GOP Primary Megathread!

[grumbler]

Santorum, yesterday on ABC, about JFK's famous "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" 1960 speech on religion and public policy--

To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up and it should make every American. . . . Now we're going to turn around and say we're going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.

Yes, he said "throw up".

That's just super.

Santorum is approaching the Viking level of straw man construction.  Didn't think we would see another like Viking in our lifetime. 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Grumbles didn't make any claim as to causation - he merely listed it as a "fun fact".

Indeed.  I only put in a "fun fact" because Ide did so.

I'm not convinced either is very fun.

[Sheilbh]

I think this article's a bit sneery but it has some brilliant quotes and pictures. 
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/gop-primary-heilemann-2012-3/

It's also important to focus on Super Tuesday.  Michigan's must win for Mitt, for everyone else it's enough to do well enough.  Some highlights:

It illustrates a shift in momentum so pronounced that, unless Romney takes Michigan and fares strongly on Super Tuesday, his ascension to his party's nomination will be in serious jeopardy, as the calls for a late-entering white-knight candidate escalate—and odds of an up-for-grabs Republican convention rise. "Right now, I'd say they're one in five," says one of the GOP's grandest grandees. "If Romney doesn't put this thing away by Super Tuesday, I'd say they're closer to 50-50."

...

"Compared to 2008, all the candidates are way to the right of John McCain," says longtime conservative activist Jeff Bell. "The fact that Romney is running with basically the same views as then but is seen as too moderate tells you that the base has moved rightward and doesn't simply want a conservative candidate—it wants a very conservative one."

...

And make no mistake: A loss is what the GOP's political class now expects. "Six months before this thing got going, every Republican I know was saying, 'We're gonna win, we're gonna beat Obama,' " says former Reagan strategist Ed Rollins. "Now even those who've endorsed Romney say, 'My God, what a fucking mess.' "

...

Nor were Romney's rehearsed turns on the hustings appreciably better. From Iowa through New Hampshire, his campaign events had been progressively pared back and whittled down. By the time he reached South Carolina, they had achieved a certain purity—the purity of the null set. The climactic moment in them came when Romney would recite (and offer attendant textual analysis that would make Stanley Fish beat his head against a wall) the lyrics of "America the Beautiful." Even staunch Romney allies were abashed by this sadly persistent, and persistently sad, rhetorical trope. "I have never seen anything more ridiculous or belittling," a prominent Romney fund-raiser says.


Newt Gingrich at a New Hampshire campaign stop. 
(Photo: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine)

...

"Of all the candidates, he has had the biggest impact," says Steve Schmidt, McCain's 2008 chief strategist. "By making the case he made against Romney, Gingrich did a significant amount of damage to him, both in the primary and in the general, if Romney does become the nominee."

The damage Schmidt is talking about in the latter case revolves around independent voters. By pressing Romney on Bain and his tax returns, Gingrich helped create the context for his rival's errors. "The toughest thing in a campaign is when there's synergy between your opponents' attacks on the left and right," Schmidt explains. "The same criticisms of Romney being made by Democrats are being echoed by his Republican challengers. And when criticism becomes ecumenical, that really impacts independent voters."


And how. An NBC News–Wall Street Journal poll in late January found Romney's unfavorability rating among independents had risen twenty points, from 22 to 42 percent, over the previous two months. "It's not as though they have said Bain has disqualified him or that he can't be trusted because of his taxes, but this has created a gulf between him and the average voter," one of the pollsters behind the survey, Peter Hart, told the Washington Post. "Bain and the taxes just reinforce the sense that this person is in a different world."

...

With these few short sentences in what should have been a moment of triumph for him, Romney managed to send the wrong message to an array of factions. To independent voters, "I'm not concerned about the very poor" sounds callous. To conservative intellectuals and activists, talk about fixing the safety net—as opposed to pursuing policies that enable the poor to free themselves from government dependency—is rank apostasy. And to congressional Republicans, the comment reflected a glaring lack of familiarity with the party's anti-poverty positions. "Electeds were flabbergasted," says a veteran K Street player. "Even moderate Republican members, if they've been here for more than four months, get dipped in the empowerment agenda."

A week later, Romney attempted to repair part of the damage with his speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference—and promptly put his foot in it again. In an address in which he employed the word conservative or some variation of it 24 times, as if trying to prove he is a member of the tribe through sheer incantation, his use of the adverb severely to express the depth of his conviction raised eyebrows inside and outside the hall. "The most retarded thing I have ever heard a Republican candidate say" was the verdict of one strategist with ample experience in GOP presidential campaigns.

...

The launching pad for Santorum was the trio of states that held contests on February 7: Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. His sweep of all three was unexpected to everyone but him—Santorum is a confident man—and reflected a grievous miscalculation on the part of Team Romney, which only barely played in Colorado and ignored the other two. "The idiocy to do that with all of the resources they have; there's no limit to their money," Rollins says. "It's that kind of ­arrogance: 'We won Florida; it's over.' That was four years ago. That's not this time. This time it's trench warfare all the way, and somebody's gonna keep rising up, and it's now Santorum."

...

Santorum may be a different story, however—less erratic, less prone to light himself on fire, less saddled with XXXL baggage. "Santorum is a much more sympathetic character than Gingrich," says the Evangelical leader Richard Land. "If a guy has 57 percent negatives, you can carpet-bomb him with impunity. But if Romney comes out swinging for Santorum, people are going to get angry. It's a lot harder to demonize him than Gingrich."

If Santorum can weather the welter of attacks, his combination of governing and ideological bona fides might make him Romney's bête noire. "The one thing Romney had to avoid that's a mortal threat to him was an ideological contest with someone who has the credentials to be commander-in-chief," says Schmidt. "And Santorum, as a three-term member of Congress and two-term senator, clears that hurdle, especially running against a one-term governor. That's why the race is more wide open now than at any other point before—because Romney is dealing for the first time with a plausible nominee in the eyes of Republican voters, where it's absolutely impossible to get around his right flank."

...

In his TV ads as well as on the stump, Romney has been slapping the favorite-son card on the table like a drunk at a game of strip poker, and is leaning hard on the state GOP Establishment to help him win the hand. "Regardless of the polls that show Santorum with a lead, it's still Romney's to lose," says consultant and former state-party executive director Greg McNeilly. "He has massive organizational strength Santorum can't match." Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics newsletter, agrees: "Romney has a list of endorsements as long as both your arms. He's raised far more money here than any other candidate, including Barack Obama. Santorum is a total cipher. He's an unknown. And he has not done anything here."[/b]

But the savviest political players in the state also allow that, as McNeilly puts it, "the race is in flux in a way that defies conventional wisdom," that anti-Establishment sentiments are running high in the state, and therefore Santorum might just pull off an upset. And while Eric Ferhnstrom, Romney's spokesman, insists the primary is not a must-win for his boss, others close to the candidate admit that losing, in the words of one of them, would be "absolutely, completely fucking horrible."

...

Not one of the president's presiding reelection gurus—David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Jim Messina—believes that, come November, their margin of victory will be as big as even the smallest of those numbers. All along, they have been operating from the assumption that the Republican base will be riled up and ready to turn out in droves on Election Day. That Richard Land is right when he asserts that, for all the lack of enthusiasm for the extant crop of candidates, no one should ever "underestimate the ability of President Obama to rally conservatives to vote against him." That, given the still fragile state of the nation's recovery, the high percentage of voters who continue to regard the country as on the wrong track, and the possibility that Iran or Europe might throw the world a nasty curveball in the months ahead, 2012 will be a closer-run election than 2008. That, in other words, it's still perfectly conceivable that Obama might lose this thing.

...

What that would mean for the GOP would differ wildly depending on which of the two current front-runners, along with the coalition that elevated him to the nomination, is blamed for the debacle. "If Romney is the nominee and he loses in November, I think we'll see a resurgence of the charismatic populist right," says Robert Alan Goldberg, a history professor at the University of Utah and author of a biography of Barry Goldwater. "Not only will [the grassroots wing] say that Romney led Republicans down the road to defeat, but that the whole type of conservatism he represents is doomed."

Goldberg points out that this is what happened in 1976, when the party stuck with Ford over Reagan, was beaten by Carter, and went on to embrace the Gipper's brand of movement conservatism four years later. So who does Goldberg think might be ascendant in the aftermath of a Romney licking? "Sarah Palin," he replies. "She's an outsider, she has no Washington or Wall Street baggage, she's electric—and she's waiting, because if Romney doesn't win, she will be welcomed in."

But if it's Santorum who is the standard-bearer and then he suffers an epic loss, a different analogy will be apt: Goldwater in 1964. (And, given the degree of the challenges Santorum would face in attracting female voters, epic it might well be.) As Kearns Goodwin points out, the rejection of the Arizona senator's ideology and policies led the GOP to turn back in 1968 to Nixon, "a much more moderate figure, despite the incredible corruption of his time in office." For Republicans after 2012, a similar repudiation of the populist, culture-warrior coalition that is fueling Santorum's surge would open the door to the many talented party leaders—Daniels, Christie, Bush, Ryan, Bobby Jindal—waiting in the wings for 2016, each offering the possibility of refashioning the GOP into a serious and forward-thinking enterprise.

[grumbler]

I'm not convinced either is very fun.

Well, you wouldn't be, would you?  I can certainly live without your conviction, and suspect Ide can as well.

[derspiess]

Santorum, yesterday on ABC, about JFK's famous "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" 1960 speech on religion and public policy--

To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up and it should make every American. . . . Now we're going to turn around and say we're going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.

Yes, he said "throw up".

That's just super.

Santorum is approaching the Viking level of straw man construction.  Didn't think we would see another like Viking in our lifetime. 

Not only that, but he's getting dangerously close to losing the atheist vote

[Razgovory]

Santorum is approaching the Viking level of straw man construction.  Didn't think we would see another like Viking in our lifetime. 

What is wrong with you?

[DGuller]

Not only that, but he's getting dangerously close to losing the atheist vote

On the contrary, he definitely has my vote in the primaries now. 

[derspiess]

Not only that, but he's getting dangerously close to losing the atheist vote

On the contrary, he definitely has my vote in the primaries now. 

My Ohio vote will be inconsequential either way, so I'm thinking about voting for Paul

[Eddie Teach]

Do it!

[derspiess]

Do it!

It would not be my craziest primary vote ever, believe it or not.

[Jacob]

It would not be my craziest primary vote ever, believe it or not.

I believe it.

[garbon]

It would not be my craziest primary vote ever, believe it or not.

I believe it.

Yeah although in the general I bet he's voted for himself.

[Berkut]

Santorum, yesterday on ABC, about JFK's famous "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" 1960 speech on religion and public policy--

To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up and it should make every American. . . . Now we're going to turn around and say we're going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.

Yes, he said "throw up".

That's just super.

Santorum is approaching the Viking level of straw man construction.  Didn't think we would see another like Viking in our lifetime. 

Not only that, but he's getting dangerously close to losing the atheist vote

Do you really think you have to be an atheist to find that attitude rather alarming?

[derspiess]

Do you really think you have to be an atheist to find that attitude rather alarming?

I don't know.  I'm not alarmed.  Should I be?

[Ideologue]

Asked by the AP reporter if he follows NASCAR, Romney responded, "Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners."