Re: 2012 Elections: Corndogs for everyone!
Its surprising just how divided the GOP is. Its almost two parties. And Newt is the lightning rod for that division.
Newt was favored 40 pts to 23 for second place Romney late last week. Much of Newts strength is off the backs of the social and flag waving and small town and southern conservatives. But Newt also seems to be universally disliked, not just by Dems, but by pundits and specifically those that are part of the business GOP punditry. Just watch CNBC or Morning Joe, etc to get a feel. Here's a taste from the conservative Hugh Hewitt:
Could Another Great Debate Save Newt? Nope.
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:03 AM
UPDATE: National Review's new cover depicts Newt as Marvin the Martian
Original Post:
It has been a terrible week for Newt, a very good week for Mitt, and a week of surprising momentum for the two Ricks.
The Washington Examiner, the center-right alternative to the Washington Post and Politico which is staffed by the best of center-right journalists and pundits, endorsed Mitt Romney. About Newt the editors said "[H]e is like an exploding cigar, waiting to be lit."
The National Review narrowed the field to Romney, Santorum or Huntsman. (Santorum's "moneybomb" had a good first day for the "little engine that could" among the campaigns.") About Newt, the NR editors opined: "We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner in the polls, would be to blow this opportunity [to beat Obama]."
Gingrich's campaign momentum was thrown into reverse and the poll numbers began to fall after Monday's spectacular train wreck of an outburst that unleashed Charles Krauthammer, Brit Hume, Jonah Goldberg and George Will in a four-pundit-horsemen-of-political-apocalypse fury on the former Speaker. Mark Steyn and Ann Coulter are still on the sidelines yelling "put me in coach," which I will do with Steyn in the show's first segment today.
(Steyn's got the best last-minute shopping options for the conservative on your list, btw.)
Newt's week was so bad that actor Gary Busey unendorsed him.
And the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza has a piece up on Newt's bleak general election prospects based on the latest national polling.
Which means of course that the former Speaker will probably turn in a great debate performance tonight, but even when he does, his moment will have passed, I think, a victim to the deadly combination of the Monday blowup which confirmed the two great themes of the anti-Newts: he isn't a conservative and he isn't reliable, though in debates he appears to be both.
So where will the free electrons of the GOP primaries gravitate now? Some certainly to Santorum. Others to Perry. Some to Romney (who won the Joni Scotter primary yesterday), and some to the Ricks.
But the former Speaker's improbable comeback is in a tailspin because the GOP really does have what the National Review called a "conservative consensus on most of the pressing issues of the day," and Newt Gingrich put himself outside that consensus at the very beginning of the campaign, and again on Monday.
In the end, in the Republican primaries, it is about beating Obama in order to restore Reaganism. There remains an opportunity for someone --Santorum?-- to capture the hearts of conservatives uneasy with the former Massachusetts governor, but it won't be former Speaker Gingrich.
