Gingrich For President?

Fox News polled 70,000 Fox viewers after the Fox/Google Republican debated. After a few hours, they pulled the results off their website, apparently because they weren't too happy with the results:

Ron Paul: 39%
Mitt Romney: 23%
Rick Perry: 13%
Herman Cain: 11%
Newt Gingrich: 7%
Michele Bachmann: 2.25%
Gary Johnson: 1.95%
Jon Huntsman: 1.59%
Rick Santorum: 1.44%

Herman Cain subsequently won a meaningless straw poll in Florida with 37%, far outpacing Perry (15%) and Romney (14%).

Well, the Republican race is heating up (melting down?).

Right-wing sites are pledging everlasting enmity to the vile Romney. But the same sites are lamenting the terrible debate performances of Rick Perry. He rode into the scene on a white horse, six-guns blazing; but now that people have had a look at him, his original popularity is dropping like a stone. Michele Bachmann, who earlier led the pack based on a strong showing in the (meaningless) Ames, Iowa, poll, has dropped to the unelectable 2% range as people are coming to realize her shallowness and fanaticism.

Strange things can happen in politics, but I really can't see one of the 1 percenters - Johnson, Huntsman, or Santorum - making the enormous gains they need to make to become viable.

That leaves us with Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain.

I've long maintained, and still do, that Ron Paul is unelectable. He's a man of principle - though I think some of his principles are goofy - and he won't pander to either the Republican establishment or the tea party extremists. Without the support of one of those groups, he has no hope.

Gingrich v. Cain! Is that what the Republican party has come to?

The Republicans have a deeply racist base. They'll froth at the mouth and rave that that's not true, but it is. What prominent black Republicans can they point to? Colin Powell, who seemed to dance on the Republican/Democratic border? Clarence Thomas, who sits silent on the Supreme Court bench, seething with hatred? Michael Steele, once the token leader of the Republican national association? Short list.

It's interesting that there are 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus; that's all the black members of the House of Representatives, because since Barack Obama (D-Illinois) resigned his seat, there are no black senators from either party. I once saw a Republican claim in an interview that the Democrats were racist because they had a Congressional Black Caucus but the Republicans didn't, because the Republicans weren't race-oriented. Interesting, in view of the fact that at that time, there were 42 black members of Congress, all of them Democrats. It would have been tough to have a Republican black caucus without any members. Since the elections last November, the 43-member CBC includes House member Allen West (R - Florida).

Cain can't win. And that leaves the Republicans with that disgusting toad, Newt Gingrich