Quinnipiac currently has Newt Gingrich at 44% to Obama’s 46% in their polls in Florida; in Ohio, Gingrich is besting Obama 43-42%, and Rasmussen Reports recent nationwide poll has 75% of respondents indicating the country is on the wrong track.
While polls conducted nationwide show President Obama beating Newt Gingrich by about 5 percentage points, Al Gore taught us over a decade ago that presidential elections are not won on the basis of the popular vote. The Electoral College is king, and in the past 3 presidential elections, Ohio and Florida were the states to watch if you wanted to predict the winner. Right now, Obama and Newt Gingrich are in a dead heat in both states.
Sure, conventional wisdom would suggest that Newt Gingrich has the best chance of winning the Republican Presidential nomination, but Mitt Romney would have a much better shot at defeating President Obama in the general election. Democrats are supposed to be filled with glee at the prospect of taking on Freddie Mac’s errand boy, Newt Gingrich, next November…but it may not work out quite as well as they’re hoping.
First, let’s examine the mood of America. People are pissed. There is no polite or gentle way to say it, and anger in America has been brewing since the Bush Administration. In 2006, voters rejected a sitting President and gave the Democratic Party control of Congress. Two years later, in 2008, it was clear the Republican Party was not going to get a third presidential term…and it seemed just as clear that Hillary Clinton was the “inevitable” nominee of the Democratic Party. But, as Mitt Romney now knows, when Americans hear the word inevitable, in the voting booth that translates into incumbent. In a land where 75% of the citizens think the country is on the wrong track, incumbent is a dirty word. Republican primary voters are choosing the candidate that best expresses their anger at Obama, just like Democrats chose the candidate in 2008 that gave the best voice to their anger at the Bush administration. Democrats didn’t listen then to those who claimed Hillary Clinton was the only candidate capable of defeating John McCain, so why should Republicans listen when told Mitt Romney is their only chance to beat Obama?
To this writer, it sure looks like Newt Gingrich could go the distance. Yes, he is a gross little man who served his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. But he’s on his third wife, so what about wifey number 2? Oh, that’s right, Newt Gingrich cheated on her with his intern, the lady currently serving time as Newt’s wife number three…the lady who was his intern and paramour while Newt Gingrich was leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern of his own. But all of that is old news, and Newt Gingrich is still on the rise.
In a time when the Occupy movement is leading a charge towards justice and equality for the 99%, and when the President of the United States winks and nods at the protestors and issues a call for “a fair play, a fair shot, and a fair share”, Newt Gingrich is running to be President as the only candidate for the office to have profited from one of the companies that led to the financial crisis of 2008. Lining his pockets with over a million dollars from Freddie Mac, Newt Gingrich should be the target of American anger, not the beneficiary of it.
Sometimes, American voters become so fed up with the way the country is going, that they develop a kind-of willful amnesia and settle their affections on the man who hates what’s going on in the world as much as they do. A candidate who promises he speaks for the silent majority can be given a second chance at life on the national stage, only for the voters to later discover that he didn’t just hate what was going on in the world, but he actually hated the world itself…and them.
A man who is stuffing his pockets with money from Freddie Mac, and jewels from Tiffany’s, has a very real shot at being the next President of the United States. I wasn’t alive to witness the rebirth of Nixon in 1968, but I’ve read enough history to see some eerie similarities between Tricky Dick and Knavish Newt.
Sarah Warden is the author of the novel Three Fifths of Love, available as an ebook for 99 cents from amazon http://www.amazon.com/Three-Fifths-Love-Marriage-ebook/dp/B005EZ3QU2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318174116&sr=8-1
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There's a word for that; stupidity. 'Til the American electorate decides to learn critical thinking, to tell truth from propaganda, and to acquaint itself with facts rather than knee-jerk emotion, they will continue to deserve the liars, thieves and whores they put in office.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 2/3rds of the states that are just 'spectators' and ignored.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes-- enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO - 68%, FL - 78%, IA 75%, MI - 73%, MO - 70%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM-- 76%, NC - 74%, OH - 70%, PA - 78%, VA - 74%, and WI - 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK - 70%, DC - 76%, DE - 75%, ID - 77%, ME - 77%, MT - 72%, NE 74%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM - 76%, OK - 81%, RI - 74%, SD - 71%, UT - 70%, VT - 75%, WV - 81%, and WY - 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR - 80%,, KY- 80%, MS - 77%, MO - 70%, NC - 74%, OK - 81%, SC - 71%, TN - 83%, VA - 74%, and WV - 81%; and in other states polled: CA - 70%, CT - 74%, MA - 73%, MN - 75%, NY - 79%, OR - 76%, and WA - 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large state. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes -- 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
NationalPopularVote
We who champion a progressive agenda think we’ve got troubles now, but we ain’t seen anything. And we deserve every bit of what we are going to get.
If there were a basic test to determine if the voter even understood how the structure of the Federal Government functions and it's relationship to the States, we'd eliminate most of the people who can currently vote.
If we'd admit that IQ and maturity do count, we'd raise the voting age (no, I don' t think you should be able to fight vote, I'd raise that age too, thus changing the whole complexion of wars fought by kids who's frontal lobes aren't fully developed enough to have good judgment). Normal programming will now resume and I will go back to my other fantasies of a rational world. All candidates can now resume manipulating and catering to the lowest common denominators of irrational behavior.
i also resisted the same premise from others when perry, and then cain, were besting romney in the polls.
not that i am looking forward to casting a vote for romney. i believe he is at least as vulnerable as gingrich. romney is easily charicaturized as the "face of wall street" due to his hedge fund hedgemony. even though former democratic senator governer and senator corzine is generating all the headlines as the current boogeyman of financial misdeeds, most voters would probably mis-identify HIM as a republican too.
competent financial stewardship of the nations finances are so vital that i would be forced to vote for romney (as opposed to obama, or any lesser GOP candidate)
your post would have had an uprate from me, except that descended to the same sort of childish name calling which moronic right wingers use when they attack obama.
http://open.salon.com/blog/travelight32/2011/12/09/who_owns_gingrich
Republicans have just started to hit him but they won't hit him like the Dems will.
I still put my money on Mitt to win the primary but as a stout progressive and Obama voter, I salivate at the prospect of Newt being the nominee.
Reagan was the same. At the time he was considered a far right wing whacko...(some of us still think that way)...without a hope...but we let Carter be villainised and ostracised...
When the Supreme Court gave the election to GWB...we were so outraged we swallowed the infamous "Swift Boat Campaign" and gave him a second term.
Never underestimate the power of money and its ability to consistently put the thirty second sound bite in front of a non thinking public....
Here is the truth according to his daughter what was there, since we weren't:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/jackie-gingrich-cushman/setting-the-record-straight.html
It is this visit that has turned into the infamous hospital visit about which many untruths have been told. I won't repeat them. You can look them up online if you are interested in untruths. But here's what happened:
My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested.
Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother.
She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a tumor.
The tumor was benign.
As with many divorces, it was hard and painful for all involved, but life continued.
As have many families, we have healed; we have moved on.
We are not a perfect family, but we are knit together through common bonds, commitment and love.
My mother and father are alive and well, and my sister and I are blessed to have a close relationship with them both.
Want to retract the part of your story that is untrue?
But lets look at the liberals. First up would be Ted Kennedy.
How does murder and cover up rank against crooks and cheats? It gets you a life sentence in the Senate.
And how many terms did Barney Frank serve lining his pockets from both the MACs money? How many more times will Maxine " Freddie is just fine" and "socializing oil is what I'm all about" Waters going to be reelected?
You find me a squeaky clean honest politician on either side of the aisle and I will vote for him/her. It certainly is not Obama. He already has skeletons in his closet and time will inevitably reveal more.
I have to say one thing for Obama. He never struck me as a wife cheater. But then maybe a BJ in the oval office is the minimum requirement one has to do to get reelected.
I have my doubts about Newt because he is old news. He had his hay day in congress. I think that works against him more than skeletons.
You are right, there are way to many people voting that can't think and/or are just not informed. But they are on both sides.
You imply the the only failure of critical thinking is on the part of conservatives, which is just pure spin.
Seems to me Obama's failure to make the liberals happy is proof of the liberals failure of criticism of any kind? I didn't like Obama not just because he is a liberal. It was mostly because I knew from day one he was lying to his own base.
The way I see it, it is sort of OK to lie to me because I'm not voting for him anyway. But to lie to his own party is kind of
low. I just wish he had kept one promise. Remember that oath he had a bunch of people around him take to be honest etc.? How long did that last? About as long as it took him to appoint Geitner. And now we have the Mexican gun thing and his lying under oath "take a lesson from Clinton" attorney general Holder. Did you really think he was going to turn American politics into something honest.
Hope and change meant to me he would have never hired the likes of Geitner, Jones, Holder and he would step up and fire all their asses. Hope and change would mean Obama going into Congressional chambers during Holder's questioning and publicly demanding that he answer the questions and skip the bullshit. Even if the answers implicated Obama himself. That's what I heard when he said hope and change.
Point is if you couldn't tell Obama was absolutely full of crap the first time he opened his mouth, you weren't think at all.
If you thought he was going to bring you hope and change you weren't thinking at all.
What was "hope and change" anyway. A huge generalization that is a hypnotic language pattern. Everyone has their notion of hope and change. And everyone wanted to hear it as the change they needed was coming.
Guess that didn't happen did it?
In any case, if you are really neutral on your notion or dumb voters then hats off to you. Its just that on this forum about 99.4% of comments are liberal minded. So maybe you didn't say it, but I bet a lot of readers here took it the way I did. They read it as "yes, those conservatives are stupid non thinkers". And then they didn't think for a second that many people on both sides are uninformed and non thinking.
Maybe mind reading again but it comes across as anyone who would vote for Newt is a non thinker, but all who voted for Obama were highly intelligent critical thinkers. My point is they were not. Which I why I pointed it out.
Anyway how about a commenting not just on my bad assumption and comment on the "Hope and Change" line that got Obama elected. The use of language generalization etc. That was more the point I was using to show that Obama voters were not thinking either. They were hoping.
BTW, when I am told that an engineering problem I am trying to solve, in a area I know little to nothing about, is impossible and I solve it and get a patent for it, I'm not too worried about my critical thinking skills. Not only did I solve the problem, my critical thinking skills immediately told me the "experts" were wrong.
http://open.salon.com/blog/stlfilmaker/2011/12/11/newt_grandfather_or_ticking_time_bomb
Its just that on this forum about 99.4% of comments are liberal minded.
Did you know that 96.4% of all statistics are made up right on the spot?
And what I have noticed that you just as 99.4% of most people that repond to me do not respond to the substance of what I wrote. They respond by taking cheap shot. Do you really think is somehow actually calculated that number and expected it to be taken literally? No you know I didn't and you still take a cheap shot and do not address the points I made. That's what happens to my comments about 99.4% of the time.
An exception is the lady on the thread about Plan B that actually acknowledged something I said. No one on this thread has answered me with any real input on point with either post of mine.
Same as Catnlion gets no response often on this forum.
What substance would that be, Mr. Cole? Your skill at "critical mindreading"? I’m sure you're quite the whiz with engineering or whatever, but I’m sorry, “critical mindreading” is an oxymoron. Since however you express an interest in responses, let’s get back to critical thinking, given that, unlike telepathy, it’s a real thing. Critical thinking is:
”the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action"
Though each site discussing the topic phrases it in slightly different language, that sounds fair enough to me, so, keeping this definition in mind, let’s see how your remarks to me measure up:
1. you presume to know things about me which you don’t and then you lecture your inaccurate construct of me as if it had any bearing on reality. FAIL.
2. you mention Obama (a president who’s been in power less than three years) at least five times in your initial comment, yet make no mention of the previous 30 years of political history during which conservative/neoliberal economic policies have prevailed in Washington, nor of presidents Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II, all of whom played larger roles in bringing our nation to its current sorry pass than Barack Obama did. I’m no fan of our current president (if you knew anything about me you’d know that, which goes back to point 1. above), but given that he’s such a focus of your rancor, you are obviously quite poorly-versed in actual events and the people who played the largest role in them. Beginning under the Reagan administration, the middle and working classes in this country have been thrown under the bus so the very wealthiest could become even wealthier, while during the same period, conservative/neoliberal policies based on deregulation of the financial sector and tax breaks for -those in the upper socio-economic strata - not to mention two wars which have been funded solely by borrowing money – have greatly increased income disparity, wrecked our economy, and created deficits of staggering proportions. These are not trends which began under Obama, so given your almost maniacal fixation on him without even acknowledging the short-sighted and destructive policies which actually brought us to where we are today, FAIL.
3.. You state that intelligent people can support Newt; to the extent that intelligent people are just as capable of poor decision-making as dumb people, you are correct, but given the role played by conservative policies in the ongoing destruction of the working and middle classes and in generally wrecking our nation’s economy, and given that those are policies which Newt would double-down on, FAIL.
I could go on in this vein, Joseph, but while I find you as amusing as you find you smart, I’ve got better things to do than waste more time on ideologically blinkered blatherers and self-professed “mindreaders.”
For the record, I wish that Paula Jones had just smacked him instead of suing him and I don't care if Clinton had a million affairs. I do care that laws that are, for the most part, supported by feminists MANDATE that a prosecutor investigate private, adult, consensual behavior when pursuing a sexual harassment charge (thus the forcing of Lewinsky to testify and the questioning of Mr. Clinton on his relationship with her) and I do care that the Left refuses to face this issue, this violation of personal freedom that they have created, even when, as in this case, one of their own is entrapped by it.
For more on this issue, I suggest Mr. Sullum of "Reason" magazine.
Frank - No I did not know that. But if so then there is a 96.4% chance you just made that up :). Of course you know where I got that number from. It was my way of saying that is a huge liberal following here and very few conservatives.
And what I have noticed that you just as 99.4% of most people that repond to me do not respond to the substance of what I wrote. They respond by taking cheap shot. Do you really think is somehow actually calculated that number and expected it to be taken literally? No you know I didn't and you still take a cheap shot and do not address the points I made. That's what happens to my comments about 99.4% of the time.
An exception is the lady on the thread about Plan B that actually acknowledged something I said. No one on this thread has answered me with any real input on point with either post of mine.
FRANK: Joseph, do you know that conservatives have no sense of humor?
JOSEPH: No, but if you hum a few bars, I’ll try to fake it.
SCARY!!!!
That's the trouble. The alternative to voting for the Democratic candidate is always such a hideously reptilian that it makes it impossible to not vote AGAINST them.... as it will be this time. I have to vote for the right wing candidate (Obama), simply because the other choice is outright, in your face fascism. At least the Democrats don't preach at me ALL THE TIME.