lunes, 6 de febrero de 2012

Gingrich, en fase estratégica



The Washington Post nos cuenta detalles de las reuniones de Gingrich con sus asesores:
In a meeting room at the Palazzo hotel here over the past week, Newt Gingrich mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention in August.

The crux of the former House speaker’s new plan is math: a complex analysis of each state’s delegates, how they’re awarded and how many, reasonably, Gingrich can expect to win.

He will focus heavily on upcoming contests in Southern states, where he expects his Georgia roots and conservative rhetoric to play well. And he will step up his attacks on his leading rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, for being too liberal to take on President Obama in the fall.

After a lackluster showing in the Nevada caucuses Saturday, the big question looming over the Gingrich campaign was whether he would withdraw. The Palazzo sessions provided an emphatic “no.”

Gingrich confirmed the strategy in a meeting with reporters in a nearly empty hotel ballroom here Saturday night after the Nevada results showed him losing to Romney by more than 20 percentage points. The results stood in stark contrast to Gingrich’s confidence that he could go on to win.

“A vast majority of Republicans across the country are going to want an alternative to a Massachusetts moderate who has, in his career, been pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, pro-tax-increase and who ran third from the bottom in job creation in the four years he was governor,” Gingrich said. “So I suspect this debate will continue for a long time. Our commitment is to find a series of victories which, by the end of the Texas primary, will leave us at parity with Governor Romney. And by that point forward, we’ll see if we can’t actually win the nomination.”

(...) Gingrich’s advisers say that those missteps are behind them and that the campaign is entering a more strategic phase, as evidenced by the meeting at the Palazzo. They see in Gingrich’s big win in South Carolina a road map for the future, particularly in Southern states. They say they are more organized, better-funded and getting an earlier start in crucial upcoming states.

“We were outspent by $2 million and we still won by 12 points,” political director Martin Baker said of South Carolina. He said that even with less money than Romney, similar victories are possible. “We just need to spend it smarter and more strategically.”

(...) In the Palazzo meeting room, a much-expanded team of operatives spent long days poring over spreadsheets and presentation slides detailing how convention delegates are awarded in each of the remaining states. They brainstormed new ways to go after Romney, at one point filling an easel pad with items under the heading: “different ways to call Mitt a liar.”

(...) As the Las Vegas war room makes clear, there is now more of a team than Gingrich has let on, with new hires coming on board weekly, including local teams in such upcoming states as Arizona, Ohio and Texas. Baker, the political director, started in mid-December. A TV ad scriptwriter has joined the team, as have two pollsters and several general strategists. At the Palazzo, all of them gathered in a single room for the first time.

The winning candidate needs 1,144 delegates to claim the nomination. The process by which they’re awarded varies widely. In some states, for instance, delegates are won according to primary results at the congressional district level. Members of Gingrich’s team have studied the convoluted rules, and they believe they can win delegate-rich states but also collect delegates in states where Romney is expected to win but where delegates are awarded proportionally.

A central assumption of the victory plan is a strong showing in Southern states. According to two operatives close to Gingrich who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal discussions, the campaign will focus heavily on Georgia and Tennessee, which vote on Super Tuesday, March 6, and count for 76 and 55 delegates, respectively. They will also target Alabama (47), Mississippi (37), Missouri (52) and Louisiana (43), which vote later in the month.

(...) Gingrich also has three surrogates who will begin campaigning heavily this month: former senator and presidential contender Fred Thompson of Tennessee, former congressman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. All three have significant followings among conservative voters, particularly evangelicals, whose votes could be crucial in the South.

Even in states such as Massachusetts and Vermont, which Romney is expected to win, delegates will be awarded proportionally, and Gingrich plans to win delegates, one by one, by using targeted phone lists and targeted mail and focusing on more conservative regions.

A central weakness of Gingrich’s strategy, however, is that even if it all goes like clockwork, he would still essentially be tied with Romney by April — when a series of winner-take-all contests is expected to favor Romney’s superior funding and organization.

1 comentario:

eusko libertarian dijo...

porque este tipo tiene la pasta... pero con los bandazos que esta dando no deberia llegar lejos


Dentro de los neo-con Santorum parece mas serio y trabajador