I've resisted taunting for a whole day
Jan. 23rd, 2012 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexPolitics, of course. Not quite as suspenseful as the football playoffs, but you take what you can get...
Gingrich won South Carolina. Ron Paul finished fourth. With the greatest of respect to feste_sylvain and marius23 and pryder... tolja so. Paul did get out of single digits, which surprised me a bit, but still he's a non-entity. Sadly for him Florida is winner-take-all and he's got no chance there. I expect him to place a respectable third in FL.
Which way Florida goes will depend entirely on how many debates Gingrich can sucker Romney into. In the final SC debate he just plain ole curb-stomped Mitt. The ABC interview turned out to be a fizzle, which was not entirely surprising. Gingrich seems to be coated in teflon at this point (but see below). Where a guy who made $3 million last gets off attacking "the elites" like he wasn't one of them is beyond me. Sadly, Mitt can't touch this, what with his Bain past and his Cayman Islands shelter accounts.
One reason Gingrich did so well in SC was that it's a diffuse market. Florida contains two major media markets where ad money can be concentrated and Romney has the warchest to out-spend Gingrich by a lot. If peoples' image of Gingrich is made by watching his debate soundbites he will do very well; if Mitt can reshape that image through attack ads it will be a different story. I expect Mitt to go after Grinch on Social Security, which is a Very Big Deal in Florida. Early on in the 2011 budget debates Romney staked out a position contrary to much of the GOP in saying that he would not touch Social Security. I think he did that with an eye toward this election as he can now legitimately say he's been up there defending Social Security and those other guys (Gingrich and Santorum) want to cut it.
Gingrich needs both to counter that attack and to cut the legs out from under Santorum in Florida's non-media-market voting areas, primarily the panhandle. Gingrich did this in SC's conservative counties so I think he'll do it again; the question is whether it'll be enough for a win.
I think I'm batting well above .500 on my predictions so far but I won't bore you with a point-by-point recap. At this stage I see Romney eking out a win in FL with Gingrich a close second, after which Santorum drops out, though I wouldn't be surprised if Santorum dropped sooner.
Gingrich won South Carolina. Ron Paul finished fourth. With the greatest of respect to feste_sylvain and marius23 and pryder... tolja so. Paul did get out of single digits, which surprised me a bit, but still he's a non-entity. Sadly for him Florida is winner-take-all and he's got no chance there. I expect him to place a respectable third in FL.
Which way Florida goes will depend entirely on how many debates Gingrich can sucker Romney into. In the final SC debate he just plain ole curb-stomped Mitt. The ABC interview turned out to be a fizzle, which was not entirely surprising. Gingrich seems to be coated in teflon at this point (but see below). Where a guy who made $3 million last gets off attacking "the elites" like he wasn't one of them is beyond me. Sadly, Mitt can't touch this, what with his Bain past and his Cayman Islands shelter accounts.
One reason Gingrich did so well in SC was that it's a diffuse market. Florida contains two major media markets where ad money can be concentrated and Romney has the warchest to out-spend Gingrich by a lot. If peoples' image of Gingrich is made by watching his debate soundbites he will do very well; if Mitt can reshape that image through attack ads it will be a different story. I expect Mitt to go after Grinch on Social Security, which is a Very Big Deal in Florida. Early on in the 2011 budget debates Romney staked out a position contrary to much of the GOP in saying that he would not touch Social Security. I think he did that with an eye toward this election as he can now legitimately say he's been up there defending Social Security and those other guys (Gingrich and Santorum) want to cut it.
Gingrich needs both to counter that attack and to cut the legs out from under Santorum in Florida's non-media-market voting areas, primarily the panhandle. Gingrich did this in SC's conservative counties so I think he'll do it again; the question is whether it'll be enough for a win.
I think I'm batting well above .500 on my predictions so far but I won't bore you with a point-by-point recap. At this stage I see Romney eking out a win in FL with Gingrich a close second, after which Santorum drops out, though I wouldn't be surprised if Santorum dropped sooner.
