Nomination or general? Palin and maybe Huckabee and Bachmann have similar levels of support of Fox News and talk radio, though I think all told both have less than Newt.
It takes more than Fox/radio support, but if it’s the nomination that’s at play I wouldn’t be so quick to discount that, plus his entrenched, far-reaching and well-oiled political machine. Palin is the closest to that network-wise, but from what I understand despite its size it’s dwarfed by Newt, Inc.
How these translate to getting out the vote is the key question, of course, but with regards to the nomination perhaps he isn’t that far from obtaining it–or securing behind the doors agreements to take the VP slot.
My core assumption in this is that the nomination process is driven by motivated minorities much more so than the general. An in-place network gives him a huge advantage.
Can anyone tell me — if Newt gets in the race but pulls out before the party nominates a candidate, what happens to any unspent money that he raises? I don’t think that any of it will be public money by that point.
I think he’s got a scheme to make money out of this, though I have only suspicion and no evidence.
Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels, Huckabee: yes, they have a better chance (though note that two of them might not even run).
Bachmann, Palin, DeMint: no way.
All of the objective evidence – the fact that he’s actually running, name-recognition-adjusted polling, and fundraising (more than all the other potential Republican presidential candidates combined) – all points toward Gingrich being more likely to win the nomination than those three. To argue otherwise you have to have as a premise that GOP primary voters don’t really know who Gingrich is, and will sour on him when they are reminded of his weaknesses. But the evidence suggests they do know who he is, and his unfavorables are comparable to others, and far better than Palin. And he will have plenty of money to help his image.
He’s clearly not a top-tier candidate. But he has a much better shot than most in this thread think.
Basically, he can donate it to charity, a PAC, or donate some of it directly to other campaigns. Although, as this ABC News article points out, it’s sort of possible to get around that. Until 1979, candidates could just pocket the money.
That being said, political campaigns are expensive, and the campaign usually winds up in debt. Hillary Clinton is still paying off her campaign debt, as is, I believe, John McCain. And Mitt Romney has just forgiven himself the last of the $45 million he loaned to himself in the 2008 campaign.
I have figured it out. He will donate it to some political entity which will then hire him as some kind of spokesperson or “strategic thinker” or some such thing.
I think this is actually the likely outcome - he plays the VP elder statesman role (ala Biden, Chaney) for some Governor who is the Presidential nominee.
Maybe, though most of the less experienced candidates now lack foreign policy experience. Bush and Obama chose their running mates to cover that perceived gap as well. But unlike Biden or Cheney, Newt isn’t particularly known for his knowledge of foreign policy (other then Muslims==Bad), so I don’t really think he fits that model.
Given the very weak field of candidates, I’d have to agree Newt does have a snowballs chance. Not much more. But, I haven’t heard a new or interesting name fielded so far. It’s the same tired rejects from 2008. Romney, Huckabee, maybe the guy from NY. Same old song.
12 years from now, we’ll be idly wondering if John Edwards has a chance. By then his antics will have been forgotten too.
With Daniels and Huckabee, I think they’ve got better chances than Newt does, even adjusted for the possibility that they won’t run.
I have to believe that ultimately someone is going to catch fire with the Teabagging crowd. And that someone will have a better chance than Newt. (No, Newt won’t be the one.)
I don’t get this argument at all. Gingrich’s problem is exactly the opposite: everyone already knows who he is, and very few people outside a 30-mile radius of the Nation’s Capital give a shit that he’s running.
IYHO. My take is that a candidate has to get people to vote for him in the primaries. There are people out there who will vote for Bachmann or Palin. To the extent that someone’s relatively unfamiliar to the public at large (e.g. GWB, January 1999; Pawlenty, Daniels this year) a bunch of money can really help if used well.
I don’t see who Gingrich is going to win over; I think even most of those who name him in the polls will eventually go elsewhere. Teabaggers will want someone who hasn’t been a creature of Washington since the 1980s, and people who want someone who’s got some experience with governing will choose between Romney, Pawlenty, and (if running) Daniels.
Heh, I meant to add an ETA that I was starting from your post but not directly addressing you in particular. Then I realized that that was a bit cumbersome phrasing and didn’t quite say what I meant it to say. Then I got distracted.
Another point about Gingrich: Everyone’s made a big deal about how the health care bill presents problems for Romney, since he passed something similar in Massachusetts. But it’s an even bigger problem for Gingrich, since he proposed basically the same thing in response to Clinton’s plan. Romney at least can offer up the state vs. federal argument, claiming that it’s appropriate or Constitutional or whatever for a single state but not for the entire US, but Gingrich doesn’t even have that argument.
The question is whether a partial campaign could make more than it spends early on. Isn’t the heavy duty spending at the tail end of campaigns?
Seems to me you build a constituency, trash the front runners, build up a warchest, and then drop out, down to a “kingmaker” position if you don’t think you can win the whole bag of marbles.
You don’t even have to give away the money, just dangle it as a potential part of the package, even if you really plan on using it in the election in a more targeted way.
He was still talking up what would basically be the Obamacare plan as late as 2007. So yea, I’d say he has at least the same amount of exposure on the issue as Romney.
Not quite. He didn’t manage to get a law passed. Did he even introduce any legislation about it? I’m doubtful, as he seems more of an ‘idea’ guy than a ‘work’ guy.
That was fun to watch. He specifically stated that he was for an individual mandate, only to back out of it later. He is the classic say anything, mean nothing politician. One flip flop is excusable, but one on top of the other will end up burying him.
