Head-to-head, horse-race polls this far out don’t mean a LOT, but they do show important trends. In that light, behold Rasmussen’s newest , which shows Rick Santorum as the only Republican to beat Obama head to head. This is the latest in a week-long series of polls, from pollsters left, right and center, showing Santorum doing better against Romney than Gingrich or Paul, or better against Obama than Gingrich or Paul and either better or about even with Romney when matched against Obama — or, having a significantly better favorable-to-unfavorable ratio (this IS a significant poll number this far out, unlike a horse-race match-up) than anybody in the GOP field. Also today, Phyllis Schlafly announced she would vote for Santorum. This follows endorsements or “support” statements in favor of Santorum this week from Michelle Malkin, David Limbaugh, Sharron Angle, Tom Tancredo, Jane Norton, Bob Schaffer, and others. Not bad for a guy who the establishment media keeps writing off.
Read the original:
Santorum’s Slow-Mo Surge Continues
One of the most bizarre narratives I have ever seen take hold during a Presidential campaign is the narrative that Newt Gingrich, who spent three decades in Washington, ultimately rising to the top of the House leadership, is the “outsider” and “TEA Party” candidate whereas Mitt Romney, who has never had a job in Washington in his life (although admittedly that is not for lack of trying), is the “establishment” or “insider” candidate. Newt is not without his redeeming qualities but I have to confess that whenever he rants in his inimitable style about the “Establishment” I am struck with a powerful sense of vertigo. It isn’t just Newt’s ancient past that presents this problem. As recently as 2010, when TEA Party fervor was sweeping the nation, Newt Gingrich was completely absent from its key battles or just as often was on the completely wrong side of the debate. In NY-23, Gingrich endorsed Dede Scozzafava right before she bolted the party and endorsed the Democrat (for the record, Romney donated $5,000 to and endorsed Hoffman). In Utah, Bob Bennett kicked off his campaign with an endorsement from Newt Gingrich who aggressively campaigned on his behalf (Romney also supported Bennett and then donated $5,000 through his PAC to Mike Lee). In Delaware, Newt confidently predicted Mike Castle would win and then was completely absent from the discussion over the race until O’Donnell won the primary (Romney donated $5,000 to O’Donnell, but I’m not clear whether that was before or after the primary was over). In virtually every major TEA Party fight in 2010 – Toomey vs. Specter, Paul v. Grayson, Crist v. Rubio, Gingrich was either AWOL until the matter was completely decided or on the wrong side. The only Senate candidate that Newt’s PAC donated to whatsoever was Scott Brown . For all of his many faults (and watching his speech last night I have very grave concerns about his ability to ever learn to sound like a real human being), Romney apparently learned the right lesson from his thumping in 2008, as he busted his hump in 2010 raising money for and campaigning for Republicans, including TEA Party Republicans (Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Jim Demint, Ron Johnson, Ovide Lamontagne, Marco Rubio, John Raese and Pat Toomey, among many others, got $5,000 or more from Romney in 2010). I again emphasize that there are a lot of candidates out there that I would prefer to see as our nominee than Mitt Romney but if this really is a contest between “Establishment Republicans” and “TEA Party Republicans,” I am at a loss to know how Gingrich has any claim to TEA Party support at all, or how he somehow escaped the label of “Establishment” when he is one of the most “Establishment” candidates who has run for President in my lifetime.
Here is the original post:
Newt Gingrich, Establishment Sellout
The 2012 presidential election season has not been a normal one in many ways. History teaches us that every election season brings something new we haven’t seen before – but also that progress in electioneering, as in most walks of life, is more gradual than people are wont to predict. The candidate who says “this time, everything is different” or “the old rules don’t apply” or promises “new politics” or “fundamental change” is almost always selling a bill of goods to his or her supporters, and often to himself or herself. As conservatives, with a belief in experience as mankind’s best and only teacher , we should know better. One need only look back to 2010, when a popular wave brought victory mostly to candidates with the attributes and experience of traditonally successful candidates (Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey) and defeat to candidates who were genuinely unorthodox or similar to past losing campaigns (Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Christine O’Donnell). The terrain shifted and new opportunities were created, but the basic rules of the game remained the same. Even now, with the leading GOP contenders pouring money and manpower into the early primary states and the filing deadlines only a month away, we still have pundits and eager activists telling us that it’s not too late for new candidates to jump in. Please , Sarah Palin. Please , Chris Christie. Etc. It’s certainly true that a late entrant could yet generate enough support to shake up the fundamental dynamics of the race. It’s even possible that Rick Perry and Mitt Romney will prove vulnerable enough that a new entrant could still win. But let us not kid ourselves: the old rules still matter. It would be deeply unprecedented for a candidate in the modern (post-1972) age of presidential primaries to win the nomination without having laid any foundation of a national organization as late as the October before the primaries. Some would have you believe that Ronald Reagan, who officially declared himself a candidate in November 1979, ran such a race. This is nonsense and historical ignorance. Let me offer as Exhibit A an excerpt here from a portion of page 613 of Steven Hayward’s magisterial book The Age of Reagan, which documents the rise of Reagan from 1964 to 1980 , and which I highly recommend. Hayward describes how Reagan began to plan for his run with a meeting of his senior staff in September 1976 : Hayward goes on to detail other steps Reagan took to prepare, such as beginning in 1978 to have aide Martin Anderson prepare task forces of issue experts to brief Reagan (Hayward notes that by the time of the 1980 election, there were a total of 461 people, experts in numerous policy areas, on these various issue task forces), and dinner parties with leading figures on the Right to drum up support. Ben Domenech cites Reagan’s 1978 foreign policy debates with William F. Buckley . Nor was Reagan coy or private about his preparations to be the next Commander-in-Chief. How do I know? Because one of the many ordinary citizens to whom he signalled his interest in running was my father, the recipient of this letter in the fall of 1978, now reprinted at page 517 of Reagan: A Life in Letters : I’m only scratching the surface here of the labors Reagan undertook to prepare himself and the public for his candidacy, to travel around the world meeting with foreign leaders and inspecting U.S. military installations, and to build a professional campaign staff, fundraising apparatus and ground organization. The point is that anyone who tells you that Reagan simply came out of the blue in the fall of 1979 wasn’t there and hasn’t bothered to learn the history from anyone who was.
More here:
Reagan Did Not Wait Until The Last Minute
Jonah Goldberg warns conservatives not to nominate a presidential candidate who might be viewed as “too conservative.” But I think Jonah’s got this wrong. He seems to mistake “weak” candidates with candidates who are “too conservative” — but the two are not synonymous. “The weaker Obama gets,” Jonah writes, the more comfortable the conservative rank and file feel moving as far rightward as possible. When the incumbent looks like a loser no matter what, electability loses its premium. That the GOP just swapped Pawlenty for Perry is a testament to that fact, and far more significant than Bachmann’s straw-poll victory… The danger isn’t so much that GOP voters will reject the Buckley rule but that they will think that almost any conservative will be electable given how weak Obama seems. After all, independents don’t subscribe to the Buckley rule — because they’re independents. If the economy improves or Obama gains traction, a Bachmann candidacy could resemble Goldwater ’64 more than Reagan ’80. The “Buckley Rule,” of course, is named after William F. Buckley, Jr., who famously said that he would support for president “the most rightward viable candidate.” But Buckley declined to support certain conservative candidates (such as Ronald Reagan for President in 1968), not because he thought they were “too conservative,” but simply because he didn’t think they could win — or because he believed that they were not yet ready for high political office. Critics of the Tea Party love to point out that it nominated (in 2010) losing senatorial candidates such as Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada. To the critics, this is prima facie evidence of the Tea Party pushing the GOP “too far right.” But the problem with Angle and O’Donnell was not they were “too conservative”; it was that they were seriously flawed candidates — and I say that as someone who seriously
[Guest Post by Lee Stranahan] There are four women it seems that Rep. Anthony Weiner sent sexual photos to… Lisa in Nevada (admitted) Meagan in Texas (admitted) Ginger Lee, sex worker & lupus blogger (presumed – because why not?) Gennete in Seattle (who was sent a photo, at least) Different ages, races, looks – seemingly all very different women at first glance. So, what’s Weiner’s ‘type’? The connection between all of them is that they are all people who admire Weiner’s politics. He doesn’t want anonymous sex thrills – he gets off on just the opposite. He likes it when they know exactly who he is and have seen him on TV> It’s all about Weiner. Of course he doesn’t want to resign – it’s his pickup line.
