The Unelectability Of Newt Gingrich

A few weeks ago, I thought the race would boil down to a competition between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. However, Newt Gingrich has bounced back from Romney's SuperPac on him in Iowa. He's won the endorsement of Rick Perry and won the South Carolina primary yesterday.

If Newt Gingrich thinks he can win the Republican nominations, he's got a lot of hurdles to overcome. Those hurdles are listed below:

1. Rick Perry's big campaign donors are supporting Romney, Not Newt:

While many of Perry's evangelical Christian donors in Texas could find Gingrich appealing, fundraisers from the establishment wing of the GOP are more likely to gravitate to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Indeed, two top Perry fundraisers—Mississippi-based political strategist Henry Barbour and Dirk Van Dongen, a lobbyist who co-chaired the governor's fundraising efforts in Washington--signed on to the Romney camp Thursday.

"Most people I'm talking to seem to be ready to go to Romney," Barbour said. "Newt's impressive, but I don't think he can win the White House. Look, this is about winning in November and I think Gov. Romney has the best chance to win. If we don't win in November, we're wasting our time."

Barry D. Wynn, a South Carolina fundraiser who left Perry's campaign to raise money for Romney two weeks ago, said he and other members of the finance team were turned off by Perry's attacks on Romney's business record. He noted that Gingrich has been even more vehement in his criticism of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Romney led.

2. Not only does Newt Gingrich have fundraising problems, he's got campaign organizational problems. Newt Gingrich doesn't have the organizational stamina or financial resources to go head to head with Obama. As a result, Newt Gingrich will gas out early in the campaign because he doesn't have the resources to last long against Obama.

3. Newt is still struggling to pay back the debt he created in the early days of the 2012 election because he spent alot of money on his wife when he should have been spending it on his campaign. Perhaps with Newt's victory in South Carolina, he might be able to pay it off. I doubt it given that major donors are lining Mitt Romney because they know he manages people's money very well. 

4.  Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot in may of the primary states:

Karl Rove explained why getting on each of the state ballots matters: 

Organization truly matters, especially in low-turnout caucuses. Four years ago, for example, 118,917 Republicans turned out in Iowa—and only 424 votes separated the third- and fourth-place finishers. The total turnout was considerably less than the 229,732 Iowans who voted in the GOP primary for governor two years later. Being organized in all 99 Iowa counties means more people can be dragged to caucus meetings who might otherwise stay home on a wintery eve, believing their vote doesn't matter.

5. Newt Gingrich as has a freight train of baggage:

He was accused of approximately 84 ethical violations while he was Speaker of the House. It is an established fact that Newt Gingrich has had to pay back $300,000 in ethics fine back in the 1990s after The House Committee on Ethics released its report on Gingrich.

6. Newt's adultery reveals he is a morally challenged man:

During the South Carolina Primary debate, Newt Gingrich deflected the question about his second wife's accusation that he requested an open marriage. However, the audience rose to its feet not because the accusation was false but that he did a masterful job in avoiding the question:

The substance of the answer was preposterous, of course. This is the man who was calling Clinton to resign because of lying over his sexual indiscretions. He also accused the Clinton administration of lacking moral standing and gravitas. I bet every one of those audience members screaming for Newt mostly likely called for Clinton’s resignation even before it was known he lied under oath.

Why was his terrible answer widely and uncritically received as “hitting it out of the ballpark”?

Because the answer was not about whether he asked his wife for an “open marriage,” it was about managing the political fallout from the accusation. 

As David Frum tweeted: “It’s manifestly true that Gingrich wanted open marriage. He had one! Only dispute is whether he told his wife about it.”

Newt Gingrich cannot deny the fact that he divorced his first wife while she was being treated for cancer so that he could marry the woman that he was having an affair with while he was married to his first wife. Shortly after marrying his second wife, he began cheating on her by having an affair with a congressional staffer. Then he decided to divorced his second wife shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis so that he could marry his current wife who he was having an affair with during his second marriage. 

The sad question for voters all across America is whether or not Newt's second wife, Marianne, was telling the truth about Gingrich's request for an open marriage?  

I believe Marrianne is telling the truth. However, even if she isn't telling the truth, we have to understand that the difference between an open marriage and adultery is that in adultery, a man is sleeping with someone other than his wife without the wife’s permission. When Newt didn’t get his wife’s permission to carry on a relationship that he was already having, he just continued on with out her permission. What is equally shocking about Newt's multipe affairs is his excuse for his unfaithfulness as a husband was that it was the result of working too hard for America.

7. As a result of his multiple affairs, Newt Gingrich will definitely lose the female vote. He will push female voters into voting for Obama and will cause women vote against the GOP for years to come in the future.

8. With Newt Gingrich's multiple affairs, he is a poor spokesman for issues that are important to values voters. He has no credibility when it comes to issues like traditional marriag. He will discredit and destroy the social conservative movement. He will harm them for many years to come because not an asset but a liability to them.  If Social Conservatives back newt, they will lose credibility with rest of America. 

9. Newt Gingrich is possess traits that they don't like about Bill Clinton and Obama:

10. Newt Gingrich cannot win the general election against Obama. Conservatives, for whatever bizzare or irrational reason, like Newt but the rest of America doesn't. He has high unfavorability ratings in 1996 very bad: 

And yet, his approval numbers while he was in charge of the House were dreadful. Gallup found his net favorable rating in negative territory by the early spring of 1995 (33 percent approve to 47 percent disapprove, or a 14 point net negative), and at the end of 1995 his net negatives would exceed 25 points, where they would remain for the rest of his tenure.

By the time of the 1996 election, Gingrich had become a drag on the nationwide Republican brand. Consider the following chart, which tracks Gingrich’s favorable rating in the 1996 exit poll, by two metrics. First, it looks at his approval rating among all voters, and among only Bob Dole voters. Second, it looks at his approval rating nationwide and in Georgia.

These are very weak numbers indeed. Obviously, his 32 percent national favorable rating shows that only the core GOP base was behind him, but even then Gingrich was viewed favorably by just 61 percent of Dole voters nationwide. And in Georgia – his home state where people knew him best – he could not even pull in three quarters from Dole voters.

Right now, favorability is low and his unfavorability is high. Newt Gingrich is simply unelectable and it would take a miracle for him to reverse that trend. In fact, Newt will probably not win the Florida primary but if he does, there will be a major effort to take him down before he does any more damage to the Republican party.

11. Due to Newt's high unfavorability ratings, he will also most definitely lose the crucial independent voter. The more independents learn about him or are reminded of who this man is, the less they will like him. Independent voters will not like the choices of choosing between Obama and Newt but they will select Obama over Gingrich at the end of the day. 

12. Another byproduct of his high unfavorability ratings is that Newt Gingrich will reverse all our gains in the 2010 midterm elections. He will hurt the local, state and national Republican candidates who are seeking to ride a second wave the against the Democrats in public offices across this nation.

The facts are clear. Newt Gingrich may have won South Carolina and he may go on to win the Republican nomination. But he will never, ever be able to defeat Barak Obama.