There’s a new (once again) front-runner for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And former front-runner, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain’s support is crumbling faster than a month-old dried out pizza from Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan:
Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has roared into the lead of the Republican nominating race, brushing off concerns about his work for a troubled housing company, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
Twenty-four percent of registered Republican voters would support the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives if the contest were held now, an increase of 8 percentage points from roughly a week ago, according to the poll, which was conducted on November 18-19.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has stayed near the top of most polls, garnered support from 22 percent of Republicans, slumping 6 percentage points from the last survey conducted on November 10-11 and ending up essentially tied with Gingrich.
Romney is finding it virtual impossible to expand his existing constituency.
Despite allegations of questionable business ties, Gingrich is the latest favorite of conservative Republicans eager for an alternative to Romney, whom they see as too moderate.
Support for Herman Cain, a previous frontrunner, is crumbling after sexual harassment allegations. The former pizza executive dropped 8 percentage points in the poll from last week and fell back into third place. Support for him has halved since late October.In a sign of further relief for Gingrich, 46 percent of Republicans said the revelations that he had received up to $1.8 million in consulting fees from mortgage giant Freddie Mac had no impact on their view of the candidate.
So Gingrich is in effect inoculated, Romney is in remission — and Cain is infected.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.