Sunday, January 22, 2012

South Carolina to Gingrich, and we have a whole new Republican Primary new ballgame! ?

American Politics is nothing if it's not full of hyperbole and breathless discussion of the implications of the ebb and flow of votes as our incredibly lengthy process slogs on.    With Newt Gingrich's win in South Carolina and very strong polling in Florida  (Gingrich leads there in polls), it looks like Mitt Romney was not locked in to the nomination as strongly as many had thought.

Romney is facing the wrath of the conservative wings of the Republican party combined with Gingrich's clever, effective, and well funded negative campaigning.     As Gingrich gains ground look for the battlefield to bloody with even more negativity from the Romney SuperPac, the "man behind the curtain" in terms of the negative advertising that supports the Romney campaign.  

2012 is the first presidential election to fall under new campaign financing rules that are likely to make the SuperPacs even more significant as campaign mudslingers.   (PAC = "Political Action Committee").

Negative campaigning is always decried by candidates, the press, and the public but it remains the most effective way to fight a political battle, so its foolish and ridiculous to think it won't generally play a key and often decisive role in significant elections, especially for the US Presidency.  

Friday, January 20, 2012

South Carolina Primary - Negative working like a charm

Newt Gingrich is now leading Mitt Romney in most South Carolina primary polling, certainly at least in part as a result of the massive and well funded negative TV campaign against Romney.    Of course its also true that most South Carolina Republican voters are a lot more conservative than Romney, and thus the Gingrich camp can reasonably argue that they've simply been helping South Carolinians figure out who the "more  conservative candidate" is in this campaign.

It's still difficult to see how even a narrow victory by Gingrich could derail Romney's likely victory in the Republican primary, but it'll certainly make for a more interesting horse race.