Newt Gingrich

jvquarterback wrote:

Ron Paul will never win. He's the democrats best hope to reelect Obama.

You must have missed Public Policy Polling's latest tweet:



"There's actually a legitimate statistical argument that Paul would be the strongest GOP candidate against Obama, period."



https://twitter.com/#%21/ppppolls/status/147745181591015424" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Have you paused to wonder why a Democrat-backed polling organization is gushing about Paul's chances right before the primary season begins? Maybe because they know Paul honestly doesn't stand a chance against Obama and they'd rather see him than Romney?

People who ignore the polls do so at their own risk. The same polling company was saying the same thing about Romney for the past three months. If they wanted to misrepresent a candidate who can't win against Obama they'd be pushing Gingrich or bachmann.



Their tweets are just teasers for their first day of polling after the last debate. This will be one of the most important polls of the whole election. If Paul improves after this debate I think he wins Iowa. It will mean he has convinced a third of the party to return to the conservative non-interventionist ideals that helped Reagan kick the tar out of Jimmy Carter.



The polling companies are actually graded based on accuracy within the last month before elections (they aren't graded any time before that) so if ppp misrepresents their polling now they will lose their position as one of the top five polling organizations, will no longer be used in the rcp average and won't be able to sell their data for as much money. Even democratic leaning polling companies have to respond to that.



But if you still disagree check paul's positives among independents in the leading republican polling companies. Only Ron Paul and mitt Romney win among independents with Paul a doing a bit better.



So take it with a grain of salt if you want to but these guys are putting their company on the line.



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hawkwing wrote:
Ron Paul will never win. He's the democrats best hope to reelect Obama.

at what point will Paul prove to republicans that he is the most consistent candidate they have, and he's not going to be a flash in the pan that republicans have pumped out for the last 6 yrs. I don't agree with him 100%, but he's the only candidate I trust.

declocoug wrote:

Ron Paul will never win. He's the democrats best hope to reelect Obama.

at what point will Paul prove to republicans that he is the most consistent candidate they have, and he's not going to be a flash in the pan that republicans have pumped out for the last 6 yrs. I don't agree with him 100%, but he's the only candidate I trust.

Trust him or not that isn't the issue. Ron Paul is the absolute best chance for a 2nd term of Obama. That's why he's so popular in the media right now. You're crazy if you don't think the media is doing everything they can to set up an election that their guy can win. That's why they have been so desperate to knock off Romney. Every guy they have tried to prop up would be easily destroyed in the media once they won the nomination, especially Paul who the media would have a field day convincing the general public is a loon once it means their guy would win.



Same thing happened last election, it's happening again this election and will continue as long as the media is left biased.



But mark my words, I believe RonPaul has as much chance to win the election as Rocky Anderson of the Independence League does. And it has nothing to do with how consistent he is or if he would be a good president.

hawkwing wrote:

hawkwing wrote:
Ron Paul will never win. He's the democrats best hope to reelect Obama.

at what point will Paul prove to republicans that he is the most consistent candidate they have, and he's not going to be a flash in the pan that republicans have pumped out for the last 6 yrs. I don't agree with him 100%, but he's the only candidate I trust.

Trust him or not that isn't the issue. Ron Paul is the absolute best chance for a 2nd term of Obama. That's why he's so popular in the media right now. You're crazy if you don't think the media is doing everything they can to set up an election that their guy can win. That's why they have been so desperate to knock off Romney. Every guy they have tried to prop up would be easily destroyed in the media once they won the nomination, especially Paul who the media would have a field day convincing the general public is a loon once it means their guy would win.



Same thing happened last election, it's happening again this election and will continue as long as the media is left biased.



But mark my words, I believe RonPaul has as much chance to win the election as Rocky Anderson of the Independence League does. And it has nothing to do with how consistent he is or if he would be a good president.

We will hear a lot about Ron Paul until Iowa is finished. Iowa is about the only thing he can win.

I like a lot of what Paul says, but I did not like what he said about the judges in the Iowa debate. What did he mean all of them are good and all of them are bad? (That isn't a quote, it's what I got from what he said.) There's a huge difference in the judges. I thought most of the others gave better answers.



I agree that we shouldn't have troops all over the world which is a huge cost to us and we're trillions in debt. However, I seriously doubt that the moslems will fall in love with us if we pulled everyone out of the middle east. They are looking for someone to hate and kill and the Jews, the USA, Brittian etc. are going to be targets for that hate whether we're there or not.



One other thing bothers me. The Paul backers I know seem unable to compromise. It's him or no one which is interpreted to be Obamma. There are those I like better but I don't think a one of them wouldn't be a vast improvement over what we have now.

nuk3



You're right Ron Paul said all of the judges have made poor decisions in the past (probably something if we all look hard enough at the court we will all agree with). Paul disagrees with the courts decision on Roe v Wade but also disagrees with its interpretation of the commerce clause (which has been addressed by Scalia and Thomas while on the court and Roberts and Alito while serving on lesser courts) and its failure to reject the Patriot act. If Paul were to nominate a supreme court justice he would make certain they uphold the entire constitution, not just parts of it.



Regarding your second concern regarding some some Paul supporters being unwilling to vote for other Republican candidates - I'm not one of them. I would vote for Santorum or Bachmann and maybe Romney but not Gingrich or Huntsman. Paul does extraordinarily well among independents and Democrats. Some of those people have switched parties to support Paul. They already feel as though they have made the biggest compromise they can in supporting Paul and are unwilling to go any further.I would say the portion of Paul's supporters that feel this way is relatively small (probably only 2-3% of the general electorate) but no other Republican candidate can get those independents and democrats that Paul can.



BTW the same argument can be made for the independents and democrats who support Romney or supported McCain. The difference is those candidates have been unable to get their undecided supporters to register Republican and participate in the primary process to the extent that Ron Paul has.

tww, hawkwing,



I'm going to guess you haven't been following the nationwide polling since May like I have. My Ron Paul friends have been up in arms over his exclusion (until recently) from head to head comparisons with Obama. In the few that were done early Paul was the only other candidate other than Romney to do well among independents and democrats - the same still holds true though now nearly all of the polls that do head to head comparisons of Ron Paul and Obama (you have to check the cross tabs). Check out Real Clear Politics.



Here is what I think will happen: Paul will win Iowa by 5% over Romney, then lose to Romney in NH by 1-2%. SC and FL will split three ways between Romney, Paul and someone else (Perry I think), then Paul will win all of the caucus states until super Tuesday (he leads in South Dakota, Lousianna and Minnesota) and then Romney will spend all of his money on advertising Super Tuesday and split the states with Ron Paul. At that point we'll see what happens.



The point is Paul won't go away after Iowa any more than Reagan did when he won Iowa against the sitting Governor of Texas.

I bet Romney wraps it up quite quickly and surprisingly.

SpiffCoug wrote:
I bet Romney wraps it up quite quickly and surprisingly.

I think that is a distinct possibility. I think there are two guys who can win both Iowa and NH - Mitt Romney or Ron Paul (Newt's on his way down but I thought he had a shot for a while too). The latest polls have Iowa going to Paul (followed closely by Romney) and NH to Romney (Paul is down 7-10 points). No one has won the nomination without winning Iowa or NH since they became the first two states to vote in 1968. So yes it could be a very quick primary season.

Polls at this point of the game as to who would beat Obama are worse than useless. Do you really think that after a year of constant negative media reports and his own quirky nature in the forefront of the American public that he would have the same polling numbers? If so, you probably thought that Ross Perot had a legitimate chance too.



The media would absolutely destroy Paul over a year period and convince plenty of people that he is a dangerous loon.

Actually winning the nomination has the opposite effect than what you describe. Once a candidate is nominated their poll numbers usually jump 5% compared to where they were before. Last election cycle Clinton and Guiliani polled higher than Obama and McCain intially, but once Obama and McCain won their nominations their general election poll numbers each jumped 5%. It happens every election cycle.



I'm sure the media will try to paint Paul as quirky and dangerous just like they did Reagan. It won't work with Paul any more than it did with Reagan.



By what metric are head-to-head comparisons worse than useless. They have pretty decent predictive value. Things change to be sure but that doesn't make them useless, otherwise why has Mitt Romney's campaign been saying for the past 6 months he polls better than all other candidates against Obama? Which is no longer true now that Paul polls equally well.

jvquarterback wrote:
Actually winning the nomination has the opposite effect than what you describe. Once a candidate is nominated their poll numbers usually jump 5% compared to where they were before.



Last election cycle Clinton and Guiliani polled higher than Obama and McCain intially, but once Obama and McCain won their nominations there general election poll numbers each jumped 5%. It happens every election cycle.



I'm sure the media will try to paint Paul as quirky and dangerous just like they did Reagan. It won't work with Paul any more than it did with Reagan.

The effect you talking about comes as candidates are exposed as unrealistic (Bachmann, Santorum, Perry, etc.) and their supporters leave them to move on to more viable candidates. The polling indicates that will not happen for Paul because the 24% of people who like him are already voting for him, and everyone else thinks he's nutzo and won't be voting for him even once their first choices disappear. There's a reason Paul can't top 25% in any state--there's a limit to myopic tea-partiers. Even if he wins in Iowa, it will be his ultimate undoing as the Republican establishment will, with the full support of the liberal mainstream media, curb-stomp Paul, who they have been able to ignore until now. He'll be painted as the racist, 9/11 conspiracy theorist, anti-Semitic nutjob (which will be easy to do with his own materials), and by the time New Hampshire rolls around, he'll be dead in the water.

Actually Snocythe we're talking about something completely different: The bump a candidate gets in a head-head poll with the opposing party's candidate once the candidate in question is seen as the likely nominee of their party. Ever since such polls have been done the candidate gets a 4-5% increase in the head-to-head polls (as long as they were not seen as the frontrunner prior to the nomination).



As for Paul's ceiling it used to be 5%, then 10%, then 15%, then 20% and now you say 25%. Nice try. Fortunately the national media can be overcome by direct candidate interaction (for examples see Reagan in 1980 and Paul this year) in Iowa and New Hampshire. Also I think it is funny that you would bring up a 25% ceiling when Mitt Romney is stuck at 20-30% in every early state.



You are so sure you know what will happen. We'll see where that gets you. I'm not sure of how it will turn out but I think freedom finally has a chance - I guess Ron Paul is right when he says, "Freedom is popular."

Freedom is popular. But zany foreign policy isn't. Paul could very popular with the nation at large with his fiscal policy. Romney criticized Obama's "pretty please" foreign policy style and won rave cheers for it. Paul's foreign policy is pretty much, "pretty please leave us alone and we won't bother you either."



Paul has no chance at winning. I'm sorry but he doesn't. Isolationism is a death knell for an American president.

Spoke too soon. Romney is back up to 35% in NH. Ron Paul in second at 19%. For reference Huckabee never made it out of single digits in NH in the polls until he won Iowa - then he got a 10 point bump.

You mean that zany foreign policy enshrined in the the Constitution? The one endorsed by George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson - that one?



I can't imagine anyone going for that. I guess the Constitution is too old-fashioned and we need to keep up with the times.

jvquarterback wrote:
You mean that zany foreign policy enshrined in the the Constitution? The one endorsed by George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson - that one?



I can't imagine anyone going for that. I guess the Constitution is too old-fashioned and we need to keep up with the times.

Maybe we should go back to their domestic policy too....you know, reinstate slavery and all if we are going to hold the Founders as infalliable



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Snocythe,



Just answer me these two questions: How many missionaries were there in the middle east before the US began intervening there? How many are there now?



You may need to do a little research but I think this one thing may change your mind about current foreign policy more than anything else. It is the thing that really confirmed for me the benefits of Ron Paul's foreign policy when I began researching the history of US foreign policy after hearing him in the debates in 2008.

The Constitution is pretty scant on foreign policy. Maybe I need to brush up on it. Can you point to me the articles and section where isolationism is enshrined in the Constitution?