It's all over, bar the shouting (politics)

[drwex]

Absent some kind of miracle or Mitt being caught in flagrante with a four-legged critter this contest is over.

The next venues are Nevada and Maine, both caucuses. Both have special circumstances that favor Romney, though I still expect Ron Paul to do well in caucus-type contests. Gingrich will do less well because Romney continues to out-organize him. After that it's Arizona (heavily Mormon) and Michigan (Romney's 'home state') - both should be wins for Romney. After that it's Super Tuesday: eleven states of which Gingrich could win as many as three (Georgia, Tenessee, and Virginia ETA: I'd forgotten the ballot fiasco that has led to Gingrich not even being on the VA slate) especially if Santorum is gone by then. Even if Grinch stays in this long and goes 3-for-11 he'll clearly be falling farther and farther behind.

Romney won Florida on nearly all fronts: he outspent Gingrich by nearly 10:1 and out-advertised him by nearly 20:1. He got a new debate coach and came out swinging in the last Florida debate, managing to parry Gingrich's attacks, jab back, and also keep talking about Obama. He sold himself as the guy with the best chance to beat Obama and Florida Republicans bought it. It's a closed primary so we don't know how effective Romney's message was with independent voters. I don't expect Florida to suddenly go blue in November but as the anyone-but-Romney contingent inside the GOP seems not to want to budge it's an open question where Romney will pull 50+% of popular support from.

Romney showed he knows not just how to raise money but how to spend it. His ground organization was extremely effective when compared to Gingrich who looked to be floundering. Romney trotted out every single Republican Hispanic elected official and every old Congressional colleague of Gingrich's that he could lay hands on to say something bad about Grinch or good about Romney. This is what it looks like when the Republican establishment gives the big ole middle finger to the Tea Party and the religious conservatives that have tried to wrest control in the last couple election cycles. Our boy, our money, our candidate.

Bottom line: Santorum should be gone before Super Tuesday and Gingrich gone afterward. If they hang on past that it'd be purely for show, or spite.

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

um... one small correction that shows how boneheaded Gingrich is: He's not even on the ballot in Virginia, his HOME STATE. Idiot. (He's trying to claim some sort of ACORN-style fraud over 1500 possibly-faked signatures supporting him...)

[drwex]

Oops you're right, I'll fix that.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Okay, first off, I have to admit that you were right about Ron Paul only doing as well as Santorum in South Carolina. I did not predict that at all, and in fact thought he'd do better. One of the reasons that Paul did not do as well was that Gingrich managed to turn it into a two-man race in many peoples' minds, and that always hurts the fringe. The other reason was that Santorum actually mobilized some of the fundamentalist support into votes.

Gingrich pretty much has to say that he's in it to win it, or he won't get enough money to run anything the least bit effective on Super Tuesday. He himself may no longer believe it, but we won't see any sign of that until after that big day.

(BTW: at one point, Gingrich wasn't even on the ballot in Virginia; did that get "straightened out"?)

Now, two things about Romney cementing his position:

1. The "leader of the week" thing from late 2011 was Rove and Ailes desperately looking for "anyone but Romney" to support. One by one, even the pseudo-Tea Party they created by hijacking a real grass-roots movement (which has pretty much been trampled out of existence) found major flaws with the series of clowns. Note that Paul was never so chosen. Note further that Santorum is pretty much the last candidate that they could actually control, a la Dubya. They may be begrudgingly supporting Gingrich by the time Super Tuesday comes around.


2. The Republican National Committee (a.k.a. "the Republican establishment") may be supporting Romney at this point, but they are not "giving the middle finger to the Tea Party"; they're giving it to Rove and Ailes. If there's one thing the current leaders of the GOP value more than anything, it's party unity, and they hate the fact that Rove appointed himself leader back in Y2K, just because he ran Dubya's campaign. They see Ailes as the reason why they can't get Congressional Republicans to stick to their script.

If Gingrich tries to hang on after Super Tuesday (believing his current rhetoric), watch the RNC lean on him hard to drop out and throw his support behind Romney.

BtW: Florida did go Blue in 2008.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Gingrich is still not on the Virginia ballot - one of his signature collectors submitted 1500 fraudulent signatures, out of the ~11,000 the campaign turned in.

[drwex]

I still disagree with your post-facto reasoning about Ron Paul, but it hardly matters.

And yes, Grinch isn't on the ballot in VA. I had forgotten that particular bit of tomfoolery.

I think there's much less of an air gap between the RNC and Rove/Ailes than you seem to think. I agree that the Republicans see party unity as supremely important and they've been tearing their hair out at the mess caused by the rebellious freshmen in Congress. Regardless of the details, there's a war going on inside the party and the establishment is clearly winning this round.

Finally, while it's true that FL went for Obama I think it's a mistake to think of it as a blue state. I make it only 7 of their 27 Representatives are Democrats even in name and Obama is going to take a serious beating there for the current mortgage mess.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Which part is the tomfoolery?

[drwex]

The part where Gingrich's entry onto the ballot can be screwed up by one person's failure (or perhaps misdeeds). The blame is vast and could go many places (start with VA for having such a stupid system in the first place) but in general I don't like systems that are built to prevent people from legitimately voting for their candidates of choice, no matter what I think of those candidates.

Then again, I think "None Of The Above" should be required as a valid choice on every election and if NOTA wins then the parties are required to start over with new candidates. So clearly I'm a quack and a freak.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

10,000 signatures is a very low threshold.

If Gingrich wishes to be president of the USA, he should understand that a leader is responsible for all their subordinates do or fail to do.

The system is not built to prevent people from voting for the candidate of their choice - it is built to ensure that primary candidates in Virginia have a broad base of support - 10,000 total registered Republicans, and a minimum of 400 from each congressional district.

If the candidates felt this requirement was an unfair burden, they should have made their legal case when the injury was first discovered, ie, the day they announced their campaigns.

They didn't - they played by the rules they knew to be in place, gambling that they could railroad a rules change in at the last minute, and then, when they found they couldn't simply get what they wanted, then they sued - 5-6 months after they discovered the injury.

[drwex]

Where did I say (or even imply) that Gingrich was blameless?

That said, if he was the only one who failed this requirement I'd be more likely to blame (only) him. In fact all but two candidates didn't make it, which leads me to think that the requirement is out of line with the way campaigns usually collect signatures.

Second, this is the only state in which leading candidates did not get their names on the ballot. Again, this is prima facie evidence that VA's system is out of line with the way the rest of the country runs things. If there we multiple states in which Gingrich or another candidate had failed, I would look to the candidate and their organization to bear more responsibility. But this is a one-off.

Finally, VA prohibits write-in candidacy of any sort. I believe this is a (potentially unconstitutional) restriction on peoples' freedom to vote for their candidate of choice as well as their freedom of speech to use their vote as a symbolic protest.

Given all three of the above I call shenanigans.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

The candidates had ample time to remedy the situation, they chose not to until it was too late, and then cried "unfair".

Given the standard concept of laches in legal issues, I call shenanigans on the candidates.

As for the blamelessness of Gingrich, I didn't say you implied that.

I will point out Gingrich's hypocrisy, given his castigation of ACORN voter registration issues in 2009 ... issues in which ACORN themselves flagged some registration as being suspicious, though they were required by law to turn them in anyway.

I find it suspicious that the GOP candidates who complain about the usurpation of state's rights, now want to fight when state's laws hurt them.

Gingrich is a VA citizen - if he could not collect 10,000 valid signatures, he has shown that his campaign didn't care enough about the state to properly invest in the battle there.

I disagree that it is prima facie evidence that VA's system is out of line with the way the rest of the country runs things - it's prima facie evidence that the candidates failed to conform to the rules they knew about at the beginning of the race.

[cos]

South Carolina was never the sort of state where Ron Paul stood much chance of performing well.

[stevie-stever.livejournal.com]

Some lesser campaigns have the habit of sticking around until AFTER negotiations to promise hire a challenger candidate to an administration positions have taken place. Not sure if this applies at all, but if either of the campaigns you named remain after Super Tuesday, don't rule out the possibility.