First South Carolina Debate: Can Romney Be Stopped?
Santorum has been focusing his sights on Ron Paul and Gingrich. His strategy against Paul is to argue that his libertarianism prevents him from being adequately conservative on social issues. Santorum is going after him for opposing federal bans on abortion and gay marriage. Santorum has broadened his argument against Gingrich, going beyond mentioning his past support for the individual health care mandate and supporting global warming solutions with Nancy Pelosi.
Santorum is bringing attention to his rocky time as speaker of the House and says that Gingrich has never run a statewide race. Santorum is wisely criticizing Gingrich’s attacks on Romney over Bain Capital. He is tapping into the backlash against him, and it is inevitable that this will come up tonight. When it does, Santorum will be sitting nicely to benefit.
Ron Paul will do the same thing he has always done, except he may gamble that his anti-interventionist philosophy will appeal to veteran voters. You can bet he’ll mention the fact that he’s served and that he gets more contributions from soldiers than all the others combined.
Rick Perry’s overall message will be that he’s the ultimate “outsider.” He’s outside of Washington, D.C. and outside of Wall Street. He rails against the D.C. culture and is siding with Gingrich against “vulture capitalism” in order to tap into anti-Wall Street sentiment. For this reason, he has suggested Ron Paul for chairman of the Federal Reserve. By doing this, he could win support from those who are backing Ron Paul because of his “outsider” status and stance on domestic issues but are concerned about his foreign policy. And, of course, he’ll mention his military service in order to win support from veterans.
The main things to look for tonight are whether Romney appears thin-skinned, thus hurting his electability argument, and whether new arguments against him are introduced. His health care policy has been talked about endlessly and so have his flip-flops. These criticisms are old and won’t affect the polls anymore. If the candidates want to bring down Romney in South Carolina, they’ll need something new.
Good grief!
How many *more* of the mindless Romney premature-Coronation propaganda ads will we be forced to endure?! *I* vote in Florida – and will vote for GINGRICH – so thankfully I can tune out the noise after that.
Huntsman’s ad against Romney sums it up pretty well why he’s a loser:
http://electad.com/videos/jon-huntsman-mittstant-replay/
And McCarthy at NRO states quite well why Romney makes the GOP a loser:
“The issues in the election are Obamacare and debt. Focusing on them massively favors the GOP … except that Romneycare is the building block for Obamacare and, far from admitting error, Mitt has doubled down. As readers will see, I believe his federalism defense of Romneycare is fatuous. The Massachusetts program is indefensible. By nominating someone who vigorously defends it, I am very worried that we are giving away our best rationale for deposing the president and dispiriting the base whose enthusiasm is vital.”
GINGRICH IN 2012!!!
Santorum and Gingrcih need to cut a deal, or another RINO is going to be coronated in the GOP primaries, because the Conservative vote was split.
Huntsman was siphoning off votes from Romney, but no longer.
My entire point system for scoring the debates goes to whomever best soundbites the current administration and inserts into the MSM the narrative that upends this radical leftist agenda. Negative points are scored for circular firing squad, and forfeiture for self inflicting quotes.
Romney is not Reagan, but like Reagan, he will bring to the voting both the moderate and conservative democrats that will no longer support Obama and his very left agenga policies. Romney, may be moderate, but so is this country. History, when the RNC won the Congress, Clinton moved to the middle and won re-election.
Yes, Romney will be stopped by obama in the general.
He’s a terrible candidate to an incumbent who will pull all the stops and run circles around Romney…and I hate obama. You can’t win an election as “not obama”, didn’t we learn this with Kerry trying “not Bush”?
It is what it is. NO MORE RINO candidates. We need new House and Senate leadership. We need to win the Senate and increase numbers in the House. Then we can check obama’s Constitutional line-stepping.
It would be helpful to defeat Romney if you could prove he is a RINO. This article by Peter Ferrera (American Spectator) at http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/11/rino-romney-is-the-least-elect