Sorry, I can’t hit your tip jar, I already donated to Newt at the end of March when you were running articles every day about how Newt’s campaign was out of money.

Law of Unintended Consequences, baby.
 

Taping the “I told you so” card to the football and spiking it gets into the Diminishing Returns Curve in a really big hurry, boss.

If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?

Don’t hurt your arm patting yourself on the back sport.

I think we lost all way round but that’s the process. Until the Party leaders realize that the process they’ve setup is designed to produce ineffective or unappetizing choices for the electorate (if that matters to them) we’ll do this all over again next time.

Until then, let’s not be too hasty in staking out bragging rights.

Under any other President with a different economic situation,  Romney wouldn’t stand a chance.

He still may not.

As far as I’m concerned, as a supporter of Bachmann and, secondarily, of Santorum, the Republicans get what they deserve for foisting Romney upon the electorate. What a waste of time, energy,  ad space and debate-watching over the last year. As Obama uses Newt’s and everyone-else-who-had-a-brain’s words against Romney, the Republicans will squirm and stick their finger in their ear and wonder how did this happen? I was not going to vote for Romney under any circumstances anyway, whether he had a chance or not. As a Californian, in the primary, I’m voting for Santorum, if he’s on the ballot, and in the general, I’m writing in my conscience–Bachmann–because this state will go overwhelmingly to Obama anyway, so my vote is a throwaway anyway you paint it.  

Newt was not in it for the long-haul. This country needs a leader who is prepared and focused like Romney!

I try to be well informed, I make my choices, and I stick with them until they become unviable.
We agreed on Herman, we disagreed on Newt (although I admitted Santorum was a good candidate, and that you’d spotted his surge before anyone else), and we agree on Romney.
The death star done burned all his opponents, and now he’s all we’ve got, unless you have some theory of the resurrection of Dr Paul.
So, now it’s Romney or Doom, with both seeming equally likely, sigh!

 HOW is the process “designed to produce ineffective or unappetizing choices for the electorate”?  Can you support this claim, or is it just frustration because you didn’t like the field?  Please be specific – nothing can get fixed with broad and general criticism.

 Well, you could vote for a more legitimate candidate who is still in the race…Ron Paul. He is more likely to win a state now than Bachmann or Santorum are. I will tell you Arkansas will be interested to watch and perhaps even Texas.

Ahhh, that’s the crux of the matter, now isn’t it?

Gingrich wasn’t my guy (although when he was in Newtzilla mode it sure was fun), and his campaign did begin to strike me as very un-serious; he shouldn’t have attacked Romney over Bain from the left either….but….but…Newt wasn’t exactly being a liar with some of those statements in those ads.

These are things the GOP should have thought through earlier, and will now have to address in the general if Romney is (a foregone conclusion at this point it seems) the nominee.

Why should I justify my comment to you?

I could but I don’t see the point.

(Unless you have some position with the RNC and/or (a|the) State Republican Party Committee(s). If so, please provide references and/or credentials then we’ll talk).

Robert Stacy McCain, to me, a few days ago-

“Don’t get me started on Newt”.

My reply-

“Okay, I’ll wait two or three days”

I scare myself sometimes.

Hate to burst your alternate reality bubble, but Newt was the only one that came out at the beginning saying he was going to run a positive campaign.  Once Romney went to the gutter attacks, was Newt supposed to pull a John McCain and try to stay above it all?  That’s a loser move and you know it.

Newt Gingrich talked more about the issues in an average campaign week than Mitt Romney has from the start until now.  When you try to claim otherwise, you’re just saying “Dead men DO bleed!”.
 

Mitt didn’t get ‘forced’ on us, except in the sense that he was the only one running a serious campaign. It’s hardly his fault that the only other candidates even capable of running a serious campaign (Pawlenty and Perry) flamed out either before the primaries even started (in Pawlenty’s case) or very early on (in Perry’s case).

 Just imagine how he’d act if he heard Newt was planning on running on a third party ticket? But no, Newt just come out today and endorsed Mitt Romney. Newt will probably get his campaign debt paid off with that move, provided he’s willing to work hard for Romney in the general election.

Also, there’s talk in certain circles that Newt and Callista might have their eyes on the Ambassadorship of a certain little South Pacific island nation with a recent history of volcanic eruptions.

Mitt didn’t get ‘forced’ on us, except in the sense that he was the only one running a serious campaign.

This kind of statement is frankly just silly.  Santorum arguably ran a much more serious campaign than Mitt. He worked the hardest, communicated the most comprehensive policy positions, made the most of his money and volunteers, and had a pretty cost effective campaign.  
From a business perspective, Mitt was horrendous in this regard. His ROI on money spent per vote was preposterous. The guy was a train wreck.  He used a strategery in the primaries that he won’t be able to use in the general so my guess is that we just have to keep hoping that Obama will keep tanking the economy. Because if it comes back, even to where it was at the beginning of this year, Obama and the MSM will spin it as a huge achievement and Obama will win running away.

But setting aside my pessimism for Mitt’s ability to string a cogent campaign argument against Obama together, he’s now “our guy” for all his faults. It was preordained (in a non-Calvinest way of course).

After all, it’s the moderate GOP candidate with the most money that will generally ALWAYS win in the primaries because it will be that one guy against about a dozen conservatives.  The problem in the conservative camp is that we can never weed out the loser conservative candidates before the moderate has essentially been proclaimed the nominee.

The problem we had this time around is that we had several candidates who were simply not ready to run but they still diluted the field.

Newt was the “idea guy” that a lot of conservatives like to support. The problem is, very few people really liked the MAN himself.

Perry was on meds so he didn’t come off as well as he should have (plus he got in WAAAY too late).

Bachmann was a non-starter and she should be commended for not really running so I can’t criticize her too much for Mitt’s ascendency.

Herman was too much of a threat to Obama so his Chicago machine took him out early so as to let candidates like Newt rise when they otherwise would not have gotten traction. Cain would have been a much more viable candidate than Mitt and Axelrod knew this.

So that left Santorum (Paul is always hanging around in the background no matter what so I don’t consider him a factor plus or minus on the ability for conservatives to field a single candidate to take on the center/left establishment GOP candidate.)

I think a lot of people are still thinking that, in a head to head between Santorum and Mitt, Santorum could have had at least a 50/50 chance of going to Tampa.

I’ll still vote for Mitt of course because I have this thing against fascist dictators. But whether he can win? If he does, it will be the first time a center left GOP candidacy has prevailed since Nixon.

Actually, setting aside the snark behind the question, it’s still a good one.

Strategy 1: Let’s posit for a moment that the challenge the GOP has is that the primaries turn-out a lot of grassroots conservatives so this tends to entice a lot of conservative candidacies which then water down the conservative vote.  Look at the numbers.

70% voted conservative but the conservative that lasts the longest doesn’t even get 20% of the delegates.  Meanwhile, we generally will see one or two moderates running in the primaries one of whom is the establishment favorite and thus, will have the money and endorsements.

So, to fix the problem; these two wings of the party should field just one candidate each.  But that’s not what we get.  We get 6 candidates vying for the 70% conservative/libertarian vote and one or two vying for the 30% moderate/establishment vote.

The math will always be against a conservative victory without a Reagan like persona.

In a fair world for the GOP electorate, there would be one candidate from the conservative/libertarian wing of the party against one from the moderate/establishment wing of the party and let the best man or woman win.  

But this does not favor the establishment so they’re not going to fix this.  

What I’d like to see is a TEA party “convention” prior to Iowa where the preferred candidate ran for the right to run as the conservative favorite.  Sure, others might still make a run in the primaries but they would be doing it knowing that the bulk of the grassroots already picked their horse.  Worst case, there would be maybe 4 candidates running (two from each wing of the party) but there would be a more clear front runner from each wing.

Strategy 2:  The other option is for conservatives to take the local state process from the establishment and set up a system that doesn’t favor the moderate candidate.

Now that’s just cold.

I guess I wish there was a composite Republican candidate I could support.  

Obama apparently had a composite girlfriend.  http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/05/barack-obamas-new-york-girlfriend-in.html

Damn, that would take Stacy’s cake.

Dunno why this disappeared after I posted it last time, but…

Tip jar, hit
Newt, schmuck
Republic, screwed

And if someone else was the nominee, nothing Romney said could have been used as a talking point, right?

 Good heavens, people. Put down the rifles and get out of the circle! Now that it’s all over, can we have an end to the intramural sniping and just concentrate on getting Obama out before he does more damage? Here, enjoy some humor before the site goes away:
http://newtjudgesyou.tumblr.com/

 See, there’s the problem: you call it intramural sniping; the RNC calls it a bunch of outsider punks trying to kick over their rice bowl.

The sooner we recognize that we have one enemy — ESTABLISHMENT DC — regardless of party, the sooner we can get on with fixing this country.

 Trying to argue that Gingrich ‘came out against capitalism’ for jumping on Romney’s vulture ventures does nothing to improve your credibility.

Bain is as insider as insider gets and Romney may very well enjoy that version of capitalism.  As opposed to conservatives, who are in favor of FREE MARKETS. 

You might want to learn who came up with each concept.  Maybe then you’ll stop fetishizing a socialist term.

Romney’s abject inability to articulate an effective defense of his own marked him as the one mentally and constitutionally on the left.