Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Ridiculous “Anybody But Romney” Spin

The amount of spin on the right these days is stunning. And most of it is so obviously wrong that I can only assume our pundits know they are trying to mislead you. Let’s sort some of this out.

1. Romney underperformed. This is garbage. This is a trick pundits use to make you think someone is winning/losing when they aren’t. Once they know how a race is likely to go, they set fake expectations just beyond what the polling suggests and then declare the candidate a winner/loser for exceeding/failing to meet those arbitrary “expectations.” This lets them declare any winner to “really” be a loser and vice versa.

Michigan gave the perfect example of this. Michigan was ignored until the polls showed Romney losing Michigan. The pundits ran with this and said Romney would be finished if he couldn’t win Michigan. Then the vote came in and Romney began to pull ahead. Suddenly, they raised the expectations. Now Romney needed to win by 10,000 votes to be credible. When he passed that, they raised it to 20,000. Then they just gave up and talked about his failure to connect even though he had exceeded all the expectations they set for him. They did the same thing with Ohio.

They tried to claim Romney “underperformed” in Virginia because he only got 60% of the vote. Yet, they failed to mention that only 250,000 people voted (5% of the state) because they were told the race didn’t matter. That makes this an outlier which can’t be used to judge Romney’s performance.

They even tried to argue that Romney “underperformed” in Oklahoma. Huh? Oklahoma is evangelical country. Evangelicals have been backing Santorum 51% to 19% in other states, so Santorum should have won by 25% easily, but he won by only 5%. Yet the pundits claim Romney underperformed? How?

Further, to promote this under-performance meme, they’ve ignored all contrary facts. For example, after spending the week saying Massachusetts was not excited about Romney, Romney won with 72% of the vote. That’s a blowout. Yet it was quickly dismissed as “expected” even though the pundits laughingly suggested the opposite a few days before. Also, compare their dismissal of this with their initial glorification of Newt’s 47% in Georgia.

The truth is this:
● Romney won 216 delegates on Tuesday compared to 84 for Santorum.
● Romney won 6 of 10 states on Tuesday.
● Romney has blown the others out several times. Santorum’s wins have come in small states and he failed to crack 40% in any state last night.
● Romney has won both “key” states where Santorum needed to win -- Michigan and Ohio.
You tell me who’s winning? Also let me ask: if Santorum can’t win in Ohio or Michigan where will he win?

2. Primaries versus the general election: gaps. The pundits are trying to mix the apples of the primary with the oranges of the general election to attack Romney. Specifically, they claim Romney’s inability to win over evangelicals and hillbillies will hurt him against Obama. Huh? To suggest, that these people might flock to Obama because they don’t like Romney is ludicrous. They would rather vote for Hitler than Obama, who they see as a Muslim who is waging a way against Christianity.

But what if they decide to stay home? First, that won’t happen. These people will turn out to vote even if it’s raining fire to be rid of Obama. Moreover and more importantly, these people live in states like West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Georgia, Mississippi. . . where Obama will lose in a landslide. In other words, they are irrelevant to this election.

Hence, the pundits are fretting over something which simply cannot happen and which will not matter.

At the same time, they are openly ignoring the real gap in this race: Santorum’s problem with women. As with Michigan, Santorum lost women in Ohio by about 9%. That’s conservative women. In a general election he will probably do what he did in Pennsylvania, when he lost “women” (liberal and conservative combined) by 19%. Women make up about 53% of the electorate. That means Santorum needs to win 65% of men just to break even. That’s impossible. So why are the pundits ignoring this or dismissing it?

3. Primaries versus the general election: RomneyCare. The pundits also want you to believe that it will be hard for Romney to win in November because of RomneyCare. Their argument is that the public will be uneasy with Romney because the base has proven to be uneasy about RomneyCare. Give me a break.

The base is not the public. The November election will be fought in the middle and will likely be won or lost in New Hampshire. That means, whoever wins the moderates wins. Because Romney is not a doctrinaire, fire-brand conservative, it will be easy for him to appeal to moderates. Santorum, on the hand, scares moderates. They will not support him. As for RomneyCare, what better person to propose killing ObamaCare than someone who has done something similar and can look voters in they eye and say, “I know why this doesn’t work, because I’ve tried it.” Or do you think the guy who says, “Jesus told me to kill it” is going to be an easier sell to moderates?

4. Can’t buy me love. This has been a consistent pundit meme throughout the primaries: Romney only wins because he has money. Except. . .
● The other candidates also have millions of dollars they are spending.
● Unlike Romney, Newt and Santorum have vast amounts of free paid-in-kind cheerleading from talk radio. They don’t need ads when they have all of talk radio ripping into Romney every day.
● Advertising cannot sway people unless there is reason to be swayed. Or are conservatives zombies who do what Romney commands because they see his ads? If that’s the case, why don't they do what Obama commands or talk radio? Why does this only work for Romney? Magic?
● Finally, if we assume this is true, then doesn’t that mean we need Romney as our nominee because Obama has even more money than Romney, so Santorum will be even more outgunned?
5. Newt + Rick = Nothing. The latest meme is that if Newt would just drop out of the race, then Santorum would win. I doubt it. There is little reason to think Newt’s supporters will jump to Santorum. If that were the case, they would have abandoned Newt in places like Ohio and Michigan where Newt could not win and would have worked with Santorum to take down Romney. They didn’t. It is more likely these are people who aren’t thrilled with Romney but like Santorum/Newt even less. And when Newt drops out, they will switch to Romney or Paul rather than Santorum.

Indeed, if you want a sense of the actual strength of the Anybody But Romney crowd, look at Virginia. In Virginia, the only challenger was Paul. That made Virginia a free vote for the ABR crowd because they could all vote for Paul as a protest against Romney without hurting their own guy (Gingrich/Santorum) by helping the other guy (Santorum/Gingrich). And how did the ABR crowd do? They won 40% of the vote, that’s it. Moreover, only 5% of the electorate turned out even though they had a chance to smack Romney hard (i.e. only 2% turned out to oppose Romney). That’s hardly earth shattering opposition.

The idea that Santorum or Gingrich would win if the other would quit is just more spin. It’s designed to give their supporters hope that something will happen soon to change the race dynamic. But it’s mathematically impossible. Romney only needs to win 48% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination. Santorum needs to win 65% and Newt needs to win 70%. If Newt dropped out and Santorum somehow got 100% of his supporters (an impossible task), he still would only have gotten 51% in Ohio and 45% in Michigan. Even in their best state Georgia (an outlier because it’s Newt’s home state) they would have needed 100% of the vote just to get to 66%. It's just not enough. Romney wins. All Santorum is doing now is playing the spoiler.

106 comments:

Tennessee Jed said...

It is ridiculous. My local Knoxville Rag had a "banner" headline stating how Tennessee helped stop a Romney route and virtually guarantees the race will go on. Santorum won here, but only got one or two more delegates than Mitt thanks to guys like me who waited for over an hour thanks to a convaluted voting procedure. Tennessee is even more evangelical than South Carolina. The abortion issue and (sadly) anti-momonism probably doomed Romney.

I saw something from Laura Ingraham stating "is it time for Rick and Mitt to join forces?" I liked Ann Coulter's column where she made the same point and blows away the notion that Newt and Rick are the same guy, the anti-Romney. It's time for both to drop out, save the money and help Romney start pounding Obama.

Joel Farnham said...

Stop it Andrew! You know real numbers make people nervous.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

What is Critical Race Theory? From what I can tell, it is the new way to view history and politics through race-tinged emotions... or is that emoticons?

T-Rav said...

Andrew, I fully agree on point 1. This is a case of moving the goalposts. North Dakota, to be frank, was something of an upset, since many people were saying Romney (or Paul) would win there; but Mitt was trailing in Ohio until late last week. To say that he's got problems because he didn't win the state by three or four points is a bit disingenuous.

However, I have issues with 2 and 5. Taking the last one first, I think your argument about Virginia as proof of the weakness of the ABR crowd is a bit offset by the fact that the only alternative to Romney was Ron Paul. I wouldn't vote for Paul even as a protest vote, and I suspect many others wouldn't either. And as a counter-example, I could present Missouri, where Santorum was practically the only ABR candidate (since Newt wasn't on the ballot and Paul didn't make much of a showing) and he beat Romney almost two-to-one.

As for the primary-versus-general bit, I can see why Religious Right voters might be "irrelevant," as we're concentrated in red states. But I don't see it as ludicrous to speculate that some of them might stay home rather than vote for Romney. For one thing, if their state is going to go Republican anyway, why bother? And if, as you have repeatedly said, there are lots of conservatives who would refuse to vote for Santorum if he were the nominee (a position I consider equally ludicrous), why wouldn't some of the people who dislike Mitt as strongly as you dislike Rick sit this one out?

Anonymous said...

Joel -

I believe this is Critical Race Theory. :-D

Andrew -

Keep up the good work. If you were paid for this, I'd say give yourself a raise after the election is over.

And as a Floridian, I apologize for whatever stupid election problem we end up creating (that applies to either party). :-)

CrispyRice said...

Yeah, I've heard the "If Newt dropped out then Santorum would kick Romney's butt!!" theory. Mostly it's said with a great deal of animosity at Newt. As someone who voted for Newt in my primary for lack of a better choice, ummm, no. Rick was definitely NOT my second choice.

Joel Farnham said...

ScottDS,

I believe that is it in a nutshell, but I have tried to Google it and I am getting highfalutin' papers which obscure that sentiment.

Anonymous said...

Well, California doesn't play much of a part in this debate yet. But it does have a huge number of convention votes, most of which I suspect will go to Romney. My biggest worry is that Santorum and Gingrich will both stay in this until the bitter end, leaving us with a little over two months to mount an effective campaign against Obama. Money that could be spent on the general election will be spent instead on an ongoing intraparty feud, and the first month after the convention will be spent just healing wounds. That's dangerous, and I think it's time for Santorum and Gingrich both to start thinking about the good of the party and more importantly, the good of the nation. Even the Obama-Clinton battle ended in June of 2008, but ours won't end until August unless Santorum and Gingrich either clinch the nomination now, or get out of the race.

Anonymous said...

Joel: Critical race theory is just the more sophisticated version of the black power movement of the 60s and 70s. Wishing to give it some sort of legitimacy, black leaders and white radicals decided it would be a good thing to couch the movement in legal and social justice terminology with some faux history and sociology thrown in. That way, instead of the Huey Newtons and Eldridge Cleavers of the street you would have the three-piece suit lawyers and social scientists spouting the same nonsense. It started to make its way into the law schools in the 80s, and like a slow-growing cancer, it has been there ever since. It also has ties to black liberation theology, and I have no doubt that Barack Obama is at least somewhat infected by it

tryanmax said...

Andrew, you forgot the one where right wing pundits adopt talking points against Romney from leftist rags but act like they thought them up themselves.

Kit said...

"Andrew, you forgot the one where right wing pundits adopt talking points against Romney from leftist rags but act like they thought them up themselves."

Yep.

EricP said...

Andrew, sincere thanks for helping me get over my disdain for Romney the "frat boy," a characteristic I've never liked in people (even though to look at me in college you would have figured I was in one for longer than the week it took me to de-pledge Phi Delt). While he needs to say less things like his recent "I'm not going to say outrageous things about the President," which reads like the 2012 version of McCain's keeping certain issues like Rev. Wright off the table, becoming more and more of a fan of Romney, and I appreciate the assistance.

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk,

I suspected as much.

AndrewPrice said...

Sorry I'm late guys, but I'll respond in a few moments.

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, I ran across some interesting articles yesterday. In conservative paper after paper, they acted like Santorum won on Tuesday. Several talk radio people did as well. They saw Tuesday as a triumph even though its obvious they would be crowing about a Romney rout if they liked him (or they were being honest) and even though Santorum can't win mathematically.

At this point, the only places Santorum will in are in the South, Pennsylvania and farm country, and he's not even winning those convincingly.

The real shocker Tuesday was Oklahoma.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, The problem with the real numbers it that they require some actual thought. It's a lot easier to just go with a number that looks like it supports you on the surface without bothering to look any deeper -- like the people who reached for Virginia without ever thinking it through or looking deeper.

The math tell us that it's basically impossible for Santorum to win.

LL said...

If Santorum wins the Republican nomination, Obama's chances for winning are vastly better. That's the bottom line.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, The moving goal posts argument always upsets me whenever I see it used. It's an argument of desperation which means things aren't going the analysts way so they keep changing the rules of the game. It is the intellectual version of schadenfreud or sour grapes and it's asinine.

To defend my points 2 and 5...

On Virginia, the biggest number is not the 40%. It's the 40% combined with the low voter turn out. Only 105,000 turned out against Romney. That's 2.5% of voters. If the ABR camp wanted to send a message, you would think they think more than 2.5% would have turned out. Or they would have written in, or something to that effect. In any event, it's just one piece of the puzzle. Look at Ohio and Michigan, where Newt's people refused to shift over. I think the ABR camp is not really an ABR camp but is instead "My Guy Over Romney."

On Missouri, Santorum still only got 55% in a very evangelical state. He needs 65% across the country to win. If he couldn't get it there, then where will he get it? Don't forget, he will need to offset California and New York. So Santorum probably needs 70+ everywhere else.

On staying home... first, the pundits I've seen have not been making that argument (because they are lying). They have instead been implying very heavily that if these people don't vote for Romney, they will back Obama. That's total BS. As for staying home, they are in states where it won't matter. Obama isn't even contesting the states where they matter.

The reality is that this race will be decided in a couple states like New Hampshire and Florida where the moderates will decide it. Both bases are irrelevant to that equation.

AndrewPrice said...

Scott, Thanks! I'll double my salary to zero! :)

I think it's vital to cut through the spin. This is something I've learned to my frustration over the years. Most political races (or wars) are won/lost long before people realize it, and the spin you hear is almost always wrong. And the more enticing it is the more likely it is to be wrong.

So I always try to look behind the spin to ask myself how things really are likely to work logically. And that often blows a hole in conventional wisdoms. This article above is the holes I see in the spin. I'm not saying with 100% certainty this is how it will play out, but this is what logic tells me is likely to happen.

Florida, btw, will be a key battleground in this election. So it could well be back to 2000. Arg.

(I'll have to get back to you and Joel on critical race theory in a few minutes... but your link is probably right! LOL!)

AndrewPrice said...

Crispy, Right now that's an attempt to force Newt out in the hopes it will win things for Santorum. So it's going to get nastier and nastier.

When Newt won Georgia, all the pundits gloated until they realized this would hurt Santorum. Literally by the end of the night, Eric Erickson of RedState was calling Newt "a Santorum spoiler." They're going to push him out.

BTW, I personally think Newt has a bigger claim to staying in the race because he's won bigger states and Santorum's wins have all be anemic. But in the end, I don't think it matters mathematically.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, That's it! LOL! I'll go into detail in a few minutes. Let me get to the other comments first.

Anonymous said...

Andrew: I agree entirely. I would just add that I see trouble brewing in the general election in Ohio as well. And both Florida and Ohio have large blocs of electoral votes.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Sadly, I too think this race will drag on until near the end. And it will not only waste money and time, it will continue to leave a bad taste in people's mouths. If they were fighting over policy, that would be one thing. But they aren't, they are name-calling. That's why Obama's numbers have been creeping up, as a direct response to the negativity of the Republican race.

Unfortunately, I think Santorum in particular is in this as a crusade and will fight to the end. I also personally doubt he will do much to end the bitterness when this is over because he would rather Romney lost in the general election. I actually expect his concession speech will be really nasty.

Newt, I suspect will drop out soon unless he wins the next couple Southern states. He'll make some argument about the good of the country and then endorse Santorum and later endorse Romney.

California and New York won't be enough to push Romney over the top, but they will all but seal the deal. So for once, your state will be politically relevant again! :)

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Nice explanation. My understanding of the theory is this:

1. Law is the vehicle not for protecting society, but for keeping the elites in power.

2. Elites = white racists.

3. Ergo, the law is racist and must be destroyed and replaced with a new law which makes the "powerless" (i.e. blacks) powerful over the "powerful" (i.e. whites).

I ran into that in law school.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, That's been true too. But I'm not trying to debunk the claims against Romney here (not enough room), just pointing out the flaws with the spin... which are enormous.

This is not conservatism's finest moments.

I'll tell you what too, keep everything you see in mind. Because you're going to see this.

1. These same pundits will eventually jump on the Romney bandwagon. They will claim they were always there, but they were just making sure to keep him honest by challenging him.

2. They will attack half of what he does in the first year.

3. He will turn out to be a solid conservative president. And midway through his first term, these same pundits will claim to have seen this coming and will say they always supported him from day one.

4. By the end of his term, they will claim that anyone who supported Santorum was a RINO.

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, Well said! LOL!

I'm not sure there's enough space on a blog to debunk all of it.

What frustrates me even more than them adopting leftwing talking points against Romney is that they are giving Santorum a pass over a couple HUGE issues. It really exposes them as not trustworthy.

AndrewPrice said...

Eric, You're welcome. I have come around a lot on Romney. I didn't see him as conservative or as a good spokesman at first. But over time, he's manage to convince me otherwise. There is much to like there. And it bothers me that he's getting such a bum rap from talk radio. They keep smearing him, promoting false-arguments against him, ignoring similar problems with the others, ignoring bigger problems with the others, and then simply distorting everything he's said and done.

They are also doing a lot of damage right now. Not only are they tearing Romney down, but they are keeping this race going even though it's mathematically over, and all that does is help Obama. But even more so, they are making conservatism look bad (1) by calling a big government liberal a conservative, (2) by adopting liberal talking points and smears, (3) by making claims like the one about money ruining politics and brainwashing people, (4) by tarring Romney's supporters (like Drudge) as dishonest RINOs who have been bought with contributions and who are shading their views to help Romney, and (5) by trying to create a groupthink environment where you better toe the line or else. This is all highly destructive.

AndrewPrice said...

LL, That is the bottom line. I know Romney will beat Obama. I'm pretty sure Newt would beat Obama. I think Paul could be Obama if things go right for him. I know Santorum will get blown out.

DUQ said...

Andrew, Excellent article! Well done. You've give me a lot to think about here. I wish our side was being more honest and would think things through as you have, but I understand why they haven't. It helps them in many ways to keep this race going no matter how it turns out.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, That's right. Ohio will matter. The states that will decide this election will probably be New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, Colorado and possibly Wisconsin.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

Rush floated an interesting idea. The more we drag this out, the less time, Obama and Pals get to denigrate and destroy him.

AndrewPrice said...

DUQ, Sadly, that's right. It's a can't lose for them to support Santorum.

1. If he wins, they were right, and they can always repudiate his loss in the general election as a betrayal.

2. When he quits, they can change sides. Then they get to claim credit for the Romney win, but also can claim they never supported Romney if Romney does anything they don't like or if he loses.

3. The longer the race goes, the higher the ratings and the more they can claim to have "power" by keeping the race going.

4. By opposing Romney they create "non-establishment" cred for themselves.

5. If this destroys the Republicans and Obama wins, then they have four more years of guaranteed ratings as they can complain about Obama every day. And more importantly, they can blame everyone else for the mess.

That's what's going on. That's also why they won't flat out endorse Santorum because they want to avoid being locked down with anything people can hold against them later. So they do it all through implication.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, That's more self-serving BS.

1. Obama doesn't need to attack Romney when Santorum and talk radio are doing it for him. None of the sneaky, deceptive attacks by talk radio are a positive. They are painting an image of Romney that plays right into Obama's campaign and which support stereotypes and talking points the left uses. The rise in Obama's poll ratings and falling GOP rating are proof of this.

2. Rush is ignoring the fact that Obama and the MSM ARE tearing Romney down. They are playing up Santorum, but they are viciously tearing down Romney every single day. They are turning non-gaffes into gaffes. They are attacking him as an out-of-touch rich guy, a flip flopper, a squishy extremist, a dirty Mormon, etc. etc. Obama opposition research has even being fed to people like CNN for use in their primary analysis! The idea that somehow this keeps Obama from attacking is laughable. Does Rush not look at the newspapers or the internet or listen to Obama?

This is just an attempt by Rush to excuse his own misbehavior by making it sounds noble, by claiming it's an attempt to help Romney rather than destroy him. It's like saying, "I beat my kid because it instills character."

T-Rav said...

Andrew, I think the low turnout in Virginia is another function of Romney and Paul being the only two choices. Remember, what applies to the ABR crowd also applies to Romney, so if there was no movement to defeat Mitt at the polls, there was also very little enthusiasm to get out and vote for him. As for Missouri, it's not that evangelical a state--at least, not in comparison to some others; the urban-rural split prevents any one group from totally dominating. Where the 65-70 percent Santorum needs to win is coming from, I have no idea.

T-Rav said...

My own predictions for the election, incidentally, are as follows:

1. Neither Newt nor Santorum will be able to gather the votes needed to stop Romney's momentum at this pointed, and he will sweep to the nomination.

2. Romney will utterly fail to win over independents when put head-to-head against Obama and lose the general election.

3. Starting the Wednesday after Election Day, we will start hearing all about how Romney's defeat is somehow conservatives' (and especially the Religious Right's) fault, because they didn't get behind Romney soon enough or attacked him during the primary, or something.

tryanmax said...

Newt (or his PAC or something) is running a couple fairly "negative" ads in my market all of a sudden--probably for the benefit of Western Iowa.

The first one I heard just goes on and on about not letting the "establishment" (♫ duh-duh-duh ♫) pick the candidate, but the implication is clear.

The other one tries to sound like a lady calling into a radio show (epic fail), but interestingly the only thing it says against Romney is that "he's not one of us." Am I wrong to sense a bit of soft bigotry in that line?

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, The 65% is a proxy. It comes from the number of delegates left. That's how many delegates are needed for Santorum to get to the winning number.

Since there is a rough correlation between winning vote percentage and the number of delegates awarded, it's a proxy for the margins they need to win by across the country to secure the delegates they need. In other words, Santorum needs to win by about 65% nationwide so he can score 65% of the delegates. It's not exact, but it's close enough to explain the problem. In fact, the problem is actually larger than it appears because Santorum is so bad at meeting requirements that he repeatedly gets fewer delegates than his percentage should suggest.

In terms of Missouri, it has a much stronger religious presence than states like California, New York, or anything in the Northeast, Northwest or Southwest. Its Republican Party, for all practical purposes, is pretty similar to those in the South. And 55% there is just not enough since he will need an average of 65% across all the states. And since he will get destroyed in places like California and the northeast, he will need much higher than 65% in the states where he does well. And don't forget, the only places he and Newt combined have come anywhere near the 65% mark is in the South -- and even that assumes that 100% of Newts people will suddenly support Santorum... which logic tells me won't happen (I would bet 6/10).

On Virginia, you are correct that it shows a lack of enthusiasm. But keep in mind, the Romney people had no reason to turn out because they knew he would win. The ABR camp, however, did have a reason to turn out -- to make a statement about Romney. I think that does make a meaningful difference, and it lets us judge the intensity of the ABR camp but not the Romney camp. And since only 105,000 voters out of two million decided to lodge a protest vote (and many of them are genuine Paul people as well), that doesn't bode well for the ABR camp.

But in any event, Virginia isn't the only evidence that the ABR camp just isn't strong enough to win. In most races, they combine for only about 51-54% of the vote, and again, that assumes they all combine. If only 6/10 go from Newt to Santorum, then Romney exceeds 50% in most states.

I'm not saying it's technically impossible for Santorum to win if Newt dropped out. I'm just saying that it's HIGHLY unlikely and would require an amazing set of circumstances.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, That could be, but I doubt it.

Romney has proven he could win independents in Mass. He's won over Republican moderates very early. He's won with moderates in states like Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Michigan. He outpolls Obama among women, who will decide this election.

I think this is what will happen:

1. Romney will win 6/10 of moderates.
2. The base will turn out in force to be rid of Obama.
3. Obama's base will be depressed slightly because Romney is not someone they can hate and because Obama has given them nothing to like -- the latest evidence of this is that Obama is not doing all that well in his own primaries.

Romney wins in a popular vote landslide, but a very close electoral college race.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, That's probably meant for Kansas (the next primary), where the Religious Right is insane. That's creationism central.

And yes, that is exactly prejudice. Let me put it this way... when there is a gap of support within a group, then there must be something between the two candidates which is specific to that group which causes the gap.

Romney is winning every group within the Republican Party (e.g. women, rich, poor, tea party, conservatives, moderates, etc.) or is only losing by a couple points.

With evangelicals, Romney is getting blown out. What would influence evangelicals but not the other groups (since we don't see similar gaps anywhere else)? Religious bias.

Add in the circumstantial evidence that both Newt and Santorum believe they can win this race by suggesting that Romney is not "Christian" and you have your answer. It's religious bias. This is the strength of the ABR camp in the South and rural areas and that's why their ability to defeat Romney is limited to the South and a few rural plains states.

That's also, by the way, why Newt is the better ABR candidate. Newt's people are not fundamentalists, they just think Romney is a RINO. If Newt drops out, they are not very likely to see Santorum as a better choice. But Santorum's people are filled with religious hate and they will back anyone rather than the cultist. So they are much more likely to switch to Newt than Newt's people are to switch to Santorum. Ironic, isn't it that the ABR camp is calling on Newt to leave the race?

Doc Whoa said...

Fascinating analysis Andrew. I think you make some really good points. I share T-Rav's concerns that Virginia should be irrelevant, but I understand your reasoning.

I often step back and ask myself, if I didn't know the names, what would I make of the results. And when I do that, I see Romney as a big winner so far.

Also, like you, I search the web and I found a couple interesting articles where people (like Salon of all places) are pointing out how silly the spin has gotten and they cut to the chase and say that all the numbers show that this Romney is winning huge, but the media is ignoring it for their own purposes.

Joel Farnham said...

The thing that really bothers me is that Hillary was about to be nominated and the Main Stream Media spun it towards Obama.

tryanmax said...

Oh yeah, Kansas. It's always hard to tell who the ads are for around here, especially considering KFAB is a blowtorch station.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I've driven through Kansas many times and the stereotype is true -- talk radio, "Saaaataaaaaaaaaan is under your bed" preachers, and lots of farm reports. That's about it.

btw, Santorum should win Kansas. And watch, talk radio will talk about "new momentum!" and "an affirmation of Romney's Super Tuesday loss." Kansas?

Kit said...

"He will turn out to be a solid conservative president. And midway through his first term, these same pundits will claim to have seen this coming and will say they always supported him from day one."

Didn't this happen with Reagan to a certain extent?

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, Agreed. And the irony here is that the MSM is pushing Santorum on us, and conservatives are falling for it! The MSM is proving that it is smarter than conservatives because it's leading them around by the nose while making them think they are actually going against the MSM. It would be laughable if I were on the left. But since I'm not, this is very troubling.

I can't believe the number of people I've heard who say "I'm voting against Romney because I don't want the media picking our candidate." Yet, the media (conservative and MSM)is picking the candidate and they are steering you toward Santorum. Idiots.

Conservatives right now have abandoned principle and are mindlessly doing exactly what they are told.

AndrewPrice said...

Doc, I've run across some of those article too. The ones on the left are actually rather condescending about conservatives kidding themselves. And the ones on the right are pretty stunned that everyone seems to be ignoring the big obvious truths in favor of a fake storyline.

T-Rav said...

re Kit's point, I want to go on record as saying that I very definitely will not have seen Romney's solid conservative record as President coming, nor have I supported him from day one. So if I start saying otherwise (in the event he actually wins in November and then governs in a conservative manner), my web account has probably been hacked, and you should contact the proper authorities.

T-Rav said...

Andrew, the Missouri GOP is much more of a South/Midwest blend, so I think your analysis there is off. But otherwise, yes, I would agree that it's become virtually impossible, mathematically speaking, for anyone besides Romney to win the nomination. Oh happy day.

rlaWTX said...

T-Rav - you never disappoint in your up-front viewpoints. if you suddenly change after a Romney win, we will certainly look to see if the kittens or those n black helicopters have hacked you!
(and your prediction scares me!!)

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, Reagan's name is actually the one that comes to mind. Reagan was attacked from the "country clubbers" (who are now known as RINOs) as a simpleton. He was attacked from the economic right for various "liberal" things he did in California, for representing the actors union, and for not being a movement conservative in the sense of Barry Goldwater. He was seen as impure by social conservatives because of his divorce and because he was pro-choice until he changed his mind.

It wasn't until the general election that they all finally got behind him.

And even then, people were ready to abandon him as late as 1983. Newt is the perfect example of this. He was calling Reagan's administration "a failed presidency" in the Congressional record in the early 1980s.

Then the economy turned around and Reaganomics finally took hold. Suddenly, everyone was claiming Reagan as their guy and saying they always supported him. Bull.

I think his history is very instructive.

So is Clinton's history, by the way. His party hated him. He was everything they didn't want. He was a stupid governor from a small state who was bought and sold by Perdue Chicken. And they were ready to throw him overboard until he turned it all around. Suddenly they all loved him and claimed he was always one of them -- which he wasn't, he was part of a moderate breakaway group called the Democratic Leadership Counsel, who wanted to move the party right.

I see a lot of similarities here.

Kit said...

I remember reading in his diaries where he mentions someone criticizing him for "abandoning conservative principles" in 1981 or 82.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, LOL! Well said. Don't worry, we won't hold it against you. And if Romney turns out to be a disaster, you can tell us that you were right and we were wrong. :)

I do think, however, that you will be pleasantly surprised. I'm still trying to sum up my reasons for that, but I do believe it.


On Missouri, I will bow to your knowledge of Missouri politics as I see it only from the outside looking in.

AndrewPrice said...

rlaWTX, I'm thrilled that T-Rav speaks his mind. I know I'm not always right and I'm happy to hear other views. Also, much of what we discuss is pure opinion and there is no right or wrong answer, so I'm happy to hear other views. I really don't want C-ramma to be an echo chamber on any issue.

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, I was young when Reagan got elected and he was the first President I really paid attention to on a day to day basis. I knew a lot about Carter, but didn't watch him day to day. And I can tell you that conservatives were brutalizing Reagan in 1981-1982. He could do nothing right in their eyes. His tax cuts weren't enough. He spent too much. He didn't wipe out the Department of Education as promised. He botched the handling of the Falklands War. He got Marines killed in Beirut (1983). Everything he did was savagely attacked from right and left. But the voters knew better. And then it all finally took hold and suddenly all the people who HATED him for the first two years had always been his BFFs.

Joel Farnham said...

I asked about Critical Race Theory earlier because at Breitbart.TV, Joel Pollock took apart a bimbette anchor on CNN. Part of what they were talking about is Critical Race Theory. Believe it or not, that was THE first time I had ever heard of it and I suspect a good many people don't know anything about it.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, Theories like this tend to be kept in the shadows. They are well known to the advocates for that particular issue and they write papers about them and lecture about them, but they don't share them with the general public because it doesn't sit well with the public.

I first heard of this in law school and haven't really heard it discussed openly since. But since I am aware of it, I hear it used by many black pundits who seem to have internalized it but know they can't really speak about it openly or people would hate them.

It's the same way socialists hide behind claims of loving democracy when their literature paints a very, very different picture.

In this case, the theory is about political power. It has become the basis for things like race-proportional voting, reparations, and nullification of criminal laws which affect blacks. It is a defense black leaders raise whenever they are accused of crimes, i.e. that whether they did it or not is irrelevant, and the "real crime" is that white people are trying to destroy a black person using the law.

It also advocates race-proportional voting. They actually propose that Congress be divided along racial percentages and that minority seats could only be voted on by minorities. (Minorities could of course also vote in white races.) Then all decisions must be approved by each ethnic groups to pass. Similarly, cities with black populations would effectively would be granted independence, though they would continue to get aid. The idea is that blacks cannot be free so long as there are more whites in the country, so they want a quasi-separate black country within the country. I kid you not. This is the kind of shit you see from black law professors and race hustlers when they speak to each other... but which they only hint at with the public at large.

CrisD said...

I agree with Joel- people won't look at the math.

But also, the press is kind of setting up a situation whereby we would suddenly expect everyone to "drop" their candidate and get behind the front-runner when people are still out there running!

I remember not thinking too highly of Reagan when I first heard of him because of the "mere" actor diss!

Sorry I am chiming in so late---

:)

AndrewPrice said...

Cris, Late is fine! :)

The thing about the math, is that you would hope that the experts would have looked at it. In fact, I couldn't image working professionally as an expert without looking at the numbers to understand not only what is happening, but also what can or cannot happen. But they haven't because it doesn't help the case they want to make and the case they want to make isn't designed to help the GOP, it's designed to help themselves.

In terms of their current plan, I think they want to drag this out and ultimately the MSM wants to split the GOP.

People forget that Reagan was not popular when he got elected.

CrisD said...

Yes, Andrew,
Not to put too fine a point on it but the consumer of news only buys into the news if the consumer is too dumb to be suspicious :) If a Republican is not suspicious of news by now, well, nix that, I guess some are not too critical!

tryanmax said...

I was just a baby when Reagan was elected, but it makes me wonder how I would have reacted to him were I old enough. Probably depends partly on how old I'd make myself for the time. I remember in HS thinking that Bill Clinton was the devil because that is what all conservative adults believed. In retrospect, he was a fairly decent president (overlooking his "extracurricular activities") and better than "W" in most respects.

Koshcat said...

Although I want this wrapped up as well, I am not worried that it will hurt Romney, assuming he is the candidate. First of all, it didn't hurt Obama at all. By the time of their convention, both sides were all hugs and kisses.

I will be shocked if it goes past 6/5 as the vast majority of primaries will be done by that day.

I think this fight might actually help Romney and the GOP if he is chosen. Over the last 4 years or more, there has been a fight over the soul of the Republican party, especially between the religious right and the tea party. At this time, if Romney wins, I think it is more of a win for the tea party. Candidate NOT from Washington who is more focused on economics (and actually understands macroeconomics) than on social issues. Moderates are watching and they tend to be uncomfortable with people such as Rush. If Sanatorium wins, they will flee and take the women with them.

Finally, Romney comes out ahead because nothing is really sticking to him. He's rich! Yes, he was a successful businessman. His dad was a politician! OK, so he looked up to his dad and wanted to be like him. HE SIGNED ROMNEYCARE!!! A state health plan was going to happen in Mass and the democratic legislature would have overridden a veto. He actually worked with the other side pulling the plan more to the right. So he has shown he can work with people from many sides and come to compromises. Isn't that the primary job of the president?

Party trumps person. Just look at the idiots the TPOTUS has put on the Supreme Court and look me in the eye and tell me you want four more years.

AndrewPrice said...

Cris, That's exactly right. Most people just aren't suspicious enough of things they hear on the news. That's why marketing can be very effective and that's why the MSM has lasted this long.

The problem here is that the conservative media has decided to adopt things the MSM advocate when they help make the point the conservative media wants to make. Also, I think many in the conservative media aren't as thoughtful as they like to pretend.

CrisD said...

tryanmax!
I HATED Clinton!!! Haha!! Just the way you said that about the grown-ups and him being better than Bush made me LOL! I really hated Hilary more which is quite an accomplishment for her!

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I've seen the same thing several times now. None of these guys is ever what the conventional wisdom (conservative or otherwise) ever paints them as.

Reagan was considered a lightweight, yet he became our most heavyweight and most intellectual president in generations.

Clinton was seen by conservatives as Satan himself and a hard-left ideologue. But he was actually an unprincipled moderate.

Bush II was seen as a solid conservative, because of his social conservative side, who would hire economic conservatives and foreign policy conservatives to run those areas. He turned out to be an unprincipled big spending liberal neocon adventurer with a penchant for cronyism.

Obama was seen as a genius ideologue (by the right) and genius moderate (by the left). He's proven to be a moron with no real ideology but who hires crazy hard-left ideologues to handle the day to day business and who loves cronyism more than Bush.

In each case, the evidence was there, but people refused to see it because the conventional wisdom grew out of the PR rather than really looking at people rationally.

One of the things I have learned to do professionally is to size people up based on limited facts, and the thing I've noticed is that the things which the MSM uses to judge people are never the things that really help you understand a person. They base their analysis on the big obvious stuff, when you really need to judge someone by sifting the details.

AndrewPrice said...

Cris, I hated Clinton at first as well, and I really hate Hillary. But Clinton turned out not to be the ideologue he seemed at first. I would say I like him, but I will admit that he was nothing like what I expected right after he won the election.

Of course, I also think he got lucky to have a Republican Congress keeping him in check and he lived through a good period economically and foreign policy-wise because of the peace dividend after Reagan won the Cold War.

AndrewPrice said...

Koshkat, I agree on all points.

I think ultimately this won't hurt because (1) they will all make up before the end and those who don't will be ignored, (2) a Romney win will be a repudiation of the Religious Right and an affirmation of the Tea Party's power (even though Romney has not adopted the Tea Party officially) and that makes the party much more popular, and (3) all the attacks on Romney are that he's a horrid moderate... which will play well with the very moderates we need.

I think early June is probably when this will end as well, barring a major surprise, though Santorum may cling on until the end -- he'll just be ignored.

And you're right that nothing sticks on Romney. I keep hearing the analysts say "oh, look at all the gaffes he makes," but they always go back to the same one or two and no one seems to care about those. It's like they want to criticize him but have nothing they can criticize him with.

I wouldn't say yet that he's at the point of a Reagan (teflon) or Clinton, who could do or say anything without it sticking, but instead we have a guy with nothing that you can tag him with. And that will make it impossible for Obama to avoid his own record by making the race about Romney.

T-Rav said...

Andrew and rla, thanks for being so tolerant of my gadfly-ness. ;-)

Believe me, I want to see Romney win and then govern as a conservative more than anything, and even if he doesn't fulfill on the latter, he'll still be infinitely superior to Obama. And if my predictions do come true, I'll be too busy gnashing my teeth to say "I told you so."

This is just one of those areas where we may never fully agree, but it's all right. At the end of the day, we can still all agree that the Left is just crazy. And also that the Star Wars prequels are an insult to the human race.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, So true! We can always agree that the Star Wars prequels are an affront to humanity! :)

CrisD said...

Andrew :)
but.but.but. didn't Clinton raise taxes (btw. I know he did welfare reform, er, Newt did, according to Newt)

New Gingrich said...

Anything good that Clinton did was me. Anything he did that was bad was Obama.

AndrewPrice said...

Cris, I remember all kinds of horror stories about Clinton and very few of them came true. And the ones that did were things like Don't Ask Don't Tell, which conservative now defend.

Clinton did a lot of good things. But he also did some very bad things. I think he's directly responsible for 9/11, for example. But one thing he was not, was what people feared he would be.

AndrewPrice said...

Newt, LOL! There actually is a lot of truth to that idea. After Clinton's first two years, the rest of his administration was basically spent signing bills created by the Republicans.

Patti said...

have you heard dean's spin today about santorum being a bigger threat than what the dems had originally thought? (i don't have time to read thru comments, so forgive me if this has already been discussed). i actually laughed out loud when i heard it.

nice try, libtard.

AndrewPrice said...

Patti, I hadn't heard that, but it doesn't surprise me at all. They are playing up Santorum in the hopes of getting the GOP to support him. It's almost comical, except so many in the GOP are actually falling for it. Scary.

Joel Farnham said...

This is a thought on the revelations earlier today that Obama consorted with racist anti-semite like Bell. Obammy even required his students to study Bell. But that isn't the BOMB-SHELL. Anyone who cared to find out this information did. The BOMB-SHELL is the MAIN STREAM MEDIA didn't do it's job. I think eventually the Media might understand, but by that time we will have a new president and a humbled media.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, They're still trying that now. Did you see that some of them released edited version of the film to make it seem pointless?

The Daily Caller (I think) had a story from the people who had the tape, who admitted they wanted to suppressed until after the 2008 election.

The thing is, for anyone who has been paying attention, none of this should be a surprise. Obama has all the signs of a radical race-hating background.

Joel Farnham said...

Yes, Andrew, but you miss the forest for the trees are in the way. This is the Media's JOB. They are supposed to dig into things. They failed horribly and Breitbart, that magnificent bastard, knew it and planned on destroying the hold the media has on America. This will drip out interminably until the Media has absolutely no credibility left.

AndrewPrice said...

Interesting thought Joel. I hadn't seen this as an attack on the media, but you're right. This makes them look much worse than it makes Obama look, because it really was their job to uncover this. Excellent thinking!

Joel Farnham said...

In the video, Joel Pollack, an authentic African-American (Born in Africa), married to a mixed race woman with child, is accused of racism by a "White Guy" Jay Thomas as being racist by saying, "Why are you afraid of a black man?" All the while this bimbette is getting flustered by a man not willing to be bullied. It is almost as if it was written by SNL at their best.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, You should know that conservative blacks are not authentically black. And thus, white liberals are more "African American" than conservative blacks. Hence, Bill Clinton was the first black president and Clarence Thomas is just an Uncle Tom stooge.

Also, being married to a non-black is considered a betrayal. Remember this: LINK?

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

You are still missing the forest for the trees are in the way. To you and I, the media is wrong. To the average American, authentically black? What is that? It will be dismissed out of hand as a trick or a caricature perpetrated and promulgated by "Angry Black Men".

Breitbart has achieved a paradigm shift. Now, the media has to be on it's toes, because any one can say now, "I have a video of what you showed last night from a different perspective. Do you want to see what you missed?"

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure the media will behave any better. I think they'll keep right on spinning and hiding, and they will hope that the public by and large still doesn't pay attention. Because between what appears on a blog and what appears on the nightly news, the public still believes the nightly news.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

Until this came up on Breitbart's site, the MEDIA didn't do a damn thing. Now, it has to wait for Breitbart to give up his next video in order to denounce it. And the drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, is going to be hard on the Media. They are supposed to always be in the know. People will eventually try to locate Breitbart because it will become very obvious to anyone that the Media isn't telling the truth.

Remember how Breitbart dripped out video after video on Acorn. Yes, it has changed shape with the willing media going along with it.

Joel Farnham said...

One more thougt, then I will drop it.... for now. Who cares if the Media ever will behave? They, by their very nature, are going to have to work overtime just to keep up with this style of attack. No one will be willing to ever listen to them again if they can't defeat Breitbart. Their time is up, only they don't know it yet.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, There is certainly something to that. The media is not prepared for (and doesn't know how to handle) someone running rings around them and exposing their failures.

That's what SOPA was about. It was bad enough when a whole legion of small bloggers were pointing out stories they'd ignored and exposing their spin... so they wanted the government to give them control over the content of the internet to shut these people down. But now to have someone prominent actually take up the challenge and attack them directly is much worse.

The world is changing and the MSM is slowly fading away, whether they want to admit it or not, because of their own prior failures. They had a golden goose and they abused it to death.

AndrewPrice said...

ACORN was a great example of a story the MSM wanted buried and which Breitbart exposed. It is becoming very true that their ability to ignore stories or drive the news cycle and spin the news is failing.

tryanmax said...

Joel, here's the one thing that I think you might be overlooking: There are still a lot of members of the "Silent Generation" around drawing Social Security and relying almost completely on the networks for their news. This newfangled internet is inherently untrustworthy and these bloggers who stare at computers all day are weirdos (unlike them, who stare all day at TVs). They haven't listened to the radio since rock-n-roll took over. They're oblivious to the fact that their local paper is nationally owned. But these people vote.

The MSM* (*a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party) won't fade away completely until after this generation dies off. Until then, they have their last hurrah to get SOPA and whatever else they need passed to maintain their authority after their last demographic shuffles off. Boomers are too splintered for the MSM to count on, and anyone younger is too tech-savvy to count on the MSM.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I think you're right. It will take a long time for things to change, but they are changing.

I think this whole issue is like the Wikipedia. Frankly, for noncontroversial things, the Wikipedia is an excellent source of information (often the best). Yet, the older generation scoffs at it because it wasn't build in the traditional sense with "experts" (who presumably are never wrong and never biased).

But younger people have started to see it as an excellent resource and they use it a lot. (They've also learned when they can and cannot trust it.)

So what you have is that people are slowly adopting it and it will eventually be seen as equivalent to (or better than) the old encyclopedias, which are very limited and also biased on controversial issues.

I see the parallel with the MSM, where one segment of the population has grasped that the old "official source" is no longer a good one and have moved on. But a huge chunk of the population is still stuck in the idea that the old source is the only reliable source. But that's fading. As it fades, the MSM is losing to the Breitbarts. And the Breitbart team is pushing that along by offering evidence that they are better than the "official" sources.

Joel Farnham said...

tryanmax,

They are dying off faster than you think and they are the shock troops of many a Tea Party. They are the ones who buy those new-fangled things for their kids. They know what is at stake with ObamaCare. The Main Stream Media won't go away overnight, but they have been made obsolete by Breitbart and blogs like Commentarama.

BTW The Wikipedia page on Critical Race Theory has been changed at least twenty seven times since the Breitbart Mustard Gas stink bomb went off. And someone keeps on trying to put in a white woman as Pollack's wife on Joel Pollack's Bio at Wikipedia as well. It seems Wikipedia learned early-on that some people will attempt to make changes on their pages for nefarious reasons and has an interesting history pages for edits just in case these edits prove to be false. :-)

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, The Wikipedia has gotten rather good at exposing things people put in for political reasons. They aren't perfect and some articles still become battlegrounds, but now you can see who is changing what and they will actually go in and "officially" reverse changes or take things out that they believe are biased.

That said, the politically controversial stuff remains unreliable. It's still a much better source for everything else.

And let me point out, the old encyclopedias were no more reliable. I still remember them playing up liberals and skipping over their scandals while denigrating Reagan. With the Wiki, people are at least able to fight about it, rather than having some NYC publishing liberal decide what is "true" and what isn't.

In terms of the MSM dying off, I think it is happening, I just don't think we are there quite yet. I think maybe 25% of the population is at that point, with another 20% to join them in the next few years. The rest won't come over until "the authorities" start to regularly quote webpages instead of the MSM.

tryanmax said...

You should rename the site "Zeitgeistarama" because the theme of today's RWR is that Romney "can't get a break." If he talks numbers, he's too distant, if he tries to connect, he's awkward, etc. etc. etc.

Talk about a bunch of self-serving baloney! Who is it that won't give Romeny a break. Pthzzz!

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I like to think of Commentarama as Thinkingaheadarama... "tomorrow's ideas, today."

:)

That's an interesting theme. It suggests that RWR is about to start shifting over to Romney. Maybe they do understand the numbers after all?

tryanmax said...

Well, I haven't heard all the shows yet, but it's a fair bet that if Ingraham and Limbaugh have both picked it up, several others have, too. I wouldn't expect Beck to pick it up, but I'd be most interested in Hannity/Levin (they're just two blocks of the same show). I might actually listen to Sean today just to avoid listening to Mark.

AndrewPrice said...

Putting on my cynical hat....

I'm not surprised Rush picked up this theme. He's the smartest of the bunch and he must know by now that Santorum can't win and will increasingly be seen as a spoiler.

So he needs to be ready to bail on Santorum before he himself gets seen as promoting a spoiler. And what better way to get credibility right now than to start defending Romney from the evil "MSM"? He can basically support both guys that way and then declare victory no matter which way the race shifts. Either he was for Romney before being for Romney was cool or he was just being fair to Romney while still being a true conservative. Either way is a win for him.

Ingraham is the harder one. She's been 100% anybody but Romney, so for her to suddenly say anything like this runs contrary to basically everything she's been saying or doing. I would BET that her audience numbers are dropping the further she goes into the tank for Santorum.

Or, she finally started reading the articles at places like Salon.com which laughed at conservatives for falling for the spin and she's decided she's been misbehaving? I would bet it was the ratings issue.

(BTW, the governor of Mississippi endorsed Romney as did Haley Barbour.)

tryanmax said...

Ingraham has become somewhat of a fascination of mine. When Herman Cain was in the race, she was ALL-Romney and vociferously anti-Cain. I'll give her credit for standing by her words when Cain dropped out. She crowed about what a good thing it was "for conservatism." (You know, because Cain was watering that down.)

Then, mysteriously, she became pro-Newt for a New York minute before falling head-over-heels for Santorum, who she earlier blasted as too focused on social issues. That's coming from Ms. Culture Warrior herself.

I think she was for Bachmann at some point, too, but I'm not remembering where it fit. But the point is, she's now come full circle while denying any movement the whole time. In a way, despite having the worst alibi, she almost has the best.

AndrewPrice said...

Interesting. I'd forgotten she was pro-Romney at one point, but you're right. I remember that early on when I was still doing the profiles. I think she was also hoping that supporting Romney would keep Christie out of the race?

It sounds to me like she's fishing around for bandwagons (other than Cain, which I can't explain). It will be interesting to hear how she changes her tune now? One thing I have noticed with her is that whatever she currently believes is right and everyone else is not just wrong, they are @#$%^ing wrong!

tryanmax said...

I'm starting to believe that there isn't just one Laura Ingraham, but actually several Laura Ingraham clones. Whenever a new clone is awakened, it takes a new political position because it has no knowledge of the previous clone's position. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are trying to kill Laura Ingraham...and succeeding. They are probably going mad more than the rest of us who only listen to her.

AndrewPrice said...

LOL! I desperately want a clone... but we'd probably only end up killing each other. :(

Joel Farnham said...

Strangely enough, I think people have finally done the math and realize that, short of a miracle, Romney gets the nomination. It doesn't surprise me the abandonment of Santorum. I just want to see the way some of these "purveyors of current wisdom" jump through hoops to get on the right side of Romney.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, The math is pretty clear. It's not impossible for Santorum to win, but it is virtually impossible. Moreover, I think Romney is gaining momentum. Lots of people you wouldn't expect are endorsing him and he's rising in the polls in all the non-southern states. Oddly, he's even ahead in Mississippi, which I don't understand.

There comes a point where it gets really obvious that Santorum is just a spoiler, and talk radio needs to be off the bandwagon before that point arrives or they risk a backlash.

Like you, I'll be curious to see how they jump ship. I think making Romney a victim of the MSM would be a good route because it lets them "come to Romney's rescue" rather than have to admit they were wrong.

But we'll see how they handle it.

tryanmax said...

Just got around to watching the video Joel posted featuring Joel Pollak and Soledad O’Brien. Somebody needs to slap that bimbette. Professionalism much?

BTW, Who is the comely black lady that seems to be the only one at CNN with any sense?

AndrewPrice said...

You mean Erin Burnett? If so, then she came from CNBC where she did financial news for a long time.

Or do you mean someone else?

Joel Farnham said...

tryanmax,

I am not sure, but I think she has been identified as someone who works for The Blaze. I could be wrong.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, You mean on the tape? I have no idea. I will defer to Joel on that. I thought you meant "on CNN." In that case, Burnett is about as close to sane as it gets, though not by much. Although, I do like Jon King. He's relatively fair.

tryanmax said...

I guess it was a panel, so she could have been from another station. I just find it interesting that the only person besides Pollak talking sense was a black woman. I also find it interesting that attractive women in news trend conservative.

AndrewPrice said...

Wait a minute, are you saying Katie Couric isn't attractive? ;)

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