Tag Archives: Elections 2012
Rick Santorum Wins: Louisiana Primary Results 2012
Rick Santorum won the Louisiana Republican presidential primary Saturday, beating front-runner Mitt Romney in yet another conservative Southern state.
“We’re still here. We’re still fighting. We still believe, as this race really shows,” Santorum told supporters in Green Bay, Wis.
Although the victory gives Santorum bragging rights and at least nine more delegates, it does not change the overall dynamics of the race; the former Pennsylvania senator still dramatically lags behind Romney in the hunt for delegates to the GOP’s summertime nominating convention.
Even so, Santorum’s win underscores a pattern in the drawn-out race.
The under-funded underdog has tended to win in Bible Belt states that include Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Romney – a deep-pocketed, highly organized former Massachusetts governor – has persistently struggled in such heavily conservative regions.
Said Santorum: “I’m not running as a conservative candidate for president. I am the conservative candidate for president.”
Super Tuesday Results 2012 Live Video
Super Tuesday results from races in ten states will determine how a total of 419 delegates are awarded to contenders competing in the Republican primary.
To secure the GOP presidential nomination, a candidate must secure 1,144 delegates.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney went into Super Tuesday running ahead of the pack, but former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul are determined to give the former Massachusetts governor a run for his money and show no signs of plans to abandon their respective campaigns.
Voters in the following states cast ballots on Super Tuesday: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
From delegates to endorsements, check out HuffPost Election Dashboard for a rundown on where the candidates stand in the primary race.
Rick Perry On Death Penalty And ‘Ultimate Justice’ In Texas
Wednesday night, Williams asked without naming Willingham, or going at Perry armed with the science that undermined the prosecution’s case. (A pity: this came on the heels of the moderators trying to get Perry in a spat with Jon Huntsman about who was “anti-science.”)
Williams simply asked in general if Perry had ever struggled with the idea that someone who was killed via capital punishment was innocent. The weak sauce allowed Perry to wriggle off the hook: “No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that’s required.
“But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed.”
Michele Bachmann And Tim Pawlenty Go Head-To-Head – Video
Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty took off the gloves and threw several punches at one another. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum nearly screamed at each other over whether to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And Newt Gingrich didn’t like some of the questions thrown his way, which he angrily denounced as “Mickey Mouse games.”
The key exchanges were between Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, and Pawlenty, Minnesota’s former governor, who are in a battle to see who can come out ahead of the other in a key straw poll vote Saturday in Ames.
For weeks, the two had been bashing one another, mostly on the campaign trail here in Iowa. Bachmann has claimed the title of Iowa frontrunner, while Pawlenty has been playing catch up in advance of Saturday’s straw poll. Fox News’ Chris Wallace was quick to give the two an opportunity to fight it out in person.
Pawlenty, whose argument has been that he has the executive experience as a governor that Bachmann lacks, said the congresswoman has “done wonderful things in her life, absolutely wonderful things, but it’s an indisputable fact that in Congress her record of accomplishments and results is nonexistent. That’s not going to be good enough.”
As Pawlenty, whose fiber was questioned after he failed to take on Mitt Romney in the last debate, delivered his rebuke, he turned to face Bachmann, but turned away after a few moments. Bachmann, in her response, faced Pawlenty the entire time she spoke. She blasted his record as governor.
Obama’s Support Among Jews Steadies Despite Distrust On Israel Policy
Jewish Americans remain committed to President Obama heading into the 2012 campaign.
The national survey, which was sponsored by the progressive-leaning, pro-Israel group J Street and designed by prominent Democratic pollster Jim Gerstein, has Jewish Americans approving of the president’s job performance by a 20-percentage point margin, with 60 percent approving and 40 percent disapproving. Those numbers match surveys sponsored by established independent pollsters. A recent Gallup release found Jewish American approval of Obama at 60 percent and disapproval at 32 percent (with a margin of error of 7 percentage points).
Not all the findings were positive for the president. Some 56 percent of respondents to the J-Street poll disapproved of the job he was doing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while 44 percent approved.
Jewish Americans interviewed for the poll were split on Obama’s handling of the economy, with 51 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving — still a higher percentage approving than among the general population.
The overall 60 percent approval rating, moreover, represents a significant drop from where the president stood four months after inauguration day, when Gallup measured his approval among American Jews at 79 percent.
American Jews may be a touch more wary of the president, but they aren’t bolting elsewhere. In a hypothetical match-up against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Obama holds a 63 percent to 24 percent advantage in the J Street poll. Against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Obama’s advantage is wider: 67 percent to 19 percent.
Those margins fall short of the 78-21 percent victory Obama scored among Jewish voters when he squared off against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008. But regaining that support for 2012 is far from impossible for the reelection team, pollster Gerstein insists.
Watch Sarah Palin President In 2012: Bristol Palin Video
We’ve talked about it before,” said the 20-year-old daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. “Some things just need to stay in the family.”
The remarks come the same day as the potential presidential candidate heads to the key primary state of Iowa for the premiere of a documentary on her tenure as governor. News of the film has stirred speculation about what plans, if any, the elder Palin has in the works for 2012.
Earlier this week, Bristol Palin said during an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she’d be excited if her mother decided to launch a campaign for the White House in 2012.
“I think she’s smart,” the younger Palin said of her mother. “I think she would be awesome for our country.”
Watch Sarah Palin: Anthony Weiner Has Been ‘Rendered Impotent’ -VIDEO
Sarah Palin weighed in on news of embattled Congressman Anthony Weiner’s (D-N.Y.) decision to resign after becoming embroiled in an online sexual scandal.
“From henceforth after his personal indiscretions were disclosed, he was going to be rendered impotent basically in Congress and he wasn’t going to be effective,” said the former Alaska governor when asked if she thought Weiner could have fulfilled his political responsibilities despite the controversy. “Obviously it was the right thing to do. Day late dollar short though, I think he should have resigned when all of this came to light.”
Palin said that the constituents of Weiner’s New York district “deserve better.”
During the segment, Palin also addressed the recent release of thousands of emails she sent and received during her tenure as governor of Alaska. The documents were disclosed in response to requests made by media organizations and individuals under the state public records law during the 2008 presidential election.
Michele Bachmann Running For President In 2012 Video
Announced Monday that she is running for president, a candidacy that could further shake up a volatile fight for the GOP nomination.
The first female contender to enter the 2012 race, Bachmann announced her bid during a Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. The third-term Minnesota congresswoman has been leaning heavily toward a run over the past few months, visiting early primary states, raising money and railing against President Barack Obama.
“We cannot risk giving President Obama four more years to dismantle our nation. We must act now,” Bachmann said in a fundraising letter sent within an hour of her entrance. “That’s why I’ve made the decision to get in this race.”
She brings high energy, charisma and proven fundraising ability to the race to nominate a Republican challenger to Obama. She also is known for unyielding stances, biting commentary and high-profile gaffes.
Bachmann is attempting the rare leap from the U.S. House to the presidency.
Despite having low seniority and few policy accomplishments, she has risen to prominence in Washington in part by her frequent television appearances and willingness to attack Obama in sharp terms.
Her popularity with tea party activists and her credentials as a social conservative make her a credible threat to other candidates courting conservatives who make up the core of the Republican Party. Her impact may be felt most in Iowa, the first stop in the nomination battle and where Christian evangelicals dominate.
Bachmann spent the bulk of her political career in Minnesota and Washington as a minority party member, reveling in her role as a fierce voice of the opposition. She didn’t let up when Republicans gained control of the U.S. House last fall, enhancing her standing through public breaks with party leaders after she was denied a place in caucus leadership.
The camera-friendly congresswoman has irked some party leaders by grabbing at the spotlight, such as the alternate televised response she delivered to Obama’s State of the Union speech this winter.
Her willingness to speak her mind – she once accused Obama of running a “gangster government” – has brought her both loyal fans and plenty of critics. In 2009, she called it an “interesting coincidence” that the last swine flu outbreak in the U.S. occurred under a Democratic president, though it actually happened when Republican Gerald Ford was in office.
Since first hinting at a presidential campaign ahead of an Iowa speech in January, she has made sustained trips there and to New Hampshire and South Carolina, all places with an outsized voice in the nominating process. She previously told reporters she would announce her intentions this month in her birthplace of Waterloo, Iowa.
Mitt Romney Set To Kick Off Presidential Campaign
Mitt Romney knows a thing or two about second chances.
After that long-ago highway collision when he was a young missionary serving in France, Romney earned an outsized reputation and millions of dollars as a corporate turnaround artist, fixing bottom lines, cleaning up the scandal-tarred Salt Lake City Olympics and giving various other endeavors a second wind.
“I’ve never seen an enterprise in more desperate need of a turnaround than the U.S. government,” Romney says.
An also-ran to John McCain in the 2008 Republican nomination fight, Romney is the closest thing to a front-runner that the still-jelling GOP presidential field for 2012 has to offer. On Thursday, the former Massachusetts governor makes his candidacy official during an appearance at a farm in Stratham, N.H.
With his good looks, able fundraising, strong political organization, solid family and business acumen, Romney sounds like a candidate ordered from central casting to run in a time of economic stress.
Romney in 2008 was that he’d conveniently reinvented himself to fit the political environment of the day. The man who’d governed Massachusetts as a pro-abortion rights moderate and delivered a bold statewide plan for universal health care coverage offered himself to Republicans as an anti-abortion social conservative who advocated limited government.
And that set off authenticity alarm bells with voters around the country. Pundits who thought his Mormon faith might be a problem for him concluded his changing political convictions probably caused him more grief.
This time around, Romney hopes the campaign for the GOP nomination will roll down his “power alley” – the economy and his business background – and away from social issues that bogged him down. He’s coming across as a little looser in the process. After he got into a tiff with a rapper onboard an aircraft last year, the well-gelled Romney joked that the singer “broke my hair.”
Over the past four years, he wrote a book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” built a political machine and cultivated diverse friends.
The dust had hardly settled on the bruising nomination struggle of 2008 when Romney threw himself behind the candidate who had defeated him, began raising money for Republicans across the country and started pushing all the right buttons in the party.
Watching this unfold, Republican strategist Mary Matalin was struck by how Romney, in seeking common cause with the party’s religious, intellectual and economic forces, may have “the greatest potential to pull all those factions together” even though other candidates may stir more passion in their core followers.
If only he could get “Romneycare” off his back.
Watch Sarah Palin On A Motorcycle At Bus Tour Full Video
Sunday in launching a bus tour that will take her across the eastern United States.
The former Alaska governor took part in the “Rolling Thunder” motorcycle ride, which starts at the Pentagon and finishes at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC.
