2012 GOP Presidential Campaign -- "This individual's going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time."

don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes (i.e., general election v. newt gingrich).

I said this not as a partisan but as general advice. S/he who is (relatively, to him) w/o sin cast some mf'ing stones ppl!

lol how badly did romney screw-up that FOX News interview?

Bring in the clowns...

the clip above seems like yr standard Romney performance to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Bring in the clowns...

they're ... all... rea...dy... heeeeeere

lol romney's answer on immigration question:

talk talk talk talk talk talk talk maybe he'll move on to something else talk talk talk talk talk talk talk

talk talk uh . . . you know . . . (nervous laughter) . . . uh talk talk

the lolsome part is that uh, aren't people who are here illegally already at the "back of the line" re: becoming legal

anyway, gingrich has a chance, because (a) he's an angry white guy who knows how to dog-whistle to his reactionary constituency (i.e., the GOP base) and (b) romney's No. 1 asset was the total, utter inability of his opponents to speak in coherent sentences and discuss even rudimentary policy, and -- as wrong as gingrich is on most issues -- he can speak full sentences and discuss policy.

basically, i'm willing to give amnesty to any undocumented person who can speak english better than rick perry.

which means amnesty for almost all of america's 11M undocumented persons.

anyway, gingrich has a chance, because (a) he's an angry white guy who knows how to dog-whistle to his reactionary constituency (i.e., the GOP base)

which means he has no chance of gaining independents, therefore he's lost the primaries.

let me put it the way my favorite candidate, herman cain, would put it: I'M SORRY BUT YOU ARE WRONG..

I still think Mitt Romney is the likely Republican presidential nominee. But I don’t think, in the way I did a few months ago, that he’s the inevitable Republican nominee.

Can Romney, under the right conditions, break out of the 20s, where he’s been stuck for almost the entire campaign? Sure. Jonathan Bernstein is persuasive on this point: Polls of Republicans show that Romney has low negatives and he performs well in hypothetical match-ups against other Republicans. But what if Romney faces the wrong conditions?

The central mystery of the Republican primary is this: How can Romney’s support be so stable in a primary that’s so volatile? So far, we’ve seen a boom-and-bust cycle take Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain from candidate to frontrunner to not-gonna-happen. But after each bust, Romney’s support was unchanged. He picked up none of their disappointed supporters. Now he’s trailing Newt Gingrich in the polls. Here, via TPM, is what that’s looked like in Iowa:

(chart i can't print here)

Ron Brownstein has come up with perhaps the best explanation for this. The Republican primary, he writes, has “become two races running along parallel but very distinct tracks.” One is the non-tea party primary. There, Romney is winning, and easily. The other is the tea party primary. There, Romney is losing, and big. Here’s the graph, which was published before Gingrich’s surge:

(chart i can't print here)

But ultimately, there’s really only one primary, and Romney needs more supporters if he’s going to win. And though Romney does not have a low ceiling, he clearly has a sticky floor. Republicans may not refuse to support him, but there’s strong evidence that a substantial number don’t want to support him. If Romney is inevitable, they’ll come around. But what if, at the wrong moment, Romney is not inevitable?

Last night, Romney sat down for one of the first televised interviews he’s given in this campaign cycle. It was with a fairly friendly audience: Bret Baier of Fox News. And it was such a disaster that this morning, the Democratic National Committee released a video splicing together the reviews — many of them from Fox.

(video i can't print here)

Debates are a format that suits Romney well and his competitors poorly. So far, Romney hasn’t even stumbled. But eventually, he will stumble. Nobody runs a truly perfect campaign. So imagine Romney loses Iowa, as is very possible. And, under the strain of the loss, he gives a bad interview, or has a testy debate performance, right before New Hampshire. That might be all the excuse a critical number of New Hampshire voters need to coalesce around Gingrich, or perhaps the excuse that some resigned Romney supporters need to jump ship to Huntsman. And so Romney either loses New Hampshire or barely wins. And then he loses South Carolina.

To be sure, Romney could, even under those circumstances, mount a comeback. As Nate Silver points out, there are eight weeks separating the New Hampshire primary from Super Tuesday. In 2008, there were merely three weeks. The 2008 calendar favored a momentum candidate like Gingrich, while the 2012 calendar favors a fundamentals candidate like Romney.

Even so, Romney is having enough trouble adding supporters that he’s clearly vulnerable to a run of bad luck or bad news coming at the wrong time. And thus far, the primary has been so focused on a medium in which he shines — debates —that his flaws in interviews, his vulnerability to ads portraying him as a flip-flopper, and his weaknesses as a retail politician haven’t really been tested. Romney has looked so strong that even a slight stumble could be significant for a media that wants a horserace and voters who clearly want to support another candidate. So is Romney the likely nominee? Sure. Inevitable? No.

it's true that Romney and Gingrich are the only two candidates that can, how you say, talk good

that's how i say.

actually, santorum can talk good. he's just lol.

Debates are a format that suits Romney well and his competitors poorly. So far, Romney hasn’t even stumbled. But eventually, he will stumble. Nobody runs a truly perfect campaign. So imagine Romney loses Iowa, as is very possible. And, under the strain of the loss, he gives a bad interview, or has a testy debate performance, right before New Hampshire. That might be all the excuse a critical number of New Hampshire voters need to coalesce around Gingrich, or perhaps the excuse that some resigned Romney supporters need to jump ship to Huntsman. And so Romney either loses New Hampshire or barely wins. And then he loses South Carolina.

this is all sort of ridiculous since a) Gingrich is the one more likely to stumble/give bad interview/have a testy debate performance. and Gingrich is the one with the weaker ground campaign. also Gingrich has less money. the deck is way stacked against him.

wait 'till FOXNews becomes gingrich's ground campaign.

WAIT 'TILL GINGRICH CO-OPTS ALL OF FORMER CANDIDATE HERMAN CAIN'S GROUND CAMPAIGN

the cain campaign is a moving train

Monk, keep flagellating yourself into excitement.

I think the Marshall and Klein pieces have it exactly right: there's no logical reason why this is happening (and 20 logical reasons why it shouldn't be happening), I don't think it's going to last, but I'm a lot less sure of that today than I was three weeks ago. I'm assuming that Alfred and Shakey Mo Collier don't view Marshall and Klein the same way they would, say, Cokie Roberts or David Gregory. So where do they get the certainty that Marshall and Klein don't have?

Klein's field is economics and economics policy, in which he is expert. At campaign analysis he's as helpless as Cokie and Gregory, and thanks to deadlines and the internet cycle yesterday's "blunder" by Romney gets more discussion than it deserves.

the GOP wants to win, and with Romney they have a chance. Plus: a President Romney can nominate all manner of conservative horrors as Cabinet members, judges, and SCOTUS justices. That's how he mitigates conservative dissatisfaction.

the fox interview doesn't have one really horrible moment for mitt, but in general it was a disaster. Seemed petulant, manic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ePA49HLes

Okay--I've found him pretty smart on politics, too. Anyway, I guess we'll see. (The reasons you cite for Romney are the reasons I was citing months ago; like everyone, I'm mystified as to why the needle never budges an inch for him.)

because he sucks! and is a robot!

the simple fact is the GOP is in complete disarray, and contrary to what others have argued here, are no more prone to "fall in line" than Democrats are. the party is fundamentally dysfunctional at the moment.

BAIER: What was the last book you read or are reading?

ROMNEY: I’m reading sort of a fun one right now, so I’ll skip that. But I just read “Decision Points” by President Bush.

Ugh. This highlights one of Romney’s biggest problems: He’s a stiff who doesn’t really understand how he’s perceived. Of all the candidates, he’s the one who needs to tell people about the “fun” book he’s reading! It would have helped him enormously if he said John Grisham or Brad Thor’s latest thriller.

It's not like Mitt is some obviously electable candidate. Primary voters may have been told that he's the most electable but then they turn on the debate and Newt (and Cain!) run circles around him.

Gingrich and Cain haven't run circles 'round him in debates!

see, everyone agrees: romney is a petulant, manic, sucky robot.

BTW, romney's really reading the red-jaime series from diana gabaldon. it is his secret shame.

In reference to something earlier today, I thought the Frum piece was excellent too. I don't think he's saying anything that Sullivan hasn't been hammering away at for months, but obviously it carries extra weight coming from someone who actually worked for W.

Mitt's fun book was probably either Chuck Eddy's Stairway to Hell or something from the Goosebumps series.

they (and Bachmann and Perry) have benefited from Romney fatigue.

"I’m reading sort of a fun one right now, so I’ll skip that."

Just to get really pointlessly analytical, what's weird about that is "so" instead of "but." "But" I probably wouldn't notice; "so" = fun is something you should never discuss?

"Decision Points" = not a fun read

the GOP wants to win, and with Romney they have a chance.

Facts not at all in evidence

http://www.landmarkaudio.com/productimages/111462.jpg

when Newt wins the nom I'll liveblog this for your pleasure

Facts not at all in evidence

the GOP mantra since '94.

If they wanted to win they'd circle their wagons round Huntsman. He's Republican lite like Obama and he's new and the country is mighty dissatisfied in an inchoate (stupid) way

Herman is still convinced "the other side" is behind his woes: "Once I moved into the top tier, I think they became threatened. My star was shining and rising too fast...they wanted to take that shine away." It's really too bad that he will never get to apply his detective skills to the intricacies of geopolitical maneuvering.

Romney will be the flip-flop, unloved, robot candidate who doesn't quite make it. There's plenty of fire in the GOP belly and no-one who can express it (and still win).

fuck Newt & Forstchen have written a lotta books

I can't wait for the ILX Book Club on these mofos

m white otm

I still think romney's gonna get it because but I think that he won't be winning primaries w/ healthy margins, prob even after he's 'sealed it'. newt et al just have so much crap they'll be dealing w/ along the way, even if they pick up some states, it's just so hard to imagine them making it to the finish line.

but "the GOP wants to win" doesn't really mean anything. everybody wants to win every election but there are definitely elections where 'the most electable' candidate didn't get the nomination. what is the GOP? 'party insiders'? fox news? the voters? people who showed up at tea party rallies? I think most people who are crazy enough to support the present day republican party might not see 'electability' the same way we do.

er romney's gonna get it but*

dunno how that because snuck in

anyway I would like to remind people who think that romney is 100%, you can literally double your money on intrade if you wanna put it where yr mouth is

No thanks -- that's what you chaps are for.

Question for those of you who were here in November of 2007: was there anybody posting at the time that Hillary had it locked up, and dismissing the idea that Obama might win? I realize it's far from a perfect analogy, as Obama was still more or less a blank slate, and Gingrich is anything but.

I didn't care much about the primaries until January '08 and Bam won in Iowa. But now it looked inevitable: he'd had a fairly big head of steam from the end of 2006 through 2007. It's hard to remember now, but lots of establishment Corner types were impressed by his prose and demeanor.

Which is to say: I thought HRC inevitable through summer '07, didn't care much until Iowa, then concluded that this man would be the nominee and probably the president.

Sure--it was a lot easier to predict Obama after Iowa, which is why I'm curious what people were posting a month beforehand, the point we're at now. If Gingrich were to win Iowa, predicting he'll win the nomination would seem a lot less chimerical than it does now. (And if Romney were to win, I wouldn't go on about how anything's possible.)