No, this is not a piece about Newt Gingrich’s plan for Iraq.? This?concerns a different kind of surge — the dramatic increase in the level of support that?former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is enjoying in the scientific polling regarding the 2008 GOP primary field.
Just days ago, Kavon presented?readers with a potentially explosive poll of North Carolina Republicans.? This poll found that, when presented with just four choices for the GOP presidential nomination, North Carolina Republicans broke down as follows:
Rudy Giuliani: 30 percent
Newt Gingrich: 29 percent
John McCain: 23 percent
Mitt Romney: 6 percent
Point One.? There is little new under the sun when it comes to the numbers of Rudy and McCain.? For the past two years, Rudy has generally polled between 25 and 30 percent in the scientific polling regarding the GOP nomination, and McCain, between 20 and 25 percent.? With regard to the first choice supporters of those two candidates, nothing has changed.? Just over half of Republicans (53 percent in this poll) plan to vote for either Rudy or McCain in the primary.
Point Two.? When the remaining 47 percent of GOP voters are given only these four candidates to choose from,?29 percent opt for Newt, 12 percent refuse to make a selection, and 6 percent choose Romney.? In other words, when the lower-tier candidates who have no chance at the nomination are ultimately excluded, the nearly half of GOP voters who don’t normally choose Rudy or McCain in the scientific polling are still disinclined to choose either of them as long as there is some other alternative.? But when the alternative includes Newt and Mitt, these voters break for Gingrich by a margin of 6 to 1, with even the amorphous, “I won’t vote!” garnering twice as many votes as Romney.
Point Three.? It would be really, really interesting to see what happens to Newt’s?29 percent if he were excluded from the field.? Truth be told, we don’t really know where this group would go if the only options are Rudy, McCain, and Romney.? Considering this group of three has a good chance of being the final three for the nomination, that’s a question that should at some point be asked.
Point Four.? All of this means that Newt Gingrich is the sleeper candidate in the race.? Of the candidates who are running or likely to run, Newt is still the only non-Rudy, non-McCain candidate to consolidate more than 20 percent of voters behind him in a scientific poll of GOP primary voters.? While we don’t know what will happen to this group if Newt doesn’t run (it could easily split into irrelevancy), if Newt does decide to run, he has a real shot at both uniting enough voters to push everyone else other than Rudy and McCain out of the race, and at?winning Iowa.?
If Newt wins the Iowa caucus, the dynamics of the race are changed overnight.? Such a victory will almost guarantee that Newt, Rudy, and McCain receive Iowa’s coveted “three tickets” to New Hampshire.? At that juncture, several things could happen.? The independent-laden?New Hampshire primary?could elevate Rudy and McCain so far above the rest of the field that Newt’s momentum is stopped cold in the Granite State and the only question remaining for South Carolina voters is which of the two frontrunners to coronate.? Alternatively, Newt’s momentum from Iowa could propel him into second place in New Hampshire, with either Rudy or McCain taking the top spot,?yielding a two-man race with the former Speaker.? And at that point, Republicans in each of the later primaries would have to decide whether to nominate a?heterodox Republican?who can win or a true-blue conservative who has been deemed unelectable for?the past?decade by the conventional wisdom.? Given the looming dread of an unfettered Democratic government in Washington, it’s unlikely that the majority of Republicans would choose to “go Goldwater” in such a situation.
As such, a serious Gingrich run, even late in the game, has the potential to change the dynamics of the race for 2008 in ways that most of us have yet to contemplate.? The goodwill that the Speaker has maintained with conservatives and Republicans over the years should not be discounted, especially in an era of conservative frustration and during a year that features no orthodox conservative candidate untainted by heresy.? While 2008 will not likely be the Year of the Newt, the polling does suggest that Gingrich could be the worst nightmare of each of the GOP non-frontrunners.? And that includes Mitt Romney.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I just can’t see him doing something that would hurt Romney, because he’s even said that Romney is his favourite (or something along those lines).
January 16th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
What does North Carolina have to do with presidential primaries? But I think Gingrich would endorsee Romney and then he would become the surge candidate. Newt’s supporters like his ideas and the way he gets things done in Washington yet still maintains his fiscal and social conservative credentials. If Rudy, McCain or Romney takes his ideas and runs with them they have a great shot at the nominations. And Newt has said his ideas are up for grabs. If Romney takes them he will have the best shot.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
What would happen if there were only four choices but instead of Newt we added Brownback or Tancredo or Thompson? In other words, maybe that fourth candidate is a “none of the above” choice, signifying that a large portion of the GOP (i.e. Conservatives) doesn’t care much for any of the top three. Yes Newt does well among ALL candidates but with just four, can anyone fill that “not one of the top three” spots or just Newt? I don’t know if this is necessarily the case but it might be worth looking into.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
“What does North Carolina have to do with presidential primaries?”
I would think Republicans in NC are pretty representative of Republicans elsewhere, no?
January 16th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Jake, those are all good questions. Those are the types of questions that professional pollsters should be asking right now.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Newt gets slaughtered in a general election. While I like Newt, the average American voter doesn’t. We need to win.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I have been looking for the exact Newt quote regarding Mitt. Can someone find a link?
January 16th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I know Newt said something like, and I feel confident this is nearly verbatim “there’s a hungering for a clearer voice of conservatism. I feel Mitt Romney has an opportunity to fill that void”. Or something very close to that.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Here’s the exact quote. “There’s a yearning for a clearer voice of conservatism and I think that Mitt Romney has an opportunity to fill that,” I got it from a search of the main Romney blog, so I don’t really have a link.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
So it seems like, if Newt is smart, he wouldn’t trample on Mitt’s chances, because he knows he has next to no shot at the nomination and absolutely no shot at the general. Even Newt’s ego isn’t that big…or is it?
January 16th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
I don’t know. Does Newt have a terribly big ego? He’s always seemed to me to be someone merely interested in advancing the cause of conservatism, by whatever means plausible. He didn’t make a terribly big fuss about leaving in 1998. Many others would have attempted to stay on, both as minority leader, and in the House generally.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Just purely from anecdotal evidence, I’ve read some stories of Newt’s amazingly brash ego. Apparently, a friend of his helped him and his original run for the House, and when he won, he turned to his friend, and said, point-blank: “F*ck you, I don’t need you any more.”
January 16th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I found the story, for what it’s worth.
—
L.H. Carter was among Gingrich’s closest friends and advisors until a falling out in 1979. “You can’t imagine how quickly power went to his head,” Carter says. The first time Gingrich flew back to the district, Carter remembers, he “pitched a fit” because Carter was still walking up to the gate to greet him when he arrived, rather than standing and waiting for him. Soon after, they were discussing a supporter who had complained to Gingrich about one of his votes. “I was sort of chiding him about not staying in touch with ‘the people’,” Carter says. “He turned in my car and he looked at me and he said, ‘F*ck you guys. I don’t need any of you anymore I’ve got the money from the political action committees, I’ve got the power of the office, and I’ve got the Atlanta news media right here in the palm of my hand. I don’t need any of you anymore.’
“The important thing you have to understand about Newt Gingrich is that he is amoral,” says Carter. “There isn’t any right or wrong, there isn’t any conservative or liberal. There’s only what will work best for Newt Gingrich.
“He’s probably one of the most dangerous people for the future of this country that you can possibly imagine. He’s Richard Nixon, glib. It doesn’t matter how much good I do the rest of my life, I can’t ever outweigh the evil that I’ve caused by helping him be elected to Congress.”
—
January 16th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Thanks Matt!
Nusrat,
You may have a point re: Newt and the general (which is unfortunate for this country). However, I feel that Newt would actually have a darn good shot at the GOP nomination if he would run a traditional campaign.
Newt might actually have a darn good shot in a “base” campaign against a lefty from a deep blue state like Obama. After 200 & 2004, it would perhaps be like the final film of a trilogy- “Red State vs. Blue State: The Final Battle”.
January 17th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Remember, I have a ten year statute of limitations of gross stupidity. How has Newt behaved since 1979′s idiotcy? When was that charming scene of him serving divorce papers to his wife in the hospital with cancer?
January 17th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I hope that Newt isn’t running, because he will get absolutely creamed in the general election (he garners an amazing 28% favorable rating in one 2006 poll, and a whopping 18% in another). However, I fear his ego is too large for him to stay out of the race. After all, one doesn’t divorce your second wife on the grounds that she isn’t “Presidential looking” and then not run for President…
Look, I don’t want my politicians to all be squeaky clean, but I’d at least like someone my soon-to-be-born child could look up to as a good leader. In this race we’ve got McCain (Keating 5, divorce only to remarry less than a month later which raises the specter of adultery), Giuliani (too many personal issues to list, including infidelity, adultery, and two divorces), and Gingrich (two divorces for lousy reasons, affairs and adultery up the wazoo)…
And this is the group of folks we expect the family values wing of America to be excited about? Ouch.
I’m not saying divorce disqualifies someone from being a good leader – far from it. But none of these three men have proven that they can keep control over their personal life and keep their vows to God and their spouses in marriage. How can we expect them to keep their vows to us?
January 17th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Do you mean taking Newt’s ideas like co-authoring a piece on Iraq?
January 17th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Newt can’t win, even in the primaries. If he does run and does strong enough to win Iowa, it will force either Rudy or McCain out of the race, and given how important a role electability plays in the calculus of both McCain and Giuliani supporters, I suspect that whoever among those two survives Iowa will pick up most of the support of the candidate who drops out.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Exactly HeavyM, excellent point made there.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Newt has too much of a past. People want somebody new. (even Romney could fill that description.)
January 17th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I doubt Newt is going to run. If circumstances happen that the nomination gets handed to him on a platter, maybe. In that I think he is like Rudy in many regards. They both will enjoy the attention and deference paid to them. They both may play kingmaker if given the chance. They both might angle for some sort of position in the new administration. Beyond that, not much beyond a half-hearted effort here and there.
January 21st, 2007 at 11:06 am
GINGRICH FOR VEEP?
In an address on Long Island on 09 January 2007, while reiterating his support for the for the President’s proposed “surge” of troops in Iraq, and joining John McCain on the “Island of Political Courage”, Rudy concluded his remarks on Iraq with this:
“We must not wait for a year or more to measure the success of our strategy but must develop a system to do so monthly weekly even daily so we give our troops the necessary support to succeed.”
In a posting dated 12 January 2007, I commented at “Run Rudy Run” (http://lutherhardy.blogspot.com/) on those concluding remarks with this:
“This is, however, actually a new contribution to the debate over what to do in Iraq, and I think a potentially VERY IMPORTANT contribution! Moreover, it is uniquely Rudy’s contribution. What he proposes here is essentially the CompStat Program his administration initiated for the New York Police in 1993, i.e., the very program that worked so well in, inter alia, reducing homicides in the City by 67.9% during Rudy’s administration. As Rudy used to say, with respect to CompStat: “What gets measured gets paid attention to. What gets paid attention to gets done.” Bravo Rudy!”
In an Op-Ed Column that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, 12 January 2007, and that Rudy co-authored with Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, he confirmed that he was indeed referring to CompStat in his Delaware remarks. The entire column is reproduced below, the money quote is this:
“[The] change from welfare to work did as much as the New York Police Department Compstat program to keep reducing crime. A similar model can work in Iraq.”
In this single Op-Ed Column, Rudy and Speaker Gingrich have together gone further toward laying out a specific and workable program for success in Iraq than any other major governmental or political figure, including President Bush certainly more so than the feckless new Democrat majority in Congress, and even more certainly more so than any other potential Presidential candidate for 2008, Democrat or Republican. This is, however, not surprising! This is precisely what one has come to expect from both Rudy and Speaker Gingrich: real-word solutions to real-world problems, solutions that will work “on the ground”. Bravo Gentlemen!
Finally, and not to put too fine a point on it, this authorial collaboration brings into sharp focus a thought that has been germinating in my mind for some time now: Speaker Gingrich would make the ideal candidate for Vice President on a ticket headed by Rudy! In my judgment, if these two men could indeed reach such an agreement between themselves within the next year’s time, and then take the BOLD STEP of announcing it before the Primary Season begins in January, 2008, they would blitz the field, both for the Republican Nomination and for the White House! For now, that’s just a thought. More later!
My ultimate conclusion: Run Rudy Run!