Griper Blade: Winning the GOP Primary in Wingnutopia

Gallup reports a new poll using a somewhat misleading headline; "With Huckabee Out, No Clear GOP Front-Runner." The reason I say this is somewhat misleading is because there wasn't a clear frontrunner with Huckabee in. The GOP field this year is a mix of no-names, frootloops, and finger-in-the-wind flip-floppers. The Gingrich campaign is (perhaps prematurely) already being declared dead in the water, a victim of the candidate's mouth. Anyone who remembers Newt's days as speakers won't be surprised -- he was always one to speak before thinking, assuming that every random thought was brilliant and worthy of great attention. His current situation must seem very familiar to him.

What we do see in the Gallup poll is a sort of split between the more pragmatic primary voters who recognize their candidate has to win a general election and the true-believers, the 'baggers, and the talk radio-informed who demand nothing short of wingnut purity. In that poll, leading the pack -- albeit barely leading -- are Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. That would be the same Sarah Palin who recent polling shows would lose even to Dennis Kucinich (a "rout," in the pollster's words) in the general election. In short, be prepared for a lot of "who's the soul of the Republican Party?" articles, because the answer to that question isn't extremely clear.

And Newt's reportedly washed-up campaign? Scoring third right now...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]