2012

jueves, 1 de diciembre de 2011

Perry en modo populista

In a speech to New Hampshire legislators Wednesday morning, GOP presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry took a hard line on Wall Street, reaping thunderous applause from Republican representatives, near silence from the Democratic minority and a clamorous mixture of boos and cheers from an activist-filled gallery.

“We must no more tolerate an America in which Main Street is allowed to crumble while Wall Street financiers and beltway profiteers bill the taxpayers,” Perry declared.

“What is wrong in this country can be diagramed on a map,” Perry continued, “with one straight line connecting two dots: Washington, D.C. and Wall Street.

“Wall Street high rollers hatched get-rich schemes while they profited from betting against America,” he fumed. “And when the market crashed, those on Wall Street, they saw it coming and they made millions. Those that didn’t see it coming, they got the bailouts.”

“We shouldn’t be rewarding taxpayer funded bonuses to Wall Street executives who defrauded those very same taxpayers. We ought to be locking them up!” Perry insisted.

With a call for no more bailouts, a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a part-time citizen legislature, Perry concluded by asking the New Hampshire legislature for its support in his presidential run.

Gingrich en Greenville, Carolina del Sur

Bachmann en Waverly, Iowa

Una joven le pregunta cómo piensa proteger al colectivo de gays, lesbianas, bisexuales, y transexuales.

Gingrich en Hannity (Fox News)

Continúa: Parte 2 / Parte 3

Ron Paul en Piers Morgan Tonight (CNN)

Herman Cain en Your World (Fox News)

miércoles, 30 de noviembre de 2011

Este web ad producido por la campaña de Ron Paul retrata a Newt Gingrich como un esbirro de la industria sanitaria y de los gigantes hipotecarios.

El video no se emitirá en televisión, pero la gente de Ron Paul pretende enviarlo a votantes de todo el país a través de su lista de direcciones de correo electrónico.

PPP: Gingrich le saca 30 puntos (!) a Romney en Florida

Public Policy Polling:

Newt Gingrich's momentum is continuing to build, and he now leads Mitt Romney by over 25 points in both Florida and Montana.

In Florida Gingrich is at 47% to 17% for Romney, 15% for Herman Cain, 5% for Ron Paul, 4% for Michele Bachmann, 3% for Jon Huntsman, 2% for Rick Perry, 1% for Rick Santorum, and 0% for Gary Johnson.

In Montana Gingrich is at 37% to 12% for Paul, 11% for Romney, 10% for Bachmann and Cain, 5% for Perry, 3% for Huntsman, and 1% for Johnson and Santorum.

These two states really exemplify one of the key emerging trends in the Republican race- Gingrich isn't just rising, Romney's also falling. His 17% in Florida is down 13 points from 30% when we polled the state in late September. His 11% in Montana is down 11 points from 22% when we polled the state in June.

(...) The biggest reason for Newt Gingrich's rise is that he's picked up the voters of Herman Cain and Rick Perry as their campaigns have fallen apart. But these numbers make it pretty clear he's doing more than that- some of Mitt Romney's '25%' is starting to fall off and move toward Newt as well.

Confirma lo que ya señalaba la encuesta de InsiderAdvantage.

De momento no hay retirada

Interrogado sobre si piensa continuar con la campaña después de un mitin en West Chester, Ohio, Herman Cain se ha limitado a decir que están haciendo una "reevaluación" de la campaña.

Rasmussen: Gingrich es competitivo en la general

Rasmussen:

The Newt Gingrich surge has moved him to the top of the polls in Iowa, big gains in New Hampshire and now a two-point edge over President Obama in a hypothetical general election match-up.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds Gingrich attracting 45% of the vote while President Obama earns support from 43%. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Last week, Gingrich trailed the president by six. Two weeks ago, he was down by twelve.

(...) The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 28-29, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

"The Right Answer"

El segundo anuncio de tv de Romney presenta al candidato como el empresario conservador que tiene las soluciones para reactivar la economía.

Se emitirá en New Hampshire.

GOBERNADOR ROMNEY: "He pasado toda mi vida en el sector privado. He competido con compañías de todo el mundo. He aprendido algo sobre cómo es que la economía crece. No vamos a equilibrar el presupuesto pretendiendo símplemente retirar los desperdicios. Vamos a tener que recortar el gasto. Y yo estoy a favor de recortar el gasto, limitar el gasto federal al 20% o menos del Producto Interior Bruto, y de tener una enmienda de presupuesto equilibrado. La respuesta apropiada para América es parar la expansión del gobierno federal e iniciar el crecimiento del sector privado."

Unas primarias con tiempo para arrepentirse

Nate Silver:

In 2012, however, New Hampshire’s primary (on Jan. 10) and Super Tuesday (on March 6) are a full eight weeks apart. Some states, of course, vote in between. Nevertheless, there will not be a lot of action at the ballot booth between the Jan. 31 Florida primary and the Michigan and Arizona primaries on Feb. 28.

Although victories in Iowa and New Hampshire often produce a lot of momentum for a candidate, leading to a chain reaction wherein the winner continues to perform well in subsequent states, there is some evidence that the momentum has a sell-by date. One such example was in 1980, when George H.W. Bush upset Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Bush, who had been well behind Mr. Reagan in New Hampshire polls, surged after his Iowa victory, eventually leading Mr. Reagan in several surveys. But there was an unusually large gap between Iowa and New Hampshire that year — 36 days — leaving Mr. Reagan with plenty of time to recover. He was able to win New Hampshire by a commanding margin, 50 percent to 23 percent, and had a fairly easy path to the nomination from there.

So say, for instance, that Newt Gingrich wins Iowa, just gets over the top in New Hampshire and wins there as well, and then also goes on to win South Carolina and Florida. Or say that Mr. Gingrich loses New Hampshire narrowly but nevertheless wins South Carolina and Florida: that would still be enough for him to be declared the “winner” of the early-voting states. Either of these outcomes seem plausible at this point.

If we had a more compact nominating calendar, like in 2008, Mr. Gingrich would seem to be an enormous favorite at that point. Rarely if ever have the early states rendered a clear verdict and that candidate failed to capture the nomination. (The closest thing to an exception was the Democratic nomination of 1972, when Edmund S. Muskie won Iowa and New Hampshire but George McGovern won the nomination. But Iowa and New Hampshire were given less attention then than they get now, and Mr. Muskie’s performance was viewed as disappointing relative to expectations.)

This year, however, a candidate like Mitt Romney would have more time to regroup after an early setback. I’m not just picking Mr. Romney’s name out of a hat. It seems that the candidate who could benefit the most is one who had stronger “fundamentals,” like fund-raising, campaign infrastructure and institutional support, which could potentially outlast transient swings in polling. That describes Mr. Romney better than it does someone like Mr. Gingrich, who does not perform well in these areas.

The long gap in the nomination calendar could also give Republicans more time to contemplate how their nominee might perform against President Obama, a comparison that might not help Mr. Gingrich. Put another way, there would be more time for the party and its voters to develop “buyer’s remorse” over their apparent nominee. The news media — which has some incentives to keep the horse race going — might play along, applying more scrutiny to him while seeking out any sign of hope that Mr. Romney’s campaign was still alive.

To be clear, this would not be Mr. Romney’s preferred path to the nomination. If party elites seemed to want to overturn the will of the voters, their intervention might not be successful — and it could tear the party’s base apart in the process. So to have any chance, Mr. Romney would have to perform credibly well in the early states even if he didn’t win most of them. He’d also want to avoid a strong performance from a candidate like Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who has similar credentials to Mr. Romney and who could compete with him for the remaining sliver of the party’s establishment’s support. But if Mr. Romney passed these tests, he could still be viable.

¿Un nuevo Newt?

The Fix:

Newt Gingrich isn’t the most likely candidate for a political transformation. He’s been in and out of elected office for more than three decades, building a reputation as a gifted but often undisciplined politician.

And yet, a look at Gingrich’s campaign over the past few weeks suggests that the former House speaker is working to correct the mistakes he made earlier in the presidential race, mistakes that led to the departure of almost his entire senior staff in June.

“Newt as a political strategist has no competitors,” said Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich confidante who left as part of the mass staff departures. “I think it was his former advisors, myself included, who have learned the lesson that Newt might actually know what he is doing.”

Criticized then for his alleged lack of willingness to travel to early primary states, Gingrich now has a schedule larded with stops in the states that will kick off the presidential vote in January.

This week alone, he is scheduled to two days in Florida, three in South Carolina and another two in Iowa.

Lambasted for wandering badly off message on a weekly — if not daily — basis, Gingrich has been remarkably disciplined of late.

Take his response to reports Tuesday that businessman Herman Cain was reassessing his candidacy. “I have no comment on Mr. Cain,” said Gingrich. “He has to do what he thinks is best.” Restrained — and smart — given that Gingrich is open to criticism due to his own acknowledged extramarital affair in the late 1990s.

“He’s been remarkably different, disciplined, and on-message,” said one senior party strategist who has closely followed Gingrich’s career. “There are a lot of people regretting not helping him sooner, and his bandwagon now runneth over.”

Several people who have known Gingrich for years insist his dedication to the campaign trail and message discipline are nothing new.

“His critics have accused him of a lack of discipline, but you don’t achieve what he accomplished in his speakership without focus and discipline,” said former Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Walker, who is supporting Gingrich.

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who is neutral in the presidential race, said that Gingrich was “rusty” at the start of the campaign due to the fact that he hadn’t been an active candidate in more than a decade. “What we are seeing now is not a new Newt; it is the old Newt re-emerging,” added Cole.

The challenge for Gingrich is whether he can keep up what looks like the turning of a political leaf.

While Walker — and other Gingrich allies — highlight the discipline that led Gingrich to the speakership, they tend to gloss over the fact that he was pushed out of leadership (and Congress) just four years after he took over.

Gingrich has shown a knack for reinventing himself in his past political lives. But he has always returned back to the old Newt — the brilliant but deeply flawed candidate who can’t manage to stay on top.

The 34 days left before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses will test whether Gingrich has really matured as a candidate or whether this is just the latest boom-and-bust episode in a political life that has been defined by them.

Perry en Fox & Friends

InsiderAdvantage: Gingrich 41%, Romney 17% en Florida

Encuesta de InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research:

Newt Gingrich is the current favorite in Florida’s Jan. 31 Republican presidential primary, picking up supporters who fled Herman Cain to claim 41 percent in a poll conducted Tuesday night for the Florida Times-Union.

Gingrich has as much support as the next four candidates combined in the telephone survey of 513 registered voters who say they’re likely to cast ballots in the primary. The poll, conducted by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research, has a margin of error of 4 percent.

(...) The Times-Union poll was the first conducted in Florida since the woman claiming the affair broadcast her story on television. In it, Cain drops to third place with 13 percent, behind Mitt Romney’s 17. No other candidate is in double digits.

“I am totally shocked by these numbers,” said pollster Matt Towery, CEO of InsiderAdvantage. “Newt Gingrich is winning nearly 50 percent of the independent vote, but more importantly, the Republican vote which makes up the vast majority of the Florida Republican primary.”

Cain holds just 12 percent of Republicans and only 3 percent of independents.

“I have not seen a lead this large, this late in a Republican presidential primary season since I have been polling,” said Towery, who notes that his firm has never missed identifying the winner in Florida’s statewide contests.

Gingrich’s skeleton’s may be the reason women voters remain his weakest demographic group. Yet, he still gets 33 percent of them to Romney’s 17. With males, Gingrich commands 50 percent to Romney’s 18.

Bachmann en The Situation Room (CNN)

Gingrich en Bluffton, Carolina del Sur

Gingrich reta a Obama en tono desafiante porque sabe que resuena en el electorado republicano.

Dice que está preparado para responder a cualquier difamación y promete que obligará a Obama a rendir cuentas si trata de ganar la reelección con una campaña negativa.

Su mensaje al GOP es claro: yo soy el tipo más duro al que Obama se haya enfrentado nunca.