Saturday, December 24, 2011

In Virginia, it's down to Romney vs. Paul

The Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday that GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich failed to amass the 10,000 signatures needed in order to secure a place on the ballot in the party's March 6th primary election. Gingrich isn't the first Republican presidential candidate who failed to qualify for the "Super Tuesday" primary contest - on Friday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry also failed to make the cut for the same reason. Rival candidates Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) qualified for the primary. On the Democratic side, President Barack Obama qualified earlier this year.

The failure is a particularly tough blow to Gingrich, who is a Virginia resident, having lived in the Washington suburb of McLean, Va. for more than a decade. Gingrich said earlier this week that he had reached the 10,000 signatures needed to appear on the ballot, but after a review of his 11,050 signatures, the Republican Party of Virginia announced in a tweet early Saturday that Gingrich "did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary."
The full story is HERE.

Makes you wonder how serious the other candidates are about their candidacies? And as Martha so aptly stated in RS's chat box, "Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus."

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27 comments:

Doug NYC GOP said...

Losers can't get their acts together to get on the ballots?

You would think a "historian" would understand the importance of details.

Crystalf said...

Gingrich is, more & more, becoming the "clown candidate." Whatever you have to say about R Paul - he did THE WORK and got the job DONE. Of course we expect it of Romney, it's in his nature to be thorough, detail-oriented & results-oriented. For Gingrich to blame the system for his lack of seriousness is ridiculous. And now, after he has shown that he believes he's above doing the minimal amount of work, expects us to believe that he will add the extra task to "pursue an aggressive write-in campaign?"

Anonymous said...

Gingrich lives in VA, I presume he votes there and yet he doesn't know the rules (for someone so fond of saying the term rule of law)?? Just laughable. I have read that VA doesn't allow write in votes. If that is true, then his blustering is even more laughable and arrogant.

Anonymous said...

Yes "Virginia" there is a Santa Claus.

ROFLMAO!

Anonymous said...

Gingrich said a couple days ago that he has a people based campaign and not a money based campaign. Well I guess even that is not true when not enough people will even sign for his campaign lol

Right Wingnut said...

There's already talk all over the internet of conservatives voting for Paul in VA to deny Romney. With a concerted effort, it would be very easy to deny Romney a single delegate. Here's a good summary of how it works.

http://bearingdrift.com/2011/12/19/republicans-to-begin-validating-petitions-dec-23/

Anonymous said...

RW, thank you for making this even more funny. And Merry Christmas.

DanL

craigs said...

RW......Since Virginia will have proportional delegate allocation , exactly how does Paul deny Romney any delegates ?

CraigS

craigs said...

RW......Since Virginia will have proportional delegate allocation , exactly how does Paul deny Romney any delegates ?

CraigS

Right Wingnut said...

Craig,

If a candidate gets over 50%, they get all of the at-large delegates. In addition, each congressional district awards 3 delegates. I'm assuming those go to the candidate who gets the majority of the votes in each district. Click the article I linked to above.

marK said...

RWN,

Do you really think that there are that many mean-spirited people out there to pull that off?

Socrates said...

RW,

Am I missing something RWN?

I followed your link. The Martian (Paul) is not mentioned. My guess is they're figuring Romney vs. Paul, ROMNEY will get 50+% of the vote.

BTW, have you checked the recent Virginia polls. The Martian is only pulling single digits.

marK said...

RWN,

So let me see if I understand you correctly. A bunch of people are going to try to make sure that the people who couldn't or wouldn't do what was necessary don't suffer any consequences from their failure, and they are going to attempt to deny the candidate who worked hard and played by the rules his reward for doing so?

Is that it in a nutshell?

Tell me again who are the "true conservatives" here?

Jed M. Merrill said...

Is this how Newt's "solutions" for America will turn out as well?

Will he cry when his tax plan doesn't work out?

Looks like his backup plan was to mount a write in campaign that is not legal for primaries in Virginia...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/la-pn-newt-gingrich-write-in-bid-in-virginia-20111224,0,3382630.story

You've lost this one, Newt. I won't tell you to quit, but you might be better off just $1.5 million in debt.

Doug NYC GOP said...

RWN/Craig of Right Speak,

Your descent into desperation is one of the best political comedy routines of recent history.

Whenever you post about "Conservatives" banding together to do this or that to Romney, I laugh my butt off.

You don't now or ever have, represented what "Conservatives" - Mainstream Conservatives - think or want to do.

You rep the small fringe sector which inhabit the looney C4P/Free Republic crevice of the political right.

For floating that idea from the fringe element, you continue to earn our collective affection as the crazy uncle on this site.

Thanks for the laughs!

Anonymous said...

Doug,

Zing! Maybe we should just start calling RW zany. Merry Christmas.

DanL

Right Wingnut said...

Where in my comment did I advocate for sandbagging Romney in Virgina? I simply stated that there is talk about it around the web. If Perry or Gingrich supporters show up and vote for Ron Paul, it's a plausible scenario. All Paul needs to do is get ONE more vote than Romney to deny any of the at-large delegates. If he does that, there's a good chance he would take most, if not all delegates from the congressional districts as well.

Right Wingnut said...

Virginia isn't exactly a Romney stronghold either. In 2008, he got 3.6% of the vote, it was in February when the race was still competitive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Republican_primary,_2008

Kim said...

I'm from Virginia Beach. There is no way that Paul can win here. No way at all.

Doug NYC GOP said...

Uncle,

While may not have "advocate" for the sandbagging of Romney, your inherent glee over sunch an idea, manifested in your posting this news in the first place, indicates you would be far from upset if it happened.

The fact you think such an idea is even plausible shows a political naivete which runs rampant among the hard right and in Talk Radio circles. The belief in monlithic voter strategy, action and results.

Do you honestly believe that outside of a small niche of hard right voters, that mainstream primary voters are going to put that much effort and thought into de-railing Romney?

What this VA fiasco shows is that Gingrich has crappy organization which does not bode well for Iowa. He can rely on enthuesiasm just so much, and that looks dubious in light of his waning poll nummbers.

I think this race is going be over far sooner that Romenot and Media would like.

Doug NYC GOP said...

Merry Christmas DanL

Teemu said...

RWN: "Virginia isn't exactly a Romney stronghold either. In 2008, he got 3.6% of the vote, it was in February when the race was still competitive. "

Romney withdrew from the race a week before VA primary. That kinda explains it...

Doug NYC GOP said...

TeeMu,

Ouch!

Stop piling on!

:)

Closer To Home said...

My youngest daughter is the political director for VA Lt Gov Bill Bolling, who is Romney's campaign chairman for VA, as he was in 2008. As such, we were receiving a constant twitter stream of yesterday's events. And it was a story of complete incompetence. The Perry and Gingrich campaigns submitted between 40 and 50% of their collected signatures in an invalid format. (invalid forms, no addresses, no notary, wrong counties, not registered voters, non-qualified solicitors, etc.) No wonder Newt thinks he can now mount a vigorous write-in campaign, which is prohibited in a primary.

The inside talk from VA is that even Paul people know they are going to get smoked in March. They were desperately hoping for a large field.

Romney is likely to tak more than 40 delegates from VA.

CRUZ COUNTRY said...

The Virginia ballot debacle proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gingrich is simply not ready for prime time. With the Iowa caucus only 10 days away, this could very well be the final nail in Gingrich's coffin. For the good of our country, let's hope so.

CRUZ COUNTRY said...

If Gingrich wants to blame "a failed system" for his Virginia fiasco, he better find a pretty large bullhorn to get his message out, since Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin & Company aren't around to recite his talking points. The talk radio blowhards are all on vacation until January 2.

Anonymous said...

Ron could never win the nomination or defeat Obama.

A vote for Ron is a wasted vote.