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Originally Posted by MrWookie
Lots of things wrong in this post. SC and Florida are not WTA. But more than that, SC and Florida are not going to put life into Gingrich and Frothy. One of them needs to not just win but wafflecrush SC in order to stand a chance, and that won't happen with both of them in the race. Even if one were to drop, it's not looking good for the other to pick up all the voters from the one who dropped at this point. Some of the people backing the guy who drops pre-SC are going to think "Aw **** it, Romneys going to win" and reluctantly switch to Romney.
Romney's up 7.5 points in SC per Nate. He'd have to do something colossally stupid at this point to **** that up.
I'm beating my own dead horse over here, but it's not even clear these people would be
reluctantly voting for Romney. I'll reiterate yet again that polling indicates Romney is a pretty well-liked politician on the right. I think Jim Geraghty is wrong a lot and "lol" @ The Corner, but he's right to point this out -- even if 2 of Newt, Perry, and Santorum dropped out, and their supporters all happened to support the survivor, it's not clear that person is more popular than Romney among GOPers:
http://www.nationalreview.com/campai...trouble-romney
He starts off by noting the conventional wisdom is that the GOP base hates Romney, the Establishment 'loves' him, and the conventional wisdom holds that either:
- the GOP base isn't that powerful/the Establishment controls everything
- GOP base voters are uber strategic and will vote for the candidate they think has the best chance
But Geraghty rightly points out that's discounting a third possibility: Mitt Romney is not actually loathed by the base, but a lot of them actually like and support him:
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Even if the three men were genetically spliced into “Newtrick Peringrichum,” a candidate who could retain all of their current supporters, they would have a tough road ahead in the upcoming primaries. It would be easier than the one that all of them face separately now, but it still would be a challenging fight against Romney.
(Nationally, Newtrick Perigrinchum would lead Romney modestly, but I’m a little wary of using polls of “adults” to assess the views of GOP primary voters.)
From this, something in the convenient narrative must be wrong. Either the conservative base does not hold such a numerical advantage over the “Establishment,” or the base selects messengers for their inherently appealing message that are so flawed that they erode that numerical advantage, or the “Establishment” candidate Romney is somehow appealing to some of those voters in the conservative base.
There’s healthy evidence for that last option. According to the exit polls, if the New Hampshire primary had consisted only of self-described “very conservative” voters, the results would have been . . . Romney 33 percent, Santorum 26 percent, Paul 18 percent, Gingrich 17 percent, Huntsman 4 percent, Perry 1 percent. If it had consisted only of self-described “somewhat conservative” voters, the results would have been . . . Romney 48 percent, Paul 19 percent, Huntsman 13 percent, Gingrich 11 percent, Santorum 7 percent, Perry . . . 0.
I think there's a lot of disconnect between some of the real media all stars on the right who are driving the anti-Romney narrative, and the base. And the political people are hearing right wing media people and internalizing their blah blah and ignoring other evidence that shows Romney isn't really detested on the right. Remember he was the proxy 'conservative' choice in 2008 vs McCain.
I'm not saying Romney = Reagan in the hearts of the right, but he's also not an apostate. I join a lot of this forum in agreeing there's very little meaningful difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Granting that, I think it's even more true that finding meaningful differences between Romney and Newt Perrytorum is even harder -- cut taxes for wealthy people, bomb for Muslims, abortions and gay marriages for none, miniature American flags for everyone, and Obama is Satan. These guys are all the same from the meta-level, and for every criticism of Romney on the superficial margins ("not authentic, empty shirt, flip flopper") equally plague the others (Gingrich is a serial philanderer, Perry is a ******, etc.) As Geraghty points out, Romney's a heterodox Republican with some bouts of going off the reservation, not entirely different from Gingrich joining Pelosi to warn about climate change or Perry <3ing the illegals or Santorum being soft on destroying unions, endorsing Specter over Toomey, working with Barbara Boxer to censor video games, whatever.
It's not at all surprising people are pulling the trigger for Romney, and perhaps not even reluctantly! The difference between Gingrich and Santorum and Perry and Romney, when it comes to core policies and stuff, are hardly noticeable. Why should we expect GOP voters to behave as if they are?
Last edited by DVaut1; 01-11-2012 at 03:57 PM.
Group dynamics are huge.