Uh, none of those power hungry, self absorbed, dimwit, a-holes should be allowed to run anything. That parties offerings this time around are a joke.

See poll--got my vote in, did you?

Why was this non-news sent out as a "breaking news" alert by Patch?

Glad you answered Nicholas. With all the storms and sirens going on around here, I thought we were under siege. Glad it's just an over zealous editor.

I think Gingrich will win, which would be a real telling statement, really. Good ol' South Carolina is not comfortable selecting a Mormon. They would rather give their vote to a serial philanderer. Something which the media has been hesitant to address is the hypocrisy of fundamentalists. They are pretty intolerant of gays, premarital sex, abortion (even in the case of rape and incest, in many cases), but they turn a blind eye to a defiant sexually loose Gingrich.

Interesting development at approximately 9:00pm, EST: CNN poll shows that 51% of those voting for Gingrich said they think he is more likley to beat Obama. They were more likley to ignore his past record, his reputation among his fellow conservatives, and his personal behavior. Meanwhile Fox News (yes FOX!!!) said their exit poll showed late deciders voted for Gingrich 53 to 46 (for Romney). Their top reason: Gingrich more closely shared their (the SC voter's) religious beliefs.

It is sad that Black folks with their conservative heritage unconditionally rebuke the Republican Party and are afraid to leave the plantation of the Democratic party no matter how bad Massa treats them...

Hi Glen, thanks for representing the Cascade Patch in this convo!

@Janita: Thank you. I will give my opinion as you see, but I wont take the bait and attack these dissenting gentlemen for their opinions. I am just a disinterested (not UNinterested) observer of the GOP race.

10:08 pm: MSNBC poll confirms the Fox News report, at least the part about religion. It found 60% of South Carolinians interviewed say they think it's important to vote for a candidate who shares their religious beliefs, and the majority voted for Newt.

Glen, religious beliefs do not necessarily mean Mormonism. It also has to do with his flip flop on abortion, Romneycare, and his moderate Republican image, correctly or incorrectly.
Will you say the same thing about us if/when he wins Georgia?

Here's what I know for certain. Any of the GOP candidates, including Ron Paul, will be better than Barak H. Obama.

It appears that SC republicans have voted to make a religious sloemn vow meaningless.
I can understand divorce but to shame one's spouse like he did twice is not my idea of conservative values.

Since Glen took my serial philanderer line I'll go with duplicitous diddler. I fully expect Newt to win Georgia as well as every other southern state with the exception of perhaps Florida. However it would not surprise me in the least to see the battle between Newt and Romney go to the convention floor with Paul holding a deciding pocketful of delegates for ransom over either a place on the ticket, in the cabinet (Sec of Defense?..hahaha) or concessions in the party platform.

At any rate, none of the current candidates seem very viable in the general election. They all seem to have electability issues and as much as Republicans are in denial over Obama's record, he actually has a healthy, some would say historic, list of accomplishments to run on even if he never mentions The Affordable Care Act.

Need I say Jeremiah Wright, Eric Holder, "spread the wealth around", 9-10% unemployment as measured by U3 standard/16% by U5 standard, $16 trillion in debt, Obamacare. I don't think the Amercan public will be fooled twice regardless of his TelePrompTer skills.

Oh please enlighten us on his 'healthy some would say historic list of accomplishments'.

Chris:

At first, I decided not to respond to your attacks because poking a pig doesn’t modify its behavior; it just makes it mad (metaphor). The subject of the discussion, I thought, was the GOP South Carolina primary. I exercised my First Amendment rights and expressed an opinion as to the outcome of the race. My conclusions were based on historical facts, observation, polls I had read and application of deductive reasoning.

I responded to your outbursts by pointing to 3 different polls (including one by Fox News, no less) indicating that my premises were logical. Instead of addressing those polls, or doing your own research, you hurled epithets not grounded in fact.

You ascribed to me motives that only exist in your mind, not in mine. But you too, sir, are entitled to your own opinion. You might even cry “fire” in a crowded theater and get away with it.

What you are not entitled to, however, are your own facts; including our own grammatical facts. As a wordsmith, writer and the beneficiary of a good liberal education, I cannot let the language be butchered so mercilessly. “Liberal education,” by the way, Chris, has nothing to do with politics. Google it.

Christopher:

Firstly, you entirely over-simplify the meaning of “disinterested.” In fact, I suggest you Google the meaning of both words I used, rather than take them simplistically. They are different words with different meanings.

By the way, speaking of simplistic and specious, let’s take a look at the rest of your copy:

It’s “you’re” not “you” well aware of. It’s “commenting on” not “commenting….” You failed to set apart the word “ultimately” with commas in your second sentence and, unless you are British, prevailing U.S. style dictates that we place our commas inside the quotes.

But, here’s the real deal: I generally do not point out grammatical mistakes on informal web chats like these unless they are blatant and used to hurl epithets at someone. I share neither your political views, intolerance nor disregard for grammar and punctuation.

What’s really sad is that you—and people who think like you—who attack others for not drinking your Koolaid actually believe you are superior to people like me so you go through life haphazardly correcting our grammar and political views…. all the while making more errors and less sense.

Well said Glen! I hope Newt wins the Republican presidential nomination. Based on Newt's record, It should be easy to show America that he is not qualified to run our country. I don't think he will be able to beat President Obama.

@ Brian:Just like a liberal. There you go obfuscating the discussion with facts. Where are your talking points, man? With those in hand who needs facts or individual thought?

I am "rooting for Newt"! He will win most of the southern states( many in the south are still fighting the civil war), but he'll lose the rest of the nation. As well he should.

I just learned more in 5 minutes on this chat than all of the Republican Debates combined.

Absolutely Bill! This item is generating great energy across the landscape--how many Patches are involved here?

It'll definitely be down to Romney and Gingrich- Newt is good, but Romney might have an edge in the fact that he's a moderate republican and he could maybe pull some democrats to his side.

"God removes kings and raises up kings. For wisdom and might are His. He gives wisdom to the wise & knowledge to those who have understanding." Daniel 2:21

20 Daniel answered and said: "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, For wisdom and might are His. 21 And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding.

"plugged the damn oil spill" HUH? Excuse me, but we left the "jumping" shark 3 miles back...

Hey Brian:
I like the title of your blog:
http://brian-crawford.blogspot.com/p/things-i-make.html

BTW--if Newt gets in, promises to be a much more creative debate season with Obama than with Romney..that is, unless the mainstream media takes the important issues away from us with all of the divisive negative hot-buttons. For instance, can we please get one of these guys to take a stand against the waste, corruption and ethical issues surrounding X,Y,Z Industrial Complexes? Can we just get a debate moderator to ask a question about the oligarchy that spawns them?

Can you imagine Obama responding to a character-related question bearing on Newt's divorces with: "I don't know--I wasn't there--and I'd really rather talk about more important issues that bear on Mr. Gingrich's and my different world views." Slap down, Mr. Media Guy!

Thanks Tom...the blog is a work in progress. Come to think of it, I guess it always will be,

Agree on the debate, Newt's histrionic bloviation (yes spell check, that is a word) against Obama's "cool as the other side of the pillow" demeanor. Nat King Cole vs Chris Farley. Can't miss TV.

Any President is limited in how to address one of the biggest threats to our Nation - Crippling National debt. That is a Congressional problem. So far, nobody is impressed with how that body is able to address ANY issue of major importance.

Until Congress is able to become effective again, the US will face a decade of economic malaise followed by an unplayable debt - to China. Ten years.

Many good comments, but most are missing the point; Presidential power to resolve certain issues is limited by Constitutional design.

As to Gingrich, Shaming is EX-WIFE'S, What about his EX-WIFE'S SHAMING HIM

When Clinton first ran for office, Bush supporters were frequently heard to say that if a man's wife can't trust him, then voters can't trust him either. Now, it seems, the vast majority of those very same people are willing to support an ethically-challenged, thrice-married, serial-adulterer who is the quintessential Washington insider (Gingrich has been living in the D.C. suburbs for years while making millions off his name and connections, including an active consultant to George W. Bush's administration). Seriously, the level of cognitive dissonance is off the charts.

Gingrich stumps around the country labeling others as "elites", "Washington insiders", "radical", "destructive" and "anti-American" while he labels himself as a "leader" who has "American values endowed by our creator." Truthfully, every time Gingrich mentions "our creator" in a public forum, given his history, he commits blasphemy.

For a reminder of Gingrich's history, consider reading the the memo his political action committee, GOPAC, sent out in the nineties, called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" MECHANISM OF CONTROL! It contains the infamous word list that, if you pay attention, you'll notice that Gingrich still employees to this very day.

It says (humorously): "...we have heard a plaintive plea: 'I wish I could speak like Newt.' That takes years of practice.." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm

Mormon-phobia (Fear of Mormonism) = Epistemophobia (Fear of knowledge) + Eleutherophobia ( Fear of freedom). We need to rethink our value systems when we think about the candidates we will choose to run our country.

Many states don't allow registered party voters vote in another party's primaries. Georgia doesn't register by party affiliation, so anyone can vote in a party primary. 2002-Cynthia McKinney supporters claimed Republicans crashed the Dem Primary (in DeKalb, the Dem primary is the General election) to push Denise Magette over the top (not that it matters legally).
The AJC did an exhaustive vote study that said there was no basis for the claim (I still wonder why they did all that work). I worked at the polls in a 70/30 Republican precinct and 92% of the voters voted in the Dem primary. Unreal stat--not sure what would have constituted a "basis for the claim".

Scott Brooks said, "It is unfortunate that liberals like Brian will be able to vote in the Republican primary, choosing someone they believe Obama can easily defeat."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it conservatives who were directing and executing "Operation Chaos" in 2008 whereby many conservatives gleefully voted in Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton, not because they planned to vote for her in the general, but because they wanted to keep the Obama/Clinton battle going? Based on the exit polls, many have argued convincingly that Operation Chaos actually worked in a couple of states. Was Scott Brooks angry then? Or was he laughing?

That said, I agree that we should have to register to vote either with a party or as an independent. Let the party faithful choose their own nominees. No Republican or independent should be able to interfere with the Democrats selection process and no Democrat or independent should have a say in who the Republican nominee is.

Anthropophobia ( Fear of people or society) + Mormon-phobia (Fear of Mormonism)+ Eleutherophobia ( Fear of freedom). = Apeirophobia ( Fear of infinity) + Epistemophobia (Fear of knowledge) + Ancraophobia ( Fear of wind). We need to rethink our value systems when we think about the candidates we will choose to run our country.

To win in November, they have to appeal to independents. Santorum doesn't because he's too socially conservative. Newt doesn't because he's too conservative, espouses the same tired old supply-side economics (that favor the 1%, which we've practiced for the past 3 decades, which got us into the financial crisis we're in now, and have proven to be a long-term failure), and is a bombastic loose-cannon gov't insider and a lobbyist. Romney has a better chance of appealing to independents because he's a moderate, but he's part of the 1% which is a major handicap for him. And all three are more of the same old Washington crap of being in someone's pocket and selling policy to the highest bidder.

The one who can best appeal to independents is Ron Paul, because he's the only one speaking truth about Big Money.

All of which is giving the Repub establishment fits because they hate Newt and fear Paul. All of which makes this Repub primary circus hugely entertaining.

Barbara:
Your comment is timely--see my letter in 1/20 AJC:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/readers-write-1-20-1308915.html

"Mary Sanchez’s column about Ron Paul (“Contrarian candidate for hope and change,” Opinion, Jan. 17) goes the way almost all editorials about Paul go: Many people, left and right, empathize with Paul’s concerns and views, but the nation couldn’t survive his medicine — and now we know he’s got decades-old baggage.

Sanchez improves on the general prattle by pulling out the real reason for his success — raising our disdain for corruption to the top of our priority list. What Sanchez and others may be missing about Paul are the extremes he believes would never be put into practice. He is provocative and “in it” to get his ideas and positions on the table, and to generate a buzz and a future mandate. I wonder if people would vote for him if they believed that he would moderate his actions in practice?


His extremes are tempered by the fact that if the ideas are too extreme, they wouldn't make it through Congress. A president is not a CEO who can just order "make it so." But people are more than ready for common-sense pragmatism not beholden to big money interests.

Absolutely--best of all worlds--elect him for the right reasons...guts and lack of attachment to entrenched interests..without having to fear the stuff that everybody is telling you he'll do. He can't "End the Fed"--nobody can stop the Federal Reserve, but the Federal Reserve itself (its owners). However, he can shine a bright spotlight on how it works. He can't close down most of our foreign Fort Apaches, but he can put the illigitimacy of the military industrial complex on the "to do" list. Do you really think anyone can just kill off the major entitlements without proposing something with equal and oppositie benefit? No--but he can get something started that takes the overhead costs and corruption of private insurance companies out of the equation.

However, one thing Congress has absolutely NO MANDATE for is the continued erosion of civil liberties under Patriot Act and Defence Reauthorization. Any President can reverse this trend without fear of public outrage. Paul would do that easily.

I think Paul appeals primarily because American's are tired of war; both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war on drugs. Unfortunately most Americans, including myself, view Libertarian ideology as somewhat whacky. It's Constitutional literalists seem more akin to religious charismatics and snake handlers than the divergent group that comprised our founders.

If Republicans were serious about getting big money out of the political process they would have paid more attention to Buddy Roemer, who is still in the running by the way. I don't understand why he has gotten such short shrift from grass roots Pubs. He has a strong message and stronger bona fides than most of the other candidates.

Yet another poll, this one by the Pew Research Center, that shows South Carolinians voted for Gingrich over Romney partially because they thought Gingrich's religion was more like theirs.

http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Religion-and-the-2012-South-Carolina-Republican-Primary.aspx

South Carolina has a long history of voting based on religion and race. In this primary, race was irrelevant and a choice had to be made between the top 2 contenders: Romney and Gingrich.

Voters do behave differently in different states. Not every single individual person behaves identically, of course, but there are trends and historical patterns. That is why candidates tailor campaigns to the particular demographics of the voters.

Lee Atwater made a career of playing into people's fears and prejudices. Then there was the Southern Strategy used by Goldwater, Nixon and others since. In 2008 robo calls in South Carolina claimed John McCain had fathered a black child (not true, but someone thought that would matter to South Carolinian voters).

There's a little Paul for everyone and a little liberty for everyone--goes with populist territory. There are law and order types who favor some of his social views, but certainly not his "end wars" views--there are liberals who don't like being on a government camera, but insist on a social (or private) safety net. These populations are meeting in the middle (thus Paul's movement is growing, if not his votes) the clearer it becomes that "systems" are breaking down. Bottom line is that Americans are simply not self-sufficient on many levels--on a global comparison-- and are generally scared of a loss of systemic control.

Ask people what they think of a "free" market and 95% don't realize that the only place that exists is underground--and almost everyone has been taught that untaxed cash transaction economy is "bad", illegal--by virtue of its name--"BLack Market". Everybody--Reps/Dems, so-called "conservatives", "liberals" feel that transactions should be captured by the tax system and the economy regulated. Fear is at the root of this and the govt (and complicit media) is at the root of fear.

Things have to get real bad in the ordered/uniform/controlled living conditions here in the US before we bite off on the risky stuff (End the Fed, etc).

Merely throwing in a few more numbers here .... Per the Miami Herald, the newest Rasmussen Poll shows Gingrich 41%, Romney 32% in Florida

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/01/rasmussen-poll-gingrich-41-romney-32-in-florida.html#storylink=cpy

Hi folks -

Obviously we've got a lot of people on this thread who are passionate and knowledgeable about the presidential race!

I just want to let you all know that Patch will be live blogging tonight's State of the Union, the last SOTU address before the 2012 election. Of course, many would argue that this speech is especially important because it's the big kick-off for President Obama's re-election effort.

Please join our discussion and let us know how you feel about where America is headed:

http://patch.com/A-qwCP

I thought Brian Williams was spot on in the way he moderated last night's debate. While I've enjoyed the political theater of this cycle's debate season immensly, bloviators like Gingrich lose their sparkle when they can't play to the crowd and have to stand on the substance of their arguments. Gingrich's frustration was palpable. Hooray for decorum! Even if it doesn't help Newt's chances..haha.

More disconnect with conservtaive Newt backers: Casino money?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/sheldon-adelson-and-newt-gingrich-one-gained-clout-from-friendship-the-other-funding/2012/01/11/gIQACvSrBQ_story.html

I am seeing more independent minded Georgians are waking up to embrace Ron Paul's message. Please check out www.ga4ronpaul.com and be an informed and involved voter. End the Fed, End the War and End the Taxes. By the way Clark Howard would vote Ron Paul (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEIckvlKasA), not to say we should build some kind of intellectual authority based on their public profile.
We welcome voters in Georgia seek Ron Paul out, join a meetup group for him.

Ron Paul 2012!