Elections 2012

With 64 seconds to go and the NY Giants 5 yards from scoring and only down by two, Patriots coach Bill Belichick made a rare and very strategic decision - he let the Giants score. That gave him the time he needed to hopefully come back and win the game, instead of the Giants being able to run down the clock.

That was one of the most technical coaching decisions we have ever seen in football and one that can translate to this year's presidential race.

With less that 9 months to go and facing a decision of eight years of Mitt Romney or four more years of Barack Obama, how do Republican voters go? This poll may shed some light on that:

The latest WND/Wenzel Poll shows none of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates has solidified the base of the party, with one in five GOP voters leaning toward support of Obama in November.

First off, that poll is from World Net Daily, so I'm sure it won't get a lot of trust, but it does echo something I have thought about for the past few months and even blogged about before. Republicans are not enthused about their candidates - at all! They really wanted to see Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels get in. When it comes to Romney, many would rather have anyone else but him. So do we want to be stuck with one of these guys for eight years or take a loss of four years, put President Obama back in office, and take the time to regroup and get a stronger candidate to run in 2016?

But like Belichick's decision, there is a big risk here.

Typical Republican BS:

As recently as last week, Newt Gingrich's communications director has been criticized by editors on Wikipedia for dozens of edits he has made and requested in defense of his candidate.

While some of the changes were minor, Joe DeSantis has removed or asked to remove factual references to Gingrich's three marriages as well as mentions of ethics charges brought against him while he served as speaker of the House. These efforts continued as recently as Monday.

Wikipedia records show DeSantis has made over 60 adjustments to entries in the online, publicly-edited encyclopedia to the biographical entry on Gingrich, the similar page on his wife, Callista, and a separate page on one of their books, Rediscovering Good in America.

Wikipedia is getting fed up with it too:

DeSantis has actively lobbied for changes to the articles since mid-December in a discussion forum called "Talk" on the site, and previously from May to June of last year, though his most recent direct edit to the site was in June of 2011.

Last Tuesday, DeSantis drew the ire of an editor on the site.

"I'll raise the question in the appropriate place, but I have to say this micro-managing by a Gingrich campaign director is a matter of concern to me even though you now are identifying yourself. Pointing out factual errors is one thing, but your input should not go beyond that, even here on Talk," the editor known as Tvoz, wrote on a page devoted discussing possible edits.

Maybe after Newt builds our moon base and sends people to inhabit it, he can then work on the mind erasing beam and wipe the memories of what a horrible person he really is from everyone. Just maybe...

With Mitt Romney enjoying a huge win in Florida last night it's time to look at the exit polls. The very first question is the one that pops out to me:

Mitt Romney has almost double the support from women as does Newt Gingrich. That's a rather large split and one that really spells problems for the Gingrich brand.

It can be safely assumed that Gingrich's past marriages and the nasty way in which they ended plays a big part in this outcome. That's what really hurts Newt's overall electability problem. If he somehow does get the nomination, Newt risks alienating an important part of the electorate because of his past indiscretions. In an election that is going to go down to the wire, that is a breaking point for the GOP.

Next we have another issue that the media doesn't seem to be paying attention too - the Tea Party influence.

62% of Romney voters somewhat oppose the Tea Party as compared to 17% of Newt's. This is one that really, really jumps out at me.

The Tea Party has made it clear they want to see Gingrich win the nomination, yet Romney won huge yesterday. It really shows that the influence of the Tea Party is in serious decline. This is also a trend we have been seeing more and more.

The biggest problem facing the GOP this year is the increasing dissatisfaction their electorate has over the choices to take on President Obama. At a time when that dissatisfaction should be calming, the opposite is true:

Republicans evaluating the field of potential GOP presidential nominees are increasingly negative about the current slate of candidates, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.

Fifty-two percent of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters said the GOP field was "fair or poor," an eight percentage-point increase since the question was asked in early January.

Likewise, the number of Republicans who had positive feelings about the candidates dropped. Forty-six percent rated the current field of four candidates "excellent or good," a drop from the 51% who had that response in January. The GOP field has undergone substantial change since then, with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropping out of the contest.

Monday's poll from Pew, which was conducted in partnership with the Washington Post, is the first time since this election cycle the negative response from voters outweighed the positive. Pew began asking the question in May 2011.

This number will easily translate to a lower voter turnout in November and that means the GOP's chance of claiming the White House will evaporate. The fact that the Republican Party could not find a viable candidate to energize the base against Barack Obama in this economy really shows a more serious problem facing the party.

After the NBC debate Newt Gingrich blamed the media for not allowing the audience to cheer and even threatened to pull out of future debates that do the same. Now he's claiming that the cheering audience last night was stacked against him:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich rode a strong performance and crowd enthusiasm at a debate in South Carolina to victory in that state’s primary, but the crowds at two debates in Florida this week haven’t been as wild for Gingrich. Now his campaign is claiming that rival Mitt Romney’s campaign stacked the audience at Thursday’s debate with its supporters to shift the energy toward Romney, the Huffington Post reported.

“They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, a Gingrich adviser, told the Post.
But that’s not the case, according to both the Florida Republican Party and the Romney campaign. The party, which doled out 900 of the 1,200 tickets, says most of them went to “rank and file” Republicans.

“We did a very thorough job of getting them to the rank and file, vetting them to make sure they went to registered Republicans and then making sure they went out to people that were not knowingly affiliated” with the campaigns, Party spokesman Brian Hughes told the website.

But I guess in this case there could be some truth. The "rank and file" Republicans are the ones who are opposed to Newt winning the nomination. They are the ones currently out there blasting him in the news cycle 24/7. It's not the Democrats or the "liberal media", but Newt's own party that is against him. Newt has a serious problem and can't even logically blame his usual nemesis' for it.

This exchange happened in an interview on CNN with Nancy Pelosi:

John King, CNN: "You make your case there passionately for President Obama. But also understand that this is a tough reelection climate for any president, Democrat or Republican in this economy. Because of your history with Speaker Gingrich, what goes through your mind when you think of the possibility, which is more real today than it was a week or a month ago, that he would be the Republican nominee and that you could come back here next January or next February with a President Gingrich?"

Rep. Nancy Pelosi: "Let me just say this. That will never happen."

King: "Why?"

Pelosi: "He's not going to be President of the United States. That's not going to happen. Let me just make my prediction and stand by it, it isn't going to happen."

King: "Why are you so sure?"

Pelosi: "There is something I know. The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him that's their prerogative. I don't even think that's going to happen."

You can watch the video here.

What is it that Nancy is saying she "knows" that would cause someone to not be elected President or even nominated for their party? It must be pretty damn serious for this to happen.

The real troubling part is the secrecy involved. Given the number of Gingrich era Republicans out there blasting him, I can't believe that someone else wouldn't know this big "heads in the duffle bag" secret. It's also meant to lead to a lot of speculation of what it could be, if anything.

God knows I can't stand Newt Gingrich, but Pelosi is engaging in very dirty politics here. As Jonathan Turley puts it:

Since Newt's win in South Carolina this weekend and Florida only a week away the civil war in the GOP is really heating up. The battle is establishment verses base and it's really becoming fun to watch.

First off we have this from CNN:

Veteran Republican leadership aide Ron Bonjean said on the record what most of his colleagues would only tell CNN privately.

"Most people on Capitol Hill and in Washington are very nervous about a Gingrich candidacy," he said. "It sends a shiver down a lot of Republican spines."

"You can actually feel the nervousness from Republicans around town that Gingrich could actually bring the craziness back of his speakership from the 1990s. It's everywhere."

The establishment remembers what it was actually like having Newt Gingrich in charge. They hated it and don't want to see it return. That explains this from another establishment person, Bill Kristol:

I’ve got to think Monday night’s debate further swelled the groundswell of support for Mitch Daniels. The liveliest part of the debate was at the beginning, when Mitt went after Newt—and Republicans all over America watched with fascinated horror at the thought that these are the two GOP frontrunners. The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move on to the rest of the debate, where little further damage was done.