Take it with a grain of salt because it could just mean Rasmussen’s in the bag for Newt, but this is a big lead:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters finds Gingrich on top with 38% of the vote. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a distant second at 17%. No other candidate reaches double-digits. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
daveNYC
And given the crazy that is the other candidates, once they start dropping out, their supporters will not be joining team Mitt.
Certified Mutant Enemy
child labor, poor houses, etc.
Newt is ready to propel the USA into the 19th century!
RP
YES! Now that’s the way to start a Friday.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well Rasmussen’s job is to provide “facts” to support the official GOP mem so that seems to mean The Newt has gotten the nod from the party elite.
As to why, I note the economic news is trending better, that means Obama much tougher to beat so 2012 becomes damage control for the GOP. Newt can do that, Mittens can’t.
Brachiator
Rasmussens’s polls is the only poll that shows Newt with a big lead. For some reason (snicker, chortle), Rasmussen polls tend to show more favorably for conservative GOP candidates over moderate GOP candidates. Rush and others often lead with these polls.
And again, this is all Political Fantasy League Stuff. I know that people want to huff and puff to use polls as reliable predictors, but they are not. Not even when they have an extra topping of Nate Silver analysis.
Conversational preference does not always mean squat when primary voting begins. And yeah, this stuff may indicate that a lot of Republicans don’t like Mittens Romney, but it still don’t amount to much.
RP
@Brachiator: Stop spoiling the Newtmentum! sheesh.
Rhoda
First Read had an interesting paragraph about a focus group of GOP voters; they really don’t like Mitt. They know Newt, they know his issues, it just rolls off. This is their decent Not Mitt candidate; and that is starting to sink in. If he doesn’t pull a Perry at the debates he can win this thing. The fact that the immigration issue didn’t hurt him is proof of that; it wouldn’t have hurt Perry if the guy didn’t trip over his tongue attacking Mitt. That wasn’t a dude that could take on Obama; the focus group kept saying they wanted to see Gingrich on stage with Obama. That’s why I think he can last. We’ll see if the evangelicals support him as they did Huckabee.
I think the GOP is starting to realize the blood bath Mittens is in for if he is the nominee; and the Baier interview didn’t convince them he could handle it. Newt at least can take a punch; he sustained himself through a dying campaign which is more than Pawlenty had the stones to do. That takes guts. I think a lot of Republicans respect that too.
dmsilev
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the GOP elite have given up on beating Obama (which I don’t believe for an instant, but let’s assume), then I could see elite opinion pushing Newt to the nomination as a way of purging the Tea Party influence from the GOP. Setting him up for a fall, in other words.
MattF
Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Romney, Paul. Itty-bitty car. And Huntsman. That is all.
deep cap
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Well, at least it’s not like Bachmann’s desire to take us back to the 16th century.
dmsilev
@MattF: You forgot Santorum. Probably just as well.
Benjamin Franklin
GINGRICH 2012
“Give me the money, now !”
Tom Hilton
It’s as I keep saying: Newt is a bullshit artist among bullshit amateurs. That’s why he just might win this thing (the nomination, not the general election).
Mary Jane
Herd mentality. The simpletons have no idea who or what a newt is, but if their god-fearin’ cousin that got an edjucation says it’s a good thing, they’ll fight to the death to defend it. Faux News also too.
MattF
@dmsilev: It’s just amazing. “Oh, wait… running for President, I thought you said running for Psychopath.”
Monkey Business
@dmsilev: If you’re going to purge the Tea Party from the GOP, you don’t nominate Newt Gingrich. You nominate Bachmann or Cain, a pair of Know-Nothings that embrace every nutso idea that spews forth from the mouths of these rubes and ignoramuses.
You strap them with wax wings and watch them fly too close to the sun and then turn to the Tea Party Daedalus and tell them that that is what happens when you leave the reservation.
Yevgraf
TheStone
@Monkey Business: They’re not going to throw the election in order to do that. I suspect that Newt lies somewhere between Mittster and Bachmann/ Cain in order of preference for the Big Money Boyz. They’ll point to the detritus of the primary campaign to make their point. And they aren’t going to purge the Tea Party; they are merely going to try to get them back on their meds again. Remember, the Tea Party is really just the GOP Base that they have relied on for several decades now and they aren’t going to encourage them to run off and start up their own franchise.
handsmile
Yesterday TPM posted a shrewd article, “Newt Gingrich’s Secret Weapon: Old People” that begins: “The former Speaker has made senior citizens a key plank of his strategy since the beginning of his run”: http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/newt-gingrichs-secret-weapon-old-people.php
To the degree that Newt’s child labor proposals become prominent in the coverage of his campaign, I do not accept that most grandparents, even Republican grandparents, will endorse sending grandchildren under the age of sixteen to manual labor. I know my Dickens very well, but those are attitudes of a Victorian not a modern era.
But perhaps I’m a rank sentimentalist. Though it could lead to some novel holiday gifts from Grandma and Grandpa: a job application rather than a check or gift card.
Social Outcast
There are a lot of parents with kids sitting around playing x-box, thinking to themselves, “How do I get more out of this asset? It’s costing me a lot of money, and there’s got to be a way to monetize it.”
Newt speaks to those voters.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@handsmile:
“Newt Gingrich’s Secret Weapon: Old People”
The Soylent Green factories will need raw material…
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
This makes no sense. Setting Newt up for a fall does not purge Tea Party influence. I doubt that the Tea Party gives a rat’s ass about Newt, or care about him only to the degree that he promises to kiss up to them.
Two things seem to be background to much of this. Many conservatives are not happy with heir presumptive Mittens Romney. And where in the past evangelicals accepted being pandered to and then tossed to the curb, the Tea Party People and those who think like they do refuse to be sidelined politically.
Also, I don’t think for a nanosecond that the Republicans have given up on the idea of beating Obama. And they know that if their candidate (whoever) can make an impressive sounding argument that they can restart the economy, they have a reasonable chance of retaking the White House.
Origuy
@Yevgraf: Newt will probably propose the resurrection of the Victorian treadmill before too long.
Judas Escargot
@Brachiator:
Part of what caught the Mass Dems offguard was that Rasmussen was the only early poll showing Scott Brown having a serious chance at Kennedy’s Senate seat. They, too, laughed.
Speaking of which, OT but a new UMass poll shows a statistical dead heat between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. (Notice how the Herald, a Murdoch paper, spins this as “Warren is ahead”, presumably to rile up the base).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@dmsilev:
`so all win for the elite. They let the tea tards take the blame for loss, at the same time get their votes to keep other Republicans in office and heck, Newt might just pull it off.
And anyway, why is Mittens the sure thing, beyond his campaign has said so for seven years? The guy was reduced to a sobbing wreck by Fox News of all things. To put it crudely, Mittens is a total wuss.
MattF
Somewhat OT, apparently not a joke:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/herman-cain-launches-women-for-cain-with-brutal-attacks-on-husbandless-accusers.php?ref=fpa
Brachiator
@Judas Escargot:
The main thing that caught the Democrats’ off guard was taking the voters in the district for granted. This early polling is useful for campaigners and their staffs in giving an idea of voter sentiment, but otherwise is not particularly useful. But I understand that a lot of Balloon Juicers, like the average guy and gal, get thrown by the fallacy that just because something can be quantified and explained, then it must tell you something meaningful.
Ask Rudy 911 and Hillary Clinton about the value of early polling anointing them as front runners.
Bex
@handsmile: You’re missing the dog whistle. The rich and upper-middle-class grandparents Gingrinch is talking to don’t have to worry about their grandchildren cleaning up toilets and barf in the private schools they attend. There are plenty of mininum wage non-union janitors to do that.
Cargo
Oh please oh please.
Tom Q
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Pundits keep saying “Romney is the overwhelming front runner” the same way ESPN kept saying the Red Sox were the World Series favorites last year, even when they were in second place in their division. Tribal consensus doesn’t needs facts for confirmation.
patrick II
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I was thinking the opposite. If the Euro collapses and throws us all into a deep recession Obama becomes more beatable and it might be the right wing’s chance to get a serious wingn&t in the presidency, and not have to settle for some moderate like Mitt.
Cat Lady
@MattF:
WTF? Complete w/ stock photo a la Gingrich’s kick off. These two owe mendacious flaming gaseous asshole fucktards an apology for making them look bad.
JWL
I never predicted Gingrich will be the nominee, but I’ve said for months odds were good-to-excellent that Romney would fail to grab the brass ring.
I still think so. Republican voters, from the batshit insane to what’s left of the party’s moderate wing, want to vote FOR something and somebody. They also need to be impressed with a candidate’s ability to baffle with bullshit, and Romney just doesn’t cut it as a snake oil salesman.
wrb
A return to 19th century England.
Carlyle found Emerson’s American optimism bothersome, so took him walking in London. As each street presented horrors worse than the previous one he’d ask “Ach, do ye believe in the divil nooo?”
JWL
I just read Dennis G. (‘Rubes Embrace The Professor’) after posting # 33 up-thread. Great minds indeed think alike.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@patrick II:
Newt a serious nut? He maybe extreme in a sane country but this is the US. Newt is also the guy who was the House Speaker in the ’90s. I think to The Leadership(tm) Grinch is that happy politician who can talk like and outsider and govern like an insider.
The other thing about Mittens as president he would just run from making any decision about anything. Newt was able to get stuff done as Speaker. The middle class don’t f**k themselves, you know,..
aretino
When I go to the New York Times website, the top article is about how the GOP nomination fight has come down to Romney and Gingrich, and the banner ad is for … Tiffany’s.
The Other Bob
I am trying to figure out which of the following is the cause of the Republican’s inability to find a decent candidate:
1) Good candidates aren’t running becuase the will lose the general.
2) Good candidates aren’t running becuase they cannot win the primary in today’s GOP.
3) There are no good GOP candidates.
Schlemizel
@The Other Bob:
I’d like to think it is a close race between 2 & 3 but cannot come up with the name of a single Republican that is decent so I’ll take door #3 Monty.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
Nobody knows whether the Euro will collapse. Nobody knows what the impact of a Euro collapse would be on the European economy. No one knows how any impact on the European economy would ripple through the US economy.
Has anyone asked the GOP stooges, uh, I mean GOP presidential aspirants what they think about the Euro issue and how they, as president, would deal with it? Would they be committed to another financial rescue, or would they play silly libertarian let ’em fail games?
The issue of the Euro might pop up in a [insert name of GOP Sucker here] vs Obama presidential debate.
Shorter answer: prediction on how a Euro situation would make Obama vulnerable is nothing but empty speculation.
zizi2
The GOP is betting on Newt whipping up the base to GOTV to at least save downticket Repugs. I also suspect that the bigwigs will open a second warfront on Pres. Obama by running a Third party moderate candidate to replicate Ross Perot’s effect on GHW Bush.
of course if they do that it will be a miscalculation since Democrats will also be fired up to go to the polls with a Newt as GOP flagbearer. The Third party candidate (Huntsman?) will remain in that middle with the Indies. it will then be a mano a mano between party bases
Samara Morgan
Here is material for a great debate question, posed by Tapper.
if life actually begins at successful implantation, then does that mean you support eSCR, Mr. Speaker?
Calouste
@The Other Bob:
I think it’s either 1 or 2. The clue is that there is no sitting GOP Senator running. As they say, each Senator looks in the mirror each morning and sees the next President, and apparently all the GOP Senators think that the time isn’t ripe just yet. You’d think someone like, say, Cornyn would have thrown his hat in the ring.