Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee for president. Why? Because Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and the GOP primary/caucus schedule favors a non-Mormon candidate.Read the rest here.
White Evangelical Christians are perhaps the strongest, most loyal constituency of the Republican Party. That is Romney’s greatest obstacle to the nomination. In a Pew poll conducted just before Thanksgiving, two-thirds of Evangelical Christians expressed the belief that Mormonism is not a Christian religion. In other polls, a significant majority of Evangelicals consistently express doubts that they would vote for a non-Christian for president.
Romney = Mormon = non-Christian
That same Pew poll, conducted shortly before Herman Cain’s implosion, showed the pizza godfather leading nationally among Evangelical Republicans at 26%. Newt Gingrich came next at 19%, followed by Romney with just 17%. Now that Cain is out of the race, his supporters must choose a new candidate. Many will move to second tier candidates like Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul. One can surmise, however, that a large percentage will select one of the two current front-runners. The Pew poll strongly suggests Gingrich will get far more former Cain supporters than Romney.
Now consider the primary/caucus schedule:
Jan. 3: Iowa
Jan. 10: New Hampshire
Jan. 21: South Carolina
Jan. 31: Florida
Feb. 4: Nevada
Feb. 7: Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri
Feb. 11: Maine
Feb. 28: Arizona, Michigan
Mar. 3: Washington
Mar. 6: Super Tuesday – Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia
If the race has not been decided by Super Tuesday, it will certainly be decided on that date. The primaries that follow Super Tuesday will play no role in the selection of a candidate.
Personally I think this makes a good case for why Romney won't be the GOP nominee (something I have said from day one) . Gingrich winning the nomination is another matter. But I will concede that for the moment he is the anti-Romney.
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I also can imagine the following: Gingrich's ego lets fly a few unsavory zingers that lose him his base, the government continues to play on Americans' ignorance and suppress real unemployment figures down below 8% just in time for August, and by default Obama slides into the White House for another 4 years.
I think Gingrich is a flash in the pan. I think he'll start sinking once he starts shooting his mouth off in earnest. He came close the other day with his bizarre press conference about ending child labor laws. It's just a matter of time until he says something utterly unretractable like Howard Dean's screech heard round the world or some other infidelity of his past comes back to haunt him.
I still think Romney will get the nomination in the end because he's the only candidate that has any appeal to anyone outside the New Right/Neo Con base.
A lot of LDS (Mormons) are not impressed with 'old Mitt' and may not vote for him in a primary. Of course, if he gets the nomination who else is there to ote for against the current presidents? What to do, what to do?
But most Evangelicals don't consider Catholics as being much better than Mormons. They often do not consider them Christian either. So the choice is sort of: "Cult or Whore of Babylon?"
Newt is the poster boy for what is wrong with the establishment in Washington. He will fall as soon as he is exposed for who he is and what he has supported in the past.
I think the scriptwriters for "Reality Politics U.S.A." have done a magnificent job. Only the Kardashians can rival them.
^ Well said.
Hm, I am a Democrat, so I have no particular insight on the minds of Republican voters, but I would still place my money on Romney to win the nomination. Two reasons:
(1) Gingrich has said many things that are wildly unpopular with Republican voters. There has been little reason for his rivals for the nomination to spend much time publicizing these "hereses," but if it comes down to a two-man race between Romney and Gingrich, you can be sure that Romney will not be shy about reminding voters in early primary states. Are South Carolinians particularly enthused about carbon taxes?
(2) Sure, Romney is Mormon, but Newt is Catholic. Mormonism is not popular in the southern early primary states, but neither is Catholicism. To the extent that Romney stands to lose votes among evangelicals who perceive him as a member of a non-Christian cult, it is not clear to me that Newt stands to be the beneficiary of that disdain. Meanwhile, Nevada, Arizona and Missouri have important Mormon voting blocs, so Romney could actually have an edge in those states, as he will likely also have in Michigan on account of his family history.
It seems to me that the safe money would still bet on Romney, but here is a slightly more provocative prediction. Current Iowa polls show Ron Paul in second place behind Gingrich. Iowa is all about organization, and Paul supporters have shown themselves well able to punch above their weight in terms of organization. I can easily imagine Paul pulling off a strong second place showing in Iowa (or even a surprise upset first place finish, given Gingrich's comparative lack of Iowa organization).
Meanwhile, libertarian New Hampshire is fertile ground for Rep. Paul, so he could easily carry the momentum from a strong Iowa finish into a strong showing in NH, and thus set himself up as a real contender in South Carolina.
He is a southerner and a Baptist, so a South Carolina Republican primary electorate that does not want a Mormon or a Catholic could easily latch on to Ron Paul. Sure, Rep. Paul is nuts, but they do not hold that against a candidate in South Carolina (see, e.g., Strom Thurmond, Joe Wilson). This is a long way of saying that I would bet on Ron Paul to take the nomination before I would bet on Newt Gingrich.
"Sure, Rep. Paul is nuts"
Uh, dude, he's not.
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