Many of us who were personally involved in the special election for the Massachusetts Senate race to replace Kennedy never for a second believed Scott Brown would be a conservative warrior. This is why there is little to no surprise in the fact that Brown failed to support the conservative position on many issues the movement found important. But nobody argued the importance of keeping Martha Coakley out of the Senate and that’s exactly what we did.
Yes, it’s true that we as conservatives no longer tolerate a “lesser of the two evils” scenario… in most cases. Massachusetts might be a state where that act is not frowned upon, being such a liberal minded political landscape. With this being the case, and it being so important to keep liberal Democrats from controlling the Senate beyond November, it’s encouraging to see Scott Brown appears to be pulling out ahead in his re-election bid.
Republican Scott Brown (49 percent) has a 9-point lead over Democrat Elizabeth Warren (40 percent), according to a Suffolk University/7NEWS (WHDH-Boston) poll of likely general election voters in Massachusetts. Nine percent were undecided, and 2 percent would choose someone else.
Brown also showed significant leads over two other potential Democratic candidates, besting Marisa DeFranco 55 percent to 22 percent and Jim King 57 percent to 21 percent.
“Scott Brown’s popularity and appeal are overpowering the efforts of Elizabeth Warren, who struggles to introduce herself to the larger pool of Massachusetts voters,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “Warren’s support does not have traction among independents.”
The poll found that Warren led 69 percent to 19 percent among Democrats, but trailed 86 percent to 7 percent among Republicans and 60 percent to 28 percent among independents.
Nearly 52 percent of all registered voters in Massachusetts are independents.
The Liberty News Network rating system still has Massachusetts at “TOSS-UP” but we’re strongly considering moving this race into a REPUBLICAN ADVANTAGE scenario. While we can’t expect Brown to be a conservative stronghold on many of our issues, it can’t be argued this won’t free up money and energy to move into other races if the polling data holds up.
-Eric Odom
The four remaining candidates are likely spending a good deal of the day preparing for tonight’s CNN GOP debate in Mesa, Arizona. Their campaigns are likely in high gear working the phones statewide in both Arizona and Michigan. The two states suddenly became a little more important when Rick Santorum surprised the field and won the Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado nod a few weeks back. That turn of events signaled to the following states that Romney was not invincible, and in fact, was quite vulnerable.
A month ago both Arizona and Michigan were assumed to be the “cherry on top” for a decent Romney sweep through February. Sure, it wasn’t expected that Romney would perform well in Missouri, but it was definitely expected he would be very competitive in Minnesota and ultimately win Colorado. While this positioning would not provide any delegates, it would throw water on the fire of the narrative that Romney doesn’t have wide support across battleground states. Instead, Romney lost all three, adding fuel to the fire of the narrative that he can’t win a broad base of support in battleground states.
The former front-runner now finds himself in second place to Rick Santorum, looking ahead to a possible loss in Michigan, a state where he was once thought to be extremely safe. The RCP average for Michigan has Santorum up by about a point. Romney is up by 8% in Arizona.
What does it all mean?
Well, regardless of the results on Tuesday, the game will not change. What happened several weeks ago in Colorado is what changed the game. The only thing that could somewhat shake the ground is a win in Michigan for Santorum, as it would again provide an injection of much needed campaign cash and momentum. A loss in Michigan would have the opposite effect for Romney. That said, no candidate will drop out and I don’t expect that national positioning will change much until after Super Tuesday (Santorum is the front-runner by just under 6%).
Romney will go on to win the states he’s expected to win on Super Tuesday (with the exception of maybe Washington). Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich will fight to split the others. Ron Paul will pick up delegates with various lower tier finishes.
Super Tuesday isn’t far away, though, and that’s when we find out where we really stand. As of today, Gingrich is poised to only pick up Georgia with a first place finish. He might be able to do something in Tennessee, but that would be it for his first place possibilities. Santorum looks good in Oklahoma and Ohio. Romney should easily grab Vermont, Virginia and Massachusetts. That only leaves North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska, and I have a feeling Santorum might do well in those.
In the end I think Super Tuesday probably won’t answer any big questions. It could, however, clearly establish the fact that Romney is not at all the front-runner.
-Eric Odom
While the Occupy Protestors and their allies in the Democrat Party are busy blasting Republicans for their support of free-market principles (spinning it as if the practice itself is at fault for our economic woes), the Obama campaign is gearing up to benefit from a Super PAC that is much in part funded by an Illinois crony. Click on over to this story for the full scoop.
In summary.
The sole major contributor to Obama’s Priorities USA PAC for the month of January is a longtime ally of the president with ties to the Illinois political machine, including convicted fraudster Tony Rezko and disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Priorities USA raised a mere $59,000 in January, according to the Federal Election Commission. Almost all of it came from Obama fundraiser John W. Rogers, who donated $50,000.
Rogers is the CEO of Ariel Investments, the largest minority-run mutual fund firm in the U.S. He raised more than $500,000 for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a bundler.
Rogers and his Chicago-based firm’s ties to the president go back to Obama’s time as an Illinois State Senator.
In 2000 and 2001, Obama urged Illinois pension funds to give more business to black-owned investment firms, such as Ariel. The year after Obama’s pitch, the Illinois teacher retirement system reported an 18 percent increase in assets managed by minority-owned firms.
By 2005, Ariel was managing $578 million in state pension funds and had become a supporter of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s re-election campaign. Ariel Investments and its executives donated $117,500 to Blagojevich, making it the second largest contributor with ties to the Illinois state pension business.
Did you catch that? Back in 2000 and 2001, Barack Obama convinced Illinois pensions funds to put their money into the hands of black-owned investment firms. A year later and bingo! Illinois pension funds begin dumping their cash into the accounts managed by John W. Rogers. Here we are more than 10 years later and Rogers is funneling money to Obama’s campaign to remain in power in Washington.
In case anyone missed the memo, the Illinois pension system is bankrupting the state of Illinois. The Illinois political machine is chasing people out of the state to the tune of 40,000 per year. The same crony machine that dealt the death blow to Illinois is now in charge of the nation’s government.
Welcome to Chicago, D.C. folks.
-Eric Odom
BTW… that Super PAC is already buying up air time in Michigan. I expect it wil begin doing this across the board as time progresses.
Two notable TV ads to show you today. The first is an ad the Santorum crew put together that displays a collection of supportive quotes from high profile conservatives and conservative entities. This is important for Santorum as a key part of his potential success on Super Tuesday will be the appearance of unifying conservatives around his candidacy. To date no candidate has successfully done this and a lot of undecided voters are still waiting to see if/when it will happen.
Of course, the quotes do not exactly translate to endorsements. Conveniently the Santorum campaign is not stumbling over itself to point that out, though.
The second ad slams Santorum across the board and comes via the Ron Paul campaign.
“Is this dude serious?” the narrator asks over a cartoon of Santorum. “Fiscal conservative, really?” The ad then runs down various spending Santorum supported while in the Senate. In the end, it compares Santorum the fiscal conservative to Bigfoot — “Fake.”
There’s a shot at Santorum’s social conservative credentials, too — the ad claims he “even hooked Planned Parenthood up with a few million bucks.”
It’s brutal…
Thoughts?
-Eric Odom
A candidate for the 51st District State Senate Seat in Illinois might have given a little too much information in a recent candidate forum caught on film. Republican candidate Tom Pliura was responding to a question about the recent passage of legal civil unions in Illinois. His response was, well… you be the judge.
“Quite frankly, if a guy wants to get married to a donkey I don’t think we ought to condone that” and “if you want to have relations with your donkey that’s fine” were the two main take-aways. It’s an interesting position to take and one we don’t often see.
-Eric Odom
So much for that March 1 CNN debate.
A March 1 debate of the four remaining GOP presidential candidates — the 22st of the primary season — collapsed on Thursday after Mitt Romney and Ron Paul declared they preferred to be elsewhere.
CNN just confirmed that it had exercised its option to pull the plug on the event, which was to be held five days before the March 6 Super Tuesday, when Georgia and nine other states go to the polls.
The event was to be co-hosted by the Georgia and Ohio GOP.
Santorum had joined in the move to bail on the debate as well. I know the author of the story is a bit puzzled as to why Romney would back out with Georgia’s huge chunk of delegates being proportional, but my guess is Romney’s game plan doesn’t include a major push into Georgia, widely known as Gingrich territory. Especially when it involves a southern debate that could give Gingrich even more steam, such as the South Carolina debate which ended up costing Romney a lot of heart-ache.
The same can be said for Santorum. Rick Santorum is now the national front-runner and the more time he can spend on the road meeting voters face-to-face the better. The less time he has on a stage getting beat on for his spending record the better.
-Eric Odom
What a whirlwind of a primary. I’ve had an interesting perspective in this primary since my candidate, Herman Cain, left the race because I don’t really support any of the four current candidates. I find all four have certain qualities that make them interesting possibilities, and all four have flaws that rule them out for obtaining my full personal support. So for the first time in my voting lifetime, I don’t have a dog in the fight. I’m in a curious “watch and see” mode that is proving to be highly entertaining as this thing rolls out.
Which brings us to the question… how’s this thing rolling out?
If there is anything we’ve learned about the 2012 GOP primary, it’s that it simply cannot be predicted. Well, certain parts can, but the overall picture cannot. I’ve made two big predictions in this primary. My first was that Sarah Palin would endorse Rick Perry (they were chums as Governors and Perry strongly supported her). Obviously Perry floundered and dropped out, so that didn’t happen. My second prediction was that Romney would win Florida by a landslide. That did happen. And for the exact reasons I predicted it would.
My view of what I thought would play out in February went blurry on February 7th. Yes, to be clear, the three states that held primary elections on February 7th meant nothing in terms of binding delegates. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich fans like to constantly point that out. But in doing so they ignore the importance of perception in politics. For many voters (and by many I mean a LOT) perception is reality. Donation and word of mouth support begins taking hold based on perception. If a candidate is perceived as having a shot at coming out in front, that individual will see a significant increase in fundraising and support.
I knew Romney wouldn’t win Missouri. The state is far too conservative for his style of politics and it outright rejected Romney in every single county. Where I got thrown off is Minnesota and Colorado.
Minnesota should have at least been competitive for Romney. During the Florida primary Minnesota looked decent for a Romney win or very strong second. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was working the Romney brand and the Romney campaign was financially positioned to be well organized. In the end Mitt Romney pulled 17% of the vote for a distant third place finish. And I mean very distant. It would be an understatement to say Romney wasn’t competitive in Minnesota. The accurate statement would be that he didn’t even compete.
Colorado should have been safe territory for Romney. Mitt Romney dominated Colorado back in 2008 and should have walked away with an easy win. Instead, Romney lost to Santorum in a stunning last minute shift in some rural Colorado counties. My best guess for this is the Romney camp took Colorado for granted. They knew there were no delegates up for grabs and figured they were well positioned for a win there that would have dislodged any energy gained elsewhere.
The Colorado loss was a devastating miscalculation. Which brings us to the current scenario and possibilities as to how the rest of February might play out.
First, let’s look at the national polling trend.
Rick Santorum now finds himself as the national front-runner with a 5.4% advantage over Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich is at his lowest average since mid-November, coming in with just under 15%. Ron Paul sits at the usual 12%.
On February 28th we’ll see primary elections in Michigan and Arizona. Mitt Romney was expected to win both, but is now slipping to a second place position in the trends in Michigan. He still holds well in Arizona, which is important for his campaign since Arizona is a winner-takes all state on the delegates. If Rick Santorum wins Michigan and Mitt Romney wins Arizona, Romney would be ahead in terms of binding delegates, but both would have a 50/50 shot at the nomination.
On Super Tuesday Mitt Romney is likely to take Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia. Newt Gingrich will get a big delegate boost out of Georgia (although his lead in Georgia slipped from 53% in December to just 9% now). Rick Santorum is positioned well in Ohio, but Romney’s media machine could very well change that. Santorum will compete with Gingrich for Tennessee, Oklahoma, Idaho and Alaska.
In other words, in a situation where Romney’s camp would have liked to have the deal sealed by Super Tuesday at the latest, we might find ourselves exactly where we are now, a day after Super Tuesday. A tied up front-runner spot with Romney struggling to stay out front.
In all honesty, I don’t see how Romney wins the primary if Gingrich or Santorum drop out. More so if Gingrich drops out, as Santorum appears to be a more acceptable candidate for general consensus within conservative ranks.
But again, anything can happen and there is no way to predict this. I guess the most important take-away here is that Romney is no longer the clear front-runner and may end up losing the primary yet again. Four weeks ago that didn’t at all seem possible.
-Eric Odom
Let’s face it… this is a very well done ad that slams Rick Santorum exactly where he’s weakest. Watch, then we’ll discuss.
This is largely where Santorum struggles with fiscal conservatives. Santorum doesn’t even try to dispute the fact that he was a big earmarking, pork barrel spender for a few years of his time in the Senate. He also doesn’t dispute his multiple votes to increase the spending limits in federal government. When confronted on the issue, Santorum simply spins it to assert contrast through his opposition to the bailouts, which Romney supported. Santorum calls the Stimulus the biggest of them all in reference to pork spending efforts of Washington.
Which is why Santorum’s new line “I’m not the conservative alternative to Barack Obama, I’m the conservative alternative to Barack Obama” seems to be working. Mitt Romney is no conservative if judged on his positions and voting record as governor. Romney had a shaky record on guns, abortion, taxes, spending, mandates, etc. Outside of spending, Santorum is actually pretty far to the right.
Another angle that’s working for Santorum is the mandates. Unlike Gingrich and Romney, Santorum wanted nothing to do with mandates in healthcare. At least not in direct terms of Obamacare and/or Romneycare. Since so much of the movement has built its opposition to Romney and Obama on mandates, it’s the one issue that sets Santorum and Paul apart from Gingrich and Romney.
Will this line of attack work? It’s possible. It all depends on what conservatives find more important.
-Eric Odom
Note: It doesn’t at all help Romney that his electability argument is falling apart
I don’t think I totally agree that Romney is “running out of money,” as is suggested in this article out about Romney’s newly found struggle in fundraising, but there is certainly some areas where it might ring painfully true for the Romney campaign. The short of it…
The former Massachusetts governor’s gold-plated fundraising machine has depended almost exclusively on big checks from the wealthy individuals — business leaders, Mormon allies, longtime Republican Establishment donors — whom Romney and his team have been cultivating for years, pressing the cases that resonate for those crowds: That he’ll cut taxes; that he’ll beat Barack Obama; that he’s inevitable and they’d better get on board.
But Romney has proved unable to tap into the emotion-driven small-dollar contributions that helped power Barack Obama in 2008, and which fueled even his more Establishment rival, Hillary Clinton, this time four years ago when she too began to run out of big donors. The result: Republican fundraisers say that despite his success so far, they think Romney is fast approaching a wall, and that he will likely be forced to pay for the campaign out of his own deep pockets.
“I don’t know that he’s completely tapped out, but they are trying to look under every stone,” said a top New York Republican fundraiser. “You run out of people you can hit up for $2,500,” he said, referring to the legal limit for primary contributions.
This is why I’m still baffled as to why Romney didn’t pull out the bigger guns for Colorado and Minnesota earlier this month. A win in Colorado and strong second place finish would have shot down any notion that he’ll struggle in big battle ground states. And more importantly in the short term, it would have thrown water on the Santorum flame.
Romney needed to put to bed the idea that he may not end up winning the nomination. If he had successfully done so, there is no question he would have started immediately expanding his small donor database. Yes, it’s true a lot of conservatives don’t like Romney. But it’s also true a lot of conservatives just want to know who they’re going to see run against Obama, and at that point they’ll begin donating.
Do I believe Romney is running out of money? Not at all. But I do agree that he should have been tapping into a larger pool of small donors by now and his campaign is probably feeling that pain.
Additionally, Romney’s wealthier backers can simply drop any amount into the pro-Romney super PAC, which easily serves as a hard-hitting media extension of the Romney campaign. That infrastructure will always be there, and it will always be better than those of Santorum, Paul and Gingrich.
-Eric Odom
I love Twitter. It’s the only live information stream I have where random hilarious videos show up out of nowhere without my having to search for them. In this case, it’s the GOP Super MIX. They call it the GOP rap, but it sounds more like an old school dance beat to me. Any way, it’s well worth the watch and a great way to start out the day.
Enjoy!
-Eric Odom
