GOP 2008: The State Of Play

There's much talk of Romney surging in California, which he appears to be. He's also doing much better in Georgia. This could be the result of his advertising and finally finding an effective attack on McCain: he's out of step with the GOP. If you believe the polls, it isn't something that has resonated around the nation. That could make it too little too late.

The best thing about having this primary season end, if it does, is having a dirt bag like Hickabee off the stage. If he leverages whatever few votes he has gathered after Iowa into a national spot within the GOP, the party is indeed dead. In terms of sleazy politicians, he rivals the Clintons - and he's crazy, to boot. The hack should go off and start a televangelist hour and leave national politics alone. I guess you can take the white out of the trash, but not the reverse. And that's not sour grapes over Romney, McCain is beating Romney, not Huckajerk.

Is there some force at work beneath the radar that will boost Romney at the last minute? There could be. But that's been the province of the Dem side all along. Not so much in the GOP race. A big late surge in California might actually be more of a plus in 2012 if Romney runs, than getting him the nomination this year.

If the worst presidential candidate in history, Guiliani, hadn't played games, getting NY, NJ and CT to go winner take all, this fight would definitely go on. What a loser Rudy turned out to be. People talk about Romney and money / votes - Rudy actually spent plenty in early states before running away to Fla and waiting to get humiliated. It should make Republicans feel real good about McCain if he wins the nod tomorrow. He'll have won because of a handful of liberal Northeastern states he'll never come close to carrying in the Fall, when it's his turn to be humiliated, whether conservatives vote for him, or not. It's going to be ugly, folks.

The only card he has to play is Iraq, likely to not mean squat in November's vote. What's he going to do, campaign as a better liberal than the Democrat? It's his only hope. Ultimately, that's good for the conservative movement. A very moderate Republican will get wiped in a national election, leading to a conservative resurgence against the Dem in the White House in 2010. And McCain will be put in a walker and walked off the national stage to a set to film Viagra commercials ala Dole. Good riddance.

Romney does have a chance tomorrow, but it's very slight. See the full delegate projections here. McCain 604; Romney 322; Huckabee 154. I'm guessing Romney would want no more than 200 delegates between him and McCain. Three might be enough for him to fight on until February 12 in Phase Four, MD and VA, after KS and WA on the 9th. That would be only to see if there is any actual surge going on and how large it was.

Now, if Romney can shift the delegate counts above to around 500 - 422, actually only a 100 delegate switch? Then McCain has a serious problem and Romney has the mo'. He doesn't have to win states to do it. Many of the delegate projections are based on percentages in states with WTA at the District level. Shifting those in several states without an outright win might be able to get him there, or close.

Forget the Northeast when it comes in early for Romney, though do watch percentage performance relative to the last polls. The early states are going to McCain. But if Romney closes the margins significantly and that continues through the night providing bigger percentages of the delegates in later states, there's reason for hope.

Comments

[Brainster]

"He'll have won because of a handful of liberal Northeastern states he'll never come close to carrying in the Fall..."

Uh, he's winning those states because he carried South Carolina and Florida (which is a battleground state). Suppose Mitt does have momentum in California and turns his campaign around. Is he going to carry California in November? Is he going to carry Massachusetts when he's not running as a liberal?

[docweasel]

The first 2 paragraphs of this post: sheesh, its like someone has highjacked your blog :p

I'll be glad when Tuesday is past and perhaps you won't feel the need for this kind of attack. Huckabee might not be a doctrinaire conservative, but insane? White trash? Sleazy as the Clintons? Where do you get all this and on what do you base it? You disagree with the guy's politics, fine, but where does all this ad hominem stuff come from?

[Dan Riehl]

Doc, either start paying attention, or stop commenting. Suggesting Hannity was bought? When the company he mentioned doesn't even own his netowrk? He's playing to the lowest instincts of un-informed voters with bold faced lies. And it's far from the first time. Like I said, white trash. He's a liar and a con man. He belongs in the D party. A scam artist with a collar, that's all hickajerk is.

[docweasel]

Saying it doesn't make it so. I just asked you to back it up. Those are strong words, and they are pretty ad hominem attacks on the guy that don't even reference WHAT exactly you don't like about him. All I take away from the post is you don't like him because, in your perception, he's draining off votes that rightfully belong to Romney. It doesn't seem to occur to any Romney supporters that Huckabee voters might actually like Huckabee on his own merits, and a vote for Huckabee is a vote for Huckabee, not McCain. If they wanted to vote for McCain, why not just do it? If Romney is so very very conservative, why don't they vote for him? The answer may be, they detest Romney and will not vote for him, and don't care if their vote damages him. They have no responsibility to help Romney if they don't support him, which they manifestly do not.

Wishing doesn't make it so either. In fact, attacks like these are more likely to drive Huck voters, and there are a hell of a lot of them, into McCain's camp. I'm seeing a lot of unfounded, unsourced and below the belt attacks against McCain, and now this post does that to Huckabee. White trash? Liar? Con man? If anyone has been labeled a con man in this election, its flip flop Mitt, governor of the most liberal state of the Union who now claims to be born again Conservative who refutes everything he did in Mass, including help enact Universal Health Care paid for by the state (and which is now a quarter billion in debt). Of course, we must take his word for it he will do the exact opposite as president.

Well, here's some Romney lies :)
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTI1NmU2OGRjZjFkZjZjYzZkMDgwOWFlOGUwMzNmOWE=

[Kaitian]

Lie 1: Hannity bought by Romney
Truth: http://hotair.com/archives/2008/02/02/video-huckabee-accuses-romney-of-buying-hannitys-endorsement/
"The background here is that Mitt’s firm, Bain Capital, owns Clear Channel Communications, which in turn owns all sorts of talent, Hannity included. Not until the last few weeks, though, when talk radio broke hard towards Romney to stop McCain (and, before him, Huck) was the Bain/CCC connection an issue. In fact, we’ve gotten several tips to the effect that Bain just recently bought CCC in a last-ditch effort to monopolize the media on Mitt’s behalf; for that lazy smear you can thank HuffPo, which duly repeated it on their site before googling for five seconds and discovering that Bain actually bought CCC back in November 2006. Which means that, per Huck’s theory, Hannity’s supposedly been in the tank for Romney for the past 14 months even while he was giving tons of airtime and admiring buzz to Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson."
Not to mention, they've never been supporting Huckabee at all. They've always been out of the spotlight for sometime not endorsing anyone until McCain started buying up alot of endorsement as a way to hit Romney the cheap way which then the talk radio hosts across the board started jumping out for Romney. They all oppose McCain because he is NOT a conservative anymore.

Lie 2: Romney being a flipflop.
Truth: The only position that you have issue is obviously Abortion which is the ONLY issue that Romney has supposedly changed positions on. However he's always been pro-Life. During his term as Governor, there were no bills passed regarding abortions at all. The claim that Romney flipflopped is wrong. Flipflopping is a term we can easily credit to John F. Kerry or John Edwards because they voted and act on bills that were supported by them then they claim they are against it later down the road.

Lie 3: Romney supported withdrawal.
Truth: He never supported withdrawal and that was even stated so in that debate. McCain lied to the American people right there and claimed that Romney wanted withdrawal when that same exact quote Romney was stating refused to discuss withdrawal at all. For the past debates, there was no issue with withdrawal until McCain brought it up just prior to the Florida primary which was cheap and a bigtime lie. All the debates that Romney has stated about any kind of withdrawal was that he was against any form of withdrawal. The only tactic McCain could find against him was a quote that he doctored Krugman-style and attempted to use it against Romney.

Lie 4: A vote for Huckabee is a vote for Huckabee but a vote for Romney is a vote for Clinton
Truth: Huckabee has stayed in the race despite the fact he only won 1 state and has every intention of splitting the vote to support McCain. Why? He's betting on getting a seat in McCain's administration which is most likely going to happen. Romney's here to stay all the way up to the end of Phase 4 and if Huckabee is still there all the way up to Phase 4 and still doesn't win any states, you got nothing to argue against that.

Lie 5: Huckabee is a conservative
Truth: Huckabee may be a social conservative regarding Abortion and family rights but the truth is he's a fiscal liberal, government liberal, etc. He personally believes that when he lost his weight he felt that he should push that idea to the state of Arkansas. He also claimed to have cut taxes so many times during his Administration but the truth is he actually raised it consistently.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Huckabee+%2BTaxes+%2BRaised&btnG=Google+Search
There are so many results of regressive taxes that Huckabee did in the State of Arkansas.

Lie 6: Unsourced, unfounded, and below the belt attacks against McCain?
Truth: The McCain campaign hired Juan Hernandez as part of his policy board for his administration if he is elected. What does Juan Hernandez advocate? Yes, that's getting all of the 12+ million illegal aliens in the United States citizenship and McCain proudly endorses that.
McCain's temperament is also a fact. He even did it in the last debate where he flatout lied about Romney's supposed support for withdrawal. He's cheap, he's willing to get any endorsements as fast as he can just prior to a primary. The BIGGEST platform McCain's been running on is that he's a war hero and he knows how to lead the country. He did that in 2000 and he's doing it again today. Clinton or Obama will rip him to pieces when he gets the nomination and there's no doubt about that.

You know there's more to list that I can go on regarding Huckabee and McCain but you're just a stubborn support flailing about Huckabee and why he should be President. Thanks to Huckabee and McCain, they've backstabbed all conservatives for real.

[Bill Mitchell]

If McCain wins the nomination, prepare for the biggest electoral slaughter in modern history to occur in 11/08. Also prepare for all those lovely polls showing Mccain leading Hillary and Obama nationally to suddenlt and mysteriously shift to having McCain down by 20.

Here's a news flash. Conservatives HATE McCain.

[BobInStamford]

Have you patriots ever considered that having a pathetic little old man as your candidate is what you get for having 8 years of a stammering fool as your leader? The wilderness awaits.

[seekeronos]

No, Boob.

REAL American conservatives want a vibrant, (relatively) youthful man with a large stable family, long time marriage to the same woman, who has proven administrative and managerial experience to be our chief executive. He will have the working knowledge of the business world and of finance to balance our budget, decrease deficit spending, and staunch the hemorrhage of American wealth into the hands of the Red Chinese, while fighting the War against Jihadism to a successful close.

[Fred Beloit]

The Boob from Bridgeport seems to be an aging (aren't we all) geographist and ageist (you've heard of "racist") who wants a monarchy established in the United States. The King? Why Buffalo Billy, of course. The Queen? Hillary the Tearful, the Princess? Chelsea the Kid.

Boob, why don't you join the fray at Kos's to help decide the future of world socialist monarchies. Thank you for your Medicare service. Misfire accomplished.

[Fred Beloit]

Here, Boob. Enjoy: http://www.royalty.nu/FAQs.html

[templar knight]

Fred, the Boob desires a Chimperor or an Impress for our leader. All bow to the new royalty, with Boob as the fool. What else would you expect?