Mitt Romney is poised to suffer yet another blow in his march to the Republican presidential nomination this weekend in Louisiana, according new polls from Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen Reports.
A poll released Friday by Public Policy Polling shows Rick Santorum with a double-digit lead over Romney in Louisiana. Some 42 percent of the 650 likely Republican primary voters polled make Santorum their top choice. Mitt Romney is at 28 percent, with Newt Gingrich at 18 percent and Ron Paul at 8 percent.And the PPP poll has Santorum winning the support of voters who identify as “very conservative,” Tea Partiers, and evangelicals. Romney narrowly has the support, 37-33 percent, of voters living in urban areas. The PPP poll has a 3.8 percent margin of error.Another poll released Thursday by Rasmussen Reports gives Santorum a 12-percentage point lead over the former Massachusetts governor.The good news for Santorum came as the candidate tried to walk back comments on Thursday that President Obama might be a better choice than rival Romney. But if it’s not him, his campaign said Friday, Santorum will back whoever it is — and isn’t actually suggesting voters just stick with Obama.
AP – March 9, 2012: Rick Santorum greets supporters during a rally in Topeka, Kan.
Rick Santorum swept to victory in the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses Saturday, marking his strongest caucus finish yet but still struggling to make a dent in Mitt Romney’s delegate lead.
With all precincts reporting, Santorum dominated the race with 51 percent support. Romney trailed with 21 percent, followed by Newt Gingrich with 14 percent. Ron Paul was in last place with 13 percent.
Of Kansas’ total haul of 40 delegates, Santorum picked up 33. He won another three in the latest round of voting out of Wyoming.
Low-tax crusader and Republican strategist Grover Norquist tells Newsmax the country is suffering from a very weak recovery because President Obama “did all the wrong things” in reaction to the recession.But as pundits tallied up the results from Super Tuesday, Norquist on Wednesday struck an optimistic tone on the GOP’s chances in November.Whoever wins the exhausting battle for the Republican presidential nomination, he points out, the candidate will be a staunch Reagan conservative with a tough fiscal approach on spending. That’s true whether it’s Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.But if President Obama somehow gets re-elected, Republicans more than likely will be in control of both the U.S. Senate and the House, meaning Obam will not have any power of the purse.“If there is a Republican president then you can immediately move to do a budget and extend all the tax cuts and begin to cut spending,” Norquist says. “If Obama is still the president, we have a train wreck, and Obama likes train wrecks because he takes advantage of that kind of crisis to try to push for bigger government.“Certainly it’s important to have a Republican House and Senate even with a Democratic president, but it’s difficult to get legislation passed. You can not give the president money, that’s not a bad first step, but you can’t cut taxes without the president’s signature.”
AP -March 6: Rick Santorum, left, and Newt Gingrich are shown on the campaign trail on Super Tuesday.
Rick Santorum’s supporters, the morning after their candidate hung tough and pulled out three Super Tuesday victories, began to apply serious pressure to Newt Gingrich to bow out of the presidential race — arguing the former speaker is standing in the way of a fair fight between Santorum and Mitt Romney.
The super PAC supporting the former Pennsylvania senator claimed Wednesday that Santorum — who was overshadowed by Romney’s victories in Ohio and five other states — would have had a much bigger night had it not been for Gingrich’s presence. Gingrich kept his campaign alive by winning Georgia Tuesday.
Democrats in Lansing, Mich., are nowhere near the far end of the liberal-o-meter as are Democrats in San Francisco, Calif.
So while Rick Santorum is taking heat for encouraging Democrats in Michigan to vote for him in Tuesday’s primary, he is actually using a playbook that the GOP should adopt in the general election.
And that is: Pit “working class” Democrats against the extreme radicals who populate the activist wing of the Democratic Party.
Rank-and-file union members, for instance, are just as disgusted with President Obama’s decision to punt on the Keystone pipeline as are conservative Republicans around the country.
“Instead of celebrating their victory by hugging a tree, they should hug a jobless construction worker because they’re the ones who are going to need it,” fumed the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
“Once again the President has sided with environmentalists instead of blue-collar construction workers, even though environmental concerns were more than adequately addressed,” they added.
Here’s why tomorrow’s Michigan primary is so important: it’s about establishment confidence in Mitt Romney and the last outside chance of getting another entrant in the race.
There are, as I’ve noted previously, a number of different types of “establishment” vs “grassroots” divides in the GOP, but you don’t have to have any particular definition of ‘establishment’ to recognize that Romney’s candidacy leans heavily on the support he draws from traditional ‘establishment’ or ‘insider’ sources: money from big-dollar fundraisers, endorsements from big-name elected officials, and covering fire from right-leaning journalists at major mainstream publications and conservative journals. Romney has depended, time and again, on his ability to get out of trouble by having the resources to go more negative than whatever opponent he’s targeting: more money to dump on negative ads and a bigger chorus of voices amplifying those attacks.
Aside from Mormon support – which is somewhat sui generis to Romney – some of Romney’s structural support comes from people who know him personally or identify with him as a fellow wealthy businessman; some comes from people who fear running a bold-colors conservative; and some comes from those who, whether or not they’d support a conservative in theory, fear Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich as electoral liabilities, Santorum for his overly outspoken social conservatism, Newt for his long train of baggage. (It’s obviously Santorum represents a serious threat to Romney at present.)
Two weeks ago, Fox News reported that President Obama held statistically significant leads over his possible Republican opponents in a series of swing state polls. Today, hope and change:
In the poll, Obama lags the two leading Republican rivals in the 12 states likely to determine the outcome of a close race in November:
•Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum tops Obama 50%-45% in the swing states. Nationwide, Santorum’s lead narrows to 49%-46%.
•Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney edges Obama 48%-46% in the swing states. Nationwide, they are tied at 47% each.
The battleground states surveyed include Michigan — where Tuesday’s primary has become a critical showdown between Romney and Santorum — as well as Ohio and Virginia, which vote next week on Super Tuesday. The other swing states are Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Sarah Palin has criticized the ‘lame-stream media’ for making too much of Rick Santorum’s 2008 statement that Satan is attacking America. But the media aren’t the only ones concerned.
Sarah Palin says the lame-stream media are getting all “wee-weed up” about Rick Santorum’s Satan speech. By that, we believe she means the mainstream press is making too much of it. Is she right?
Well, we’ll note here that the media gets wee-weed up about many subjects, because if they don’t, it can be very hard to stay awake during a slow news day. Mr. Santorum’s remarks were made four years ago, in a different context than a presidential race, and are easy to misinterpret if you have a dissimilar religious background.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania speaking to the Ohio Christian Alliance in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 18, 2012. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has opened a double-digit lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Gallup’s national tracking poll of the Republican presidential race.
In the five-day polling period ending on Sunday, Feb. 19, Santorum was first with 36 percent, Romney was second with 26 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was third with 13 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas was fourth with 11 percent.
Coming up from the underdog, Senator Rick Santorum is gaining momentum like wildfire. Some people are calling him the new ‘frontrunner’. Check out this Google Trends chart from today, February 18, 2012. This is not a poll, but a significant chatter meter of how candidates are doing.
While polls, when properly calculated, are move scientific, it is obvious that all polling is not on the same page. We believe that there is some affecting of bias by the mainstream media. We have recently found out that Media Matters has been linked to access to the White House perhaps for the purpose of generating a ‘consistent’ front on all the networks, just like in the last election (2008).
By God, it’s not going to work this time. The American people know what you guys are doing. People like George Soros, David Brock, etc., are in bed with the Obama Administration to pull together the same ‘slick trick’ they did last time.
Not gonna work. This time we not only have the record of a failed president, but we have full knowledge of the intentions of this administration. We know that the job numbers are being cooked to look good on the surface, but in reality, we know that the real number much higher.
The ‘tax cut’ Congress passed is a bad idea. It’s not a tax cut, its taking money from Social Security receipts and calling it a tax cut. Why is it that Social Security has always been the victim of legislative robbery? We know that Social Security is funded by current, on-going tax receipts from Social Security taxing. Where is the money coming from to replace those funds?
It’s continuing to be obvious that President Obama is secretly and willingly trying to crash this economy. This is the worst ‘tax and spend’ administration since Woodrow Wilson! It’s even worse than the Carter administration. We need a REAL CONSERVATIVE. We believe Sen.Rick Santorum is that man to get this nation back in the direction it should be going.
Considering the fact that the 2012 presidential election is only months away, the Obama administration‘s missteps in handling the Health and Human Services Department’s contraceptive mandate are stunning. At best, the administration failed to gauge the Catholic Church‘s full fury when considering the realization of impending women’s services requirements. Now, the rhetoric coming from those opposed the the measures has reached a boiling point, with one group already launching legal battles against the initiative.
On Friday, Obama attempted to temper the storm by releasing plans for an “accommodation” that would exempt religiously-affiliated universities and institutions from being forced to directly offer contraceptives and other controversial services. As the Blaze reported, under the “compromise,” the insurers that these faith-related groups contract with will, indeed, be forced to cover contraceptives for those employees who wish to receive them.
posted at 8:40 am on February 8, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
Last night when discussing the trends in the three non-binding Republican contests, I tweeted that Rick Santorum’s win in Missouri was only surprising in gaining a majority, but that a win in Minnesota would be surprising — and a win in Colorado would be shocking. As it happens, National Journal agrees with that assessment. Santorum shocked the Republican race with a clean sweep of Tuesday’s caucuses and primary, and may have pushed himself into serious consideration as the long-sought conservative consolidation alternative to Mitt Romney:
Rick Santorum on Tuesday completed his sweep of states with a stunning upset of Mitt Romney in Colorado’s caucus, according to state Republican officials, shaking up a GOP presidential race that has seen more drama than Romney’s campaign envisioned even a week ago.
Santorum earlier won Minnesota’s caucus and a non-binding Missouri primary. Romney – who won Colorado handily in 2008 — had long remained the odds-on favorite to prevail in that state’s caucus, as polls had shown him with a double-digit lead.
A jubilant Santorum told supporters that he isn’t the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney:
“I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” he told supporters earlier in the evening. “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”
Tuesday could be Rick Santorum’s big day – his chance to break back into the news cycle with some strong primary performances, and make the case that he’s a better choice than Newt Gingrich for those seeking an alternative to Mitt Romney.
On the national level, it’s really still a fairly close race. An ABC News / Washington Postpoll concluded on the eve of this weekend’s Nevada caucuses had Romney in the lead with 38 percent support, but Gingrich, Santorum, and Ron Paul were fairly close together with 24, 18, and 14 percent, respectively. Very few delegates have been assigned by the primaries and caucuses held thus far. There is still plenty of time for the race to change.
It’s the local polling that makes Tuesday exciting for the Santorum campaign. Missouri is holding a “just for show” meaningless primary ahead of its March caucuses, but Santorum is looking very good there. He’s just a hair behind Gingrich, and a bit ahead of Romney, but Gingrich didn’t qualify for the primary, so Santorum has a great opening to win over those march Missouri caucus-goers.
Rick Santorum accused President Obama of wanting Americans to go to colleges and universities that will indoctrinate them to be liberals.
“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid go to go college,” Santorum said Wednesday in Florida, according to CBS News. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?”
In Obama’s State of the Union speech a day earlier he called on higher education institutions to become more affordable or face funding cuts from the federal government.
“Higher education can’t be a luxury — it is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford,” Obama said in his speech.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at a presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – A poll of 1,540 likely South Carolina Republican primary voters completed on Friday night had former House Speaker Newt Gingrich leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 37 percent to 28 percent. The poll put former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in third with 16 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in fourth with 14 percent of the vote.
The poll was conducted Jan 18-20 by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling company based in Raleigh, N.C. It was done through automated telephone calls.
In just the polling done on Friday night, Gingrich actually led Romney, 40 percent to 26 percent.
…CNN’s John King opened the Charleston debate with a direct question to Gingrich about his past. “Do you want to take a moment to address that?” King asked.
“No, but I will,” Gingrich replied. And he wound up his ire and spent the next few minutes pulverizing the media for digging into his past on the eve of the South Carolina primary. When King tried to deflect Gingrich’s wrath back off onto ABC, Gingrich would have none of it: King has brought up the issue in the debate, after all. King looked visibly cowed.
posted at 11:10 am on January 18, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
After a brilliant debate performance by Newt Gingrich on Monday, some wondered whether it was too late in the cycle for a second bounce. According to a Rasmussen poll taken yesterday of 1,000 likely GOP primary voters, Mitt Romney’s team may want to keep the party favors in the box for a little while longer:
The race for the Republican presidential nomination is now nearly even with Mitt Romney still on top but Newt Gingrich just three points apart.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters nationwide shows Romney with 30% support and Gingrich with 27% of the vote. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who was running second two weeks ago, has now dropped to 15%.
Santorum brings a positive message of faith to the Palmetto State.
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Political ads are now running almost constantly during the commercial breaks on TV here, and most of them are attack ads. Mitt Romney’s “super PAC” Restore Our Future is attacking Newt Gingrich and Gingrich’s “super PAC” Winning Our Future is attacking Romney. And, as if to validate his newfound status as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum is now being attacked in TV ads, one by Ron Paul’s campaign and another by Romney’s “super PAC.”
Asked about one of those ads during a town-hall event in Florence on Sunday, Santorum struggled to find words for the pro-Romney PAC’s ad, which accuses him of wanting to extend voting rights to felons. “That is a lie,” the former Pennsylvania senator said at Percy & Willie’s restaurant. “To go and mislead the people of South Carolina as to what our record is on this is just… yuck. I expect that from Barack Obama. I don’t expect it from a Republican running for president.”
[Editor: CWNews endorses Senator Rick Santorum as a favorite candidate for the Iowa Caucuses. God bless America!]
Last month, Sen. Rick Santorum schooled CNN’s Candy Crowley on the subject of President Barack Obama’s appeasement of America’s enemies. Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, it was David Gregory’s turn.
Like Crowley, Gregory attempted to “fact-check” Santorum by arguing that it could not possibly be “accurate” or “objective” to describe Obama’s foreign policy as “appeasement.”
In particular, he challenged Santorum to distinguish Obama’s policy on Iran from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. (For several years, Democrats have tried to defend Obama by pointing out that the Bush administration refused to approve military strikes, either by the U.S. or by Israel.)
Santorum, as usual, delivered the facts on demand:
Santorum pointed out that Obama failed to support Iran’s democracy movement–and later added that Obama cut funding to pro-democracy programs that Bush had supported. He noted that Obama has given tacit support to Islamist political parties in Egypt and other Arab countries that oppose America and our allies.
posted at 8:40 am on November 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
The Republican candidate held their first debate in weeks last night, a forum dedicated to economic policy hosted by CNBC’s John Harwood and Maria Bartiromo, and for the most part they seemed to have improved with the time off. For the first hour or so of the debate, everyone seemed sharp, with crisp answers and very little to criticize. Even Rick Perry seemed to have improved — and then, one of the worst moments in decades of major political debates took place when Perry got lost on an easy listing of Cabinet-level agencies he wants to eliminate. Worst of all, the one he couldn’t recall despite nearly 30 seconds of stammering was the Department of Energy, a key area on which Perry has based his economic policy.
Is the GOP presidential field “a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism?” That’s what Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens claim in a New York Times op-ed. How so, you ask?
Well, Giberson and Stephens, who both have a history in academia at Eastern Nazarene College and who came together to author the book, “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age,” believe that the current Republican candidates hold views that defy logic. A description of their book sheds more light on their mentality:
“Exploring intellectual authority within evangelicalism, the authors reveal how America’s populist ideals, anti-intellectualism, and religious free market, along with the concept of anointing—being chosen by God to speak for him like the biblical prophets—established a conservative evangelical leadership isolated from the world of secular arts and sciences.”
Michele Bachmann officially announced her candidacy for the presidency in Iowa with a homespun, Iowa-centric speech. Picture: AP Source: AP
A HORDE of presidential candidates descends on Iowa this week to secure support in the nation’s first caucus state, but Michele Bachmann has gone one better: she launched her campaign with a resounding reminder that she was here first.
The Minnesota congresswoman, who was raised in the state, officially announced her candidacy for the presidency yesterday in a homespun speech in which she promised to transplant the God-fearing, conservative values of rural Iowa directly to the Oval Office.
President Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Thaddeus McCotter and Rick Santorum were due to meet the idiosyncratic Iowan caucus-goers today but none of them will be able to match Ms Bachmann’s pledge.
The lead-up to the Republican campaign for president next year is getting testy. Former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum, a likely candidate in that campaign, is taking Politico news service to task for a story it published with negative comments by him about fellow potential candidate Sarah Palin.
At issue is Santorum’s response to questions asked by S.E. Cupp, a conservative commentator who hosts an online radio show on Glenn Beck’s website. Cupp asked Santorum about Palin’s decision not to speak at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) this weekend.
Santorum responded that the former Alaska governor has “other business opportunities” occupying her schedule, Politico reports.
“I have a feeling she has some demands on her time, and a lot of them have financial benefit attached to them, so I’m sure that she’s doing what’s best for her and her family,” he said. (more…)
Last week on the show I criticized former Senator Santorum for his comments regarding Tea Party candidates. When he asked for equal time, and we were happy to oblige him. The Q&A might surprise you.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by former US Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum. We’ll discuss how he matches up with the values of the Tea Party, his opinion on the runaway TSA, and whether or not he’s running for president.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
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The Scripture Call for God’s People:
II Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
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Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed
Mitt Romney is poised to suffer yet another blow in his march to the Republican presidential nomination this weekend in Louisiana, according new polls from Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen Reports.
AP -March 6: Rick Santorum, left, and Newt Gingrich are shown on the campaign trail on Super Tuesday.
Democrats in Lansing, Mich., are nowhere near the far end of the liberal-o-meter as are Democrats in San Francisco, Calif.
Here’s why tomorrow’s Michigan primary is so important: it’s about establishment confidence in Mitt Romney and the last outside chance of getting another entrant in the race.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania speaking to the Ohio Christian Alliance in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 18, 2012. (AP Photo)
While polls, when properly calculated, are move scientific, it is obvious that all polling is not on the same page. We believe that there is some affecting of bias by the mainstream media. We have recently found out that Media Matters has been linked to access to the White House perhaps for the purpose of generating a ‘consistent’ front on all the networks, just like in the last election (2008).
Billy Hallowell
Considering the fact that the 2012 presidential election is only months away, the Obama administration‘s missteps in handling the Health and Human Services Department’s contraceptive mandate are stunning. At best, the administration failed to gauge the Catholic Church‘s full fury when considering the realization of impending women’s services requirements. Now, the rhetoric coming from those opposed the the measures has reached a boiling point, with one group already launching legal battles against the initiative.
Last night when discussing the trends in the three non-binding Republican contests, I tweeted that Rick Santorum’s win in Missouri was only surprising in gaining a majority, but that a win in Minnesota would be surprising — and a win in Colorado would be shocking. As it happens, National Journal agrees with that assessment. Santorum shocked the Republican race with a clean sweep of Tuesday’s caucuses and primary, and may have pushed himself into serious consideration as the long-sought conservative consolidation alternative to Mitt Romney:
by John Hayward
Rick Santorum accused President Obama of wanting Americans to go to colleges and universities that will indoctrinate them to be liberals.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at a presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. (AP Photo)
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Political ads are now running almost constantly during the commercial breaks on TV here, and most of them are attack ads. Mitt Romney’s “super PAC” Restore Our Future is attacking Newt Gingrich and Gingrich’s “super PAC” Winning Our Future is attacking Romney. And, as if to validate his newfound status as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum is now being attacked in TV ads, one by Ron Paul’s campaign and another by Romney’s “super PAC.”
Santorum, as usual, delivered the facts on demand:
The Republican candidate held their first debate in weeks last night, a forum dedicated to economic policy hosted by CNBC’s John Harwood and Maria Bartiromo, and for the most part they seemed to have improved with the time off. For the first hour or so of the debate, everyone seemed sharp, with crisp answers and very little to criticize. Even Rick Perry seemed to have improved — and then, one of the worst moments in decades of major political debates took place when Perry got lost on an easy listing of Cabinet-level agencies he wants to eliminate. Worst of all, the one he couldn’t recall despite nearly 30 seconds of stammering was the Department of Energy, a key area on which Perry has based his economic policy.
Is the GOP presidential field “a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism?” That’s what Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens claim in a New York Times op-ed. How so, you ask?
At issue is Santorum’s response to questions asked by S.E. Cupp, a conservative commentator who hosts an online radio show on Glenn Beck’s website. Cupp asked Santorum about Palin’s decision not to speak at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) this weekend.
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