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

crazy. linx?

Where did you get that from? Gallup still has Romney far in front nationally.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/02/rick-santorum-gallup-tracking-poll-mitt-romney-/1

https://twitter.com/#!/ppppolls/status/167775351718686720

v. interesting. were those gallup polls including lagging data?

Okay--I'm still working on Standard Internet Time. I have to get me one of those Twitter machines. (I believe the Gallup included one day of post-Missouri/Minnesota/Colorado polling.)

I'm not even sure santorum wouldn't be a stronger candidate for the gop at this point

PPP also said the lead is much bigger for Santorum if you remove Newt.

fivethirtyeight Nate Silver
Reverse engineering the Gallup tracking poll, looks like Wed.'s results were about Romney 32, Santorum 32, Gingrich 16.
39 seconds ago Favorite Retweet Reply

He's more personable than Romney, Gingrich too (though not as entertaining). But surely his rigidity on a whole bunch of social issues would lose half the country immediately.

oh yeah he's a pretty terrible candidate too, but at least republicans will vote for him.

shit just gets more incredible every day

dude took the worst beating *ever* by a sitting senator seeking reelection

he would like to outlaw *contraception*

i don't even know whether to cry or wind my watch

I hope the Minnesota debacle put to the rest the fantasy that Pawlenty should have hung around--he was out there campaigning in his own state for Romney.

dude took the worst beating *ever* by a sitting senator seeking reelection

i know he got creamed, but is this literally true? i would imagine there are some outliers in the 1870s-1880s as radical reconstruction collapsed.

idk being that literally every other candidate running had their moment in the sun, he prob woulda got one. at least then he could tell his grandkids "I was leading the nomination polls, that one week, pappy coulda been president" xp

and it's not like Gingrich or Santorum are better candidates, so who knows

my bad -- it was the worst ever by a sitting gop senator, tho

cmon iatee, Repubs are gonna vote for Mittens just like 'disappointed' Dems are gonna go for O.

Probably...although Huntsman didn't have one (unless third in NH counts), and Pawlenty struck me as Huntsman's equal in political ineptitude. That early debate moment where he tiptoed away from Romney was awful. (xposts)

at this point yeah it's not like alabama is gonna go blue, but it's getting harder and harder to imagine *any* real enthusiasm for romney's campaign. like, this is sub-john kerry.

Inept in terms of what this race requires--obviously they were successful at the state level. (And no, I haven't a clue anymore what "this race requires.")

I think santorum is pretty inept tbh, he is where he is because he stood around and was the least interesting person there. that's typically not a good strategy and only was on accident.

isn't the CW that this race is going to hinge more on the state of the economy than intangibles like voter enthusiasm and candidate likability (tho obviously the quality of the economy will impact both of those things)?

yeah but it's getting harder to see santorum or romney winning even if the economy slows a little

Like Don Corleone, I'm a superstitious man. Last election was initially supposed to hinge on Iraq, and it ended up being about the economy. This one has been assumed forever (with good reason) to be about the economy, but I look at something like Syria and wonder, what if in the midst of an improving economy it ends up hinging on some calamitous foreign-policy surprise?

well no election 'hinges' on one issue, but economic factors are the most consistent predictor. if we unemployment magically fell to 5% but there was a scandal cause obama molested a kid, he would still lose. but due to the economy, he would probably lose by less.

that 'we' can disappear

"Hinges" as in the one issue that dwarfs all others--surely there were elections where that was true. '68 was Vietnam, '92/'08 were the economy, '00 was about how Al Gore sighed too much during debates. The secondary issues were there, but these were the things preoccupying voters.

when the economy 'isn't an issue' - that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. if the economy is fine or great that still affects the nation's decision making. that it's not at the forefront of the narrative doesn't mean that it's not a huge variable in the process.

cmon iatee, Repubs are gonna vote for Mittens just like 'disappointed' Dems are gonna go for O.

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, February 9, 2012 9:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://blakehuggins.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/rednecks.jpg

As crazy as this sign is, I can't even imagine a "Rednecks for Romney", even with the alliteration.

Yeah, I understand all of that. Would you not agree, though, that the general outline of the '08 election looked a lot different a year out? Iraq was what gave Obama his initial entree into the race--in the early debates, they were arguing about Iraq and health-care mandates and driver's licenses for illegals. I don't recall hardly any talk about the economy. So I'm just suggesting that it'd be ironic if the reverse happened this time. (Mildly ironic. Rain-on-your-wedding-day ironic.)

yah its looking like the economy could be a lot less effective of an issue for the gop than was expected

yeah but the process in which a party picks its nominee is quite different from the national election. obama was operating completely within the 'democrats who pay a lot of attention to politics' sphere and on 'the economy' there weren't really going to be debates within the democratic party.

a better example would be the 2004 elections. while they were not about 'the economy' in the same way that the 2008 elections were about the economy, if there had been 8% unemployment in 2004, dubya would have lost. in that sense, the results were just as much about the economy, but the popular narrative wasn't centered on the economy, because it was boring and fine and there were swift boats to talk about.

"Do you use contraception at all, ever? Hi, I'm Barack Obama, the President of the United States. My opponent, Rick Santorum, is a good man who served his country in the US Senate. He has made clear that he hopes to outlaw contraception in the United States. I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message."

ps google him

I have to say a Santorum candidacy would really be the gold standard for whether people will vote against their interests just to stay aligned with their party

rick santorum, voted the stupidest senator by his colleagues then lost his seat by a record margin, good luck! (ps google him)

We're going around in circles, but I don't quite understand your logic. You're saying that if the economy is humming along, and no one really takes any notice of it, it's still a big election issue simply because if it weren't humming along it'd be a big issue, so therefore it's a big issue either way. Which to my mind is like saying that San Francisco won the World Series two years ago because of their hitting. Cnventional wisdom says they won because of their pitching, but if they'd had an historically awful offense instead of just a sub-mediocre one, the pitching wouldn't have mattered, so therefore they won because of their hitting. Maybe I'm just not understanding you, iatee.

'the economy' only enters popular narrative when things are pretty shitty, but the actual economy affects 300 million Americans always, so changes in household wealth, inflation, etc affect how people think the govt is doing. even when 'things are okay' that doesnt mean it doesn't have the same level of effect, it just means the effect is less apparent.

Right--and wars only become election issues when they're actual wars, even though potential wars are a fact of life at all times, and therefore every election is a foreign-policy election too. So maybe I've been talking about "popular narrative" all along. The popular narrative has been that this will be an economic election; it'd be ironic if the popular narrative ends up being that it's a foreign-policy election instead.

basically you have to not think of the economy as a political subject like 'the war in afghanistan' and think of it as the well-being of 300 million people. their economic well-being determines whether they are bitter and what change, regardless of what ad plays on fox news or whatever, most people don't pay that much attention to the day to day stuff anyway. the popular narrative stuff has *some* effect and 'the economy' plays a role in the popular narrative, but it's still not as important as the economic well-being of 300 million people.

well if the economy is good enough for it not to be the primary issue then its an incumbent gets reelected election

what change = want change xp

thegarance Garance Franke-Ruta
Santorum: "other types of emotions" cld make women in combat do stuff "that may not be in the interest of the mission" wapo.st/xI7AGQ
6 minutes ago

As for Santorum, has he yet been subjected to the usual tsunami of negative ads that anyone who looks like a threat to win the nomination can expect? My impression is that he hasn't really been a target of any serious attacks, yet.

Wherever he's won, he hasn't shown much real strength with voters, either. He has lagged badly in primary states and has mostly done well in small-state caucuses. Missouri's primary was non-binding, so it's an outlier.

other types of emotions

I'm sure there's some angle they can find, but he's pretty clean and boring / most of the things you would attack him on would be things that would alienate everyone in american except for conservatives

like the above tweet

I think I've already said that economic well-being drove the elections in 1992 and 2008. But if you want to argue that economic well-being drove the election in 1968, sorry, I think that's way off. Which is not to say that economic well-being wasn't a fact of life in 1968, because yes, of course, it's always a fact of life. But that doesn't mean that other concerns can't jump ahead of it in line come election day. I mean, I'd be very interested in seeing polling data from 1968 suggesting that the economy was the #1 issue on voter's minds.

The type of emotions that can sometimes be helped by taking birth control pills?

Oh wait.

They could show a guy in the hind end of a horse costume, quoting Santorum's stupidest pronouncements approvingly.