Another weekend has come and gone, and the path to the GOP nomination gets no shorter than it had already been. With 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination, is almost halfway home with 565 delegates. Twenty-two states plus DC remain in the primary season. Seven of these states will hold “winner take all” primaries with 377 delegates at stake. Even if Romney were to win all of these states, he would still be 202 delegates shy of the nomination. For those who want to know why this is still a four-person race, the bottom two are subscribing to the theory that it isn’t over until (insert your large singer of choice here) sings.
Mitt Romney has spent the entirety of the campaign trying tos pin his conservative credentials. Through his words and deeds, Romney is positioned as the moderate. Chief among those deeds is his health care law in Massachusetts that has many similar provisions to the one passed by the Federal government in 2010. Romney has tried to brush this attack from the right (which would also be an attack fromthe left in the general election), by dismissing his law as a State matter and as political survival in bleeding blue Massachusetts.
Rick Santorum seems to be the wedge on which the”anybody but Romney” wheel of fortune finally stopped. Santorum seems to relish being the candidate on the right, so much so that he seems to find new ways to move further in that direction. Santorum is running under the premise that when the GOP sends a non-war hero moderate to the general election, it loses.
Ron Paul appears to be filling the Jerry Brown/DennisKucinich role of “You think our candidate is too extreme? It could be me.” Ron Paul is interesting because when he’s right (as in correct), he is laser accurate. The problem is when he’s wrong, the people of Alderaan need to take cover. In some ways he goes so far to the right that he finds a black hole that spits him out on the left.
Then there’s Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is the smartest guy in the room. His problem is that he knows it. He has worked out all of our problems in his head and arrived at the optimal solution. He doesn’t get why others haven’t done the same, and doesn’t seem to have the desire to hold everyone’s hand through the process. This is why the annals of sports history are littered with superstars who have failed in management positions (Michael Jordan and Ted Williams come to mind). They’ve all reconciled the process in their mind, and consider matters closed. When they fail, it must be the execution! So they try the next thing, hoping not to find more stiffs who just don’t get it. It’s probably some form of ADHD for high achievers.
The question springs to mind, what is different about this derby from all the prior ones? Usually “Super Tuesday” narrows the field to the front runner and the “hey it could be worse” guy. Could it be that the process that each State employs to assign delegates, has made this race appear closer than it is? After all, Romney has a solid lead in the popular vote by virtue of wins in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and Illinois. The notion that there is still a race may come from the fact that some States are proportionally sending delegates to the RNC.
What if the issue is something else? What if we are looking at four fatally flawed candidates? If so, are voters going to the polls, not to vote for a candidate, but to suggest the nomination of the least objectionable alternative? If so, is this really a new concept?
The lineage of the Presidency is robust with fatal flaws and least-objectionable alternatives. ThePresidency of John Quincy Adams was a House compromise over who fit the bill as LOA. Rutherford Hayes was a popular voteloser. For that matter, what does everyone think the election of 2004 accomplished?
Even the Presidents who are provided a mandate by the voters had fatal flaws that tarnished their legacy. John Adams brought forth the Alien and Sedition Acts, sort of an 18thCentury version of the Patriot Act. Andrew Jackson repaid the national debt, but also has a spotty record with regard to Native relations. Ulysses Grant was allegedly an alcoholic. Warren Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act, but was also part of the Teapot Dome scandal. FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton had grand visions and mistresses. LBJ was very loose with his language to gain support for the civil rights acts. Richard Nixon won in a landslide, but was inexplicably paranoid about the two jurisdictions he would lose in 1972. Ronald Reagan had Iran Contra. Barack Obama has ideas that sound great inthe faculty lounge, but a lack of executive experience gives him a “messaging problem.”
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