“Because I think ultimately, [Gingrich will] be proven right and if Mitt Romney is the nominee we will lose in the fall,” Tyler said. . . .
Romney has “pursued the politics of personal destruction.”
“You cannot win the presidency that way and you cannot win majorities that way,” the Gingrich booster said. “Our chances now of beating Barack Obama are dramatically diminished and our chances of winning the U.S. Senate are dramatically diminished.”
Meanwhile, I wonder, what will be the effect of Mitt Romney’s campaign on the fate of Scott Walker? We know that negative advertising depresses turnout, and Team Mitt is doing everything they can to stigmatize, demoralize and discourage Rick Santorum’s supporters.
“When Allahpundit first asked, ‘Second look at Gingrich?’ on Oct. 18, my visceral reaction was, ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ Nothing astonishes me more than poll numbers . . . suggesting that people are taking Newt seriously as a presidential candidate. And of all the prognotications I’ve ever made, of none have I been more confident than in predicting this: It won’t last.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Nov. 14, 2011
You know, now that it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ve got a Romneycare versus Obamacare race this year, I’m actually looking forward to voting for Newt in the California primary. At least I’ll get to vote for one candidate I actually want to vote for this year.
No regrets for Bill. He never had a problem with Gingrich’s narcissistic grandiosity, but Rick Santorum’s opposition to porn? Unacceptable!
My temperament and instincts are simply different than Daily Pundit’s, and this long-running friendly electoral flame-war between Bill and I (with Smitty throwing in the occasional volley) reflects those differences.
The point of yesterday’s political psychotherapy session was to put into perspective the emotional reactions to which political junkies are prone. My combative temperament and populist instincts — to hell with these elitist insiders and their shabby self-serving ways! — are not universally admired by my fellow conservatives, some of whom don’t share my view that the Republican Party keeps losing fights because it is run by people who are more interested in advancing their own narrow ambitions than in accomplishing anything meaningful toward the defeat of liberalism.
In that basic sense, nothing has changed since 2009: The GOP Establishment is still an arrogant bunch of clueless dilberts collecting paychecks for running their phony sham opposition to liberalism.
My support for the Santorum campaign is a continuation of my support for the Tea Party, for the “Not One Cent” Rebellion (Marco Rubio vs. the NRSC), and for Doug Hoffman vs. Dede Scozzafava in NY-23.
What I would like to see is for Rick Santorum to emerge from this fight with the scalp of the allegedly “inevitable” Mitt Romney on his belt — a savage warrior, red in tooth and claw, and ready to lead a howling bloodthirsty tribe of right-wing barbarians against a Democratic Party stricken with fear at the prospect of contending against a genuine grassroots conservative movement.
This goes back to something my friend Stephen Gordon said to me a few years ago. Gordo was the Alabama state director for the 2008 Ron Paul campaign and, when I remarked on the ferocious dedication of the Paulistas, Gordo said: “The Ron Paul movement is not about Ron Paul, it’s about a movement.”
Exactly. Which is why I am perturbed by those who have viewed the 2012 presidential campaign as merely a matter of personalities.
To hell with that. It’s about building a grassroots conservative movement powerful enough to overwhelm all opposition. Newt Gingrich failed to do that, and why? Because Newt was always all about that 10-car motorcade and the big media entourage.
Whatever anyone’s disagreement with Rick Santorum about “issues,” the point is that he has organized an actual movement, one which has exceeded all expectations, whereas Newt Gingrich . . .
Well, some guys actually likebig fake boobs. I’m just not one of them.
I live in Hagerstown, Maryland. Last night the TV in my office was tuned to Fox News and, during the commercial breaks, they kept running an anti-Santorum ad from the pro-Romney “super PAC,” Restore Our Future.
This ad, portraying Rick Santorum as a soft-on-crime pork-barrel phony, was airing at least twice an hour on Fox News last night. I assume these spots were purchased through the local cable-TV provider. So . . .
Why is the Romney campaign worried about Maryland?
With all the “inevitability” talk, it seems strange to me that Romney’s super-PAC would be spending money to run attack ads against Santorum in a state that everybody expects to be an easy win for Mitt.
Frankly, I think the Louisiana results — which showed that Gingrich’s support has finally collapsed and conservatives have shifted decisively to Santorum — put the scare into Romney’s top advisors. Team Mitt must be a lot more worried than they’re letting on, or otherwise I wouldn’t be seeing all these ads on cable TV in Hagerstown. And because I want to be “fair and balanced,” here’s an ad for Rick Santorum:
Rick Santorum has been using the “uniquely disqualified” line against Mitt Romney in his stump speeches for weeks to describe how RomneyCare makes the Massachusetts governor a poor choice to face Obama in November.
So, while people are making a big deal of Santorum yelling “bulls–t” at New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny for asking him about the line, they’re missing the important point: Why did Zeleny ask the question?
During an interview today with CNN’s olf Blitzer, Santorum explained the part of the story you haven’t heard: Zeleny and other reporters asked him similar questions repeatedly after being prompted to do so by a Romney staffer who attended Santorum’s speech.
“This is the kind of stuff that we’ve been seeing from the Romney spin machine. Their press secretary was back in the back of the room, out there feeding lines to the national press. . . . It’s the third time I was asked that question in the matter of four minutes,” Santorum told Blitzer on CNN’s Situation Room. “They sent a Romney person to our speech. He fed the line to all the reporters. We saw it happening. And every man in that room, even reporters [said] ‘Yes, we understand what you meant. But, you know, the Romney people said this to us, so we had asked about.’ That’s what happened.”
Think about this: The Romney campaign sends a staffer to a Santorum speech, the staffer is feeding questions to reporters at the event and — like little lapdogs — the reporters do exactly what the Romney staffer wants.
Santorum’s right: This is bullsh–t and Zeleny’s editors should be asking why their reporter went along with this “gotcha” game.
UPDATE: I’ve said before that I don’t like “gotcha” reporting, where the aim of the enterprise is to try to embarrass somebody on camera. To be doing “gotcha” reporting at the behest of an opposing campaign? C’mon.
Reporters shouting questions at a candidate while he’s “working the rope line,” shaking hands with supporters after an event, is a phenomenon I’ve witnessed often during the campaign, but never done myself. It just seems like such a low-yield activity as to be a waste of time: What, you think he’s going to give you a worldwide exclusive, right there on the rope line?
Zeleny has claimed Santorum blew up at him as a sort of publicity stunt, but when a New York Times reporter decides to play errand-boy for the Romney campaign, who’s zooming who?
UPDATE III: Speaking of journalistic ethics, yesterday I said on Twitter that if Santorum had punched out Zeleny, the viral video would have been worth a million dollars of fundraising.
Between his inevitability and his electability, Romney’s advocates would have you believe their man is an unstoppable electoral juggernaut, a lead-pipe cinch to become the next President of the United States, and they’ve managed to sell that proposition with the assistance of journalists who seem suspiciously eager to ignore all evidence to the contrary. So when Santorum won his 11th victory Saturday in Louisiana by a margin much larger than anyone had predicted, the media went out of their way to pretend that this result was neither surprising nor significant. Fox News actually interrupted coverage of Santorum’s victory speech in order to permit their reporter Carl Cameron to provide the pro-Romney angle on the Louisiana vote. Sunday morning, Fox brought on Romney surrogate John Sununu and gave him 10 minutes of airtime to pour cold water on any notion that Santorum’s 22-point margin of victory in Louisiana might portend any meaningful revival of conservative resistance to Mitt. . . .
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana
When I had lunch Wednesday with Ali Akbar, he was talking about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and I had to confess that I didn’t know enough about the case to have an opinion. My main suggestions were (a) we shouldn’t “try the case in the media” by offering opinions based on incomplete knowledge provided by news accounts that might be misleading; and (b) we should urge people to calm down and let the justice system work.
Obviously, it’s a very bad thing for a kid to get shot while walking home from the store with Skittles, and it’s very difficult to understand why the cops didn’t arrest George Zimmerman, but I remember the way left-wing bloggers rushed to judgment in the 2009 Kentucky census worker case, and wouldn’t want to be a part of that kind of “trial by blog” reaction.
Besides, I’m covering a presidential campaign and I don’t need to get bogged down in . . . Wait! What’s this headline that just popped up at the top of Memeorandum?
Plouffe calls out GOP candidates
over Obama reaction “Reprehensible.” “Irresponsible.” “Hard to stomach.” White House senior adviser David Plouffe did not mince words Sunday when talking about the reaction by Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to President Barack Obama’s comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting.
“Those two comments are really irresponsible. I would consider them reprehensible,” Plouffe said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think those comments were really hard to stomach, really, and I guess trying to appeal to people’s worst instincts.” . . .
A somber Obama on Friday commiserated with the Martin family and urged authorities to fully investigate the shooting.
“If I had a son he would look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “I think (his parents) are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we will get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”
Santorum said the president politicized the events, while Gingrich characterized Obama’s comments as “nonsense.” “What the president of the United States should do is try to bring people together, not use these types of horrible and tragic individual cases to try to drive a wedge in America,” Santorum said Friday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” a radio program.
“Is the president suggesting if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it wouldn’t look like him? That’s just nonsense,” Gingrich said Friday on conservative host Sean Hannity’s radio show, “The Hannity Show.” “I mean dividing this country up, it is a tragedy this young man was shot.”
But Plouffe, who served as Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, said the Republican reaction is evidence of a circus-like primary.
“I don’t think there’s very many people in America that would share that reaction. You know, this Republican primary at some points has been more of a circus show and a clown show,” Plouffe told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.
Earth to CNN: David Plouffe is a Democrat. David Plouffe is a top political strategist. David Plouffe thinks it’s “reprehensible” anytime anybody says a negative word about Obama. Also, in case you didn’t notice, David Plouffe is whiter than a slice of Wonder Bread.
At a time like this, does America really need pious partisan sermons from self-righteous white liberals? I don’t think so.
And that is my opinion on the Trayvon Martin case.
HARAHAN, Louisiana UPDATE 9:29 p.m. CT: While the exit polls had indicated a double-digit margin for Rick Santorum, few suspected that he could beat Mitt Romney here by more than 20 points but, with 65% of precincts reporting, it’s Santorum 49% to Romney’s 26%. Santorum staffers here say they don’t expect that margin to shrink much.
UPDATE 10:05 p.m. CT: The Harris sisters, who sing the Santorum campaign song “Game On,” just arrived at the victory party. And, via Talking Points Memo, here is video of Santorum’s victory speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin:
“We don’t believe, as the pundits have said, that this race is over. We didn’t get the memo . . . We’re still here. We’re still fighting. . . . I’m not running as a conservative candidate for president. I am the conservative candidate for president.”
UPDATE 8:10 p.m. CT: The suspense didn’t last long. The networks called it for Rick Santorum as soon as the polls closed. The key now will be the margin of victory.
UPDATE 8:48 p.m. CT: Fox News is currently showing Santorum winning by 16 points, 44% to 28% for Romney, with 19% for Gingrich and 6% for Paul with 15% of precincts reporting.
According to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office, it’s 45%-28%, and also currently: 335 votes for Buddy Roemer, 157 votes for Rick Perry, 72 votes for Michele Bachmann and 29 votes for Jon Huntsman.
UPDATE 9:15 p.m. CT: The lead widens: With 57% of precincts reporting, Santorum leads by 23 points, 49%-26%, Gingrich trailing in third at 17%. Also: Buddy Roemer remains firmly in fifth place.
UPDATE 7:50 p.m. CT: We have exit polls via Fox News and it looks like an easy double-digit win for Santorum. He beats Romney 54%-22% among evangelicals, 46%-30% among Tea Party supporters, 47%-30% among conservatives.
PREVIOUSLY (7:30 p.m. CT): We are at the Fox & Hound pub here for the Rick Santorum campaign Louisiana victory party. Polls close at 8 p.m. CT (9 p.m. ET), and it’s expected to be a big win for Rick. Fox News will immediately provide the Team Mitt spin, minimizing the significance of this Santorum victory.
People have asked me why so many people in the media — including many in the conservative media — have joined the “Roll Over for Romney” crowd when, despite all the spin about “inevitability,” Mitt’s still got less than 600 delegates and Santorum keeps winning primaries and caucuses. It’s mainly bandwagon psychology. Once the political press corps gets an idea into its collective hive-mind, the Conventional Wisdom congeals quickly.
Team Romney has been pushing the “inevitability” argument ever since the Florida primary Jan. 31, and on March 7 — the Wednesday after Super Tuesday — they rolled out their delegate-count calculus (which involved some dubious assumptions about apportionment of delegates) to assert that Mitt had already effectively clinched the nomination.
The media eagerly bought into that and, so far as Fox News and much of the conservative media are concerned, the attiude now seems to be, “Hurry up and get this silly nomination thing over with, so we can get on to the big Romney vs. Obama showdown.”
Team Romney has been trying to scare people with dire warnings about what a disaster it would be for Republicans if Romney comes into the GOP convention without the 1,144 delegates needed to win on the first ballot, and so Santorum has been getting dismissive coverage from Fox for the past couple of weeks.
When Santorum complained about this treatment last week, it seemed the bias at Fox actually got worse. For a few days, Santorum got almost zero coverage from Fox, and very few conservative bloggers have objected to what is clearly an unfair and unbalanced attitude at the network. Now let’s take this moment to count up Santorum’s victories:
That’s 10 Santorum victories so far over Mr. Inevitable. To this point, according to the Associated Press, Santorum has amassed 263 delegates, and now he’s poised to win the Louisiana primary.
Expect the talking heads on Fox News tonight to talk a lot about how only 20 of Louisiana’s 46 delegates were at stake in today’s vote. Louisiana has a two-step system, and the remaining delegates will be awarded at the state GOP convention in June. But like all the “non-binding” chatter we heard after Santorum’s Feb. 7 “trifecta” victories, this is just a bunch of bullshitRomney spin.
Louisiana Santorum volunteer David with Lisa Graas in Central, La., March 24, 2012
CENTRAL, Louisiana
Mitt Romney’s got the big money and the big endorsements, but Rick Santorum has Lisa Graas who — with 6,835 Twitter followers and about 1,500 Facebook friends — has been a sort of social-media equalizer, helping lead an amazingly effective online grassroots campaign for her candidate. It was Lisa who urged me to cover Santorum’s campaign in Iowa back in August, when he was stuck in single digits in the polls and the media were ignoring him. When I showed up that Saturday in Roland, Iowa, at a barn in the middle of a cornfield, I called Lisa and handed my phone to the senator, who talked to her for more than 10 minutes — and that impressed me.
Rick Santorum talks to Lisa Graas in Roland, Iowa, Aug. 6, 2011
Ask anyone in politics: Nothing is more valuable to a campaign than the candidate’s time. The fact that Santorum was willing to spend 10 minutes on the phone with this Catholic blogger mom from Kentucky was an indicator that he understood the value of her online activism.
Lisa was 100% for Santorum at a time when almost no one believed he had a chance in Iowa — or anywhere else, for that matter.
Santorum understood the value of that kind of volunteer enthusiasm and he understood that encouraging volunteers like Lisa, at a time when there seemed to be so little cause for optimism, was an important part of his campaign. Continue reading Lisa Graas: Santorum’s Secret Weapon →
