Rick Santorum supporters have a difficult but important choice to make in the next few days as the Florida primary comes up on Tuesday.
Rick Santorum has left Florida. He knows he cannot win Florida. FLorida is the first of the Winner take all states. In other words, Florida is crucial.
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are running neck and neck in Florida. By all accounts this race is going to be very close.
The Santorum voters can make the difference.
The Republican establishment is working overtime to make Mitt Romney the nominee. While those of us who support Newt and those who support Rick Santorum may disagree about who is the best candidate, we all agree Mitt Romney is not the candidate. He is a liberal who probably cannot defeat Obama this fall and even if he does, will govern much as Obama did.
If Romney wins Florida, he will be ordained as the Republican nominee and both Gingrich and Santorum will have a very hard time stopping him.
If you are a Rick Santorum supporter, it is time to think strategically. If Romney wins, the race is over for Santorum. If Newt wins, he may or may not be able to continue, but that that is a different story.
If you vote for Rick Santorum in the Florida primary, you are splitting the vote with Newt. Splitting the vote with Newt will guarantee a Romney win.
That we all agree must not happen.
If you support Rick Santorum, use your vote to help stop Mitt Romney in Florida. Whether you agree or disagree with Newt Gingrich, he is close enough to stop Romney with your help.
If you are a Floridian who supports Rick Santorum, I strongly urge you to vote for Newt Gingrich in the Florida Primary. If you know someone who lives in Florida, please urge them to vote for Newt Gingrich.
Let's stop Romney and keep a liberal from becoming the Republican nominee.
Tags: conservatives, establishment, gingrich, gop, mitt, newt, rick, romney, santorum
Permalink Reply by Bobby C on I do not think that Romney is a Fraud, nor do I believe that Newt is a bad person, mistakes yes, bad no. I believe there are some things in this weeks results that are very revealing and promising at the same time.
First, it is clear that the American people are finally fed up with the political infighting and these politicians tearing each others character down.
Second, at the last CNN debate Santorum showed himself to be a bigger person than Romney and Gingrich, because he on no uncertain terms declared he was fed up with this fighting.
Third, Santorum with little or no money sweeps three states, making him the person who has won the most states. This says to me that elections can not be bought and the American people are putting their foot down.
Whether you agree or disagree with Santorum's positions he is the only one who has not crawled way down into the mud.
Permalink Reply by Agi Yaeger on Unfortunately Bobby, it is Rick's turn for receiving the lambasting. That's how it always happened, if you remember. First the enemy on both sides allowed the candidate to reach the top, starting with Bachmann, Cain then Perry, Gingrich. They all came up to the top just like Santorum did. I liked them all. It's not a matter of us liking him. It's a matter of how after the smell of victory both sides of the political machinery inject the agony of defeat.
It's watching a gladiator fight....survival of the fittest. Right now we know that so far evil seems to be the victor. It's reality.
Permalink Reply by Bobby C on Agi,
I am not saying I like Rick Santorum. If I had my choice I would have stuck with Rick Perry. But that's
life in the whirlwind of this political hurricane and I can't wait for the storm to be over.
"What has turned folks off is Mitt Romney's scorched-earth campaign, which has managed to unfortunately suck all the rest of the candidates into a circular firing squad of a childish food-fight that is of zero interest to the Republican base voter."
i DON'T HAVE THE ANSWER, but I have a gut feeling.Anyone but Romney/Obama
Permalink Reply by Karen Fraker on Why is Ann Coulter saying on CPAC that you are not conserative, and that oday you will not reverse Obamacare? I know that Ann is for Romney and will say what ever she needs them to vote for him and putting Newt down. She keeps saying that Romney is the most conservative. WHAT? Can someone explain how any of this makes sense, and how we can shut her up, about this?
Romney is an empty suit, a cardboard cutout, a photo-shop poster. Sincerety and inspirational, not so much.
Permalink Reply by Alexia MacReady on An article from American Thinker that needs reading:
Thus, after South Carolina's record-setting primary turnout, the Republican Party has now seen a total of five events in a row where turnout was down compared to 2008. This includes the three events from this week along with Nevada and Florida.
Yes, something has made Republicans less excited about beating Barack Obama than they were about John McCain maybe replacing George W. Bush. Who knew that was even possible?
What gives?
The answer is fairly clear. The candidates have forgotten about Obama. What has turned folks off is Mitt Romney's scorched-earth campaign, which has managed to unfortunately suck all the rest of the candidates into a circular firing squad of a childish food-fight that is of zero interest to the Republican base voter.
Given that all have entered the negative arena, though, you might ask, Why blame Mitt?
Good question, but it has an easy answer. The Romney campaign and their PACs have the lion's share of the ad money and thus can dictate the ground rules. Also, for the record, they started it, along with Ron Paul in Iowa, in a panicked response to Newt's double-digit lead in the polls. In Florida it got so bad that 99% of Mitt's ads were negative towards Newt Gingrich, and only 1% were positive about Mitt. He ran 65 TV ads to every one Newt could run.
I guess the Romney campaign forgot a person named Barack Obama. They damned near forgot about Romney. At the very least, they thought he was irrelevant.
Ironically, no one has attacked Rick Santorum, so he has gotten a pass from talk radio and others in the media for being above the fray -- and yet most of his ads have been negative ads, and most have been aimed also at Gingrich. And yes, Gingrich, who owned the polls in November and early December -- and then again during South Carolina week -- jettisoned his winning strategy of focusing on liberals and also joined the ugliness. Predictably, he has started losing again.
Moreover, voters stopped turning out. They were turned off. In South Carolina Newt was able to keep the focus on liberals on issues of racism, work ethic, public schools, unions, judges, Iran, and media bias. This excited voters, and the Palmetto State had a 35% jump in participation over 2008. They were jazzed. To paraphrase the Merle Haggard tune, Newt was "kicking liberals' asses and raisin' hell."
This raises the question: if this is what everybody wants, why is it so hard for candidates and consultants to figure out? It is patently obvious that conservative and Republican base voters wants to hear about only two things. They want to hear a vision for beating Barack Obama and then a vision for reversing the damage Obama and his buddies in Congress have done. That is the only thing folks are interested in, and Newt was able to keep the focus in S.C. on mostly just that.
Yes, I know -- people respond to negative ads, so there is a case to be made that "they work." But you have to define "working." The main way people respond is by staying home. They stop caring. And to achieve this result, you have to run a ton of negative ads. So if you're willing and able to run a scorched-earth campaign and just mercilessly hammer an opponent by means of your big budget, you can keep his or her numbers down and win a contest.
There is one teeny-tiny little problem. Once you scorch the earth...well, the earth is scorched. The fields are salted, so to speak. They quit bearing fruit. What Mitt Romney in particular and the entire party in general should understand from the past five contests is that this is an absolutely losing strategy in the long run. Obama will be easily beaten if the GOP has an excited base that donates and talks up the candidates and turns out and is aggressive about yard signs and bumper stickers and other iterations of intensity -- because it is positive intensity that attracts new voters.
A depressed or even disgusted conservative base means another McCain or Dole or Bush 41 campaign -- in other words -- four more years of Obama. Put another way, the choice is a raucous, enthusiastic election à la South Carolina -- or the low-turnout models seen in the past five states. The only way to regain what the party (not necessarily just Newt) had in South Carolina is to refocus on Obama and liberals.
When I wrote on the day of the Florida primary that Mitt had earned only a shallow and costly victory, I was accused of merely having sour grapes and of not having a case. Perhaps my grapes were a bit sour. That doesn't change the fact that the analysis and prediction were right on the money. Mitt's scorched earth has indeed come back to haunt not only him, but the entire party. Even Santorum can claim wins only with tiny voter populations that have been carpet-bombed with negativity. He has shown zero ability to promote enthusiasm or turnout either.
In a cycle when primary turnout should be at an all-time high, the hatred the candidates have for each other is trumping their love for the country and turning voters away in droves. There is no way this is a winning strategy in 2012. If one of these candidates does not re-apprehend what the voters are demanding, we will all be losers.
Permalink Reply by Bobby C on There is an even bigger picture here than just voters being turned off with these candidates. The bigger picture goes something like this. Since 2008 there has been a move away from political parties 37% are now unenrolled or independent voters. 34% are registered Democrats and 28% are registered Republicans.
If you take a look at registered Republicans 67% are considered conservative. 42% of conservative Republicans voted in 2010 and 38% of moderates voted in 2010. If 42% of the 67% voted and 38% of moderates voted that equates to about 12% of the voters.
This means that many Republicans are sitting on the sideline or switching to Independent.
This does not translate into a majority of support for Republicans in this country. Nor does it translate into support for Democrats. What it translates into is that the Republican party and Democratic parties have been disenfranchised by the voters.
For anyone to believe that the Republican Party is going to bring these voters back are kidding themselves.
Just this week Congress's approval rating hit a historic low of 10%.
Let's look at this from another perspective if 12% participate in the primary and Romney gets say 30%, Santorum 30% and Gingrich 30% & Paul 10% that is about 3.6% of the turnout allocated to each of all registered voters.
Is it fair for 3.6% of voters to pick our next nominee. If 30% or 40% picked the nominee that would be fairer. I do not see how either party is going to make a case to voters either way. They will go into the voting box, hold their nose and hope for the best outcome.
Unless we stop labeling folks conservative, moderate, mittens, true conservative, social values, liberal, progressive and get to the root of things being AMERICA FIRST, the American people will continue being disenfranchised because neither a Republican or Democrat represents them period.
© 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
