Comments on: The Florida Primary and The ADD Electorate

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:27:00 +0000

Santorum won three straight primaries? Has April Fool’s Day come early? Needless to say, I didn’t see that coming. As a former resident of the state of Pennsylvania, where he was senator, he became a laughing stock and was chased out of office, and to my hopes, never to be seen or heard from again (except on Fox News, where conservative laughing stocks tend to end up).

My scorn for the man aside, he seems to possess two qualities that the other candidates do not: sincerity and consistency. Whatever kind of objectionable thing Santorum says, we can be relatively sure he will continue saying the same things in front of different audiences. That may change as more attention, and more attacks, come his way, but I think at least for now, Santorum’s victories say more about Romney and Gingrich, than they do about him.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:39:00 +0000

I think Republican voters are undergoing an identity crisis, and this has much to do with the wild swings in fortunes of the candidates as they move from state to state. Indeed it does appear as if they are suffering from ADD as they’re assaulted by Super-PAC fueled vitriol from all angles. If neither Romney nor Gingrich are true conservatives, and hence have underwhelmed conservative voters, and the only true conservative in the race, Ron Paul, is too conservative, then this leaves the field in a state of disarray, and perhaps leaves voters in a state of confusion. But I wonder what else is at work here. Both Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina and Romney’s victory in Florida were solid. What differences in the demographics in the two states could account for such a swing in fortune for the candidates?

By: Michael Corey

Michael Corey — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Without explicitly using the terminology of Irving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective, I think that Gary and Jeff capture aspects of the primaries as a performance. Almost all the front stage aspects of the campaign are presented to us through traditional and newer media. A few of us participate in person. We occasionally get a peak backstage, and many people have a hard time with what they learn. Once in a while, the candidates while onstage break expectations, and/or communicate out of character. These are the sound bites that are frequently repeated throughout the 24-hour news cycle. We are both the audience, the critics, and some of us are participants. Our reactions influence their performances. At the appropriate point in the process, someone will receive critical acclaim and move on to the next stage in the Presidential Election process.

By: Stephen Turner

Stephen Turner — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:53:00 +0000

If you read the county by county results, and the women’s vote differential, there is nothing mysterious here. In counties like South Carolina, Gingrich won by huge margins. In Miami, Romney ran way above anywhere else in the state. In the places where he ran ads at a forty to one rate and did endless robocalls, he got the country club republican vote and won at the rate of the state as a whole. Women did in Gingrich in these counties.

Does this tell us anything about November? Probably not. Obama won’t get the voters who hate Romney, and Romney will damp anyone’s enthusiasm. So he has no edge over Obama in that department. The lesson– ultra-negative campaigning works, and will be the formula for both sides in November. Florida was just a testing ground, and AFSCME was out in force against Romney, with brutal and very compelling negative ads. They have the big money, and they will be back.