December 24, 2011

Gingrich and Perry fail to make it onto the primary ballot in Virginia.

What a screwup! You have to get 10,000 signatures....
Perry’s campaign told state election officials it had submitted 11,911 signatures, and Gingrich’s campaign said it submitted 11,050 signatures. State party officials spent Friday night validating the signatures.
... valid signatures.

29 comments:

Xmas said...

And 400 in each Congressional district...they could have missed on that count.

Mogget said...

Validating signatures. It's something they do in those other states, not Wisconsin!

Anonymous said...

Validation is for those lower order of folks.

Anonymous said...

As a Virginian, I'm disappointed in this. It's already bad enough that nominee candidates tend to drop out before we get a chance to vote on them and now they won't even be on the ballot. (sighs)

james conrad said...

I hear it's worse than that, the only candidates that have qualified to primary in VA are Romney & Paul.

james conrad said...

I would add that Larry Sabato predicts that the VA GOP will let the signature provision slide. The bigger question to me is, if one can't even qualify to run in a state primary, why the hell would i vote for you to run the country?

Bruce Hayden said...

I think that this says something about these candidates, and it isn't good.

Keep in mind that they are campaigning to run a government of several million people, with a million or so guns, multi-trillion dollar budget, etc. And, that takes some managerial ability. This failure shows that these candidates may be a bit weak there.

Probably the second to last thing that this country needs right now is for the next President to be a lousy administrator (the last thing is for the present occupant of that office be reelected). Obama has shown us what happens when the President has not knowledge, or in his case, interest, in what the rest of his Administration is doing. We have run-away departments - Fast and Furious and New Black Panthers in Justice, Energy squandering hundreds of billions to political cronies, EPA outlawing coal plants and CO2 emissions, etc.

If the President doesn't show leadership and management of his government, bureaucrats, both political and career, are going to take that as a green light to do exactly as they wish, at the taxpayers' expense. Ok, they are going to try to do so regardless - the question is the extent that they get away with it.

Kchiker said...

I don’t think that Gingrich really thought he’d be in serious contention at this point.

Perry entered under the premise that he would be in contention, so I’m not sure what his excuse would be....

Hagar said...

To be effective, a President needs to at least have his party's "establishment" form up behind him/her and support him/her.

Considering the spirit shown in the payroll tax debacle, I do not quite understand why a rational person would seek the Republican nomination.

wef said...

Could be that these two posers are not serious about wanting to be president. Send them more money, rubes!

Bill said...

The GOP is an absolute train wreck right now. The only way there is any possibility of the next president being a Republican is if Romney is the candidate.

Otherwise, this election will be a landslide victory for Obama, who'd likely defeat Romney anyways.

Sue D'Nhym said...

Valid signatures? Ohhhhh. They thought it was like Wisconsin.

Anonymous said...

Aloha. Listen up all. This is what I think GOP should do:

The GOP ticket, should you accept your responsibility, is to be:

Newt/Perry.

Remember. Should you love to the GOP. Do this for me. Vote for Newt or Perry. Give them your money, your time, and everything else.

sane_voter said...

I think this kills Newt as a viable candidate. Perry was not viable, but this is the final nail in his coffin.

Toad Trend said...

And I suspect the other candidates wrote this state off long ago due to the requirements.

"...the question is the extent that they get away with it."

I think the latest number exceeded 15 trillion.

How bankrupt is bankrupt enough???

Cedarford said...

I think Virginia's rule is generally a good one. If you are running for President, possessing the organization and administrative ability to get 10K signatures for ballot eligibility seems to be a pretty low bar to show that you have those talents. And establish you have the actual support out there.

Double bad on Newt. He has LIVED in Virginia for 30 years as a Beltway Bandit. Has had dozens of booksignings and "Newt speeches" in Virginia and in DC where VA residents mingle in, since the ballot opened.

Bill Harshaw said...

I'm a life-long Democrat but I received a robo-call Wednesday night asking me, as a supposed Republican, to go to Alexandria to sign a Newt petition, the desk being open Monday and Tuesday!

Just a comedy of errors.

purplepenquin said...

It's something they do in those other states, not Wisconsin!

Those of us who bothered to read the article are aware that VA didn't use tax-payer money to "verify signatures", rather it was the Republican Party that picked up that expense.

Chef Mojo said...

@Purple:

Kinda laughable that you bring up using taxpayer money to validate recall signatures in Wisconsin. I would imagine that the amount of tax dollars involved in such a validation effort would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount being billed to the taxpayers of Wisconsin for the entire recall process! If the taxpayers are willing to pay for this, then they shouldn't complain about paying to ensure the process is fair.

Chef Mojo said...

As a Virginian, I'm a bit perturbed by all this, but that's the extent of it.

The Virginia GOP has had this process in place for decades, and it's never been a problem before. This reflects very poorly on the non-qualifing candidates, who have showed an amazing lack of organizational skill. Especially Newt, who should know better, since he's a Virginia resident! Blaming the process is stupid.

And kudos to the Virginia GOP for running this process straight and true. You can't say they're not playing by the rules, even though they're catching holy hell about it.

edutcher said...

As always, the FUD merchants are out, Grinching up the landscape.

Perry, according to pjmedia, intends to fight the decision.

PS Maybe they were so used to ACORN's tactics, they didn't know real names when they saw them.

somefeller said...

Clearly the Left is terrified by Perry and Gingrich, so they are using their allies in the Virginia GOP to keep those two heroes off the ballot. They'll stop at nothing, I tell you.

edutcher said...

Actually, this happens to one campaign or another several times during the primary season, IIRC.

If so, not as big a deal as some would make.

Andy said...

Joke candidates are jokey.

Whatever, grifters be grifting. Now that Cain dropped out, that other primary is wide open.

Andy said...

How does it feel to realize the candidate you supported wasn't being serious about running for President?

shiloh said...

Again, like Cain, gingrich just wanted/wants to sell books and increase his speaking fees.

Whereas mittens just wants conservatives to love him. Hey, is that too much to ask ...

Wince said...

Republicans, come home... to Mitt.

LilEvie said...

The money isn't coming in so Gingrich knows he is toast. But running for Pres will up his book sales. No time to man up - he cries "wah" blames "the broken system".
Next year his book on the environment comes out with a key chapter on AGW, ugh.
Next year the R's take over the Senate - they better get it right this time. Romney as Pres won't stand in the way.

Anonymous said...

Aloha from the big island.

The word during the super K-street consultant conference (transcontinental) was this:

We have to do what is necessary for GOP to accept Newt and Perry on the ballot.

We have to support them. We have to not say anything. In fact, we have to complain about Romney. Use the time to go after him and Ron Paul.

Just focus on everyone else, except Newt and Perry. Give them the ammunition that we are scared of them.