Unelectable GOP Candidates

South Carolina went big for Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina, much to the dismay of the GOP and Conservative pundits.  This morning, Monday morning pundits are hanging the heads the way Forty-Niners fans are:  what were they thinking out there on the football field and in the Palmetto State voting booths.

Football?  Let’s leave that to the sports experts.  But here’s what the South Carolina allegedly Republican voters were thinking:  Newt’s not Mitt.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Is Newt a bad choice for Conservatives?  Well, he’s in favor of mass amnesty for illegal aliens, he was involved with Freddie Mac, he’s politically capricious, in favor of environmentalism (he was an environmental science professor, although of the sincere rather than the socialist sort) and Big Government before he changed his mind.

Whatever you may think of his marital status, though, he is spirited and dynamic.  If the GOP thinks electability means soft and cuddly, a negotiator, a compromiser, Newt may or may not be their guy.  Mitt most certainly is and therein lies the rift between the GOP and its Conservative members.

Just what candidate have they put forward, since Ronald Reagan, who was electable, or re-electable?  George H.W. “Read My Lips” Bush.  Congress lied to him, but that’s what you get for being negotiator.  Bob Dole?  John McCain?  George W. Bush was elected and re-elected, but on his coat tails came a flock of unsavory, high-spending moderate Republicans who were trounced out of office in 2006.  Thank you very much.  And George W. was no conservative, but he was the best the GOP was willing to manage.  “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”

The GOP is gnashing its teeth over a possible second Obama term.  They have only themselves to blame.  The GOP, under great protest from the Conservative wing, put McCain up for nomination.  By this time in 2008, he had shut the primary process down.  We were stuck with him.  Apparently, angry Conservatives are determined not to let that happen again.

The GOP should have backed Santorum.  But they wouldn’t give him a penny.  Every dollar went to Mitt Romney, who has scores of Big Business backers.  Romney is certainly more fiscally conservative than Obama (who isn’t?), but he’s still very definitely Big Government and Big Business has no qualms at all about negotiating with Big Government.

So why didn’t they back Santorum?  Because he’s a Conservative.  He’s a Conservative who backed earmarking, by the way.  Even Moderates make some reasoned arguments for some ear-marking; they consider it an act of returning their constituents’ federal taxpayer dollars to their state.

A political consultant on the radio this morning politely chastised the belligerent Newt for telling Moderates that since they’re really Liberals at heart that they should just go join the Democrat Party.  “That’s not the way to win undecided voters over,” said the cautious pundit.  But it is the way to win Conservative voters over, despite his record.  To Conservatives, Newt was just telling it like it is.  The fact is, the GOP considers nominating a Conservative candidate unsavvy.  Middle-of-the-road moderate is their strategy.

Newt himself has taken a moderate stance in bashing Romney for his wealth, even though Romney pointed out that Gingrich has a standing account at Tiffany’s.  That wealth-bashing evidently played well with the lower middle class voters and transplanted New Jerseyans in South Carolina.

The whole thing may just be a GOP cabal to keep the real Conservative, Santorum, from taking the nomination.  He’s already been pronounced a “dead duck” by some.  But at least by fighting, Gingrich, even if he isn’t the electable candidate, has kept the nomination door open.  He’s made sure the primary race isn’t over until the last primary voter has voted.

The GOP should keep in mind that when you lead from behind you wind up in a bind.  The moderates want social liberalism and fiscal conservatism, without understanding or caring that with social liberalism, there is no fiscal conservatism; just endless debt.  What’s going to happen when all the uneducated, unskilled illegal aliens are allowed to invade our borders in a bad economy?  What’s wrong with gay marriage?  Well how about minus population growth, for starters?  No workers, no workforce, no workforce, no production, no production, no economy, and no economy, no one to pay the taxes for all the social entitlement programs.  Ditto abortion.

We certainly have a weak field of candidates, all thanks to the Republican Party.  They’re in favor of giving liberal moderates choices.  The rest of us can just go back to our hobbit holes – and that’s just what will happen if the GOP advances another weak candidate like McCain; the Conservatives will stay home and the election will go to Obama.

South Carolina just sent a huge message to the National Republican Party; they’d better start listening or it really will be too late.