2012 republican presidential nominee III: can romney get santorum out of his hair?

v curious how much of santorum's vote would go to newt if he dropped out.

Romney still less than #50 /talkingpoints

I know it gets tricky for Newt but there's a lot to go. He'll hang in there as long as he can pull in the funds. Thankfully for him, the media has been carpetbombing the airwaves about the staggering difference in money/negative ads between him and Newt so nobody else int he country will be fooled by such salacious and ungentlemanly behaviour.

@fakedansavage Santorum demonstrates his ability to stir audiences to new depths. pic.twitter.com/r8HxcX6K
31 Jan

http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Akg_EfcCIAEhZ28.jpg

i'm sure newt has the petulance to keep going forever, but

a) how long will sheldon adelson continue to fund a hopeless cause?

b) does callista?

the title of this thread makes me nostalgic

hoping gingrich makes it to the convention just to non-violently re-enact this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjzKiEs_pHI

Newt should sail into Tampa Bay in colonial garb

lmao at that santorum pic

is that girl handing Santorum a chunk of mango?

i think she's fanning that kid who passed out from being inundated by bullshit

two girls back left are cracking up, attempting to conceal it

it's like santorum is trying to compete with our very own santorum.jpg

the two lads on the right are every bored kid in church ever

Girl on the left with glasses -- my wife tells me this is the classic pose for sleeping in church while appearing to be in deep spiritual contemplation.

Implosion time.

As a bunch of us has been writing around here for a while, the under-emphasized dynamic in this race isn’t that Romney isn’t conservative enough (though that’s obviously a real concern out there) it’s that he’s simply not a good enough politician. He may be the most electable on paper. He’s certainly a nice guy, decent father, smart, successful etc. But, every time he seems to get into his groove and pull away he says things that make people think he doesn’t know how to play the game. That can be reassuring to some, who take it as proof he’s not another politician. The problem, for others at least, is that because he isn’t a natural politician he breaks the language where it needs to bend. He uses language — “I like to fire people!” “It’s nothing to get angry about” etc — that doesn’t make him seem like an unconventional politician. Rather his language makes him seem like a caricature of a conventionally stiff country club Republican.

yah 4 sure obscured by all the electablity talk is the obvs fact that hes just not a natural politician, hes worked v hard to become competent which is actually a v high bar for a presidential run, but he just does not at all have it

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/time/3630-1.jpg

^yeah. not an absolute impediment, why wd ppl think so?

does romney know about supermarket scanners y/n

he's related to one

in retrospect doesn't it seem like bush's win in 88 was really a 3rd reelection for reagan? the contrast with dukakis probably helped him too (pour one out)

the point is ghwb WAS a president w/o "it". he borrowed someone else's it, and won against a man with even less of it.

kind of tautological tho i guess

in retrospect doesn't it seem like bush's win in 88 was really a 3rd reelection for reagan?

oh no – that's exactly how most observers viewed his win at the time.

doesnt mean romney cant win but hed have a better shot if he had the juice

i'm a little surprised at the cold feet from j goldberg up there. tho i suppose he is the type to want to hang with the cool kids at a moment too late to matter

Despite serious competition the '88 campaign season was the most moronic of my life.

turnout was down from 08:

share
Eric Kleefeld January 31, 2012, 10:30 PM

Underneath tonight’s big win for Mitt Romney in the Florida Republican primary, is a statistic that might suggest enthusiasm is flagging among GOP voters in this large and crucial swing state: turnout was actually down significantly from 2008.

In the 2008 Republican primary in Florida, in which John McCain beat Romney by a margin of 36%-31%, a total of nearly 1.95 million votes were cast.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/florida-gop-turnout-actually-fell-big-time-from-2008.php?ref=fpb

But in tonight’s primary, turnout was actually much lower. At time of writing, with 98% of precincts reporting, the total turnout is only about 1.65 million — a drop-off of 15% in terms of the raw number of voters.

Romney did increase his own vote total, though. In 2008 he received about 605,000 votes. Tonight, it is up to about 765,000. (One can imagine him combining some of his old votes, with some of McCain’s in 2008, for his strong 46% plurality.)

er whoops i put the link in the middle there!

i believe that is a pattern in the other states, too? idk i'm getting this from liberal sources.

Despite serious competition the '88 campaign season was the most moronic of my life.

One of the '88 presidential debates was at UCLA just after I got there and I went down to mingle a bit and see what was being said by various types on either side out front. It probably helped confirm me in my belief, when I could first register to vote the following year, that there was no point in registering a party affiliation.

yeah turnout was down everywhere but sc iirc?

Gingrich pulled a Hillary last night in his speech and didn't even acknowledge that he'd just been crushed--didn't mention Romney at all--which is a pretty good indication he's mad enough to keep running long past the point when it makes any sense to (which most people would say was yesterday, but he does have all those southern states to go).

Romney seem comfortable with what he's doing about half the time to me.

"seems"

Gingristapo tactics?

weren't Reagan's poll numbers in the toilet by '88 from Iran-contra etc?

dukakis had a huge lead at the beginning of the campaign lol

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/images/life/dukakis.jpg

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyodeekXZQ1qzzg70o1_500.jpg

http://www.achievement.org/achievers/bus0/large/bus0-029.jpg

nice socks bro

yeah, always seemed to me Reagan fatigue is the only reason a pathetic campaigner like Dukakis did even that "well" in November.

that newt pic is amazing but how it looks like hes contemplating the watermark takes it to the next level

god Reagan's hair was always perfect.

Reagan's poll numbers.

eh Clinton gets a similar "benefit" from hindsight

i like how that angle lets you see underneath gorbachev's combover.

and by angle i mean penis

Reagan's last two Gallup job approval ratings before he left office were 57% in mid-November and 63% in December 1988.

The highest job approval rating of the Reagan administration was 68% -- reached twice, in May 1981 and as previously indicated, in May 1986. As noted, the low point was 35% in January 1983.

Both in and out of office, Reagan was always well-liked by the American public -- based on ratings measuring the public's personal opinion rather than its assessment of his job performance. Between 1984 and 1988, Gallup consistently found more than 6 in 10 Americans holding a favorable view of Reagan, including a substantial 81% in October 1986. Even during the 1982 recession, when only about 4 in 10 Americans approved of the job Reagan was doing as president, 6 in 10 Americans rated him on the positive end of a 10-point rating scale. In Gallup's most recent measure of favorability about Reagan, taken in January 2001, 74% of Americans had a favorable opinion of him, and only 23% were unfavorable.

Americans' perceptions of Reagan's presidency have risen considerably in recent years. His average approval rating for 1988, his last full year as president, was 53% -- identical to the average for the entire eight years of his presidency. Yet, when Americans were asked in 2002 to state whether they approved or disapproved of the way Reagan handled his presidency, retrospectively, 73% approved.

This increase in retrospective approval didn't occur at once. Three Gallup ratings in 1990, 1992, and 1993 showed Reagan's job approval rating in the 50% to 54% range -- little different from the average while he was in office. Reagan publicly announced that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in 1994, and it's possible that the sympathy and concern his condition has elicited over the last decade are in part responsible for the elevated retrospective job approval ratings he has received since.

OK, so the Iran dip came in '87

Romney "not concerned about the very poor"

can't make this shit up

I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.

lol 95% of the country cannot be middle class that just doesnt make any sense

Yeah, the speech functions of this robot are not very well engineered, are they?