HUGH HEWITT:: The Ball Is in Florida’s Court Now – NRO
By MB Snow at January 21, 2012 | 4:54 pm | Print
“We’re ready to take out some of the balloons we’ve been storing,” is how Democratic strategist Donna Brazile greeted the idea that Newt would win by a significant margin in South Carolina, an hour before the polls closed and Newt was indeed declared the winner. She was echoing James Carville, who said much the same thing. So what is it that makes these two lefties happy about Newt’s win?
They think they know that tonight’s result means one of two things — Newt as the GOP nominee, which they pray for, or a battered and bloodied Mitt Romney as the president’s opponent, which they will settle for.
They are wrong on both counts.
The South Carolina electorate didn’t vote for a person or a platform; they voted for a personality — the fiery, combative, MSM-hating Newt. They want the GOP nominee to charge at the president, throw around the term Alinksyite, push back at John King and Juan Williams, and shout out the absurdity of Barack Obama as president and the destructiveness of his combination of epic incompetence and awful ideology.
I suspect that the GOP as a whole has a lot of this pent-up anger at the Manhattan-Beltway media elites, and they too have been cool to cool hand Mitt as a result.
But if, having been indulged, that passion for a political fistfight ebbs and the desire to win grows, Romney will be a much, much better nominee for having blown a round on points and too timid by far a strategy.
I emailed a strong Romney supporter this week that I was disappointed at Romney’s absence from talk radio, his lack of extended conversations on-air with the conservative electorate unmediated by MSM figures. When the platforms are available to speak directly to conservative voters and you are not using them, you are missing opportunities. Sure, skip the set-ups, but accept the real invitations to talk to conservative voters, who control this process. Team Romney thought this was sewn up after New Hampshire and went into a plan that assumed the nomination and the leisure to pick battles and frame issues. It wasn’t and isn’t, and needs to be earned if it is to be won.
via The Ball Is in Florida’s Court Now – By Hugh Hewitt – The Corner – National Review Online.
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