...A classic American Voting Booth
If you just watch the election campaigns on TV, you don’t see how turned off average Republicans are to the current Republican choices of presidential candidates.
As was reported by the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, while at Jackie’s Diner in Nashua, NH, a waitress, Ms. Barbara Justason, told Mr. Milbank that she had become tired of the recent campaign events. “It’s all reporters and no real people,” she said.
Ms. Justason was just confirming what the reporters already knew. That the “real people” just weren’t into the campaign this year. “Usually I research everything and have big arguments at the lunch counter." “This time”, she said, “I found myself not even wanting to read the articles in the paper. Maybe I’ll just close my eyes [when I go to vote.] and it’ll be eenie, meenie, mynie, moe.”
This wasn’t just the situation in New Hampshire. It’s been that way with the Republicans lack of enthusiasm since the over-large stable of potential “off-the-wall” candidates declared themselves back in early to mid 2011.
According to the records of all of those that voted this week in the New Hampshire Republican Primary, regardless of who they voted for, well over 50% of them stated in exit interviews that they were Independents, not Republicans. For the most part, just as with Ms. Justason, many of the real Republicans apparently stayed home. And remember, in New Hampshire, a registered Democrat cannot vote in the Republican Primary, but any unregistered independent can vote in the GOP Primary. (One Republican woman, interviewed after she voted, admitted that she didn’t like any of the choices, but she “went ahead and voted for Romney because she didn’t want to not vote”. She also said she had friends that did not show up to vote.)
Just as the Iowa Caucus only had a total of 125,000 votes, the good residents of New Hampshire proved that they were also uninspired by the GOP candidate roster. As expected, they were much less interested in attending any of the candidate’s rallies when compared to years past. As with Iowa, the final result were that traveling mobs of journalists vastly, and routinely, outnumbered the “real people” that attended.
Here are some examples as observed by Mr. Milbank:
When Jon Huntsman made a campaign stop at a small shop in Nashua, he was trailed by 150 journalists, but only about a dozen New Hampshire voters. And it has been reported that most of those locals were more interested in taking pictures of the “Meet the Press” moderator, David Gregory, than in listening to Mr. Huntsman.
When Newt Gingrich showed up in a local Hispanic community, it was more of the same with more media than local voters. Two thirds of the those visiting in a local Mexican restaurant where the political “meet & greet” event was held were journalists. “All I see are white faces,” complained one news photographer.
And instead of Hispanics, Gingrich found protesters outside shouting “Workers of the world unite” and there were hostile Gingrich questioners inside the restaurant. The perennially grouchy Mr. Gingrich eventually declared “I’m not getting into a debate, you ask your question & you’re done.”
Candidate Romney spoke at a metal fabrication plant outside of Nashua, afterwards the candidate mistakenly tried to take questions from reporters. Once again, the number of journalists dwarfed the number of locals on hand. The Romney aides ended up scurrying around making sure that supporters waving Romney signs were the only people visible in the camera’s background. One aide shouted, “We want the press out of here.” (It makes one very curious when a candidate’s team declares that they want the press to be removed from a “Press Conference”...?)
The Rick Santorum event had about 100 journalists with approximately 20 TV cameras filling the local Chamber of Commerce Hall. And as expected, here too there were very few locals attending. Santorum struggled with a PA sound system with serious feedback problems. He then turned off the microphone and shouted, “Can everybody hear me now?” One camera man answered, “Not for television!” Of course, upon hearing that, Santorum got back on the noisy microphone, but his comments were still heard mostly just by the attending journalist and cameramen.
The reality is that the far right conservatives have been very consistent in declaring that they cannot trust anything that the Candidate, Mitt Romney says. And there is plenty of history to back up that negative attitude. Not only has Mr. Romney “Flip-Flopped” on virtually every social issue that is important to most strong conservatives, his history as a “job creator” continues to be negatively challenged. This is all occurring as more negative information about his Bain Capital company becomes available. And it is already known, that as the governor of Massachusetts, his state was only 47th of 50 in job creation.
And of course, the disgraced former House Speaker, Mr. Newt Gingrich has his own very long list of negative baggage, as does the 2 term, former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum.
As for Ron Paul, he is the nut case that supports a mythical political system (The Austrian System) that is totally theoretical and most educated political historians agree that it wouldn’t work anyway. Plus, Ron Paul wants to get rid of most government organizations that many Americans rely on today such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and even the new “Obamacare”. One of the only government agencies that most people agree on getting rid of is the IRS.
The other issue is that since the Tea Party extremists took over the controlling part of the GOP, there appear to be very few of what we use to call the “Eisenhower Republicans”. These were individuals that would work across the aisle to come to some kind of compromise on issues for the benefit of all average Americans. Today, the base of the Republican party has instead become the far-right conservative party of “no, never”. So, if you are of the old, middle-of-the-road, “moderate” Republican persuasion and agreeable to compromise, you are now sitting in the back of the bus.
Those few remaining Republicans that still have a good slice of common sense are now making it clear that they do not agree with the current extremist group of Republican “ya-hoos” that are running for president, and they are possibly planning on just staying home in November.
And as Mr. Romney gets closer to becoming a “hold-your-nose” choice as the Republican candidate, I believe there will be a defection at the polls by the remaining sane members of the GOP, if there are still any out there.
We should all hope that this is the case regarding the real Republicans for both the national and local elections between now and through November.
Copyright G.Ater 2012
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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