“The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue and the public will turn en masse against Barack Obama….Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea party hobbits could return to Middle-earth…This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP nominees. The reality is the debt limit will be raised one way or another.”
It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to understand what happened Saturday in South Carolina. The GOP Establishment received a medicinal kiwi enema. Newt Gingrich served as a weapon of meme destruction. He just blew up the “Mitt Romney is Inevitable” meme that was fed to the voters of South Carolina like a direct order instead of a talking point. Of course, the GOP Establishment wouldn’t be the GOP Establishment if they weren’t too arrogant to understand what just took place.
To agree with Inner Party Screech-Harpy, Ann Coulter, you’d have to believe Newt Gingrich is in BIG TROUBLE. According to public opinion polls, everybody, and I mean everybody hates him. According to Rick Santorum, ““You look at someone who was speaker of the House, and again, these are friends, I know they are good people, but when Newt was speaker of the House, well, within three years the conservatives within the House of Representatives tried to throw him out, and in the fourth year they did…”
Mitt Romney adds additional scorn to the phlegm and bile attack being launched against Former House Speaker Gingrich as the GOP Primary circus moves to Florida. Romney called him a failure stating “He resigned after four years in disgrace. He was investigated under an ethics panel and had to make a payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of Republicans voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich. He has not had a record of successful leadership.”
Recent Florida polling suggests that this is working about as well as calling President George W. Bush a miserable failure worked for the Democrats in 2004. And yet the GOP establishment doesn’t grok the water on what just happened
In their (Team Romney’s) view, Gingrich has barely run a campaign. As they see it, Team Gingrich doesn’t have the money, professionalism, brains, or organization of the Romney campaign. They see the former Speaker as somewhat unstable and vulnerable to continued attack on issues of ethics and morals. And most of all, they see Gingrich as a candidate who owes his very existence to the never-ending series of Republican debates — and not much more.
The crosstabs of who voted for Newt Gingrich belie the above tomfoolery. Gingrich consistently beat Romney by 8-12 percent regardless of voter age. Gingrich dominated Romney and Santorum amongst voters with a HS Diploma or less. He beat all comers solidly amongst voters with Bachelor’s Degrees or lower. Only Republicans who had done Postgraduate study preferred Mitt Romney.
Gingrich surprisingly performed better with married voters than he did amongst singles. This suggested dragging one of Newt’s ex’s in front of a camera for a tell all was ill-advised. Romney took a plurality amongst voters earning $200,000 or more. He lost every other income group. He lost all voters with incomes less than $100K by over 15%. Gingrich won a near-majority amongst Conservative voters. He lost amongst voters who were Moderate or Liberal.
What all this demonstrates is that much of the GOP Electorate prefers anyone not endorsed by the GOP Establishment. This is particularly true amongst people not atop the educational or monetary ladder. They feel that way so strongly that in the 2010 Delaware Senate Primary, they actually preferred Christine O’Donnell to Mike Castle. A large number of Republicans not getting fat envelopes from the party apparatus actually preferred seeing a Democrat inherit that seat instead of Representative Castle. How could this be? Go back up to the Coulter link and listen to the woman if you can stand it.
The leaders of the GOP are more moderate than the rank-in-file. They consider themselves intellectually and culturally superior. They have no respect for the voters and activists who they need out walking the precincts next Fall to stand a prayer against the Obama Re-Election Juggernaut that will set upon the march from Charlotte, NC. They need to learn that respect the hard way. We can all hope that Newt Gingrich’s significant win in South Carolina is the 2X4 upside the head these people really needed.
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