Contrary to popular belief, Romney is the most acceptable candidate to conservatives..

[DCBob]

From the Politico..

In the new survey, 59 percent of all Republicans said Romney would be an acceptable presidential nominee for the Republican Party. Just 46 percent said the same for Newt Gingrich and 45 percent for Rick Santorum, who were trailed by Rick Perry at 37 percent, Ron Paul at 29 percent and Jon Huntsman at 21 percent.

Romney is also the only candidate whom the majority of both conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans say is an “acceptable” GOP nominee — 59 percent of conservatives said the former Massachusetts governor was an acceptable Republican presidential candidate and 59 percent of moderate/liberal Republicans said the same.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71271.html#ixzz1jXSWl5Pe

===============

So the idea that if there was only one conservative GOP candidate then that candidate would be beating Romney is flawed.

[DCBob]

2. I think its a done deal.

Polls show him up in SC and a huge lead in FL. The momentum will then carry him.

[rucky]

3. The Tea Party has either split the vote too thinly, or overstayed their welcome.

either way, i hope it shuts them up

[DCBob]

4. The teaparty effect is waning.

Some of their own have jumped ship.. ie. Nikki Haley.

[customerserviceguy]

8. She's just showing her naked ambition

She saw how someone can go from the governorship of a relatively insignificant state to being a national figure after only one gubernatorial victory, if you can get the VP nod. She knows that if she delivers SC, she stands a very good chance of being picked.

Besides, SC voters from both parties are getting tired of her, it was natural for her to find the next steppingstone on the path.

[SlimJimmy]

5. I think the idea that he is unaaceptable to mainstream Republicans is something that we believe

here at DU, but it's not necessarily true with the general population. I've seen quite a few threads, for example, say that because he's a Mormon, he won't win the nomination. I've never believed that, and it looks like it's not going to be a reason for even evangelical Republicans to withhold their vote.

[customerserviceguy]

7. If you dare

spend a half hour over at Freeperland. You'll see why I think this. Besides, see my post below to explain why Romney's acceptability with 'the general population' of Republicons is irrelevant.

[SlimJimmy]

15. Freeperland is *not* the general population of Republicans - not even close. So I actually discount

them as an indication of anything. I stand by my prediction that even the religious right will go with Romney rather than vote for President Obama. And they won't be sitting it out either. Repubs just don't generally do that.

[customerserviceguy]

18. I certainly don't believe they are representative either

But they do reflect what the GOP'ers from the reddest states believe.

As for the religious right sitting things out, they've never had this situation before, they've always had Protestant Repukes to vote for, they may not have been evangelicals, but they were at least 'nominally' Christian. Mormons don't fit that definition.

[SlimJimmy]

20. Actually, Mormons most certainly do for the definition of Christianity. They don't fit the

definition of Evangelicals. Quite the difference.

... they may not have been evangelicals, but they were at least 'nominally' Christian. Mormons don't fit that definition.

[customerserviceguy]

23. I was talking from the perspective of the evangelicals here

I don't know of any Catholic or mainline Protestant churches teaching about the evils of Mormonism, but fundies do this all the time. Like I said, they've never had someone who they consider as a non-Christian on the GOP ballot, we don't know what they'll do. My guess is that they'll find a religious third party to cast a 'principled' vote for.

[SlimJimmy]

29. My guess is that they'll vote for Romney because they hate President Obama more,

and will do whatever is necessary to ensure that he only serves one term.

My guess is that they'll find a religious third party to cast a 'principled' vote for.

[customerserviceguy]

30. They already know

that they can stomach having him in the White House, as long as Congress is under their control. It's very likely that the Repukes will keep the House, and take the Senate. It might seem worth the trade of four more years of a crippled Obama than a possible eight years of a Mormon president.

Besides, African-Americans don't go door-to-door to solicit anyone to join them. I've seen enough fundie anti-Mormon propaganda out there to know how much the missionaries infuriate them.

[SlimJimmy]

33. For some reason, you don't seem to appreciate the dynamics here. If the mid-terms told us

anything, it's that the right wing *will* come out to vote, and they will not tolerate another four years of the President. They only tolerated him because they didn't have a choice in the matter. But they sure as hell spoke volumes when they *did* have a chance to vote.

As I've said here many times, don't get complacent and think this one's in the bag. That's about as far from the truth as we can get.

[customerserviceguy]

34. You're right

Nothing is in the bag. But we've never ever seen a situation where there's a GOP candidate who's not a mainline Protestant, unless you want to count Quakers Hoover and Nixon.

[customerserviceguy]

6. I looked who conducted the survey

and while it was the respected Gallup organization, I still feel that the sample size is quite small. Even they say the margin of error is 6 percent, which is several magnitudes less accurate than the statistically more significant 3 and 4 percent MOE surveys that are usually quoted in most press releases.

Besides, the US Presidential election is not one election, it's fifty separate elections; 2000 taught us that. If a sizable proportion of GOP voters in NY, CA, or other blue states find Romney acceptable, it's irrelevant. Their states' electoral votes are going to President Obama anyway.

Acceptability of Romney in states that usually vote red is far more of an important measure, and in a sample of only 479 GOP (and self-identified GOP-leaning voters, no telling how many of those are fibbing) that works out to less than ten voters per state. In fact, if this survey was designed to be scientific, there would be many more than ten survey participants from the more populous states, which tend towards being blue.

I'm sure the Romney people are behind this survey, they're beating the drums harder and harder for inevitability, and this is just another piece of ammo for them to use. Not a problem for me, because I expect that the fundies and the really hard-core tea partiers in the red states will simply not vote for Romney, and that gives us another win.

[DCBob]

9. Gallup is about as good as it gets... IMO.

MOE of 6 percent does not discount the validity of the survey.. it just means there is a larger MOE.

[customerserviceguy]

10. As I said, Gallup is respected

but that MOE thing really does mean something. My college statistics class was a very long time ago, but I do remember a graph that looked something like this:



The difference between a 4% MOE and a 6% MOE sounds insignificant if you're thinking arithmetically, but when you think exponentially, it is significant. As I've said before, it's probably more right than wrong, but it doesn't take into account where Romney is considered acceptable.

[DCBob]

11. I did alot of statistics during my college career being a researcher..

It just means you need a 6 point spread instead of a 4 point spread to be significant. It does not mean the data is any less valid.

[customerserviceguy]

12. You probably had more education on this than I did

and I will defer to you on your explanation of the significance of the difference between a 4 and a 6 MOE.

However, what about my explanation of what this means in terms of the 50 separate elections? The SC and FL primaries are taking place in the kind of states I'm talking about, where Romney would be much less likely to be acceptable than in the Gallup organization's national survey. They might have polled ten voters in FL, but I doubt they did any more than five in SC. If they stuck to the Myrtle Beach area, they might find this kind of acceptability, but I doubt that you'd see it in the rest of that state.

[DCBob]

13. It has no statistical significance at the state level.

It was a nation wide survey designed to get a big picture result.

"Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 5-8, 2012, with a random sample of 479 Republican and Republican-leaning independents, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia."

[customerserviceguy]

14. And that's my point

"General" acceptability for Romney among GOP voters is meaningless in the context of state-by-state primaries and a national election that is really fifty elections.

The question that the GOP'ers in the red and purple states are asking themselves is : Can Romney win in November? This survey does nothing to answer that question, and actually obfuscates the true answer. But I hope they buy it, too.

[DCBob]

25. yes, that makes sense.

The survey only gives a broad brush view of how conservatives feel about Romney. However even at that its valuable because most thought he was not supported by the majority of conservatives.

[customerserviceguy]

31. And I'll admit

that I was surprised by the result myself. Apparently, Mitt's spin doctors have done a pretty effective job with their inevitability campaign.

I do hope for a long drawn out battle, though. If all the others drop out in February, it gives the tea partiers and the fundies more time to get used to the idea that Romney is their only way out of Obama. I believe that there are many of them who will never vote for either of them, but that number rises dramatically if it can be perceived that Romney 'stole' the nomination at the convention.

[SlimJimmy]

16. It's a statistical bell curve, and the survey certainly falls fairly close to the left and

right norms of the curve. You're correct that a 3-4% MOE would be more accurate at predicting the outcome, but a 6% MOE is still in the ballpark.

[customerserviceguy]

17. Perhaps you will agree with me

that it's simply more of a difference than the arithmetic difference between either 3 or 4 and 6.

Do you agree that when it comes to this election, this poll is just a bunch of spin that tries to spread BS for Mitt Romney, that it really doesn't mean that he'll win GOP support in either red or purple states, even though he'll be OK for Republicons in blue states where it really doesn't matter?

[SlimJimmy]

19. Sorry, statistically it's not enough of a difference between 4,5,or 6 to really matter much.

Especially with such a small sample. I learned early on in statistics to get as large a sample as possible, so that the margin of error would be relatively small.

[cthulu2016]

21. It is not a surprising finding

This has been the case in the south carolina polling, and that's a pretty conservative state.

He is also the top second choice of santorum and gingrish voters.

He's going to be the nominee.

[customerserviceguy]

22. He might well

But it's not over yet. Even if he limps into first place with a third of the vote in SC and FL, as long as some fundie organizations have a single anti-Romney to back, they will beat the drums hard for that individual. There's a long time between Florida and what's left of Super Tuesday, it will be put to use.

[karynnj]

24. Could the theme of Romney being disliked by the majority of the party be a good sign for us?

It looks like he will actually become the nominee after a far less rocky primary struggle than McCain, Obama - and if you want to go back in time - Bill Clinton. Yet the story, even as he wins, has been the search for the elusive conservative messiah. In doing this, the media has elevated some really pitiful alternatives - Cain, who I still don't understand why he EVER became one of the "viable" candidates, Gingrich, with more baggage than the rest of candidates put together, and Rick Santorum, who lost PA by 16%. 16% is NOT a reasonably popular candidate losing in a tidal wave election!

What this shows to me is that the media does not like Romney. If they did, the story in Iowa was that he won a state that people thought very hard for him to win. Then they would have played up the (pretty average) win in NH. I think if he does win SC, they will have to swing to the story that he is the inevitable nominee.

Compare this to the coverage of 2008, where McCain and both Obama and Clinton had strong advocates in the media. Obama's win in Iowa was treated as a game changer and ended the Hillary is inevitable talk. Then after NH, Hillary got a huge wave of positive press of being the front runner again after winning NH by 2 points - even though before Iowa, she polled 20 points ahead. I don't want to restate the whole primary season, but I think you can see that both had exuberant press for any wins they had. McCain captured the nomination through a far rockier path and he was also seen as a moderate by the conservatives, but the media coverage was entirely different.

In retrospect, I can see that in 2004, the media really did not want a change in direction. You can see this, after the fact, with the NYT and WP praise of Bush's second inaugural address, where he spoke of Iraq being about "spreading democracy". Neither pointed out - as John Kerry and some on the left did - that this was absolutely not what they told America before the election. In fact, they called people saying that this is the neocon motive behind the invasion liars. At least two of the most powerful traditionally liberal papers likely wanted the experiment to continue - and knew that Kerry would not do this - even as they distorted every detailed Iraq speech he gave calling it what Bush was already doing.

I wonder, if the media really does want Obama to win and to continue what he is trying to do to make the economy recover. If Romney won, especially if he has the House and possibly the Senate, he will be pushed to do things he ran on to cut the safety net and cut the size of government. (You can see that Republican policies can hurt by comparing the time series of unemployment in NJ vs MA - before Christie they tended to move in the same direction and were pretty similar - since then, MA has recovered far more quickly than NJ. - and Christie can only change state policy!)

[DCBob]

26. Yeah, for sure. Republicans wont get excited about this guy..

That means less donations, less volunteers and potentially a low Repub turnout.

Not sure if the media likes him or not.. I think he's just so boring there isnt much they can focus on to capture viewers/listeners. They prefer crazies like Palin or Cain.

[karynnj]

27. Consider George W Bush

Look at his life before 2000. Is there anything the least bit interesting in it? Romney's family, business career, public service etc is at least as interesting as Bush's - and he did put his dog on the roof of his car for a 12 hour drive. With Bush, a large part of the DC media had to have known him in his mean drunk phase. They helped Bush create the image of the genial, down to earth personality - contrasting to the "boring", unlikable Al Gore. Nearly the complete opposite of reality. I still wonder what their agenda was or if they really were just bored with the Democrats.

[DCBob]

28. The media's primary focus is making money.

They want a train wreck or controversy or sex or something that captures the eyes and ears of the ignorant masses. Romney just doesnt fit any of those categories. However, another factor is that much of the media is RW owned and of course as we all know that has an impact on content and focus.

[Hugabear]

32. I personally know repukes who cannot stand the thought of Romney

Don't know whether it's his Mormonism or the health-care plan he came up with as governor, but they cannot stand the guy.