I just voted in the GOP bloggers poll and was shocked to find Newt (26%) running a solid second behind Giuliani (34.4%), with McCain pulling a measly 2.6%. I am always shocked by how much the hatred for McCain runs in the blogosphere and in Republican inner circles. So if both hate him, how can he win? I am starting to think he is a very big paper tiger. Which could play right into the “Newt Bubble” imagine a McCain collapse in support in mid-fall, leaving just Giuliani and Romney… there is clearly room for a consensus candidate… Newt Gingrich who has shown surprising strength while running absolutely no official campaign. Now I am in no way endorsing Newt, but I do think the perfect storm necessary for him to win the nomination could be forming.

Consider that Newt would play to the desire for the base for a solid conservative (whether he truly is or not we could debate but no doubt he is publicly perceived as so) along with the distrust of Romney as a flip-flopper (a potent sting in a party that spent a billion dollars hammering flip-floppers in ‘04) and Giuliani (as well Giuliani, not to mention the corruption rumors that swirl around his consulting firm). If nothing else its interesting.

Tonight I had the opportunity, thanks to John McCormack, to debate at the CloseUp Foundation event in front of 200ish High School students from all across the country. Each student had a red card and a green card and they held up the red if they disagreed with what you said and the green if they agreed. It turned into an interesting chance to message test and see what a fairly large sample of students had to think about certain issues. So I wanted to share my findings.

1. We’re winning on abortion - Besides my support for allowing states to determine the drinking age, no statement of mine got a more lopsided response then “I want to protect every unborn _life_” We are clearly winning on this issue and I think its because of things like ultrasounds that allow people to understand it really is murder.

2. We’re losing on gay marriage - Probably for the same reason we are winning on the life issue. Our generation is the “fair” generation to them both abortion and banning gay marriage is unfair so they want to change them.

3. The “We were right on Vietnam” argument helps us on Iraq - The preponderance of red cards that popped up when I came out in favor of the surge was not surprising, but what was surprising was how many green cards went up when I said, “But we had this same argument thirty years ago, and we pulled out of Vietnam a huge mistake that resulted in the slavery of an entire subcontinent” I think in some odd way, Iraq has allowed conservatives to feel confident to rehash the Vietnam argument we lost in the 70s. Maybe in some odd way we want liberals to talk about Iraq. One guy, an admitted liberal, said that even he found our “abandonment” of the South Vietnamese appalling. Whoddathunkit?

4. Bush hatred runs deep - One of the first thing the liberal guy did in the debate was frame it about George Bush, a very good tactic, which stuck me in a hard position. Hatred for Bush runs indescribably deep and will be a liability for our party for years to come.

Calling all creative SAVE THE GOP readers. We will be releasing a limited edition STG T-shirt for our CPAC bash and we need your help. The winning designer will get a free t-shir.

SaveTheGOP is going to be an official CPAC blogger again this year so please stop by Bloggers Row to visit us. In addition, SaveTheGOP is going to be throwing one BIG party!

If you are a SaveTheGOP reader who will be in the DC area around March 3rd at 9PM then please come out to our party. It will be located at my house and there will be food, drinks, and politics, all the things you need for a good time.

EVITE HERE! 

RSVP to me at markdharris@gmail.com

Basically Rudy is trying to tell conservatives that he really isn’t interested in their vote, not that he wasn’t going to have to fight like hell for it anyway.

Giuliani says gun control helped reduce N.Y. crime

“I used gun control as mayor,” he said at a news conference Saturday during a swing through California. But “I understand the Second Amendment. I understand the right to bear arms.” He said what he did as mayor would have no effect on hunting.

The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting Rudy, it is about making sure men like you don’t overstep your authority once in office.  Despite his powerful name recognition I don’t see Giuliani having any chance of being elected in ‘08.

Its bad when you have to open your campaign with an apology to your former campaign manager because you slept with his wife. He will probably win anyway.

In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis — gratitude decaying into idolatry — is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.

George Will reviews John Patrick Diggins’s new book Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History for the Washington Post here. Basically Diggins (and Will) are saying that Reagan was an anomaly of the conservative movement and hint strongly that he perhaps wasn’t much of a true conservative himself.

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