Mitt Romney has mostly been the G.O.P. front runner for at least the past year. There are transient exceptions.
Most recently, from early November to mid-December of 2011, Newt Gingrich lead the Republican pack in the national polls. But Americans remembered why they despised Gingrich—an arrogant motherfucker, who is mean, nasty, and corrupt. Mitt re-took the lead as the first polls of 2012 came out.
Yesterday, a Rasmussen poll found Newt in the lead by a remarkable +7. And today, the Gallup tracking poll put Newt up by +3.
Once can be a fluke. But not twice in a row. It appears that Newt taken the lead—perhaps for a few days, or maybe right up to the convention.
One of the implications for me is that I should probably start doing state head-to-head matchups of Obama against both Newt and Mitt. When I started this year’s batch of analyses I wrote:
At this point, I am only doing analyses of an Obama versus Romney general election. As much as I would like to see one of the weaker candidates take the G.O.P. nomination, I’m pretty certain Republicans will, as they did in 2008, act rationally, and chose the candidate that performs best against Obama in head-to-head polling. That is currently Mitt Romney. As the Republican primary circus continues, I’ll reassess. If, say, Santorum trickles on up to the front (eww!) or there is a crazy surge for Ron Paul, or the Mittster takes a tumble after unintentionally tweeting a photo of his underwear, or Rick Perry challenges the rest of ‘em to a duel (and wins), I’ll switch do doing analyses for the new front-runner(s).
Mitt didn’t magically Tweet a bulge in his underwear, but he did release his tax forms. That’s pretty much the same thing. So, while I still believe Republicans will ultimately act rationally and pick the candidate who performs best against Obama, I’ll give you the same analyses for the mean motherfucker who thinks knows he is the smartest man in the world.
I started collecting poll information for Newt last night. Perhaps I’ll have the first Obama—Gingrich analyses out by tomorrow.
I was just reading an obituary of the Perry campaign. Some of Gingrich’s advisors, who quit in mid-August among concerns that he wasn’t serious about the campaign, went to work for Perry instead. Seems a bad choice. Perhaps that’s why he endorsed Gingrich, and not Santorum? Perry’s advisors may have figured they needed to keep their options open, and forging an endorsement between the two candidates might give them a chance for a job opening in the Gingrich campaign in the coming months.
Of course, in the Perry camp there is a lot of finger-pointing. Perry’s old colleagues from Texas say that they were shut out by the outsiders who were brought in to re-organize his campaign, and claim they did more harm than good. The outsiders, for their part, claim that the old Texas gang didn’t know how to organize a campaign outside of Texas, and that’s why the wheels started coming off the bus as soon as the campaign ramped up.
It’s an old story which you hear repeated in almost every campaign which doesn’t win the top spot, so I don’t pay that much attention to it when the finger-pointing begins.
For the most part, the nomination of Gingrich would be a good thing for Obama. Gingrich has an incredible amount of baggage, he rubs most people the wrong way, and he’s a pompous ass. he should be easy to beat in November.
But I’m always a little worried. Sometimes just enough of the electorate want a flawed leader who is politically incorrect, and kicks ass and takes names. When that happens, the reasonable candidate sometimes looks wimpy in comparison. You might call this the “Dirty Harry” syndrome – the electorate’s search for someone to clean up the streets, to hell with the Miranda rule.
Take, for example, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980. Reagan couldn’t have done any better in handling the oil crisis or the Iranian hostage crisis or the Soviet invasion of Afganistan than Carter did, and he could have probably done much worse. Many were worried that, based on his previous comments, he would start droppiong nuclear bombs at will. But enough of them were willing to vote for him regardless, because they didn’t want someone who told them the road ahead was hard, they just wanted someone who promised to wave a magic wand and make all the problems go away. If that meant bombing Tehran with the resultant loss of life for all the hostages, that was okay with them.
Darryl…I’ve long been of the same mind as you, figuring that the series of “debates” has been mostly theatre, keeping the GOP in the public’s consciousness and putting on an almost deliberate freak show so the moderates and independents who comprise the majority of American voters will feel all warm and cuddly about the prospect of a “Massachussetts moderate(tm)” getting into the White House.
On the other hand, it may actually be that the GOP leadership are responding to the apparent “popular support” of the more radical candidates (forgetting that the entire show is staged) or have simply come to believe their own bullshit. That’s about the only logical explanation for Newt’s political fortunes appearing to improve more he shoots off his mouth, talks down to his own audience and generally reveals himself to be the delusional, crooked, lying, narcissistic fuck he really is.
How can Republicans act rationally when they don’t have a rational candidate to choose? Romney responded to President Obama’s speech last night by asserting Obama personally targeted him by proposing to raise taxes on the (undertaxed) rich.
@3 At this point, even Wall Street pundits who don’t like Obama believe he will be re-elected.
If the job creators like Romney are only taxed at 15% (or less with deductions)…where are all the jobs? Is a tax rate of 15% SO burdensome that they can’t create jobs until it’s what..10%, 5%?
Meanwhile, as one of the “peasants” who has to actually work for a living, I’ll keep paying my 30%. But that’s what I deserve for not be a “job creator”, but just one of the people working at those jobs. I suppose it’s a fit punishment.
Seriously. The BALLS of Romney COMPLAINING about the evil excessive taxes on the rich “job creators”(tm) when he’s only paying ~13%. The BALLS of New Gingrich to complain about attacks on traditional family values (yeah it’s the gays attacking marriage, not your 2 affairs/divorces/cheating you douche bag). Just amazing these guys have ANY support at all. Are there not ANY sane rational non-douche bag Republicans? I know there are, why aren’t they running?
@6 Yeah, you’re a job taker, not a job creator, so you deserve to be taxed at punitive rates. By filling your job position, you’re taking that job away from some other shmuck, so you should be punished for your selfishness. As for your boss, he shouldn’t be taxed at all — and probably isn’t. I mean, how do you cut the taxes of people who already don’t pay any taxes? That, it seems to me, is where the GOP tax-cut argument falls apart.