Among the alarmed were members of South Carolina’s tea party. They were gathered on the third floor of a conference center looking out over a sandy beach occupied by no one but four gray-haired Occupy Wall Street activists. The gray-haired conservative activists inside took no note of the protesters and their hand-made signs; two presidential candidates occupied their attention.
Santorum was up first. He talked about American exceptionalism; about how, in an age of kings and emperors, the founding fathers created a Constitution that declared an individual’s rights were derived from God, not granted by government.
“Any rights a government gives you, they can --” Santorum paused and the tea partiers responded in unison -- “Take away!”
The right to pursue happiness, articulated in the Declaration of Independence, also had a particular meaning when Thomas Jefferson penned the words, Santorum claimed. According to the ex-senator in his ubiquitous sweater vest, pursuing happiness back then meant doing “not what you want to do, but what you ought to do.”
Through it all, Gingrich was cool, calm and collected, picking his spots and coming off as the clear onstage alternative to frontrunner Mitt Romney — just as the other candidate for that position, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, was largely an afterthought and struggled to get his voice heard.
That’s exactly what Gingrich needs. But even moreso than Santorum, it appears Gingrich has little room to grow.
“not enough to make newt electable,” GOP strategist Alex Castellanos tweeted after Gingrich tussled with debate moderator Juan Williams. “nothing can do that. but he gets a bump.”
Recent polling shows Gingrich is among the most disliked Republicans in the country, even when it comes to Republican-leaning voters.
So even if he shows some resilience in the GOP presidential race, the universe of voters that Gingrich can add from this point on might actually not be enough to help him win many votes — or at least, enough to come close to victory.
A recent Fox News poll showed Gingrich’s favorable and unfavorable ratings at 49 percent and 39 percent among registered Republicans. Needless to say, having nearly four in 10 Republicans against you is extremely rare for a Republican politician, no less one who is trying to win his party’s nomination.
In fact, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), whose ceiling in the GOP presidential race is supposed by many (including The Fix) to be not far above where he is now, has essentially the same unfavorable rating among Republicans as Gingrich — 41 percent.
Gingrich probably has a higher ceiling than Paul, especially given that he is seen as more of a traditional Republican. But the fact that Gingrich engenders nearly as much opposition in the GOP as a libertarian-leaning foreign policy non-interventionist like Paul is significant.
Over the weekend, leaders of a group of conservatives that met in Texas to pick their candidate settled on Santorum (though some insist it wasn’t very clear-cut) as their choice against the prohibitive frontrunner Romney. And Tuesday’s debate showed Santorum and Gingrich jockeying for that position.
No comments:
Post a Comment