Can Gingrich's 15 minutes be up already? Reason would dictate it, but reason dictates nothing in the Republican Party. Barney Frank is having great fun with Newt:
Let's assume the Wingnuts are already backing off their infatuation with Gingrich. It might be assuming too much (see second sentence of this post), but he has a record that will catch up to him eventually. So where does that leave the GOP in their search for Anybody-but-Mitt?
Let's go back to our list:
Rick Santorum
Ron Paul
Can anybody construct a scenario in which Ron Paul gets the nomination? I can't.
So Santorum is in a great position (last man standing), but doesn't seem to have the smarts to figure out what he needs to do. Okay, so he's against abortion and gays, but that's the price of admission to the GOP. Does he think about anything else? Obama's birth certificate? Obama's grades? Any of the other important issues facing our country?
It's up to you, Rick. Carpe diem.
For all the inevitability in which some commentators wrap Mitt's nomination, it remains to be seen if the guy will be able to pull together a majority at the convention.
Gallup has this analysis:
Romney is generally acknowledged as a front-runner, if not the leading candidate, based on nomination preference polls as well as his fundraising totals and prior experience in running for president. But Romney remains a fairly weak front-runner in three respects.
First, in most prior GOP nominating contests, the front-running candidate had a large lead over the rest of the field, whereas Romney has had at best only slight leads over his rivals.
Second, the percentage of Republicans who prefer Romney as the party's nominee has failed to grow over the course of the campaign, even as prominent challengers such as Mike Huckabee declined to run and as some of Romney's current rivals, including Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, gained in the polls earlier in the campaign only to lose much of their support as they became better known.
Third, his lower Positive Intensity Scores indicate he is not generating a lot of enthusiasm among Republicans.
A Republican convention that goes through several ballots before deciding on the standard bearer can't be ruled out. Multiple ballot conventions used to be fairly common. Thomas Dewey won the nomination in 3 ballots in 1948. Wendell Willkie took 6 ballots in 1940. And every political junkie's favorite, the 1924 Democratic Convention, took 103 ballots to decide who was going to lose to Calvin Coolidge.
Are desperate, pleading phone calls once again being made to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie? Is John McCain plotting a comeback?
Pass the popcorn, please.
No comments:
Post a Comment