter is unhappy in his own way.
General Stuck
@Anya:
Absolutely, I agree. Anything can happen in a two man race. I don’t know if Gingrich scares me more than Romney or Santorum. Probably, a little more. But all three are the stuff of nightmares as possible leaders of the free world, as is the loony party they represent that they would kowtow to.
jl
I don’t understand the debate over who we should want to win the GOP nomination.
I do not want any of the GOP candidates to win. For the first time in decades, I cannot think of any prominent GOP politician who I would feel at all comfortable having the nomination (and partly any past GOP moderates I would feel comfortable with would lose in the general due to lack of GOP turnout because he or she would not be insane enough).
If we have to face the poison of Newt (versus Mitt) in the general election, I think Obama would win. As other commenters have said, Newt has very high unfavorable rating, due to older people who remember what an ass he was. I am confident younger people will deliver a similar verdict on more exposure to Newt.
As I said in an earlier thread, I think Newt has two modes: Buchanan racist, and dumb man’s genius poseur. Buchanon did horrible damage to a previous GOP campaign with much less opportunity, Newt will be spreading Buchanan racist poison turning of droves of sensible people.
I also think Obama and Biden (if he is the VP nominee) are the perfect candidates to destroy Newt’s fake visionary thinker swindle. Obama would take Newt apart. As would Biden from long distance.
I think sometimes Newt tries to finesse his bigot pitch into a Jack Kemp pitch for free enterprise opportunity policies that would help minorities. But I don’t think Newt can keep that up for long. That may have been what Newt’s bold proposal to help poor kids earn their school with good hard work. But the degenerated into white racists cheering the idea of poor n***** kids cleaning rich white kids toilets, probably starting in kindergarten. And Newt just can’t help himself, he is such a conceited ham, when he hits it big, he plays to the max to get more love from whatever loons fate sets in front of him. And he wrecks himself.
And Jack Kemp was sincere. Newt isn’t sincere about anything except his self worship, lust for the spotlight and greed, and impulsiveness.
Donut
@shortstop:
Maybe I’m misreading the situation or clouded by partisanship or whatever, and I posted this in Dennis’ thread below, but I find this whole scenario just beautiful for the Democratic party this year. It just feels like Republicans are way more divided than ever right now, like their coalition of libertarians, socially moderate/fiscally conservatives and freaky Christian evangelicals and Catholics is really breaking down now. The split on the Democratic side in 2008 was over the judgment issue of Iraq and who would be best situated to clean up the various messes left behind by GW Bush. The split in the GOP right now seems much deeper and far more ideological in nature. Again, not being a Republican, maybe I totally misread this situation, but all I see is fracture and no one around (that I know of) who can bring the parties together to heal when the smoke clears.
Donut
@jl:
I think all of their candidates are deeply flawed for the general election. Moving back to the middle is going to be nearly impossible for any of them. Mitt is the one most capable of doing it, I guess…I guess…but he’s gone so far right already, and still has to compete with Newt and Santorum, and Popeye’s Pappy Ron Paul, so he can’t stay in the center any more – and who freaking knows where the center is in the GOP any more? I sure as fuck don’t know what is a mainstream Republican view at this point.
I think in the end one of Obama’s biggest hurdles is not going to be the eventual conservative nominee (or nominees, if you will), but rather an aggressively “centrist” media machine that is loathe to give him credit for his achievements, as doing so mucks up the horse race and big-time ad buys.
FlipYrWhig
@Donut: Bob McDonnell, Virginia gov, has the best shot at patching up the rift between big money and Xtian apocalypticism and moral superiority. But he didn’t run this year. IMHO that’s revealing.
dogwood
I realize anything can happen, but whether it’s Newt or Mitt, the nominee is going to have to flip close to 100 electoral votes just to win a squeaker. That can’t be done with TV ads alone. Talking heads on TV can’t carry these guys either. Sarah Palin had a network pimping for her and plenty of MSM types taking her seriously, but SNL, Comedy Central, and late nite comedians had as much if not more to do with defining her among the general public. It’s been 5 years since Obama became a candidate and the only people making fun of him are the 27%ers. Newt and Mitt are already punch lines among the “non-serious” media. With a slow recovery, and high unemployment, these guys should be 10-15 points ahead right now, considering they are getting all the attention and the President hasn’t really entered the fray. Yet, they are not. What happens when they have to go against the President in full campaign mode?
Donut
@FlipYrWhig:
Yup. And Mike Huckabee or even Mitch Daniels might have been able to straddle the fence, too, but they also both sat it out. And then there’s Jeb, who despite the name problem, may have been able to do it. All of those guys are insane wingnuts, but they ain’t stupid nor as tone deaf as the ones who actually got into the race this year.
FlipYrWhig
@Donut: I kinda think the movers and shakers in Republican circles want to throw this election, and use the occasion to rid themselves of Romney. Ride Obama’s work on cleaning up the mess, then run in 2016 on a clean slate and a change in direction.
Anya
@General Stuck: All of the remaining GOP nominees are bunch of sociopaths. Who ever is the nominee will be a nightmare for the country.
Omnes Omnibus
The panic and flop-sweat in this thread is ridiculous. The debates would kill either Newt or Mitt. Imagine either of them on stage with Obama. To go back to the boxing metaphor I have been using, neither of them is capable of connecting with a solid punch. Mitt has a glass jaw, no right hand, and the footwork of man on ice. Newt can throw a flurry of punches that look good, but none of them, except the low blows, land. He’ll tire and his hands will drop. Obama, however, moves well, can take a punch, and times his punches perfectly.
b-psycho
@galileo126: Pretty much. There’s a reason the line is “Gawd created Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve!” rather than “Ava and Eve”: big hard throbbing DICK going up a male ass just excites the conservative mind more than mutual licking between women.
+4…
Gwangung
@Omnes Omnibus: A little flop sweats good; it keeps you honest and on your toes. But you’re right that too little confidence may almost be as bad as too much confidence.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gwangung: Concern about, and respect for, the crazy are one thing. Panic and flop-sweat are another.
Mustang Bobby
Chuck Todd talked about the Cuban-Americans as if they rule Mimai-Dade County. They are a very small voting bloc here compared to the rest of us to the point that in a recent poll Obama was up like 20 points over Romney. John Kerry won the county along with Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) in 2004.
The Cubans move a lot of air and spin a lot of wheels but they don’t win the election for the GOP here.
Pat In Massachusetts
What exactly is a born-again, lesbian security mom? And are they exclusive to South Carolina?
Being a lesbian and a mom myself, I feel like I’m missing something here. Enlighten me.
Inquiring minds want to know.
But back to Newt and the lesbian vote:
He would never get my vote, BUT I really would love to run my fingers through Cally’s hair because I wonder (everyday) how it must feel. O! La La!
Kathleen
@Countme In: Brilliant. You nailed it.
shortstop
Pat, your fingers would get stuck immediately upon insertion and the local EMTs would be dispatched to free you using the Clippers of Life.
Svensker
@Donut:
He won the women’s vote in SC. I think Marianne’s video boomeranged.
kc
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth!