Response to Improbable Ben

(See: Just Above Sunset: Improbable Ben)

I am convinced that at least one of the reasons Ben Carson is doing so well in the polls is that he is locking onto that particular segment of the "outsider" electorate that don't like their politicians going negative. It cannot be said of Donald Trump -- until recently, way ahead in the polls -- that he doesn't go negative, and maybe because of that, I suspect there's a good possibility that Carson's supporters see Trump as just another typical politician, as much as he pretends not to be.

For a little bit of historical context on how well that campaign strategy works, here's a little clip of a discussion between then-ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper and then front-running Republican candidate Newt Gingrich, posted back on the first of December of 2011, a full eleven months before election day:

TAPPER: “How do you respond to Republicans who say if you don’t draw distinctions with Mitt Romney and others who are attacking you, if you don’t point out their perceived vulnerabilities, Barack Obama and the Democrats sure aren’t going to share that same reluctance and you are doing Obama a favor by staying positive?” 

GINGRICH: “They are not going to be the nominee. I don’t have to go around and point out the inconsistencies of people who are not going to be the nominee. They are not going to be the nominee.” 

TAPPER: “You are going to be the nominee?” 

GINGRICH: “I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee. 

And by the way I don’t object if people want to attack me, that’s their right. All I’m suggesting that it’s not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking. So they should do what they and their consultants want to do. I will focus on being substantive and I will focus on Barack Obama.”

Why was he so confident he was going to win?

Maybe because, in the week that interview took place, Gingrich's Gallup numbers had climbed, in one short month, from his 13% to Romney's 22%, up to a whopping lead of 37% over Romney's 22%.

Sure, at one point or another, seemingly every Republican candidate back then got their 15-minute turn in the front-runner spot:

Eleven different people were at the top of a poll at one time or the other; these were (in chronological order of earliest poll lead): Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum.

But the difference, of course, between Gingrich and all those others was that they weren't going to be the nominee.

Okay, wait. Let me recheck that.

Okay, it turns out that, by the end of December, the very same month of that Tapper interview, Gallup released another poll with the sub-head reading, "Gingrich down 14 points since early December; Romney up 5 points", making Romney the new leader at 27%, putting Gingrich at 23%. 

Oh, well.

I suppose we'd all be better off if we just halted all this useless handicapping of these races, and just waited until afterwards to see how it all comes out in the end.