Because Newt staying in the race is nothing but good news for the President:
When we last discussed this, there was a feeling that most of Newt’s support would go to Santorum, so Gingrich was helping Romney. But, as this poll shows, Newt’s support isn’t that clear-cut. Some old school Republicans can stomach Newt but can’t swallow Santorum — probably for reasons similar to those given by this Republican operative. If I had to guess why 40% would pick Romney over Santorum, I’d say that they believe that Newt talks the most purty, and that, unlike Rick’s scary, buzz-killing zealotry, Newt’s godbothering is just a technique to pick up votes.
Ruviana
I see what you did there.
feebog
As discussed last night on TRMS, the poll may have turned out these numbers based on the way the question was asked. The question was; who is your second choice. Don’t know that it would make that much of a difference, but WTF.
Also, too, let me be the first to point out that this is good news for John McCain.
Joey Maloney
Some old school Republicans can stomach Newt but can’t swallow Santorum
Let me be the first to say: ew.
cmorenc
The food fight at the GOP Convention will alternately be irresistibly fascinating and unbearably repellent to watch. This means that for many of us, we’ll let others of you watch so we don’t have to, and count on the political junkies to post links to the most entertainingly loopy/juicy parts.
Linda Featheringill
Santorum’s greatest contribution to this race [as I’ve noted before] is making Gingrich look like a Christian.
Which is really, really ironic.
cmorenc
Newt’s game here (as well as that of his backer Sheldon Adelson) is to accumulate enough delegates so that, even though he cannot himself win the nomination, he nonetheless has sufficient crucial leverage in a brokered convention to exact a demanding price from whomever he gives enough support to win the nomination. The price of course won’t be money, but rather in positions the nominee will have to pledge his potential administration to support, choices for cabinet positions, and so on.
Newt is the one who most benefits by doing everything possible to insure that the nomination can only be won through a brokered convention, even though his effect on the eventual nominee’s general election chances are harshly corrosive in the meantime before then.
MattF
FWIW, the equal split on second choice means that choosing Noot does not have anything to do with policy.
My own view is that people vote for Noot because they’ve fallen for the con– he’s persuaded them that he can beat Obama. It’s the typical sucker’s delusion, that they are in on the game, and they will be in on the payoff. So, when Noot announces that he can lower gas prices to $2.50, they think “Well, I’m too smart to believe that, but all the idiots who hear that will believe it and and vote for Noot, and the Pigmented One will get beaten.”
Carnacki
Here is a mind cleanser: a haunting version of Country Roads by Chelsea McBee
Villago Delenda Est
Gingrich is the guy they think is most likely to utter the n-word in Obama’s face during the debates.
That’s one of his strengths with the vile base.
Quiddity
I believe Newt staying in will help Santorum, and we all want that.
I think that the conservative portion of Gingrich supporters will switch to Santorum, and that the moderate portion will stay with Newt. That’s due to the different levels of intensity between conservatives and moderates, and because Romney seems to be doing okay, so why bail on Gingrich to help the other moderate. If you are a hard conservative currently supporting Newt, how can you stick with the guy after he’s failed to win any primaries recently. The conservative “action” is with Rick.
WereBear
I’m sure you are right. Since the Base does sense “one of us!”
MikeJ
@cmorenc:
What’s going to be nice is when the supers put Mitt over the top and the rubes get to see what their betters think of them.
Davis X. Machina
@MikeJ:
The rubes will love it. That’s why they’re rubes.
Randiego
Off topic, but news: San Diego Teaparty spokesman arrested for kidnapping and sexual assault. Let freedom ring.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/mar/16/sex-assault-suspect-tea-party-leader/
MikeJ
@Davis X. Machina: I have no doubt they’ll fall in line and do as they’re told, but I think there will be some disgruntlement when somebody who didn’t win “legitimately” gets it.
MattF
@Randiego: I think San Diego has fallen through the wingularity event horizon:
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/03/16/lets-not-be-quick-to-judge/
Hal
@efgoldman:
This sounds like the storyline to some alternate future sci-fi novel written by Bill O’Rielly.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
No one can stomach Santorum other than the home schooled evolution deniers, and even then, some of those won’t as well. Santorum is a true believing extremist, well beyond any norm for religious candidates for POTUS. And with overtones of fascist theism.
America is a religious country when pollsters call citizens and ask if they are religious, and many will even claim they believe in the Genesis version of events for creation. But that is where it ends for most, and begins at repulsion of religious imposition on their daily lives. They want their birth control because they like to fuck, and like their abortion for often the same reason, plus they have daughters.
Rick is the worst kind of big government wingnut, and that is why the other wingnuts don’t like him, and are frightened by the prospect of a Santorum run. And the indies would just crush him, not to mention women folk. He would likely put a bug up lazy moderate voters and dem voters to go vote. Gingrich would do that too, but the other wingers know Newt is a follow the money corporatist above all else, and is mostly acting the part on other wingnuttery. He’s crazy, but not insane, as Santorum is.
And also too, Rick is a pure regressionist, economically. He is Ryan squared in that department, the worst kind of militant Jesus believer, picking winners over losers and discarding the rest. A Santorum campaign would get at least 40 percent, but very possibly not more than that, and would likely drive a stake through what is left of GOP electability for the near term, at least. Giving Obama and dems a huge win.
He is the male supremacist prototype with the certitude he is right according to a holy book he interprets, and comes with all the other white supremacist tendencies of the south, which is why he did so well there, I suspect.
I think if Newt ever made it to president, he would likely be another GWB. Hair trigger with the military and all out corporate stooge, with some sense of the limits of right wing policies the country could accept. Then there is Romney, the Tom Ripley candidate that is impossible to foresee what he would do, other than favor the wealthy. The rest would be a day to day affair of who he thinks he needs to please most
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
Speaker Gingrich managed to shut down the US Government out of spite for President Clinton. Making Noot the Ambassador to the UN sounds like a first step toward the right-wing dream of shutting that body down too.
xian
@MattF: also, they think “Newt will show what a stuttering non-entity that near guy is.”
catclub
posting against the mobile
catclub
still with the mobile site appearing
Davis X. Machina
@MikeJ: There are a few of the rubes with anarchic tendencies who will grumble, but as for the majority of them, if you’re an authoritarian personality, every time the hierarchy acts hierarchichal, even if it acts upon you, it reinforces your world view.
People like that. They’ll override reason to have their Weltanschauung stroked, left and right. (cf. any blog you care to name’s comments…)
If you’ve got the mind of a 13th century peasant, kicks from above feel good, because of the direction whence they come. The ancien regime lasted as long as it did not because of a monopoly on violence, or on the possession of superior means of violence, but because it was acquiesced in by most people most of the time.
And your typical tea-bagger is the forelock-tugging peasant of 1250. Give him the occasional Jew to throw down a well, or a little later, a witch to burn, and he could care less whether you’re listening, up in the Big House, to his concerns.
Anya
Newt is such a whiner. Every time he speaks (at debates or his speeches after each primary) he’s complaining about how no one values his genius, or about the media bias and on and on. He’s such a cry baby. I don’t understand how wingnuts think he’ll do any damage to the President, when he can’t mount an effective defense against Willard?
I think wingnuts like him, not because they believe he’ll do the most to the President, but because they relate to his sense of victimhood.
WereBear (itouch)
Perhaps we should let the wingers know which Presidential candidate would annoy us most.
schrodinger's cat
Breakfast?
cckids
@cmorenc:
Oh, I don’t know. Newt strikes me as the type, when they get to the backroom dealing & Mitt asks him what he wants, Newt will reply “50 million cash”, or some amount. I think he’s got no principles, beliefs, relationships or ethics that some amount of cash wouldn’t buy.
Also, a prime-time speaking spot.
Raven
@Anya: He’s a draft dodging, phony intellectual, punk ass motherfucker.
cckids
@Villago Delenda Est:
This. When Repub voters are interviewed, Gingrich supporters always mention that a main reason for their choice of him is that he will “take Obama apart in the debates”.
The dance with unreality aside; what is the election to them, reality TV? Just for shits & giggles? Asshats.
Quiddity
@Amir Khalid: Newt would love to be at the U.N. where he could make speeches and debate every day of the week. What I’d be interested in, is how would the translators handle his words? Whatever “zinger” Newt thinks would wow the crowd would be completely denatured by the staid voice of the interpreter.
For example, Gingrich’s (actual quote from a debate)
Would come out as
Cat Lady
@Anya:
The whole conservative raison d’etre is to be able to kick down and kiss up, and now that the kick-ees are telling them to FOAD, they’re running around screaming help! help! I’m being oppressed by not being able to oppress! The bullies are in their last throes because they realize that 2012 will be the end of them getting away with their antics, and so they’re the victims.
Gin & Tonic
@Hal:
That’d be my cue to start packing. I like living in the US, and have raised up my kids here, but I am in a position where I could live elsewhere for the long term if I needed or wanted to.
Gin & Tonic
@Cat Lady:
They do not realize this because they do not believe it. They do not believe it because it is not true. Remember all the way back to 2010?
noodler
Off topic, but what the hey? No open thread for St. Patrick’s Day?
My mom sends me a loaf of Irish soda bread every year, whether I’m in a far off war zone, or here at home, and like clockwork, I received it yesterday.
Started about 25 years ago when I first joined the navy. Not sure where this tradition came from (I’m italian) but she always did a great job with most holidays.
Really good with caraway seeds and raisins, and fantastic toasted too.
I made some last year and sent to a friend as a gift, but it needed way more sugar (literally and metaphorically), did not attempt the same this year tho.
75 and sun here in DC. Going to channel my inner Rory McIlroy and hit the links this afternoon. And then there will be Guinness. And there will be smoked trout.
irinn go Brách
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is something I don’t quite understand. If the Republican nominee (Noot or Mr Whoever) calls Obama a ni***r on nationwide TV or even hints clearly at it, the only result I can imagine is a catastrophic loss of votes for that nominee. Not out of sympathy for Obama, but because such overt racism is surely disqualifying to most Americans — as is the recklessness it would also expose. Are right-wingers so keen to see Obama pwned in a debate (not, of course that this would come anywhere near doing it) that they don’t mind seeing their candidate throw away the election?
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
I think you’re absolutely correct. The trick, as it were, is for the candidate to display a desire to do so via dogwhistles to the crazy wing while maintaining the PC-mandated silence on the president’s obvious blackity blackness. That’s what it will take to get the crazy crew out votin’ and not goin’ to the gun range on election day.
Willard cannot speak to these people in a meaningful way.
Davis X. Machina
@Amir Khalid: 50%+1 elections can be won if enough people, disgusted by the whole spectacle, don’t even make it to the polls. And we have a press that’s obsessed with “Both sides do it.”
Generalized revulsion, particularlized revulsion, doesn’t matter, just so long as they don’t go out and vote, it doesn’t matter who they’re not-voting for.
Then you turn out the base. A GOP campaign is primarily obligated to give the general population enough reasons to not vote for your guy to sneak in.
Cat Lady
@Gin & Tonic:
I do. I also remember that they were going to “focus like a laser on jobs”, and that the deficit was going to kill us all unless they got elected, but the mask slipped instead.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: I agree. The old generation of flat-out racist Southern politicians would complain about the ‘nigras,’ but I just can’t see that happening now. All of the current Republican candidates have lived in the political spotlight for decades, they all understand that the n-word is verboten. Now, maybe I’m wrong and I’ll have to eat my hat, but I don’t expect to.
Jay C
@Amir Khalid:
Umm, in a word, yes. For a non-trivial segment of the GOP electorate. That using overt racial insults in a public campaign might damage a candidate’s standing with the large majority of the public doesn’t isn’t a concept that the hardcore wingers can really “get”: remember, they live, for the most part in a closed and utterly self-reinforcing information bubble: and get their political info mainly from a biased media that repeatedly tells them what they already “know” while constantly congratulating them for being so smart as to “know” it. Not hard to imagine at all…
Chet
@David X. Machina:
Florence King, the unabashedly elitist, WASP-Tory writer of the old “Misanthrope’s Corner” column in NR, did a piece in ’96 bemoaning the populist posturing (as she put it, “trying to out-lout the proles”) of the GOP candidates, and recommending instead that they “campaign with the self-assured dignity and air of command that Bubba secretly admires”.
Some considerable portion of our populace really are natural peasants. “A danned good thing, too,” say Ms. King and her fellow One Percenters. “More’s the pity,” say I.
Steeplejack
@noodler:
I went to the car dealership late this morning to pick up a can of ultra-rare power-transmission fluid, and the dudes at the parts counter were sporting green-striped top hats. A little more Cat in the Hat than Irish to me, but full points for the effort.
And on the way home I saw big outdoor celebrations in full swing at both Ireland’s Four Provinces and the Dogfish Head Alehouse. Erin go bragh!
Bruce S
Best line in the link to “Republican operative”: “avid Reagan supporters legalized prostitution in Nevada.”
Steve in DC
The problem with Santorum is simple. Most rich Republicans are social liberals to some extent. But generally there is no difference between a 1% Democrat and a 1% Republican. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative, can’t we all just get along and cut social security and believe in the private market.
Some vote Democratic and try to move the party right on economics, and have been very effective at that. And some vote Republican and try to keep the howlers at bay, and they’ve been failing.
They don’t care about birth control and abortion. They use it and if their daughter got pregnant in law school they’d be the first ones to press her for an abortion. But they sure as fuck don’t want to pay for anyone else to have one and they sure as hell would rather business didn’t to after because profits are important. They are for equal pay, as long as you are talking about equal pay for women with masters degrees. Lack a degree, yeah you make too much and you need to give up that pension and unemployment benefits as well so we can lower taxes and become more competitive.
All of these types are really the highly educated, socially moderate, but pro business types that make up the old school GOP power base and increasingly part of the Democratic base as the GOP kicked them out. Gingrich may talk a good game, Romney does as well, but they don’t really give a shit about social issues and are saying whatever they can to get votes. Santorum really believes this shit. And that scares the crap out of them. Because Santorum might actually put into place a theocracy that affects them and their daughters.
AxelFoley
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well played.
rikyrah
The title of this post is hilarious
Cheeto Lovin' Liberal
Swallow Santorum?!?!?
Don’t be disgusting.
Steve Finlay
What puzzles me is how the Republican operative, who otherwise seems reasonably intelligent, thinks Obama is a “simple target”. Perhaps their illusory idea of who Obama is – that might be a simple target. But Obama himself is not a simple target, except for people who think that yelling “Ni***r Ni***r Ni***r!!” constitutes a campaign.
racing
Beautiful points Bill. The fact is that some westerners are the types who believe in their hearts of hearts that imperialism still exists today. But the reality is that the Islamic Republic is a regime that at its core spouts an “Islamic Imperialism” policy. How can one support Islamic Imperialism?