Newt Gingrich is clearly far more popular among voters right now than the guy who’s still the insiders’ favorite to win the nomination — but, even though I’m often a contrarian, I know what a preposterously huge undertaking it is to run for president seriously in this country, so I suspect that the conventional wisdom is correct … or at least part of it:
Surging in polls is one thing. But as Newt Gingrich seeks to turn his impressive performance in surveys into votes, he is scrambling madly to build the kind of organization that Mitt Romney has methodically put in place for a year, one that will let him compete through all 50 contests, often in multiple states at once….
If neither candidate succeeds in knocking out the other in the burst of early tests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, Mr. Gingrich could be faced with the ultimate challenge to his campaign: the need to survive a war of attrition of the sort for which he is unprepared at the moment.
Where volunteers for Mr. Romney have gathered voters’ signatures to be on the ballots of Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Vermont and Virginia, Mr. Gingrich’s campaign is only beginning to activate volunteers in those states….
Yeah, I think Romney could take this nomination because he’s out-organized Gingrich, even though Gingrich is the base’s preferred candidate. But I’m wondering if the second part of the conventional wisdom is really true: that, subsequently, Republican voters will rally around Romney.
Particularly if Romney starts winning states where Gingrich leads in the polls, a conspiracy is going to emerge on the right that Romney’s victory is the result of liberal/Democratic/ACORN voter fraud! Right? Isn’t it? Or at the very least, it will be said that establishment liberals and Democrats are collaborating with some sort of Vast RINO Conspiracy to make the Evil Mitt the nominee.
I know, I know: polls say GOP voters hate Obama so much that they’ll rally around Romney. The kind of outrage I’m describing isn’t showing up in the polls yet.
Well, PUMAism didn’t show up among Democrats until Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 primaries was all but assured. There’s plenty of time for disaffected anyone-but-Mitt-ers to go crazy.
Ah, but PUMAism didn’t really hurt Obama in the general election, did it? Yes, but don’t forget: Republicans are crazier than Democrats. Democrats in 2008 had a spirited contest between two utterly mainstream candidates, then (apart from a tiny group of grumblers) shook hands and united around the winner (who later gave the loser an important job). Republicans are desperately searching for a rabble-rousing bomb-thrower, a dangerous guy to ride in on a Harley and save them from a boring marriage to the son of the guy who runs Pop’s Malt Shoppe, and it’s clear they’d be perfectly happy if that dangerous guy turned out to be a psychopath.
PUMAism was a temporary threat to Obama — but the insanity of the Republican voter base, cultivated for years by the right-wing media, could lead the rubes, in the late winter and spring, to conclude that Romney won because sinister forces cheated them out of their votes. A theory as insane as birtherism could emerge.
Could that toothpaste be put back in the tube? I’m not sure. It’d be fun to watch, though, wouldn’t it?
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
The Freepers are “going there” with open anti-Mormonism:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2816262/posts#comment
I blame these confounded Voter ID laws. Newt’s voters are all too old to drive.
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Rural Suicides Follow Medicaid Cuts
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Like this guy……….
Alas, Rick “Tex” Perry is no Randall “Tex” Cobb.
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
Still buying Romneys, at the market.
Steve! How are we ever going to have a successful conspiracy if you keep spilling the beans? Sheesh!
Now we’ll all have to work overtime creating even MORE TV adds with subliminal flashes of Willard with the legend “WHITE GUY”. The damn things trigger epileptic fits, and it’s getting harder to recruit good conspirators.
So knock it off, already!
I’ve written it elsewhere but I have great faith in Newt’s ability to self-destruct. Newt is a Narcissist. Of the nine characteristics listed at the link I only see two that might not apply to Newt. It only takes five of the nine characteristics to qualify for the diagnosis. He makes seven at least.
For all his grandiosity, his brag is his alleged intellect, not his ability to organize people or projects. And when his staff quit him a few months ago it was because he cannot work with people who could organize his campaign.
Newt may win a few early primaries, but he can’t last without an organization and he will resist being organized by anyone. It may drag out a while, but Newt will be Newt and that is self-destructive.
He is also up against Romney who is obsessed with winning the Presidency and whose clearest personal characteristic is that he is a “grind.” Newt may win a few, but Romney will literally grind him into the ground over time. Newt will not see it coming and will blame others, but that, too, is a characteristic of a narcissist.
Newt’s biggest enemy is himself, and since the core of being a narcissist is a refusal to recognize his own personal flaws because of fear that those flaws reduce him to being merely another common person, not the superstar he pretends to be. He won’t adapt to his own failures because he can’t admit they exist. So there is zero chance that he will learn on the job and correct the problems he is going to have. Again, Newt will defeat Newt because that is Newt’s nature.
I don’t disagree with your assessment of Newt, but here’s the thing…
The Iowa Caucus is under a month away.
so, I give Newt plausibility that he can tough out a month…
Newt wins Iowa….
Willard wins NH, BUT doesn’t blow Newt away….
Nevada…goes to Willard because of the Mormons….
South Carolina goes to Newt…
which brings us to Florida…
maybe Newt will have self-destructed by then…
but, what if he doesn’t…what if he wins FLORIDA…
then, there’s the first five contests, and Mittens has only one 2…..
I just think it’s funny
In that case we will likely watch a brokered Republican convention where the money Republicans choose Romney. They aren’t going to choose the flake, Gingrich. (Watch Rove) But the publicly displayed idiocy of the Republican primaries is going to turn off the general electorate. Obama may float back into office because he has been above the fray carried on by the clowns.
Unfortunately in that case Obama will probably not learn what his weaknesses have been from such a result and will not recognize his real need – and opportunity – to go progressive. So he’ll continue to be a moderate-right President.
That’s looking only at the Presidential level, though. The Congressional level is going to be massively messy in any case, and I have no feeling for how that will work out. I probably won’t even begin to be able to guess until next summer at the earliest. Europe this winter and the unemployment rate next summer and fall will be critical.