I predicted the convention will deadlock and draft Jeb.

I'm wondering who will be the VP Pick because that is what REALLY scares me!

onto the ticket? I think RW fundies will force Santorum onto the ticket. Much like establishment fascists forced GHWBush onto the ticket with Reagan.

He's got time. He's got a small, but vocal base. He may opt to be the "conservative alternative" in the out of power (R) party until the '16 presidential races.

He might fight Mitt to a tie in delegates with Paul sucking up about 5-10 percent of them along the way, but I've seen the momentum swing. Noot has sunk for the last time.

Add one to the list, Washington State. It's caucuses are the Saturday just before Super Tuesday. He even said he's going to visit there, while he'd love to beat Mitt in Michigan, he knows that even a close second in one of Romney's several "home" states is good enough.

Next week, Gov. Chris Gregoire is going to sign an equal marriage bill into law. WA will be the only Western state to have equal marriage on the books at that point (being as CA's is tied up in the courts), and the fundies in the WA GOP will be hopping mad about that. There will be an immediate rush to get petition signatures to defer this to the ballot, and the homophobes know that the Rethug caucus meetings are a superb place to get those signatures. I mean, if you're a bigot about gay marriage, who's your champion? Mitt Romney, the guy who "allowed" it in the first state to go that way, or Newt Gingrich, who isn't too attractive if you think of yourself as a "defender" of marriage. Nope, it's the guy who is still on his first wife with seven kids. Not a massive amount of prejudice against Catholics in WA state, either.

There are two kinds of Republicons in WA, the country-clubber establishment types who live in the suburbs of Seattle and the other sizable cities, and the hardcore fundies out in the sticks. Remember, this is the state that actually gave its delegates to Pat Robertson (!) in 1988. I predict an outpouring of support for Santorum that day, and he will whip Romney's ass there.

Does it matter? They're all Republicans and morons, to boot.

Fix is in.

He was very popular during his time as the Governor of Florida. It's my opinion that he would have been a FAR better President than his brother proved to be.

I should point out that the last thing I wish to see is another Bush in the White House. However, it would be fascinating to watch a throwback convention. I believe that the last one was the Republican Convention in 1952. I was only six years old at that time and had absolutely no interest in politics.

Outside of Florida, and maybe a few Rethug-leaning states with sizable Hispanic populations, Jebbie is not popular at all with the GOP'ers. Besides, he didn't bother to enter the fight. No guts, no glory.

Back in 1952 (or in 1948, another contentious year for the GOP), very few states held primaries. The rules for delegates were not as stringent as they are today, and you have to factor in the massive changes in the media in that time. All people had to go by was word-of-mouth, telephone and telegraph conversations, radio, newspapers and magazines. Television was not an important factor, and we were decades away from having three 24/7 news channels with vast amounts of empty space to fill. Today, with the Internet bringing blogs, social media, a true 24/7 access to any news story or video clip, the ability to send the same email to a hundred different people on a mailing list, and website fundraising with distribution of campaign supplies, and you've got a whole different ballgame.

The smoke-filled rooms of 1952 don't even allow smoking any more.

There is no Ike Eisenhower for the Rethuglicans to rally around in this election, there will only be charges of stealing that will persist all the way to election day if no one Repuke comes to Tampa with a first ballot victory.

We have to hope that the angry little attack muffin keeps his promise to go all the way, even though he'll put up numbers less than Ron Paul's in the coming primaries and caucuses. He keeps it possible for neither Mitt nor Ricky to get that lock on the nomination.

assuming the economy continues to show steady signs of improvement.

Yeah, I know that it sounds like I'm stubbornly sticking to a prediction I made over a year ago that Sarah would be president.

Was it a long shot? Picking a president two years out is pretty long, right?

And how would it look if I didn't back up my predictions during the "rough times?"

And if it happens, I am on record right here at DU with my prognostications. Someone will dig them up. Showld be worth a few hearts.

--imm

The thing the press refuses to acknowledge is that the machine has already chosen Romney, or rather Romney has already gamed it so that nobody else can be chosen, and there is no high-probability way to stop that.

Voters in the primary process are not usually voting for the candidate. They are voting for the delegates who have pledged to vote for the candidate at the convention.

But if a candidate has not filled those delegate slots before the primary vote, then someone else's delegate is assigned the task of voting for a candidate that the delegate never supported, and those delegates will break after the first ballot, and before that if the state and party by-laws allow for it.

Only Mitt Romney appears to have understood that fine point, and therefore he's the only candidate who already has enough pledged delegates "running" in the primaries to win the nomination. That of course is on top of the problem that only Romney's campaign was competent enough to get itself on the ballot in enough states to make a win probable in the first place.

That means that most of the delegates Santorum and Gingrich have picked up may well be Romney delegates who are likely to betray other candidates at the convention, if they can. Santorum, Gingrich and Paul are left to pursue high-risk, low-payoff strategies that I think have virtually no chance of working.

But oh, the damage they're doing to each other! Thank goodness the sham continues.

and will be quite weak and damaged.

From a broken convention.

Petraeus

eom

He has too many advantages... money, organization, the GOP establishment, the Mormon church and pathetic opponents.

And that's what I'm hoping for, as you know.

By the way, I listened to Meet the Press today, and when Sick Rantorum said he was going to Washington state to campaign, a light bulb went off in my head. I figured that with the next two contests being Arizona and Michigan, Ricky was going to concentrate as much effort as possible in winning the latter from Romney. However, a close second in a state that most pundits would already concede to Mittens is good enough. Noot will probably do better than he would in Arizona, whether he went there or not. And as you point out, there's that Mormon thing, more of them in that state than any except Utah, of course.

Santorum has managed to sniff out an opportunity. You see, the Washington state GOP caucuses are the Saturday before Super Tuesday, and while most would expect Mitt to do well in a Western state where most folks are pretty familiar with Mormons, there's something else going on. Why did Sicky Ricky do so well in the three-way last Tuesday? The economy is looking less and less like a problem for GOP'ers (they are always the first to see recovery) and the social agenda is starting to loom large as an issue for Republicons. All the news about Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen, about what the 9th Circuit did regarding equal marriage in California, and the shrill screams of religious persecution of both progressive and regressive Catholics have all brought Santorum's issues to the front burner.

Do you know what's about to happen in WA state next week? Gov. Gregoire will be holding a signing ceremony for an equal marriage rights bill that the Legislature in Olympia just passed last week. Of course, under WA law, if enough signatures can be gathered, the thing will be put on to the fall ballot for the people to decide. Now, I'm damn proud of the state I moved from less than five years ago, lived there 37 years, and I have complete faith that the people will do the right thing if this gets on the Nov. ballot. Frankly, I expect the signature drive to fail, it's not as easy to get something on the ballot in WA as it is in CA.

But that's not going to stop the backwoods fundies who think they don't know any gay people, they'll be foaming at the mouth and ready to hop down to the GOP-only caucus meetings, where they will surely have petitions ready for the faithful to sign. They won't have a massive success in the Rethuglican caucuses that are primarily country-clubbers in Seattle suburbs, but they don't know that yet. However, they will have fresh in their memories whatever Ricky says to them about man-on-man, or man-on-dog, or man-on-geoduck (look that last one up if you want a laugh), and they'll be ready to vote for him at the caucuses.

I mean, who else would be their champion? Mitt Romney, the guy who clearly didn't do enough to start the abomination of gay marriage in the first place to have it, or Newt Gingrich, the guy who loves man+woman marriage so much he did it three times? Ron Paul, the libertine libertarian? No, Frothy's their guy. Remember, this is the state that gave its GOP delegates to Pat Robertson in 1988. Compared to that senile idiot, Santorum looks sane as a choice for fellow Republicons at the caucuses who are not wild about either Mitt, Noot, or Paul.

I may not know Florida all that well, and owe you a beer because of it (and my hubris about that), but I think I've got this one figured out!

I think another the reason Santorum did so well last week was Romney's dumb comment about "not worried about very poor people". That was played wide and far in the media. I think Santorum had a big bump from that and his 3 wins but that bump may be over.

Your theory about Wash state is interesting. I suspect Mittens campaign will anticipate that and will soon be there and throw some $millions of negative ads on Rickie and squash him.

We shall see what happens next. It will be interesting for sure.

I don't expect him to stop any time soon. Of course, there will only be a couple of CNN debates between now and then, but Mitt seems to stuff his foot into his mouth without needing one.

The folks in Washington don't take a liking to negative campaign ads, at least not on the primary level. And if he does pour some nastybucks into the Seattle and Spokane media markets, they will just act like a red flag to a bull with the fundies who have their hands full with Mormon missionaries out in the backwoods. I have a good Mormon friend who "shepherds" incoming LDS missionaries in the sticks, and he's confessed a few horror stories to me. Believe me, they'll be loaded for bear.

My lady is already getting sick of primary season! She knows it's the only thing keeping me going between football and baseball seasons!

they being threatened by fundies (many of whom regard Mormonism as a Satanic cult)?

with some spicy language from the non-fundies, of course. 99% percent of the people whose doors are knocked on simply say, "No, thank you," half a percent invite them in, and with the other half a percent, things happen that make them glad to get back to Utah when the time comes.

Senator Clinton had all of those type of advantages and was an expert on policy as well.


The fact is that Romney has no policies, or solutions and people don't like him.

He is teetering on the brink of a collapse and only managed to hold on to Maine by 200 votes, with several caucuses getting postponed.

He is currently third in Ga and trailing in his home state of Michigan.

He has lost a shatttering 23 points on likeability on the national poll since December.

He doesn't have the GOP establishment, he hasn't gone around the country and helped people get elected and he has only 15 superdelegates committed.

He was lucky to be declared a winner in Iowa but his only real victory outside of NH has been Florida where he ran thousands of ads.

If he doesn't turn Michigan around he will be finished.

Romney, I suspect, although the Rep base will not be happy. He has money, operation and seems saner (well to some extent) than the others. Santorum and Gingrich have zero chance of winning.

he hit things right on the head in 2008- very savvy.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/g-o-p-race-has-hallmarks-of-prolonged-battle/

My money, and most of the old-line Republican money, is on Rmoney.

"Corporations are people, too, my friend!" makes those 1%er's all moist, yanno.

But he'll come in first with a few missing teeth, a split lip, bloody nose, a black eye, and limping badly.

Just a wild hunch...

The only question is: what song will they play in the final round of Musical Chairs?

Mr. Noneoftheabove