The Horse Race

After savoring the Giants' great victory in the Super Bowl, I guess it's time to get back to posting on politics.  Eli Manning was again phenomenal down the stretch and Mario Manningham's amazing catch along the sidelines in the game-winning drive will go down in history right there with David Tyree's "velcro" helmet catch in Superbowl XLII.  Besides being the great national spectacle that it is, the Superbowl had another advantage this year - it totally dominated the news and forced the Republican primary season below the radar.

I've not posted much on the horse race aspects of the Republican primary since it doesn't much interest me.  There have been so many front runners as the far-right try to nominate ABM (anybody but Mitt).  Recently though (Florida and Nevada), the Tea Party wing of the Republican party seems to be declining a bit in influence.  Unless Gingrich can pull off some amazing upsets in the coming weeks, it looks like Romney is on the way to winning the nomination.  It ought to be fun as Newt goes after Mitt - seeing the two lead clowns slugging it out will be entertaining.  But make no mistake...in the general election the Republicans will come together and make Obama the target of their hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the SCOTUS Citizens United decision. 

If past performances are any indication, it will be truly ugly with ad hominem attacks against Obama reaching a fever pitch - especially in the PAC-funded third party negative ads.  Or as Al Franken's The Truth (With Jokes) noted about the 2004 election - the Right will try to win based on a campaign featuring "fears, smears, and queers". 

Hopefully, the independents in the country know enough about Obama to resist the coming onslaught.  The most recent national poll has Obama leading Romney 52% to 43% but this will undoubtedly change as the Republican attack machine turns its attention to Obama.  If anything can be said about Romney's victory in Florida, it's that money wins elections.  Surprisingly, those polled think that Romney would do a better job on the economy. 

This seems to be an area totally devoid of any understanding.  It was clearly Republican deregulation policies that led to the economic collapse in 2008.  It was clearly the neocon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the tax cuts for the rich and the agreement not to negotiate lower prices for Medicare prescription drugs that sent us into deficit mode.  And it was clearly Republican opposition that prevented a sufficiently large stimulus package from being approved that delayed the jobs recovery.  If the people want more of the same, they should continue to elect Republicans.  But let's not get the root causes of our current economic problems confused with our disappointment that Obama was not able to do more to resolve it.  The hole the Republicans dug was too big and the constraints and obstructionism they placed in play were too crafty for a President who wanted to "reach across the aisle".

Update 2/8/12
With Newt Gingrich on the sidelines for at least one of yesterday's races (honestly I'm not following it that closely so I can't tell you which one(s)), Rick Santorum took the 3 state primaries.  The AP reports this afternoon that the delegate count is:
Romney  98
Santorum 68
Gingrich 29
Paul 9

Fox News had a different count this morning:
Mitt Romney – 107
Rick Santorum – 45
Newt Gingrich – 32
Ron Paul – 9

Hmm...well I guess it will be sorted out by election day.