I share Nate Silver’s inability to use the past as a guide to the future when trying to figure out what will happen in the Republican nominating contest. I have been of two minds over the last year. Most of the time, I have looked at Romney’s competition and seen it as so wanting that I could envision Romney winning every single contest. But my earliest inclination was that Romney could never overcome his authorship of Massachusetts’ heath care bill, and that the Republicans would never coalesce around him. A somewhat hybrid version has been to see the Republicans as vacillating back and forth between these two views to such a degree that it results in a brokered convention.
All I can say for sure is that Romney did not and will not win every contest. He came close to closing the deal, but he failed. My guess is that Santorum will continue to gain strength over the rest of February. He’ll never be able to match Romney financially, but he should begin to raise enough money to actually build an organization and do some advertising. Every day that Santorum is still in the race is a day in which he grows stronger relative to Romney.
It shouldn’t be this way. Romney should be using his superior resources to widen the gap. But he’s actually a rather hopeless candidate. He can try to destroy his opponents with negative advertising but he doesn’t really have much he can say about Santorum that will drive Republican base-voters away from him. The truth is that Santorum is a more seasoned politician, he’s more likable, and he’s actually a conservative. The only reason to prefer Romney is because he has the money to run a general election campaign. I am beginning to feel like that is not enough. For the first time, I am beginning to think that Romney might actually lose the nomination and that Santorum might win it.
And, even worse, I am beginning to think that Santorum is a much stronger candidate against Obama than Romney. I think Gingrich is a stronger candidate than Romney. I just can’t exaggerate how bad I think Romney is as a politician and as an alternative to the president.
I’m not.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/PA/S/01/epolls.0.html
Romney’s a cardboard cutout, but he allows “independent” voters and media elites to project whatever the hell they want onto him. How else to explain how he gets away with having no political compass, maintaining no steady course, and telling zero truths as a candidate? He’s the biggest fucking liar I’ve ever seen. Literally nobody believes anything he says, and yet everybody is clearly in on it, so nobody really cares.
There’s no reason why the President shouldn’t be reelected by one of the largest electoral margins in the last hundred years. But his race holds him back. McCain-fucking-Palin, having put up perhaps the most humiliating and incompetent closing stretches of any ticket ever in the face of a crisis so far beyond their intellectual capacity I almost felt sorry for their public humiliation, won 47% of the vote. Forty-seven percent. Jesus wept.
Now that seems like good news for Santorum-whoever. How much worse can he really do than a Palin ticket? But Santorum is a loathsome troglodyte. He goes out of his way to say the worst possible things about women. Over and over. You can’t credibly run for President talking about rape exceptions. You just can’t. The presidency has symbolic meaning. McCain retained some small amount of, if not dignity, then at least some sort of sense that he wasn’t an embarrassment to the nation as a man.
Quisling racists in November can pull the lever for Romney telling themselves that he’s a successful guy, so that must mean he has something going on for himself, right? But Santorum? He’s pure, uncut Republican base. He’s Mr. 27%. Ain’t no “soccer moms” coming around on Santorum.
But I agree with you, Booman, I don’t think Romney is going to win after all. The enthusiasm disaster is shocking. The base doesn’t want him. And the way to bring Santorum down, by being the sensible centrist who doesn’t want to police the ladies’ hoohas, won’t work in the remaining primaries.
What a crazy year this is turning out to be.
I got a an electoral map “roadmap” from the Obama campaign today in the mail, and decided to run some state-by-state election scenarios with the new EVs.
My conclusion: Pennsylvania and Ohio will be crucial states this time around, the former much more than normal.
While I know Santorum was rejected soundly in PA, how much of that was an anti-Santorum vote vs. a pro-Casey vote? Also, given the effort to disenfranchise through voter ID laws, Dems will potentially lose a bunch of votes.
That means we need massive investment in voter registration, voter education, and voter mobilization in PA and OH.
When Santorum was given the boot here, there were Reoublicans and Democrats alike voting against him solely because he was so awful in so many ways (living in VA and charging the PA taxpayers for homeschooling his brood being one example). Of course, we live on one of the ends of the state, where the Santorum doesn’t play so well and the Republicans are generally of the old-school variety rather than the racist teabag hoo-ha controlling freakazoids they call their base today.
Santorum was voted out almost entirely on an anti-Santorum vote. Casey has supporters but most Democrats think he’s a squish.
Thanks for clarifying – I don’t know PA dynamics very well.
what you said. “a squish”.
If the guy running against Casey has as muchcharisma as a garden slug, Casey could lose.
Dude makes the Romneybot3000 seem like a real human being. Casey’s got all the warmth of Rain Man.
No way. Santorum is the best candidate we can have to run against, man. Romney would run to the center during the GE. Santorum will run to the right. He’ll talk about social issues, reminding everyone of his humiliating defeat in 2006. This isn’t abortion, it’s contraception. He was rated as one of the most corrupt Senators in the modern era. He’s not likable at all. He’s just as swarmy as Romney.
Women vote more than men. Women will vote in droves for Obama over this dude. I’m not complacent, there will still need to be organizing, voter registration drives, canvassing, the works…but this election is more or less over. the only question is, how much. And if it’s Santorum, shit…I think we might just hold onto the Senate after all, and the House will definitely flip. More than that, Obama will just might break 400 electoral votes.
Also, this is EXACTLY how I thought the nomination was going to go down, except Bachmann instead of Santorum, and Perry instead of Gingrich. Even though I knew Perry wouldn’t be able to compete worth a damn, I still underestimated that dude’s stupidity.
That’s what I was thinking earlier, but after seeing how bad the electoral vote shift is for Dems as a result of the census, I’m not so sure. The solid red states picked up a lot of EVs, and solid blue states lost them.
Getting substantially above 300 EVs will be very difficult, which means there isn’t much margin for error – it’ll come down to one or two states.
Even with the “toss-ups” (I do not consider them all toss-ups…), Dems have a solid 232 votes. That isn’t including Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire.
I think Obama will have his old map sans Indiana, steal Missouri, and compete in Georgia/Montana/Arizona.
Every year people talk about PA being in play, and every year it’s bunk. Obama will win PA by 10+ points. Ohio might be close. Depends on the Kasich hatred. All assuming there’s no economic disaster before the election of course.
And speaking of PA, that should be Obama’s biggest college student demographic. Corbett has been thrashing college students in every budget. I heard his new budget cuts education another 20%…on top of the cuts he already put in place. If they’re not turning out for this, they never will. And that’s a damn shame.
The guy is a monster, that governor.
Yesterday I saw in the news someplace that Germany, France, and most European countries still provide free or much cheaper higher education than we do, better and more and cheaper health care, and higher wages, more vacations, and earlier (and better paid) retirement than the US.
Only those in the Southern tier of European economies are in serious trouble and that’s because of misbehavior by banks.
What a great opportunity for Democrats to espouse “European socialism,” telling the American people that we are NOT number one on any of these scales and telling them that if they want to know why not they should ask the Republicans!
What a chance to explain to America that the Republicans’ much vaunted “American exceptionalism” in the reason why we are not number one!
For some reason, PA ALWAYS polls 10+ pt more Repukeliscum than it votes. NJ is the same. Menendez was supposedly in trouble, and won by 10 pts. PA will be interested in the repukeliscum, but will vote D. PA already had a chance to consider Ricky, and he lost by 18 pts to Casey.
President Frothy… has a certain ring to it, don’tcha think?
His bumper sticker:
OMG
I GOTTA get one of those.
Think fixers.
Like Frankie Carbo. The Mafia’s primary NYC fight fixer from the late ’30s right on up into the ’60s.
Say the designated loser…Romney in this case as opposed to Obama, the designated winner…appeared early on to be so plainly a tomato can that even the suckers wouldn’t bet on him.
What would Frankie C. do? Would he allow a long-shot winner like Santorum to get into the ring with Obama and risk breaking the bank of every shylock and bookmaker in the business if Santorum managed to throw a lucky punch?
Hell no!!!
He’d fix the runup prelims so that Santorum wouldn’t even get there.
And/or, of course, he’d find a patsy that he could trust to lose…or trust to win and still make the proper kickbacks, like Jeb Bush, for instance…so that he would be able to cover both sides of the betting in a win/win situation.
As above, so below.
The prelims?
The RatPub primaries.
The setup guys?
The national media.
The really dangerous opponents?
Gingrich, Paul and…surprisingly…Santorum.
And the media is kept busy playing whack-a-mole.
Meanwhile an “emergency” opponent…equally win/win although more chancy because of his affiliation with other fighters who have proven to be big-time losers…is floated as a possibility.
Jeb Bush. Just in case.
And the beat goes on.
My question…?
How can you take any of this shit seriously?
I mean…really!!!
Obama has caved in to so many right-wing demands…the NDAA thing and the ongoing runup to a war w/Iran (What, you hadn’t noticed!!!???) being only the most recent of them…that it has become increasingly clear that any claims of “progressive” goals or tactics on his part are simply more smoke and mirrors to be used in the ongoing PermaGov mob’s fix attempt.
Wka e the fuck up.
The fix is in.
(
Don’t) Bet on it.Bet on it.
Later…
AG
His last name is Bush. He’s not running for anything this year.
In a “brokered convention”…as in a fixed fight…anything is possible. If a Jeb Bush candidacy is what the fixers want, a Jeb Bush candidacy is what they will get, more than likely. An Obama/Romney storyline is their primary goal right now, but again…just as in the fight game…if one of the combatants is injured in training or takes an unexpected loss, they will simply slot someone else in there.
Someone both controllable and at least to some degree believable. Jeb has been hyped as the un-George W. for at least 6 years now, since Bush II started looking unavoidably like a total ass.
George II:
And then there’s Jeb.
The reasonable Bush. The thoughtful Bush. The nice Bush.
If hey can sell Capt. Crunch cereal, Bush II or the Iraq War to a gullible American public…why, they can sell anything!!!
Anything.
Always remember that classic line, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
In a so-called democracy, all you have to do is fool some of the people all of the time. The salient word here is “some,” of course
How large a “some?”
Enough to get over.
If you can fool one portion of the people one way…say the Ratpublican way…and another portion the DemocRat way, then there you are.
In the 1% catbird seat.
Watch.
I am not saying that a Jeb Bush candidacy is in the works, just that an acceptable Rat candidate…acceptable to the1%, win, lose or draw…will be found. If it’s Mittens, great. He’s a good looking loser, at the very least. But whoever it is, it won’t be Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich or any other candidate who might not be controllable on the off chance that he did indeed win the presidency.
Bet on it. Bet the house on it if your mortgage is not so underwater that your house still has some value.
Watch.
AG
I think that a Santorum nomination might drive the frustrated, unmotivated center-left mass of the mainstream electorate into waking up and supporting the President.
the President wake up and start supporting the center-left mass of the mainstream electorate.
This. The socially conscious but politically kinda-sorta under 35 demographic came out in droves for Obama in 08. Romney won’t get them up in arms, but they (we, at 36? anyway..) all read Savage Love. Santorum would be a very high-profile boost to womens’ rights activism and a call to arms on both sides of the culture war.
The last thing that I want to see is Santorum as the GOP nominee. He will unite the GOP. He will energize their base. He will lose. When they lose, having gone all-in for Santorum, they – the GOP base – will get violent, and I could see it approaching Rwanda levels.
Seriously.
If Santorum is the nominee then I would seriously suggest that everyone prepare themselves for wingers’ “Second Amendment Remedies” come election day.
I’m prepared…
No, this is actually good news.
Santorum is better at being a candidate than Romney, sure.
But while Romney’s weaknesses in the primaries would be strengths in the general, Santorum’s strengths in the primaries will be weaknesses in the general.
Santorum is a lucid, committed, articulate and hard-core conservative whose most distinctive feature among the whole pack is that he is so much a died in the wool Catholic clericalist.
He is the pope’s man, the Vatican’s man, the candidate of choice for the American bishops.
He is for outlawing everything the Catholic Church disapproves in matters of sex and what the Catholic Church disapproves in matters of sex has not changed in going on two thousand years.
You know and everyone knows what those things are.
Divorce, contraception, abortion, and any form of sex not involving one man with one woman in one lifelong marriage, the chance of pregnancy limited only by the rhythm method, is immoral according to them and not only to be outlawed and punished but, so far as can be, to be made impossible.
Nothing could be more flatly opposed to every jot of the sexual revolution, an American revolution against clerical power made in the teeth of unrelenting clerical opposition with the indispensable support of liberal activist judges over more than half a century.
No one could be more unequivocally opposed than the Catholic bishops, the Vatican, and the pope to the constitutional right to privacy found in Griswold, the chief foundation for the sexual revolution in the law.
Nor could anyone be more relentlessly opposed to the string of liberal, 20th Century decisions concerning the First Amendment and the Incorporation Doctrine that undermined the legal suppression of sex in culture high and low all over America by cities, counties, states, and even the federal government.
And all of that is built into Santorum’s personal character and political outlook.
Just get him talking.
The only thing that could go wrong would be for the Democrats to drastically underrate the strength of popular support for the liberal, anticlericalist, secularist position.
The only thing that could go wrong would be for the Democrats quite unnecessarily to cut and run, scuttling to the right in the face of the coming, angry clericalist onslaught from not just the Catholic clergy but nearly the whole of the Christian clergy of all America.
Make no mistake.
The whole Christian clergy of America will be overwhelmingly on the side of Santorum on all these sex issues, the larger denominations most firmly of all.
By no means only but especially, among the Protestants, the Evangelicals, in particular, are every bit as rock-solid cultural and sexual reactionaries as the most conservative Catholic bishops.
Rightly seeing a Santorum candidacy as the best chance they have had in a very long time for a sexual counterrevolution, the noise they will all make at every opportunity with their advertising, on their radio and TV stations, and in their pulpits will be absolutely frightful.
But the people, the silent majority, are and will remain just as firmly on our side.
Tough it out and let Santorum and his Christianist allies bury him and themselves.
The causes of liberalism, secularism, and anticlericalism will come out of this all the stronger.
Who knows?
When the smoke clears, Democrats might even dare to call themselves by these names, again.
Booman Tribune ~ I Finally Think Romney Might Lose
Actually the Catholic Church’s teaching and practice has changed dramatically over the centuries with homophobia and denial of gay marriage only becoming dominant in the middle ages (c. 16 Century) and the concept of life beginning with conception being even more recent. Puritanism and homophobia are distinct social phenomena even though they have so often been intertwined with Christianity in particular, and Abrahamic religions in general.
I think the more interesting question is why Puritanism is on the rise. It would also be unwise to underestimate the zeal of those who propagate it. Sexual repression is one of the most powerful forces in humanity. We are not talking rational politics here but the emotional power of dominance and submission in matters sexual.
In theory Obama, the model father, parent, husband, family man should be well placed to combat Santorum – perhaps better placed than he is to combat Romney on the economy. But in reality he plays into old racist white fantasies of what black men can do if left to their own devices.
No wonder political analysts are scratching their heads trying to understand and explain what is going on the the Republican primaries in rational terms. What you have to understand is the pathological hatred of Obama and the sexual desire to subjugate. For the good of Santorum’s “society”, Obama must be put down.
This is going to look and sound like an inquisition, not an election to fix the economy.
It almost sounds as if the entire election could
hinge upon the infamous scene from Blazing Saddles featuring Sheriff Bart and Lili Von Shtupp.
You are right about the historical changes of the churchs’s view on abortion.
But the idea that only sex aimed at reproduction is morally acceptable is as old as the church.
That, after all, is nature’s purpose.
wow! pretty bleak outlook on human sexuality
It is indeed.
And it’s not mine.
I guess part of what works against the sexual revolution and for the clerical counterrevolution is the fact that just as many people depending vitally on social democracy disapprove of it morally many of the people, especially those in the pews, who want contraception and abortion and relatively easy divorce to remain legal agree with the clergy that these things are wrong.
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ I Finally Think Romney Might Lose
It’s a lot older than the church and not limited to the church and one of many competing ideas within the church at various times.
Nature doesn’t have a “purpose” as such as that is ascribing intentionality to than can only apply to conscious processes. Reproduction does of course have evolutionary advantages in terms of the propagation of the species, but so do sexual practices aimed at creating greater bonds within families and communities. Sex has many valid functions outside its purely reproductive functionality.
I was speaking the church’s view, Frank.
Not my own.
And,yes, both the idea of purpose in nature and the idea that sex is ok only when aimed at reproduction are older than the church and have existed and do exist outside the church.
My point was that those are the views of the church, and even of most of the Protestant clergy.
That is what we are up against.
Ahh, yes and consider how that might occur if the money that backs Romney suddenly decides to take a Santorum turn?
Surely, by now the money is accustomed to turning peoples’ heads away from little things like “I don’t care about poor people” and apply that magic wand to Santorum’s grotesque incompetence and turn it into pixie dust?
Santorum with Mitt’s treasury would be a different candidate.
The ideal solution for Democrats is for them both to spend all their money and then some in trying to defeat each other.
I hear you Frank, but on their side, the money never seems to run out!
When all of this got started months ago, I did not think that the bible belt would support a Mormon, still don’t. I worry most about Santorum. I can see the GOP coming together for him more than the other two. A bit more wedge-issue social stuff to enrage the enrageable, and all of a sudden they are in a real race. I hope not, but that is what worries me most at this time.
Keep in mind, Boo: Mullah Ricky hasn’t been subjected to the nastiness that Mittens and Jabbah have endured for months. And Mittens still has his enormous warchest.
He doesn’t need anything of substance to hit Santorum with in the primaries. He can just make it up. And when he does, Santorum may not look as strong as he currently does.
In terms of demographics, Santorum makes much more sense than the other two. He’s from the Rust Belt, makes Pope Benedict look like Dan Savage, and is enough of a creature of Washington that he could get much of the establishment on board.
Mittens has no appeal in the Rust Belt. His dad ran a sucky car company, and most Michiganders were either not born or too young to remember his dad as governor.
He has no appeal in the South outside of Florida, which isn’t even really southern once you get into the areas people actually live in (even many ones the GOP usually carries).
Gingrich’s appeal in the South is neither broad nor deep, IMO. And his appeal everywhere else is nonexistent. He’d lose all the states McCain lost plus marginal McCain states and perhaps even AZ and TX. Maybe even more. The man’s toxic.
What remains to be seen is whether Santorum really has any pull in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and a few others in a general election once the country gets more familiar with him.
Santorum may not have a lot of vulnerabilities Romney can pick on, but that won’t keep the Romney campaign from just making stuff up.
Republican presidential politics these days comes down to picking a candidate that has genuine appeal to the party base, but can be reliably counted on to support the Republican elite. Reagan and Bush II fit that description. Bush I not so much, but certainly loyal to the GOP elite.
After his Senate career, I expect the GOP elite see Santorum as someone who can be counted on to tend to the business of Republican government, which is business. If he shows a strong appeal to the base, the GOP elite may shift to him. Right now the bulk of Wall St money is going to Romney. Be interesting to watch and see if it starts to shift to Santorum or Obama.