Gingrich win almost certainly be the nominee. The calendar simply favors Newt over Romney. [View all]

[Bucky]

Last edited Tue Dec 27, 2011, 01:15 PM - Edit history (1)

Those who want Newt nominated, take heart. Mr Gingrich's drop in national polls may not have that big an impact on whether he gets the Republican nomination. First off, compared to the Bachmann, Perry, and Cain implosions, Newt's drop has been fairly moderate. This is partly because the Republicans have simply run out of candidates to turn to and partly because the reasons not to like Gingrich are fairly old news. Yes, he's been a high priced shadow lobbyists for 15 years; yes, he divorced his wife while she was in the hospital for cancer treatments; yes, he has a long history of murdering orphans and eating their livers on Pay Per View to raise money for his Store Asbestos in Public Schools initiative.

But many Republicans knew all that already and he's the Marilyn Manson of conservative politics--just not that shocking anymore. Furthermore, he's not going to drop down to single digits because he's a more disciplined and less flaky candidate than the previous flash-in-the-pan frontrunners. And, as always, Romney each won't ever get more than a third of voting Republicans to approve of him while Ron Paul won't ever get more than a fourth. That missing 45% will have to vote for somebody and that somebody is not going to be Rick Santorum or the pro-science Huntsman. Newt is simply the last clown left in the toy Volkswagen in the center ring.

Once we get into the state primaries and caucuses, the news will start being (stupidly) dominated not by who's ahead in national polls but who won each of the rapid sequence of state contests. It'll go like this:

A week from now Ron Paul will pull off his upset in Iowa, but the unreported story will be all the also-rans' supporters ganging up to deny as many caucus delegate selections going to Paul--even throwing their support strategically to Romney where they can. Romney & Newt will be neck and neck for 2nd place. Everyone has been expecting this outcome, so to the Establishment's delight, Iowa won't seem to matter all that much.

The national media will step up the focus on Paul's nuttier ideas about getting out of most international organizations and the fear of urban minority riots.

Two weeks from now, Romney will win New Hampshire and Gingrich will take 2nd, effectively ending the Ron Paul threat. It will be a four person race at this point--but Paul and Perry are only hanging in there out of sheer Texas stubbornness. Perry is hoping for a southern miracle, but the next two contests are in Gingrich's backyard and frontyard respectively.

Four weeks from now Gingrich will be Romney by 25 points in South Carolina. Three days later he will repeat this margin of victory in Florida. Paul will not break 10% in either contest and Perry will drop out, coming in behind Paul in both states. Gingrich will probably get a majority win in one of those big state primaries. Because the national press has not been obsessing about the South the way they have about Iowa & New Hampshire, these will seem like big momentum swings, even though Gingrich's numbers have not been moving nationally.

In February there are a series of caucuses, followed by a Missouri primary on the 7th and Arizona & Michigan primaries on the 28th.
The media never pays attention to Maine, which Romney will win, while Newt should be able to win over enough wingnuts in the Nevada, Minnesota, and Colorado caucuses. Newt will win all three primaries by narrow margins and his win in Michigan will be wrongly perceived as a huge upset over Romney.

At this point the talk will be that Romney has to exceed expectations on Super Tuesday (March 6th) or the race is over. Super Tuesday means the following states: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Vermont. Romney's victories will be limited to Virginia (where Gingrich is not on the ticket) and the two New England states.

Mitt might hold on for a little while, but pundits will start discussing him as a regional candidate (even tho the reality is that Newt is better described that way). The media will have tired of talking about the Gingrich swamp of scandals, which will have been fully explored by then. As his inevitability sinks in, Gingrich will become increasingly restrained and cautious in his usual pompous pronouncements--until the summer when the crazy talk finally escapes its cage. Ron Paul will continue to be a nuisance, with only marginally higher results that what he got in 2008.

Romney will come under increasing pressure to pull out. His strongest states are still months away: Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, California. He doesn't handle losing very well and he'll become ever more testy, risking petulant gaffes. Meanwhile the GOP big wigs will start pushing him not to go more negative now that Newt looks likely to win. They want him to end his campaign before April, when he'd otherwise start to finally win big primaries. If the new "disciplined" Newt can pull off an upset in Illinois on March 20th, it's over. A lemon meringue spine like Mitt will cave into the bosses' demands and drop out.

The Gingrich-Daniels ticket will win 45% of the popular vote in November. Threats of a third party ticket will never materialize. Voter turnout will be significantly less than 2008's and in all likelihood the Mayan apocalypse will end all human life on the Winter Solstice 2012. You heard it here first.