The Powerful Forces Of GOP Bigotry And Hatred Come Out For Their Man Newt

The right-wing crazies are crawling out of the woodwork now to get behind one of their hazily-remembered heroes and to defeat the Mormon flip flopper. Seeing their preferred candidates-- Bachmann, Perry and the Hermanator-- laughed off the national stage, the Republican Party's child-molesting, hypocritical religious fanatics wing has now coagulated around the Newt Gingrich campaign. In saner times Romney could point at the freak show and say, "It's either me or this... but thanks to Hate Talk Radio and Fox "News" that doesn't work any longer. This now occupies too big a space inside the Republican pup tent to be able to run against it. In Iowa, for example, well-known political psychopath Bob Vander Plaats (3 time loser for Iowa governor) is a respected leader of the anti-Jesus faction of the Christian right, the ones who love everything about Christianity except Jesus and his damned hippie message. Vander Plaats is a leader of the Anyone But Romney movement. He would have preferred Huckabee and he's still dangling his endorsement in front of Perry, Bachmann and Gingrich. But while he tries cutting as good a deal for himself as he can, he already tilting towards Gingrich, the only real alternative to Romney left.

Deranged anti-Mormon bigotry in Iowa is turning Romney's hopes-- and the Mormon Church's hopes-- to win the presidency into a pile of ashes.

New polls in Iowa suggest Romney’s Mormon religion continues to be a sticking point among all-important evangelical Christians there. And that’s bad news for a Romney campaign that is trying desperately to prevent Newt Gingrich from scoring a big victory in the state’s caucuses.

A new CNN/Time poll out Wednesday showed Romney trailing Gingrich 33 percent to 20 percent in the Hawkeye State. A look at the crosstabs suggests religion is a big reason why.

Gingrich takes 31 percent of the self-described “born-again Christian” vote, which is pretty much in line with his overall vote total. Romney, though, takes just 13 percent of born-agains, and actually gets twice as much support-- 26 percent-- from the rest of the electorate.

Of all the different groups in the poll (old, young, rich, poor, men, women, etc.), none gives Romney a lower share of the vote than born-again Christians.

If Gingrich can rally the support of evangelicals and not lose their votes to the two more evangelical-friendly candidates in the field-- Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)-- he’s got a great chance to bring home a victory. That’s a big pool of voters (half or more) that has shown itself to be pretty resistant to Romney.

In reality, though, this is nothing new for Team Romney.

In the 2008 caucuses, he took 19 percent of evangelicals despite taking 25 percent of the overall vote.

While Romney had surrogates John Sununu and Jim Talent on the phone with reporters yesterday savaging Newt for hurting Paul Ryan's feelings by telling the truth about his plan to kill Medicare ("right wing social engineering"), Vander Plaats was talking to the media about how God has forgiven Gingrich his many (many, many, many) trespasses.

“The centerpiece of our faith is forgiveness,” Vander Plaats, the leader of the Family Leader organization, said during a discussion at a diner here on Wednesday.

Gingrich, he said, has “admitted that he’s hurt people” and “wishes he could do things differently” and therefore Christian voters are open to him.

“They’re kind of thinking, maybe we should overlook some of this stuff with Newt because he might be the best to lead at this time,” Vander Plaats said. “That’s what I think you’re seeing with his rise.”

He added: “Now that doesn’t mean we’re over everything. There’s still baggage we need to address, you know personal and policy wise.”

...Vander Plaats said Christian voters in Iowa are divided, though many are waiting to see if one rises to be the clear alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney... He also said it’s “very important” to Christian conservatives that Romney isn’t the nominee.

“He hasn’t admitted that Massachusetts health care is a bad idea. He still thinks it’s a good idea. He hasn’t admitted he has been on both sides of the pro-life, pro-marriage, health care, limited government issues. He’s been passionately on both sides. He hasn’t admitted that,” Vander Plaats said.

And this lunatic fringe-- in society as a whole; they're perfectly mainstream among Iowa caucus goers-- is getting what it wants. Gingrich now has seemingly insurmountable leads in 3 of the first 4 decision states, Iowa, South Carolina and Florida. And with Hunstman gaining against Romney, Gingrich might just pull off an upset in New Hampshire as well! Casting all their stated principles aside, teabaggers are rallying around Gingrich in all four of those states. Hatred über alles!

This is all making Republicans in general a lot less enthusiastic about voting. It's an ugly mess and, although they've been brainwashed into thinking Obama is some kind of a socialist-- rather than the mainstream conservative his policies have revealed-- GOP electoral enthusiasm is sinking... rapidly. Several Republican strategists, who see the handwriting on the wall, are already predicting a Gingrich nomination will lead to catastrophic losses in Congress and a Democratic takeover of the House.

Republicans' enthusiasm about voting in the election for president next year has decreased, with 49% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican now saying they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, down from 58% in September. This narrows the gap between them and Democrats, 44% of whom are more enthusiastic than usual, essentially the same as in September.

Republicans' enthusiasm about voting has dropped and, as a result, the enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed significantly. This marks a change from the decided enthusiasm advantage Republicans enjoyed just two months ago and in last year's midterm elections.

The decrease in Republicans' enthusiasm could reflect the intensive and bruising battle for the GOP nomination going on within the party, and the rapid rise and fall of various candidates in the esteem of rank-and-file Republicans nationwide. Once the Republican nominee is determined next year, Republicans' voting enthusiasm may steady, but whether this is at a high, medium, or low level remains to be seen.

Notice, disappointed Democrats are even more unenthused than Republicans. Last year they stayed away from the polls in droves. Many have had it with Obama-- despite his bullshit populist rhetoric-- and the only questions remain are can Obama do anything substantive to win back high-info progressives or will the fear of Gingrich be enough to motivate them to hold their noses and vote for him again (and unlike the way they didn't last year). President Gingrich appears preposterous-- but didn't President Nixon? President Reagan? It seemed as impossible that either of those clowns could win the Presidency as it looks like Gingrich could. Vander Plaats' organization sponsored this theocracy debate (which Romney ignored):