Mitt and Newt in Florida

[Valin]

NRO: This time it means something.

 

Neal B. Freeman1/27/12

 

Jacksonville, Fla. – If you want to know who’s going to win the Florida primary, give me a call Saturday afternoon. I’ll be glad to tell you then. I could tell you now, of course, but then I’d just be blowing smoke along with the rest of the media. This race will break late and break hard — later and harder, possibly, than even the South Carolina primary did.

 

What I can tell you today is what this election is going to be about. The 2012 Florida primary will be an old-fashioned family feud pitting conservatives against Republicans. It’s a feud with deep, 1964-vintage roots, but it’s not about old grudges misremembered or long-forgotten. Next Tuesday’s vote will be a referendum on what happened here and elsewhere around the nation in 2010.

 

(Snip)

 

It is difficult to convey to NR readers, much less to New York Times readers, just how astonished and annoyed the grassroots activists in Florida are. These are not people who hold party posts or are on Larry Sabato’s Rolodex as potential sources. They are the people who dropped what they were doing in 2010 and dashed off to the aid of their party in its hour of manifest need. They restored order to the public square, imposed clarity on the party message, sent a human wave of self-declared reformers to Tallahassee and Washington, and then said, with a sigh of relief, “There. You guys can take it from here. We’re going home.” To then watch their new heroes acquiesce in the selection (appointment?) of Mitt Romney as their party’s inevitable candidate has been more than many conservative activists can bear. (A typical quote about Romney from a local hyper-activist: “I don’t have the time for him. If he were president, we’d have to mobilize for every appointment, every regulation, every agenda item. He thinks of us the way old man Bush did — as them.”)

 

(Snip)

 

The establishmentarians may be right. They should win. The record is clear that the guys with the tanks usually beat the kids with the candles. But if they don’t win — if the late break goes Newt-ward — I offer herewith a small, don’t-bet-the-rent-money prediction. The process will begin afresh. Romney will wither away, up against the hard reality that the Republican base simply cannot be dragged kicking and screaming to a cellophane-wrapped Romney nomination. With Newt installed as the placeholder, attention will then begin to drift again, first perhaps to Rick Santorum or Mitch Daniels, and then to Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie and, at least for a long moment, to Paul Ryan. Horizons will broaden, scenarios will proliferate.

[Rokke]

Interesting article. I am an unwilling member of a union (ALPA). The rank and file get the same treatment from them. Yet, everyday I'm bombarded with emails and letters about how they want to know my opinion to do more for me. Like the GOP establishment, there is only one thing my union bosses care about...themselves. It's almost a literal mafia. I have to pay 2% of my salary for union dues that feed the spending habits of my useless union. I have to pay a much larger percentage of my salary for taxes that feed the spending habits of my useless government. If the RNC thinks I'm just going to quiet down and go away while they keep shoving their status quo candidates down my throat under the auspices of knowing what's "good for me" better than I do, than they really have no idea regarding the rage that's building among people like me.

We're on track toward nuetering the lying media. The next target is castrating our own party bosses.

[Evad]

@Rokke.The next target is castrating our own party bosses.

 

 

Good luck with that. ..seriously.

I would love nothing more that to see these money laundering fronts for the Democrat party go down in flames.

 

oops..misread..thought you were talking about the union party bosses.

 

as to diminishing the Pubbie party elites, RINOs, moderates and other various and sundry undesirables...

good luck with that too.

We keep trying..the TEA party is a beginning but only a beginning. Much much much work to do.