Bill Cammack

My most recent opinion about the Republican candidates was that we were going to see a Brokered Convention this cycle, because nobody was going to get enough votes to actually win. Having now seen more of how the system works, I’ve changed my mind.

The reason I figured it might be a close race was because Gingrich had just been sanctioned by a Christian group. We know that Romney, as a Mormon, won’t be getting many votes in the South. I figured that if Gingrich could make it to the South without being too far behind, he could catch up to Romney at that point.

Unfortunately for Gingrich, he became a frontrunner when Cain dropped out of the race so nobody would delve any more into the story about that chick whose rent he had been paying without telling his wife, and that he supposedly wasn’t having sex with.

Once Gingrich went to the front, he became the subject of attack ads.

Gingrich had been able to get over up until now by getting the other candidates to agree to “The Eleventh Commandment”, which is “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

That was all well & good, so long as Gingrich didn’t stand a chance of winning anything, but suddenly, the kid gloves came off, and the other Republicans have been literally SMASHING HIM with attack ads. Everything from sitting with Nancy Pelosi to dumping multiple wives after cheating on them to policy stance changes.. They’ve just been kicking his ass up and down the block out there in Iowa.

Gingrich’s response to the ass-whipping he’s been taking has been to challenge people to debate him. *YAWN*

The reason he’s been doing that is that his campaign doesn’t have any money in it.

That means that while Romney and Paul have a barrage of attack ads playing all day and all night on Iowa television stations, Gingrich can’t do jack-**** other than get free air-time on talk shows and news programs. Unfortunately, most people don’t watch those programs. They watch regular television, where they get bombarded with negative ads about Gingrich all day:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/CWKTOCP45zY

YouTube Link => youtu.be/hRdqGKA782A

On top of that, even though he got endorsed by a religious group at that meeting they went to a while back, other religious groups are balking at backing him because of his past history, based on the usual “family values” objections. It’s not helping Gingrich to have his current wife at his side, because she was his side-piece before he ditched wife #2, and her being there only reminds people of that fact.

Also, I hadn’t anticipated how INSISTENT the Republican Establishment would be about making sure that Gingrich doesn’t get the nomination… It turns out that they’re concerned that if they send Gingrich, WILDIN’ OUT in the big dance, not only will he lose to Obama, but he’ll make Republicans look so bad that their chances of taking the 4 seats they need in order to gain control of the Senate will evaporate.

They honestly can’t afford for Gingrich to move forward to the next stage, so now, all the props he had gained from Cain’s exit are now flowing away to last-ditch-effort Santorum.

Santorum recently got the endorsement of Christian Conservative leaders instead of Gingrich:

Rick Santorum Gets Big Boost From Iowa Christian Conservative Leaders

URBANDALE, Iowa: Rick Santorum received a big Iowa endorsement Tuesday that should help rally the splintered Christian evangelical community here around him. A social conservative leader in the state, Bob Vander Plaats, backed the former Pennsylvania senator just two weeks before the caucuses here, calling him “the Huckabee in this race.”

“I saw him as a champion for the family in the U.S. House, I saw him as a champion for the family in the U.S. Senate. I saw him as a champion for the family on the campaign trail,” Vander Plaats said. “I believe Rick Santorum comes from us, just not to us, he comes from us.”

For some odd reason, the pundits don’t feel like talking about this, as this is the obvious reason he suddenly is in the double-digits in Iowa polls… Well.. I guess the reason isn’t odd… If they talk about Santorum getting a boost because Christians rallied behind him, they have to talk about how Romney’s *NOT* getting votes because of his Mormon faith.

So Romney stays the same, around 20%-25%, Gingrich is coming down, Santorum is going up.

Bachmann is still nowhere. More of her staffers have bounced from her campaign, including her Iowa campaign chief leaving to JOIN. RON. PAUL’S. CAMPAIGN!!!

In another news tidbit nobody wants to talk about, Bachmann was the flavor of the DAY, because she won the Iowa Straw Poll BARELY over Ron Paul (215 vote margin), and then the very next day, Perry entered the race and became the male version of Bachmann. They’re offering the exact same qualities. Bachmann went straight to ZERO when Perry joined, and she never returned. She only had props because she was the only anti-Romney vote at the time.

Bachmann should be scoring in the single-digits when the Iowa Republicans vote, and then that should be the end of her campaign.

I don’t know what Huntsman’s plan is, but he’d better do something SOON! :D

Perry, even though he’s proven himself to be mentally deficient, still has a lot of fans and a lot of money. Even if he gets trounced in Iowa, there’s no reason for him to quit, because he has a lot of religious support in the South and enough campaign cash to keep paying entry fees and buying television commercials.

Having said that.. Both Perry and Gingrich *FAILED* to get the requisite 10,000 signatures in Virginia which would have placed them on the ballot. I think Perry just straight FAILED, and I saw videotape yesterday of Gingrich admitting that some dude that was getting signatures for him in Virginia got caught doing election fraud, so 1,500 votes got removed from Gingrich’s tally and he fell short.

Gingrich cites fraud in Virginia ballot failure

MASON CITY, Iowa (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday his failure to meet the requirements to take part in Virginia’s presidential nominating contest resulted from fraud by a worker hired by his campaign.

Gingrich, who lives in Virginia, scrambled to submit the petitions necessary to get on the ballot on time, but the state party said on Saturday a review process showed he did not have the required 10,000 verifiable signatures.

Gingrich’s campaign hired workers to gather those signatures, and the former speaker of the House of Representatives said at a campaign stop that one of those workers had committed fraud.

“We hired somebody who turned in false signatures. We turned in 11,100 – we needed 10,000 – 1,500 of them were by one guy who frankly committed fraud,” Gingrich said, according to CNN.

So, since Santorum’s not going anywhere, and neither is Bachmann, Cain is out already, Huntsman is still trying to get out of the mid-single-digits in polling, Perry won’t be winning but has enough money to stay in the race, and Gingrich is being torn down by his own party in the best interests of their self-preservation, that leaves Romney as Last Man Standing.

…

Except for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is no spring chicken.

He ran for President in 1988.. TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO! :D

He ran again in 2008. He’s running again, now, in 2012.

How is it that perhaps a week ago, the pundits started reporting about racist comments in his newsletters from the 80s and 90s?

YouTube Link => youtu.be/1vMHuWQ_kfg

Didn’t they go over this in 2008?.. Didn’t they go over this in 1998? How is it that this stuff is supposed to become an issue *NOW*, when Ron Paul is about to win in Iowa?

It’s ridiculous. :D .. First of all, Ron Paul is as old as Moses. He was born in 1935, which means he was already THIRTY YEARS OLD before the USA even agreed to stop discriminating.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States[1] that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (“public accommodations”).

Ron Paul was already a grown-ass man by the time stopping discriminating was determined publicly to be “the right thing to do”! :D You’re going to have to cut him some slack.

Also, the people that want to talk about it now should be ashamed of themselves for not talking about it from day 01, when he announced he was going to run for President.. AGAIN.

Regardless, Ron Paul is clearly unelectable in a general election. He says what he thinks, regardless of what people think or feel about it, which is extremely admirable, especially amongst politicians, but most people aren’t going to agree to return to the Every Man For Himself days of the Pony Express and O.K. Corral and whatever else Ron Paul is reminiscing about when he says what he says.

The other problem with the Republicans is that they have to make such incredibly assholeish statements in order to gain the respect and/or trust of their base that there’s no way any of them (other than Romney) are going to fare well AT ALL in a general election, where all the people they just finished verbally disrespecting are going to either vote for THEM or for President Obama.

Romney has a chance, because he doesn’t believe anything in particular. He just says anything that people want to hear so he can try to get elected.

Republicans see his infinitely changing stances on basic policies as a liability. It’s actually good for his general election chances, because he can run a lot of videotape of him saying moderate or centrist things and act like that’s how he’s been the whole time, setting himself up to be perceived as a replacement for Obama who has the same thoughts, but more business experience.

Also, the same thing that Romney did to Gingrich, flooding the networks with FACTS about Gingrich that people don’t like, that’s what’s going to happen to Romney as soon as he’s determined to be the Republican nominee.

So, The order in Iowa should be:

1. Paul
2. Romney
3. Gingrich
4. Santorum
5. Perry
6. Bachmann
7. Huntsman
8. Cain (Can people still vote for him, since he had already qualified for the ballot before he quit the race? o_O)

Paul and Santorum won’t be going anywhere after Iowa, so the important part is that Romney should get about 23% of the vote, and either Gingrich or Santorum should get 18% of the vote. This matters because the voting is proportional in Iowa, not winner-take-all, so, effectively, the outcome in Iowa shouldn’t have any effect on anything, because they’re going to have to split the delegates evenly.

Santorum doesn’t have enough money to make it to the South, so Perry should pick up a lot of votes down there. Those won’t be enough to catch Romney, however.

So, it’s looking like it’s going to be Romney vs. Obama, which is what I said from the giddyap, because the rest of these people aren’t and weren’t viable candidates.

Romney will get smashed because of changing stances on policies as well as being associated with the Republican obstructionist tactics that have been going on in Congress.

Also just like I said.. Once the President started snitching on Boehner and Cantor for what they’ve been doing, his favorable ratings have been going up, up, and up.

I don’t even think the general election’s going to be close, and watching Romney try to debate Obama is going to be a laugh riot.

However.. Even if/when Obama wins, the Republicans are in position to take the four seats they need to gain control of the Senate, in which case, we can look forward to four more years of obstructionism, so you’d better figure out how to get a job on your own. Washington won’t be helping you out.

The funny thing is that some of the Republican positions make a lot of sense, such as decreasing the amount of money the government spends, which is why I find it strange, embarrassing for the USA, and disconcerting that they decided that their message, which may very well be the right answer for bringing back the American economy, should be delivered by this circular firing squad of circus clowns.
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