Primary 2012

[Valin]

Yahoo News: Heading into Minnesota, Romney focuses attacks on Santorum

Chris Moody

2/6/12

 

Mitt Romney isn't letting up on Newt Gingrich this week, but in the days before the Minnesota Republican caucuses, his campaign has been taking aim at Rick Santorum as well.

 

The Romney campaign sent reporters an in-depth, 1,537-word "Research Briefing" focused on Santorum on Sunday, knocking Santorum for supporting earmarks during his tenure in Congress and pointing to some of the more famous earmarks he voted for, like the Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere." And on Monday, Romney put campaign surrogate and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty on a conference call with reporters to counter Santorum's claims to being the most conservative candidate in the primary race.

 

"He clearly has been part of the big spending establishment in Congress and in the influence peddling industry that surrounds Congress," Pawlenty said of Santorum."To hold himself out now as somebody who is unquestionably conservative on these matters is just not supported by the facts. We wanted to call that out."

 

(Snip)

[NCTexan]

Here's an interesting perspective from David Frum who has sold his soul to CNN as a supposed "conservative" voice. Of course he now echos the DEM talking points about "the good Obama"... but also makes some interesting "what if's" concerning the GOP primary.

 

CNN

 

Gingrich's best bet: Obama wins

By David Frum, CNN Contributor

 

Washington (CNN) -- After a bad defeat in the Nevada caucuses, the options dwindle for former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

 

Gingrich has benefited in the past from game-changing debates, but there is no debate on the calendar for two weeks.

So what does Gingrich do next?

 

How does Gingrich recover after losses?

 

Option 1: Fight to the bitter end, money or no money.

 

Option 2: Try to make a deal now, in hope of gaining something in exchange from the Romney campaign -- a speaking slot at the convention, some kind of advisory role in a Romney administration.

 

Pretty obviously, neither of those options leads anywhere good. Option 1 could rapidly lead to public humiliation, Option 2 to lingering private humiliation.

 

Option 3: Retire quietly from the field, no deal, and hope that Romney loses in November and that Gingrich can then claim the "told you so" rights of the party elder statesman over the next four years.

 

... if he (Romney) loses, Gingrich can fill the hours on Fox with messages conservatives will want to hear:

 

• We lost because we nominated a moderate.

 

• I was the real conservative in the race. Had the party nominated me, I would have pummeled Obama in the debates and won the election.

 

• Next time, listen to me!

 

After all, an Obama re-election is a very possible outcome in 2012. Recovery is quickening now. Job numbers are rising. The president has foreign-policy successes to point to. House Republicans have left behind a record the president can attack, from threatening to default on the debt to passing a budget that withdraws the Medicare guarantee from voters under age 55. Primary season attacks on Romney's business and tax records have drawn blood.

 

After this primary season, Gingrich can only win his own personal future if Romney loses. Look for him to do everything possible to help that outcome along.

[Valin]

@NCTexan

 

Washington (CNN) -- After a bad defeat in the Nevada caucuses, the options dwindle for former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

 

There are those who are bound and determined to write the obit of the Gingrich campaign. It may very well be the Romney will be the GOP candidate, some of us are waiting until super tuesday.

 

... if he (Romney) loses, Gingrich can fill the hours on Fox with messages conservatives will want to hear:

 

• We lost because we nominated a moderate.

 

He is right.

 

Here's the thing the MSM and (sad to say) many Republicans/Conservatives don't get. Everyone talks about how this is not just another election (and I agree) but IMO there are only two of the candidates left that have spent years talking/writing/speaking about the tidal wave of crap coming our way..and fairly soon. One of those two has a foreign policy that is frankly worse that Barack Obama's. We are in the middle of a period of change (by change I mean the kind that happened when Guttenburg figured out movable type) and after following him for quite some time I believe Gingrich understands this, and that is why warts and all I support him.

 

It is not in Romney's nature his background to get this. He's a good manager but not the change agent I believe we need.

 

 

[Valin]

Michael Reagan: "Newt Gingrich Really Needs To Find Out Who Newt Gingrich Is"

 

[Valin]

Before people get all carried away, and start talking about this race is over

GOP Presidential Race 2012

The Delegate Count So Far

 

I don’t know whether the GOP nomination battle will drag on toward the convention, or whether Mitt Romney will quickly pull away and win the nomination more or less by acclamation (I don’t think any other candidate has the potential to do that). News coverage tends to focus on momentum, but a more basic question is, how many delegates do the candidates have so far? Those numbers tend not to be reported prominently, but here they are:

 

Romney: 101

 

Gingrich: 32

 

Santorum: 17

 

Paul: 9

 

Note: 1,144 delegate votes are needed to win the nomination

[Rokke]

Poor T-Paw

 

Well, Hell has frozen solid. Bill Kristol is slammning the Romney campaign. I'm not sure what to make of this development.

[Valin]

Poor T-Paw

 

Well, Hell has frozen solid. Bill Kristol is slammning the Romney campaign. I'm not sure what to make of this development.

 

I think what may be happening is some people are figuring out Mr. Inevitability is not that great a candidate, and not well loved by a large part of the party.

 

Reminds me of a line from Death of a Salesman..We was liked..but not well liked.

[Rheo]

philipaklein Philip Klein

Santorum at 51% in Chisago Co. Minnesota (with 29% in). Romney won 48% of the vote there in 2008.

[clearvision]

Missouri 12%

 

Santorum20,496 51%

Romney 11,115 28%

Paul 4,682 12%

 

Minnesota 3%

 

Santorum 678 46%

Paul 345 24%

Romney 252 17%

Gingrich 188 13%

[Casino67]

Actually, it looks like HuffPo has a good handle on the results:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/map-caucus-primary-2012-results_n_1260890.html?ref=politics

[Rheo]

Santorum wins tonight. He is probably thanking Obama for making a social issue an issue with the Catholic church.

[Valin]

In our caucus (all 11 of us) Ron Paul won 6 votes 3 for Santorum 1 each for Romney and Gingrich.

 

I'm going to leave it as one of lifes little mysteries as to who I voted for.

 

It was a good meeting.

I was voted as a delegate to the next level..so I get to cause more trouble.

[Valin]

Santorum wins tonight. He is probably thanking Obama for making a social issue an issue with the Catholic church.

 

I think "The One" is going to find he made a serious error bringing Abortion into this race.

[clearvision]

Big win for Santorum. Big hit for Romney to be behind by so much. Newt loses some ground here in the Anti-Romney vote.

[Valin]

Big win for Santorum. Big hit for Romney to be behind by so much. Newt loses some ground here in the Anti-Romney vote.

 

I will have you know Mitt Romney is the inevitable Presidential candidate. Don't you read Politico?

[Valin]

Three Lessons from the ‘Beauty Contests’

The storyline changes again.

Jim Geraghty

 

(Snip)

 

For conservatives hoping to unite behind one Romney rival, Missouri offered a tantalizing look at what the race would be like if Gingrich and Santorum were not splitting that segment of the GOP electorate.

 

Gingrich was not listed on the Missouri ballot; he and his campaign said that they did not bother to qualify for it because they deemed the nonbinding contest irrelevant. Cynics may notice the Gingrich campaign’s inability to qualify for the ballot in Virginia and wonder just how deliberate their approach to Missouri was.

 

In the reduced field, Santorum didn’t just win, he thrashed Romney. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Santorum led in every Missouri county that was reporting results.

 

(Snip)

 

 

[Valin]

This is a long piece but here is the money quote IMO

 

Why Newt Fights

Mitt Romney irritates Gingrich; history inspires him.

Robert Costa

2/8/12

 

(Snip)

Gregorsky observes that Gingrich’s career is a story of similar narratives, of caustic tussles and unpredictable resurrections. “He thinks that he embodies the truth and the way. As he struggles, he is in his element. But an ego trip? No, no. That’s thinking too small about what he’s up to. It’s much more than that,” he says. “He’s out in the wilderness, where he is very comfortable. He was there for years, hitting the establishment. For him, it’s a noble thing.”

 

“Back in the late 1970s, when we first worked together, he had lost two House races,” Gregorsky recalls. “I asked him about what keeps him going, even though he was struggling to support his family on an assistant professor’s salary, even though he kept losing. He told me that the Atlanta media kept him alive. The media is playing the same role for him this year. The problem for him is that his campaign staff is a lot like McCarthy’s — a bunch of kids and some old radicals — and he’s running against a Romney, a savvy chief executive officer. He knows this is a problem. But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to leave.”

 

“Bitterness isn’t the right word,” says Mel Steely, a Gingrich biographer and his former colleague on West Georgia College’s faculty. The old friends still keep in touch, exchanging calls and e-mails every week. “What I sense is frustration,” he says. “Romney has so much money and has hounded him for months. We used to talk, before this primary started, about what a pipe dream it was to stay positive like he did at the beginning. He tried to do that during the debates. He really did. But he got unloaded on. It forced him to change his perspective. What he is doing now is more political than personal.”

 

(Snip)

 

[Rokke]

Big win for Santorum. Big hit for Romney to be behind by so much. Newt loses some ground here in the Anti-Romney vote.

 

I will have you know Mitt Romney is the inevitable Presidential candidate. Don't you read Politico?

 

I am going to blame Mitt's loses on Ann Coulter's support of him. He was doing fine until she opened her yap. I might even think about reading her next column simply for the sake of humor.

[Evad]

Big win for Santorum. Big hit for Romney to be behind by so much. Newt loses some ground here in the Anti-Romney vote.

 

I will have you know Mitt Romney is the inevitable Presidential candidate. Don't you read Politico?

 

I am going to blame Mitt's loses on Ann Coulter's support of him. He was doing fine until she opened her yap. I might even think about reading her next column simply for the sake of humor.

 

Suddenly, she's not so funny (or credible) anymore. Quite a few "alleged" conservatives have shown their true colors lately...and FAUX news has gone rogue.

An interesting turn of events. The early results from all this mayhem shows me one thing..voters do not want a northern liberal/progressive Obama Lite candidate.

[Valin]

Big win for Santorum. Big hit for Romney to be behind by so much. Newt loses some ground here in the Anti-Romney vote.

 

I will have you know Mitt Romney is the inevitable Presidential candidate. Don't you read Politico?

 

I am going to blame Mitt's loses on Ann Coulter's support of him. He was doing fine until she opened her yap. I might even think about reading her next column simply for the sake of humor.

 

Suddenly, she's not so funny (or credible) anymore. Quite a few "alleged" conservatives have shown their true colors lately...and FAUX news has gone rogue.

An interesting turn of events. The early results from all this mayhem shows me one thing..voters do not want a northern liberal/progressive Obama Lite candidate.

 

I haven't found her all that funney for quite some time. Her act got old after 2-3 years of the same old same old. The thing for me is, she's really smart, but she always takes the easy road, the cheap easy shot. She's the Rights (smarter) Bill Maher.

[Valin]

Right Scoop: Santorum on Fox and Friends after his big win

[Valin]

In shift, Obama campaign to support Super PAC fundraiser

Jeff Mason

2/8/12

 

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, worried about the influx of money to groups supporting Republican candidates, said on Monday it would start supporting the struggling Super PAC designed to help Obama stay in office.

 

The decision to back Priorities USA, a fundraising group that has failed to gather steam, represents a tactical shift for Obama, who opposed the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling that erased longstanding limits on corporate and union money in federal elections as an unconstitutional restriction of free speech.

 

Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina said in an email to supporters that campaign and White House officials as well as some members of Obama's cabinet would now attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events.

(Snip)

 

The Internet never forgets.....

 

[righteousmomma]

Establishment Shocked by Santorum sweep

 

The one thing, it's never gonna stop bothering me, this notion, this template, if you will, that conservative voters are a bunch of idiots and can't make up their own minds. They sit around and wait for marching orders. That's been one of the templates to describe this audience ever since this program started in 1988. It's insulting, it's demeaning, and it impugns these people, and I think it's a mistake because the Republican Party had better understand here that the people who are not voting for Romney are not doing it because I'm telling them to, or because anybody else is telling them to. They're doing it because they genuinely have a problem with Romney. And they're doing it because in Santorum's case, as I've been saying the past couple of weeks, if you're looking for a conservative who is the least corrupted, who has the least number of periods of wandering off the reservation, if you're looking for a conservative who's never sat down with Nancy Pelosi on the couch for any reason, you get Rick Santorum. And people know this.

 

http://www.rushlimba..._santorum_sweep

[righteousmomma]

Trump Doesn't Understand What's Motivating Conservative Voters

 

He (Trump) says, "That's like me saying, 'I just failed a test. Now I'm gonna apply for admission to the Wharton School of Finance,' okay? He just failed a test and now he's gonna run for president? So I don't get Rick Santorum. I don't get that whole thing."

 

I (Rush)'m sure he speaks for a lot of people who are not oriented toward conservatism ideologically, and by the same token who do not understand what is happening and has been happening with the Republican base. And I should probably point out that these people also fail to understand what the 2010 midterm elections were all about. They don't get that. And this is frustrating for us because it's so simple what's going on! It's not accidental. It's not a quirk of fate. It may be a quirk of fate, but it's not coincidence that Santorum had his sweep. It's not at all to people who vote in Republican primaries.........

 

SANTORUM: Why don't you ask Abraham Lincoln, who lost just about every single race he ran before he ran for president? A lot of folks lose races. What I didn't lose, unlike Governor Romney, is my principles. I stood up and fought for what I believed in in a very tough election year. And guess what? Governor Romney was up for reelection that year, too. His poll numbers were so bad, he decided not to run for reelection. I stood for what I believed in.

 

and the fact Santorum continues to talk about, "This election's about freedom," bingo! There's Connection A. Connection #1. That is what a majority of people voting in Republican primaries actually fear is happening: Their freedom being taken away.

Not just being "lost," but it's actively being taken from us. Every day this administration has something else, either in mind or something else that they are doing, that is usurping these freedom little by little. When you get to that point, the fact the guy loses an election by 19 points doesn't really matter that much right now. What matters more is the fact that the supposed Wizards of Smart in the Republican Party don't seem to understand what's at stake in the election. They don't seem to understand what's at stake for the country.

And so Republican primary voters -- as much as voting for Newt or voting for Santorum -- are sending a message to the Republican establishment at the same time. There's so much going on here, but it isn't complicated. It isn't mysterious. By the way, Trump's debate back in December 5th or 7th, whenever it was supposed to happen? Santorum and Newt were the only two that agreed to do the Trump debate, and that was eventually canceled.

 

http://www.rushlimba...ervative_voters

[nickydog]

I wasn't able to listen to much of Rush today but I heard a little bit while in the car. One of the things he said that cheered me up, and this is for @Rokke as well as me, was that the low turnout for the Republican primaries is not indicative of how the turnout will be in the general election. He sees a lot more people coming out to vote Obama out of office in Nov. And all Rush listeners know how often he is right.