Long-time reader, and good friend of mine, “Fishingrod” asked me for my predictions for the Florida Republican Primary that’s coming up tomorrow (Tuesday).

In fact, I hadn’t even thought to write about it, because it’s hardly a “prediction”, as the situation has stabilized at this point, but let me talk about the WHY rather than the WHAT.

The order tomorrow is going to be Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul.

This is already evident by the polls, which have Romney leading Gingrich by anywhere between 5 and 20 percentage points, like meaning 43% Romney, 29% Gingrich.

Besides the polls, Florida allows its residents to vote early. The early voting reflects the current poll numbers… Already. :D

They haven’t even cast the first “real” vote, and Romney is already ahead by A LOT.

Meanwhile.. There is *ZERO* demonstrable difference between the Republican candidates on the most important topic, which is AMERICAN. JOBS. PERIOD!!!!

No difference at all. They all say the same thing. Less government. No rise in taxes for rich people. Fewer regulations on small businesses. Repeal ObamaCare so companies will feel confident to hire people in the near future.

That’s all well and good. That’s not even worth talking about, because they all say the exact same thing. Whether that would work or not is irrelevant. None of these candidates are offering anything that makes them stand out in the crowd, on the topic of jobs.

If you believe they do, feel free to leave a comment below, and we’ll discuss it. :D

All I know is that if *I* don’t know the difference between their job plans, the average American knows way less, Capisce? >:D

So.. If the nomination process isn’t being decided by “How is this man going to get *ME* a job and help me feed my family and keep my house?”, then what’s deciding it? o_O

Elections For Sale

The deciding factor in this nomination process is money. Period.

The more money you have, the more negative campaign ads you can run.. Like this one:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/CWKTOCP45zY

and this one:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/hRdqGKA782A

and this one:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/BLWnB9FGmWE

Negativity sways the opinion of a lot of people, which is why we’ve been seeing so much bitchassedness in this process (and any OTHER election process that ever goes in in the United States of America, Republican, Democrat or otherwise).

So, if Newton Leroy says “I can get the American people jobs by firing all the government workers so we don’t have to pay their salaries anymore and we can balance the budget! :D” and I say “Newton is a FREAK-BODY who has a history of screwing more than one female simultaneously, and, according to his ex wife who used to be his side-piece until he dumped his first wife for her, dude offered her an ‘open’ marriage including her, him and his current side-piece (whom he’s now married to) when they were already married! :O”, I win.

With no difference in our jobs policies, all I have to do is talk yang about the other candidate, and I win.

This is why CREAM in politics (Cash Rules Everything Around Me).

YouTube Link => youtu.be/bjZRAvsZf1g

Dolla Dolla Bill, Y’allll!!! >:D

If you have money, you can afford to send physical mail to everyone in creation so they have the forms they need to send in to vote early for you.

If you have money, you can afford to ring people’s phones all day and night with robo-calls, reminding them to vote for you.

If you have money, you can hire more people than your competitor can to do your bidding in any particular state.. In fact, While you’re campaigning in New Hampshire, you can pay people to campaign for you in Florida. Get the picture? :D

Meanwhile, every ounce of the next candidate’s resources are going into their current campaign in the current state. By the time they win or lose there and start heading to the next location, the candidate with more money already has a nice head start on the process, and has probably flown to that state a couple of times IN PERSON to glad-hand, kiss a few babies and pose for a few pictures.

Don’t Hate The Player

You will hear the pundits talk about “Game”.. Specifically, “Ground Game”. You have to have a ground game because someone from that area has to go around and collect signatures from people that say they want you to be on the ballot. This is why only Romney and Paul are on the ballot in Virginia, since Gingrich and Perry failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify.

So if you can’t afford people to go get signatures for you, you don’t get on the ballot. If you don’t get on the ballot, you don’t get any votes. If you don’t get any votes, you don’t get any delegates. If you don’t have enough delegates, you aren’t nominated by your party.

Unfortunately for the final four, Florida is too large a state for your ground game to make a difference. You just literally can’t travel from spot to spot and make an appreciable impression on people. This is why Ron Paul isn’t there.

Paul knows that the only way you win Florida is through television advertisements (see above for examples, hehe). You can shake as many hands as you want, but most people are going to find out about you by watching television, as they always do, and having a commercial come on that tells them something about the current candidates.

Paul is saving is money.. Wisely.. Because Romney has already spent $16,000,000 USD on television ads smashing Gingrich, and Gingrich has spent something like $3,400,000 USD for airtime.

In case you can’t count, that reads SIXTEEN MILLION DOLLARS has been spent just to buy up television time that informs Florida voters what Romney’s team wants them to know… Which is that Gingrich sucks.

Thanks For The Ducats

To make matters worse.. There are these things called Political Action Committees, or PACs for short, and now, there are Super PACs.

Super PACs’ money could tip balance of power in Congress

The 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allows unlimited contributions by corporations and unions has already affected the 2012 presidential campaign. But it could play a larger part in the balance of power in Congress this fall.

Voters in three states have been bombarded with television and Web advertising, automated phone calls and direct mailing, most of it directed against a candidate rather than in support of one. And in Florida, which votes Tuesday, spending is going up by the day.

Spawned by a Supreme Court ruling that loosened restrictions on independent spending by corporations, unions and advocacy groups and by subsequent rulings by the Federal Election Commission, the outside groups have the ability to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate around hot-button political issues, like support for or opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, and to support or oppose candidates for office.

The outside groups can do just about anything a campaign or political party can do, including voter registration efforts and sending direct-mail pieces or automated telephone calls that frequently fly under the national media’s radar, but don’t have the same financial limits and donor disclosure requirements that candidates’ campaigns do.

So.. Basically.. All that “Give $5 to help Obama get reelected” or “Donate $50 towards Buddy Roemer’s campaign” stuff is mainly symbolic now.

People are sending insane amounts of money to Super PACs to support their favorite candidates.. How much influence do you think *THAT* will buy if that person gets elected? o_O

Sheldon Adelson donates millions to support Gingrich

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A Las Vegas billionaire with ties to Newt Gingrich has given $5 million to an independent group backing the former House Speaker’s presidential bid.

A person familiar with the situation said casino mogul Sheldon Adelson made the contribution Friday to Winning the Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC. The person said Adelson would spend heavily to assist whichever candidate wins the Republican nomination.

Adelson is a longtime supporter of GOP candidates and has been a friend and backer of Gingrich for many years.

Gingrich’s campaign has struggled since a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney spent $3 million on ads attacking him in Iowa.

The Washington Post first reported the $5 million contribution. Politico reported last month that Adelson was prepared to spend $20 million to help Gingrich.

See that? :D haha So you either get a million people to contribute $5 or one dude to contribute $5,000,000 and it’s the exact same amount of power to purchase the creation of and airtime for negative campaign advertisement against other candidates.

In fact, at the time of this printing, dude and his wife have dropped another $5M on Gingrich, already. :D

Shakeout

At this point, the situation has stabilized. The only thing we’re waiting for is for Santorum to quit.

Everybody else is in it for the long haul.

Paul is racking up delegates so he can have some props at the Convention, so he’s going to run in as many states as he can.

Gingrich has a billionaire for a Sugar Daddy, so he has no incentive to quit.

Romney has been the only real candidate this entire time, which I’ve SAID this entire time, so he should be in it all the way, instead of quitting, like he did in 2008.

So, it’s not really about “predictions” anymore.. It’s more like how the situation’s going to play itself out, like watching a cut-scene in a video game.

The next several states that vote are in the South. Gingrich will do well in the states where he can utilize his ground game. Romney will do well in the states where ground game can be nullified by incessant negative television attack ads. Santorum should suspend his campaign relatively soon, hopefully after Florida, because he’s strictly an 11% candidate unless he gets a religious endorsement from someplace like Iowa, where 57% of the people in the exit polls described themselves as Evangelical Christians.

Romney will do better when the vote goes back up North. Gingrich will do better when Santorum quits and stops splitting the Non-Romney, Not-Romney, or Anti-Romney vote.

So, the way I see it, this process should be a loooooong, drawn out process of getting delegates here and there, until Romney finally gets the 1214 that he needs to secure the Republican nomination.

By then, Newt Gingrich will have written the Democratic playbook for dismantling Mitt Romney’s candidacy.

He also will have created all the negative attack ads for free to Obama, since his team doesn’t have to spend any money researching, creating, airing, or measuring the efficacy of the ads.

Gingrich will also have set the stage for A LOT OF unforced verbal errors by Romney that Romney will be starring in his own attack ads, like at the end of this one, where Romney says “There are a lot of reasons not to elect me”:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/jVUQuJDEs04

So, the longer this goes on, the worse Romney looks, and the lower the chances become that Republicans will win the 2012 election.

Gingrich has now gone from calling Romney a Massachusetts Moderate to a Liberal.

Romney’s credibility (and he didn’t start out with much) with Conservatives is being eroded, daily.

That’s all that’s going to happen from now on. Gingrich and Romney are going to air incessant negative ads about each other until Romney makes his 1214 to secure the Republican nomination, and then he’s going to have to try to turn around and say “I was only kidding” to all the people he’s offended during the current process of pandering and demagoguery.

Demagogy (/ˈdɛməɡɒdʒi/[1]) or demagoguery (/ˈdɛməɡɒɡəri/[2]) (Ancient Greek: δημαγωγία, from δῆμος dēmos “people” and ἄγειν agein “to lead”) is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes. What qualifies as demagogy has been the subject of debate and ambiguity since Aristophanes first used the term, in reference to the Athenian statesman, Cleon.[citation needed]

Good Luck with sprinting back towards the center.. You’re gonna need it.
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• South Carolina 2012 Republican Primary Predictions
• 2012 New Hampshire Republican Primary Predictions
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• Done With Politics
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Here’s my prediction for the 2012 South Carolina Republican primary:

1. Gingrich
2. Romney
3. Paul
4. Santorum
5. Cain

The reason I have to include Herman Cain is that Stephen Colbert is running under his name:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/3UOGKO7tM34

If Perry would have foolishly stayed in the race (He should have quit IMMEDIATELY after he got trounced pathetically in Iowa), he would have received fewer votes than Stephen Colbert, who, obviously, isn’t even running for President.

Colbert also would have received more votes than Huntsman, who also dropped out. => L.A. Times: “Jon Huntsman trails Stephen Colbert in South Carolina poll [Video]“

Down Yonder

Now that they’re in the South, the religious vote comes into play.

Romney’s not getting that, because he’s Mormon.

Originally, it was promised to Perry.

As soon as Perry had to interact with actual human beings, instead of posing while someone built campaign commercial videos around his visual image, people realized that a) he wasn’t EVAR going to be able to out-debate our current President, Barack Obama, and b) if Perry SOMEHOW would have become PotUS, we would all be dead soon, because of some STUPID, uninformed, RETARDED statement he made about some country that wasn’t America, leading us into the next Global War => Fox News: “Perry draws Turkey rebuke over debate comments”.

Rick?…… Shall. We. Play. A. Game? o_O

YouTube Link => Evangelical Meeting Spawns Endorsements for Santorum, Gingrich

Gingrich lost some propers because of his multiple “Let me start having sex with some chick I’m not married to, dump my current wife and marry the side-piece” situations => en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich#Marriages_and_children

However, he’s been gaining position because he keeps treating Santorum like his son. People are going for the way Gingrich talks down to and about Santorum, and they’re figuring that they’d rather send Gingrich to debate Obama than Santorum, because he’ll just get sonned again, and they’ll have to bitch and moan about Obama for another four years, until Hillary’s elected.

Also, Perry endorsed Gingrich when he dropped out, so the 16 people that were going to vote for Rick Perry are now going to vote for Newt Gingrich.

This will leave Santorum in last place, if you don’t count Stephen Colbert.

Ron Paul’s supporters are steady. He neither rises nor falls in the polls. Everybody knows he’s an old-ass man that’s mentally reliving the gold rush, Miner 49′er days, so they cheer him on and vote for him.

I suspect that with the religious vote being split between Gingrich and Santorum, Paul should receive more votes in South Carolina than Santorum, because other than that base, nobody votes for Santorum.

Snapping

The reason I think Gingrich will defeat Romney in South Carolina, besides religion, is that Romney can’t snap.

Snapping, Joaning, Playing The Dozens, is a social form of entertainment, whereby one person attempts to make the other person look bad to the crowd, and FEEL BADLY about themselves as a person.

Newt Gingrich is very good at this. Mitt Romney *SUCKS* at it.

Remember when you were in elementary school and there was the fat kid and the skinny, rich kid? :D haha Who was better at snapping? The fat kid was.

That’s because everybody’s been coming at the fat kid for his entire life, and he’s used to being in verbal battles, and he’s used to having to come up with good snaps on the fly to kick people’s asses with, being that he already knows they’re going to come at him with fat jokes.

Meanwhile, everybody’s been riding the rich kid’s jock, so they refuse to say *ANYTHING* negative about him so they can be invited to the parties at his mansion where they raid his father’s liquor cabinet and get high… (Yes.. This is what friends of mine were doing in elementary school. >:D)

So the fat kid has all the practice, and the rich kid has none of it. There’s no contest. the fat kid is going to demolish the rich kid because he’s easy to break. This is why you see Romney losing his cool every week, every time someone asks him something that causes him to have to deviate from the cue cards he memorized before the debate.

This is why Romney says stupid stuff when he freestyles, like “I’m from the streets” or whatever nonsense he said… In fact.. I owe Michele Bachmann a quasi-apology, because I called out that quality for her several times, and I never called it for Romney, because he was so busy shutting the **** up during the debates that I didn’t realize he was doing the exact same thing.

Flash Cards

Both of them memorize and regurgitate information. It’s not just Bachmann. This is why you’re like “HUH??? o_O” whenever Romney goes off-script.

$10,000 bet? HAHAHA are you ******* CRAZY??? :D

$10k to Romney is like a penny to me. Imagine me offering someone a bet for a ******* PENNY! :D

This is what I mean. What he says doesn’t make any sense, unless he’s reciting information he previously memorized. You can take his statements from the debates and overlap them almost verbatim. You already know what he’s going to say, because he’s using his mental teleprompter.

This is why I think Gingrich will beat Romney today in South Carolina. The more debates they have, the cooler Gingrich looks as a freestyle snapper, and the more robotic Romney looks.

The Republicans don’t want to send someone to debate Obama that’s going to look like a sucker. They want to send someone that they think will act tough at the podium.

Unfortunately, the “establishment” Republicans would rather not see Gingrich as their nominee, fearing that he’ll make them look so bad with his unpredictable shenanigans that they’ll start losing seats in Congress.

This is why all of the important endorsements have gone to Romney, while Gingrich receives backing from Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, which one pundit described as someone throwing you a lead life jacket if you were drowning. :D

So, overall, I still see Romney as the Republican nominee, unless Gingrich can son Santorum into dropping out very soon.

Romney has problems with getting more than 30% of the vote, so far, so with Paul taking up another 20%, if there’s only one non-Romney left, he should easily pull 40%-50% from here on out.

If Santorum stays in the pocket, he’ll keep splitting that extra 50% with Gingrich, allowing Romney to continue to squeak by with low-enthusiasm victories.
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ok.. I’ve seen enough Republican tomfoolery to drop my overall prediction for how the 2012 Presidential election is going to go. >:D

As far as my predictions for New Hampshire, I was right that Romney was going to win (everybody knew that). I had hoped that Huntsman would edge out Paul, but he didn’t. I had thought that Santorum would be ahead of Gingrich, but he wasn’t. Perry was at the bottom, where he should have been, since he didn’t even campaign in New Hampshire, and Bachmann got 343 votes, even though she already dropped out of the race.

Here’s what I think is going to happen, going forward, which should result in the reelection of President Obama:

Gingrich

Gingrich is upset because he thought he was going to get over with “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican”, and Romney was like “**** That! >:D”

According to the pundits, Iowa television was inundated with negative ads about Gingrich, which I’ve spoken about, previously.

If this had been 1975, their money would have been spent. Since it isn’t, those videos will live on on YouTube ad infinitum. They were used in New Hampshire. They will be used in South Carolina. They will be used by Democrats. They will be used with Green Eggs And Ham… Forever.

Gingrich couldn’t do anything about this because he didn’t have any money in his campaign to match the Super PAC that’s backing Romney’s play… However… *NOW*, some dude gave Gingrich 5 million dollars to go berserk with ads in South Carolina. >:D

This money will be spent trashing Romney’s name and achievements by calling him a “Vulture Capitalist” (instead of Venture Capitalist, haha so funny! :D) because of how he’s made his money by taking over companies and making decisions for them that have resulted in LOTS of job losses, while also creating jobs.

This campaign will be extremely effective to make Romney look bad, because Romney won’t show people the documents that compare the number of people who LOST JOBS to the number of people who gained them because of his company.

Similarly, Romney doesn’t want to reveal his tax data, which, of course, would indicate whether or not he’s still profiting from people losing their jobs.

So, Gingrich, himself, is finished. Kaput. Any time he makes a move, people are going to break out the YouTube videos that Romney’s Super PAC and Ron Paul’s team made about him, and then he’s going to stay with a very low percentage of votes in every single primary and caucus.

He already knows this, so he’s on a kamikaze mission to take Romney down with him, which will result in even MORE useful material for the Democrats to use in the general election, since, like I said from the giddyap, Romney was the only actual candidate that the Republicans fielded this cycle, and was always going to be their nominee.

Paul

I have to give the Ron Paul supporters their props, because they’ve really sustained their candidate and kept him in good position, even though neither Democratic nor Republican pundits wanted to talk about him this entire time. They have to talk about Paul *NOW*, or else they’ll look like they don’t know what the **** they’re doing.

Last I checked, Paul didn’t have enough money for television ads in Florida, so he was skipping campaigning there, and going straight to the next state in the order. That might have changed after his strong 2nd place showing in New Hampshire, if he received an infusion of cash.

Either way, he’s running a week-to-week operation, and he really shouldn’t be able to keep up with the war machine that Romney already has available, fully-oiled and properly running, so I can’t imagine Paul receiving the Republican nomination.

Paul’s role, going forward, will be a factual dismantling of Romney’s position, which, again, will add to the ammunition that the Democrats have for the general election.

Santorum

I kept telling you people that there WAS. NO. SANTORUM. SURGE! >:D

Santorum received a religious endorsement in Iowa from a group that doesn’t have any props in New Hampshire. Case Closed.

He was polling at 10% before he got that endorsement. He “surged” because 57% of the people that voted in the Iowa caucus identified themselves as Evangelical Christians. He went to New Hampshire and received his requisite 10% of the vote, just like I said.

The pundits don’t want to talk about this, because then they’d have to talk about the issue of Romney and Huntsman being Mormons, which obviously wasn’t a problem in New Hampshire, as they ranked #1 and #3 out of the six remaining candidates, with Santorum ranking #5, because Perry didn’t even campaign in NH and ended up #6.

Santorum’s role going forward is going to be to split the religious vote with Perry, nullifying both of their opportunities to make any real waves.

His other role is going to be to keep spewing wrong-side-of-history statements that are going to make Republicans in general look bad to independents.

Other than that, he shouldn’t have much effect on the inevitable nominee, Romney, because he’s not spending money on negative television/YouTube advertisements about him.

Santorum has no money and no boots-on-the-ground infrastucture, so he shouldn’t be going very far past South Carolina.

Perry

Perry should have quit when he had the chance, after Iowa! :D haha

The *ONLY* reason Perry should stick around is that he has religious backing from the Bible Belt. If that doesn’t create a situation-based “surge” like Santorum received, he needs to pack it up for real and go back to Texas and stay there.

If he doesn’t do well in South Carolina, Perry needs to just quit, because all he’s doing is splitting the religious vote with Santorum. Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, NOBODY wants to see him try to debate Barack Obama! :D HAHAHA

Perry got basically no votes in Iowa, he got almost absolutely no votes in New Hampshire.. If he doesn’t receive a massive turnout in South Carolina, it’s going to be way too late to BEGIN getting votes / securing delagates at the FOURTH contest in the series.

Huntsman

Even though I’ve known this whole time that they were going to send Romney to the big dance, I had been hoping against hope that Huntsman would be able to sway enough voters to be competitive for the nomination.

I’m not sure that pulling 40,000 votes to Mitt Romney’s 95,000 votes makes the case.

Either way, Huntsman’s heading to South Carolina to try it again. He may as well. He has infinite cash. His pops is like the original baller, shot caller! :D haha en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Huntsman,_Sr. .. Dude *INVENTED* the “clamshell” container for McDonald’s Big Mac that we still use to this very day, so Huntsman may as well spend a bunch more money campaigning in SC, since it’s a drop in the bucket.

I’m also not sure that pulling fewer votes than Ron Paul makes the case, either.

New Hampshire was Jon Huntsman’s high water mark. He skipped Iowa entirely to campaign there this entire time, and he came away with 17% of the votes, compared to Romney’s 40%.

The Utah Primary doesn’t even happen until June www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012-republican-primary-schedule/, and Huntsman should be out of the race WAAAAAAAY before June! :D

The way I see it, if he doesn’t do extremely well in South Carolina, he needs to hang it up with Perry.

I’m a fan of what Huntsman is saying and the way he carries himself and that he took Utah to #1 in job creation during his terms as Governor, but business is business. >:D

Romney

According to me, this sends Romney to the general election to attempt to defeat President Barack Obama.

At first, I saw this as slightly possible. Now, I don’t.

Through the first series of debates, the candidates didn’t want to say anything to or about Romney. This is because he was never the frontrunner. All these non-candidates were having surges which lasted as long as it took for the press to find out the very slightest things about them, and then the public was like “Nahhhhh! :/”.

So Romney got to stand there looking Presidential, without actually saying anything.

Now that people have realized that he’s the only candidate that was ever fielded by the Republicans this cycle, they’ve been going at him in real-time, and he’s been folding.

He offered a $10,000 bet to Rick Perry, knowing that he (Romney) is worth approximately 250 million dollars… Are you ******* KIDDING??? >:D

Romney worth up to $264 million; earned up to $68,000 per speech before campaign

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who made part of his fortune as co-founder of a private equity firm, and his wife have personal financial assets worth as much as $264 million, according to disclosure documents filed Friday.

The records suggest that Romney may have seen a small, but limited, drop in wealth during one of the nation’s worst economic downturns, with a maximum asset value about 8 percent lower than what he reported during his first White House bid in 2007.

The numbers underscore an issue that poses both a benefit and a challenge for the former Massachusetts governor, who points to his business experience as evidence of his ability to lead the country.

But Romney, who grew up in a wealthy family before expanding his fortunes at the Bain Capital equity firm, also has struggled to portray himself as a candidate in touch with the lives of regular voters.

Since then, he’s said and done a bunch of other stuff that give away that fact that (rightfully so, because he’s always been rich) he’s not in touch with American workers AT. ALL.

Most importantly, he’s committed unforced errors as well as having been baited into errors by the likes of such debate geniuses as Rick Perry.

It’s become apparent that as long as Romney has memorized his flash cards, he can seem like he’s giving a spontaneous, intelligent presentation, but as soon as he tries to ad-lib, he ends up staying stupid-but-authentic things like “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me”:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/nBfWB64iHAs

The link I posted has the entire context of what he was talking about, which was insurance providers, but the important part is that you can see and hear the change in his demeanor. :) He was running his mouth and as soon as he said that, people in the crowd started chuckling, and you see Romney go “OH ****! :O” and every word he says after that is like BUH-B, BUH-B, stumbling and bumbling all over the place, because he got nervous, realizing that he had tipped his hand.

The short version of that video that only has him saying “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me” will be played over and over, whenever he attempts to run for *ANY* public office for the rest of his life.

This indicates to me that Romney will continue to commit these gaffes, to the ultimate delight of the people in charge of Obama’s reelection campaign, and also that when he finally has to debate Barack Obama, he’s going to get sorely embarrassed every time he’s forced outside of his cue-card comfort zone.

Hail To The Chief

So, No.. I’m not seeing it anymore. I feel like the 2012 Republican nomination process has provided the blueprint / roadmap for the reelection of our current President, Barack Obama.

The extraneous, unelectable “candidates” will continue to buzz around and create more anti-Romney media for the Democrats to use in the general election.

If they were smart / unselfish, they would decide on one of them to be nominated and all the rest of them would drop out.

In a two-person contest, you can’t win with 39.4% of the vote. :D

In a three-person contest, you have very good odds of winning with those many votes. There are currently six people involved, and there shouldn’t be.

Perry should drop out because it’s clear that people don’t see him as smart enough to be able to defeat President Obama in the general election.

Santorum should drop out unless he has a string of religious endorsements coming up very soon.

Huntsman should drop out if his message doesn’t resonate in South Carolina, because that means his gambit didn’t work and probably won’t work during the rest of the nomination process.

Gingrich should drop out because he’s been statistically eliminated by Romney’s Super PAC’s onslaught of negative ads about him, and he’ll never recover from that.

Ron Paul *SHOULDN’T* drop out, because he’s having the time of his life! :D

YouTube Link => youtu.be/Da6irSCvnZY

Play On, Playah!!! >:D hahaha Get Yo’ *CELEBRATE* On! :D hahaha

But, Yeah.. When the dust settles, Romney is going to be the nominee, but his fellow Republicans will have researched and revealed so many flaws in his background, ideas, style and personality that it’ll be a cakewalk for the Obama team to trounce him in the general election.
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• Brokered Conventions
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• Republican GOP Presidential Candidate Debate 2011 [Part 02]
• Obama vs. Romney 2012
• Republican GOP Presidential Candidate Debate 2011 [Part 01]

Today, the Republicans in New Hampshire are going to make their decision about which candidate they’d like to see attempt to defeat President Barack Obama in the 2012 general election.

Here’s how I think it will turn out:

1. Romney
2. Huntsman
3. Paul
4. Santorum
5. Gingrich
6. Edit: Buddy Roemer
7. Perry
8. Cain
9. Bachmann

I know Cain and Bachmann are kaput already. I’m pretty sure they both qualified for this primary before they exited the race, so they’ll probably have a few votes each. Cain had ~58 votes in Iowa, and he wasn’t even there.

Romney

Romney has had New Hampshire on lock this whole time. His lead is deteriorating, but it’s way too little, way too late. He’ll coast to an easy victory here… The only thing I dislike about this situation is that the stupid-ass pundits are raving about a candidate winning Iowa and New Hampshire back to back. They might have to STFU when the official vote count is received from Iowa in two weeks, and they determine that Santorum actually had more votes. I don’t see how you can get all happy about a virtual tie and then a definite win, but that’s television for you. \o/

Huntsman

I’m thinking and HOPING that Jon Huntsman will take second place here… One of the dumb things about how the pundits report the polls is that they like to give you the percentages for each candidate, but they don’t like to give you the percentage of people that are currently undecided or willing to change their minds. Last I heard, that number was ~45% were definitely going to vote for the candidate they said they were going to vote for, and ~55% were NOT DEFINITE that they were going to vote for that candidate (or didn’t select one to begin with). More people are “undecided” than are “decided”.

I think that a lot of the undecided people will vote for Huntsman. He’s put in the groundwork in New Hampshire that Santorum put in in Iowa. The worst I can see him doing is 3rd, but I believe he’ll take second by a few points over Ron Paul.

I’m biased on this one, because I’d like to see Huntsman get the nomination, because he had the best job creation record when he was Governor of Utah (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Huntsman,_Jr.), and I think he makes the fewest wacko statements out of the entire group of candidates.

Paul

Ron Paul should be in 3rd. His fan base is pretty consistent. He’s also consistent in what he says. There’s nothing you’re going to hear from him NOW that’s going to make you think about voting for him. You’ve already heard it and all the cards are on the table.

Right now, Paul isn’t planning to go to Florida, because he doesn’t have enough money to be effective there. You can’t go door-to-door in Florida.. You have to pay for a lot of television advertisement. He said that if he does well in New Hampshire and gets an infusion of money, he’ll rethink that position, and that he’s taking this election process one week at a time.

This check-to-check campaign mindset is to Romney’s advantage, because he has enough money to do whatever he wants, and run a parallel campaign in several states, simultaneously, while the rest of these dudes have to run serial campaigns and start all over from scratch in each state.. If they’re even registered (Only Romney and Paul are registered for Virginia, for example. It’s been speculated that Santorum failed to register for D.C. as well).

Santorum

Santorum should take fourth place.. Not because of anything he did in particular, but because Gingrich and Perry will do worse than he does.

The only reason Santorum did well in Iowa is that he receved this particular religious endorsement:

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.”

I brought this up last month, in billcammack.com/2011/12/31/2012-republican-iowa-predictions/, but for some reason, the pundits refuse to discuss this and keep talking about a non-existent “Santorum Surge”.

There *is* no surge. Santorum was polling around 10% until he got that endorsement, and then, overnight, he was polling near Romney. Now, he’s back to polling around 10% because the group that endorsed him doesn’t have such a high percentage of people in New Hampshire.

I’ll be completely surprised if he does Ron Paul’s numbers, and he shouldn’t be anywhere near Huntsman when the smoke clears tonight.

Gingrich

Gingrich has many, many problems with his campaign, but the two of them are the attack ads that Romney and Paul’s supporters created about him (also shown in billcammack.com/2011/12/31/2012-republican-iowa-predictions/), and his current wife.

There are going to be A LOT OF FEMALE VOTERS this cycle. :) They don’t take kindly to home-wreckers, because they project situations they experience onto their own lives and have seriously negative reactions to it.

Gingrich is the only dude that brings along the chick that was screwing him behind his wife’s back and that he ended up dumping his wife for, with. him. on. the. campaign. trail.

When women look at them together, they imagine how TIGHT they’d feel if their ex-husband or boyfriend was flaunting the chick that stole their man on national television.

In fact, Gingrich’s marital/infidelity history is part of what lost him the religious support that went to Santorum in Iowa… The only way for him to get back in contention for the nomination is for both Santorum and Paul to run out of money and drop out of the race.

Perry

Rick Perry.. as usual.. wasn’t smart enough to quit, after delivering his “Thanks for the support, y’all, but I’m going back to Texas” speech after getting trounced in Iowa.

Right now, he’s polling at 1% in New Hampshire, but he’s not campaigning there. He went directly to South Carolina, which is the next stop for this carnival.

If Perry gets waxed in S.C., he needs to hang up his spurs for real this time, and stop wasting people’s money that they donated to his campaign… Once they hit the South, that’s where Perry and Santorum are supposed to start SHINING, so if they don’t, they’re finished.

Perry’s the low man on the totem pole, and he’s definitely going to South Carolina, so you can bet that all six of the remaining Republican candidates will be there.

Romney or Obama

Ultimately, like I’ve said this entire time, Mitt Romney is the Republicans’ only hope to defeat President Obama this cycle, and even *those* hopes aren’t great.

The only way Romney won’t get the nomination is if all but one of the extraneous candidates drops out immediately after South Carolina, and the vote becomes Romney vs. Not-Romney.

It’s always been that way, but there are several candidates that are splitting the Not-Romney vote, so he’s winning with 25% support from his party… As soon as everyone else drops out, 25% won’t be enough to defeat 75%. Gingrich knows this, and intends to remain in the pocket until Santorum and Perry get shaken out.

So, I don’t think New Hampshire is going to weed anyone out, but I think it’ll give a more realistic view of where the candidates stand, nationwide. Romney and Perry have a lot of money left. Santorum and Paul don’t. Gingrich and Huntsman are in the middle.

It would be interesting to see Huntsman/Romney and then Huntsman/Obama for the Presidency, but I think it’s actually going to be Gingrich/Romney and then Romney/Obama.

EDIT: I left out Buddy Roemer (www.buddyroemer.com). Good Luck to him today! :D
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Related Posts

• 2012 Iowa Caucus Results
• Done With Politics
• Obama vs. Romney 2012
• Florida Republican Primary… Predictions?
• South Carolina 2012 Republican Primary Predictions

Here are the reported Iowa Caucus results:

Romney: 30,015 votes (25%)
Santorum: 30,007 votes (25%)
Paul: 26,219 votes (21%)
Gingrich: 16,251 votes (13%)
Perry: 12,604 votes (10%)
Bachmann: 6,073 votes (05%)
Huntsman: 745 votes (01%)
Cain: 58 votes (I heard a Fox News broadcaster mention this, but haven’t seen it in a chart)

What Had Happened Was…

I had predicted Paul, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman, Cain, so the top 4 got jumbled and the bottom four were correct.

Cain was going to be last, because he’s out of the race now, but he had qualified for Iowa before he dropped out.

Huntsman was going to be next to last, because he wasn’t campaigning in Iowa at all.

Bachmann was going to be next, because as soon as Perry entered the race, he became Bachmann+Male and soaked up all her votes.

On top of that, the difference between them is that Perry tries to freestyle and fails miserably. Bachmann doesn’t try to freestyle. She just memorizes and regurgitates, which is why she always says the exact same things in the exact same order every time you ask her, like Rosie The Robot.

Perry was going to be next, because he just doesn’t “have it” to be The President.

That was obvious as soon as he started speaking, and became more and more evident in each debate.

Gingrich landed where he did because of elements I hadn’t been aware of.

First of all, the Republican Establishment doesn’t want him to represent them, fearing that he’ll set such a bad example that they’ll lose seats in Congress, not to mention lose the general election to President Obama.

Second, Gingrich had received a religious endorsement, but Romney’s “Super PAC” flooded Iowa Television with scathing advertisements about Gingrich (and Ron Paul added to it, and Perry a little bit, too) that caused his standings in the polls to plummet.

Gingrich didn’t have any money to create and air his own ads to either defend against Romney’s attacks or to attack Romney, so he took a short and lost a lot of potential votes.

Also, I heard there was an incessant Robo-Calling campaign, where people’s phones kept ringing off the hook with messages suggesting whom they should vote for.

The residual effect is that Gingrich is mad now, and should start retaliating against Romney, ASAP. >:D

I think my Ron Paul prediction was off because 41% of the people being polled said they hadn’t made up their minds, the day before the caucus.

That’s something the pundits don’t like to talk about. When you have 22% of the people in your poll saying they’d vote for Romney, that’s only 22% out of 60% of your sample pool.

“UNDECIDED” has been the front-runner in the Republican race for a very long time, which makes them look dumb, so nobody wants to talk about it.

Anyway, I think the undecided people decided to vote for a candidate that can probably actually win the nomination, which Ron Paul can’t, because his views, though heartfelt, are too radical to win an American general election, and everybody knows this.

Santorum basically tied Romney for the win, having lost to him by only 8 votes (30,015 to 30,007). This is because he scored an important endorsement:

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.”

Vander Plaats heads up the Family Leader, which has not endorsed a candidate before this campaign but said they would this time. But the board deliberated up until last night and “reached unanimity,” according to Vander Plaats, that the organization would not make an endorsement. Chuck Hurley, who heads the Iowa Family Policy Center, part of the Family Leader, also chose to endorse Santorum outside the organization.

Before this happened, Santorum was nowhere. Congrats to him on what I consider a WIN that was stolen from him, but he’s going to have major problems going forward, unless he scores religious endorsements in every single contest from now on.

He also doesn’t have any money, so when Romney decides to have his Super PAC step on Santorum’s neck, it’s all over.

BTW.. “PAC” stands for Political Action Committee => en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

What Difference Does It Make?

The so-called winner in Iowa was/is Mitt Romney.

He won with 25% of the vote. Interestingly, this parallels his polling numbers this entire time. He hasn’t been able to get higher than 25% this entire time.. Nowhere.

In fact, according to Boston.com: “Last night, he didn’t expand his base of support beyond what he brought in four years ago. In 2008, when nearly 120,000 votes were cast, Romney got 29,949 votes, or 25.2 percent. Last night, he reached almost exactly the same overall total and percentage. An Iowa GOP official said there would be no recount.”

Of course, this means that 75% of the Republicans that participated tonight voted for Not-Romney.

As far as delegates, this basically means that Romney will get 13 and Santorum will get 12. If they had given the win to Santorum, he would have had one more delegate. So what? The first contests hand out delegates proportionally, as opposed to winner-take-all. According to the Las Vegas Sun:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won most of the delegates in the Iowa Republican caucuses Tuesday, edging former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Iowa’s delegates to the national convention are not bound by the results of the caucuses. But an Associated Press analysis showed Romney would win 13 and Santorum would win 12, if there were no changes in their support as the campaign wears on.

Twenty-five delegates were at stake in the caucuses. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas came in third in the voting but was shut out of delegates because he didn’t win any of Iowa’s four congressional districts.

Romney and Santorum each won two congressional districts, and Romney was the statewide winner by a mere eight votes, according to final results announced early Wednesday by the Iowa GOP.

A total of 2,286 delegates are slated to go to the party’s national convention. Support from a majority _ 1,144 _ is needed to claim the Republican nomination to take on incumbent President Barack Obama.

So, Romney received 13 delegates out of the 2,286 that he needs = nothing.

The most important thing that happened tonight is that these people who keep talking all this yang, who are clearly not viable candidates and never were, are going to have to step aside after their poor showings in Iowa.

I predicted incorrectly that Santorum would be gone after this, but that was before he scored the Christian endorsement and surged forward to what I consider a win tonight.

Bachmann, however, got as many votes as she should have gotten. The only two candidates that received fewer than her 6,073 votes are Jon Huntsman, who wasn’t even campaigning in Iowa, with 745 votes, and Herman Cain, who dropped out of the race ENTIRELY three weeks ago, and *still* received 58 votes.

58 people voted for Cain instead of Bachmann, and he’s not even involved anymore. :D .. Get a clue. Exit the race gracefully.

Rick Perry made his exit speech:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/D2UFr-fNMa4

Perry received twice as many votes as Bachmann (12,604 to 6,073). He said: “With the voters’ decision tonight, in Iowa, I’ve decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight’s caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race.”

As people, I think the Republican candidates are ok. Like, they’re real people, if you remove them from the process of attempting to be the elected leader of the United States of America. They’re actually personable when you see them talking to people in a regular fashion, instead of regurgitating slogans about Obama and reciting stock party lines.

Good Luck to Rick Perry, and to Herman Cain also, and to Michele Bachmann when she finally makes her speech. :D

Welcome To New Hampshire

Moving forward, we have Ron Paul, who’s in a class all by himself.. We have Mitt Romney, who has always been the only viable candidate that the Republicans fielded this cycle.. And we have Gingrich and Santorum, who are going to battle it out for the religious vote, now that Perry’s not going to be involved.

I still say that Santorum will be the next one out of the race. He doesn’t have any money to defend against Romney’s negative ad campaigns. He doesn’t have time to visit every district in every state in the country, like he did in Iowa. This situation was a fluke. If Gingrich would have received the religious endorsement instead of Santorum, Gingrich would have won and Santorum would have been wallowing down in Bachmannville with almost no votes.

Ron Paul will stay in as long as his money lasts. He’s not a real candidate, but he’s bringing important topics to the table, so his supporters will continue to support him. He may end up running as a 3rd-party candidate when he finally gets bumped from the Republican roster.

Gingrich will hang in there long enough to exact some good revenge against Romney for trashing his reputation in Iowa merely to receive 13 delegates. >:D haha This is gonna be good! :D

Huntsman comes online in New Hampshire. I’m hoping he’ll make a good showing there! :D

Huntsman: No One Cares About Iowa

PETERBOROUGH, N.H – Even before the results were in, Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman had a message for whoever won the Iowa caucus: “Welcome to New Hampshire. Nobody cares.”

Huntsman skipped Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses and was counting on a strong showing in the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary to keep his campaign afloat.

Huntsman finished up his final day of having New Hampshire to himself with a crowded town hall meeting in Peterborough, where a voter asked him what he’d say to the Iowa winner. His short answer — “Welcome to New Hampshire. Nobody cares” — was a bit more direct than he had been in recent days. He has said the rest of the country will forget the Iowa results within days if not hours.

Showing off a more aggressive speaking style, Huntsman won sustained applause from the crowd of about 350 when he repeated his stump speech promise not to pander to voters by “signing all those silly pledges like all the other candidates.” And he answered “Hell, no!” when asked if he’d bail out banks if they sought help to deal with foreign debt.

“I can’t even believe I’m standing here!” he exclaimed at one point, reveling in what likely was the largest crowd he has attracted so far.

The former Utah governor insists that New Hampshire, not Iowa, will send a strong message about electability, but he continues to lag far behind the New Hampshire front-runner, Mitt Romney.

In a perfect world, Huntsman would defeat Romney, and we’d have an interesting contest between Jon Huntsman and Barack Obama for the Presidency. :)

In reality, I doubt that’s what’s going to happen. Gingrich is the most serious politician out of the group, and he got completely demolished by Romney’s Super PAC’s commercials. I can’t see any of the other Republican candidates being able to stand up to them either.

Money Talks.

The only question that remains is how long before the rest of the candidates quit and it becomes Romney vs. Obama.

Last cycle, Romney quit on February 07, 2008. That leaves a full month for Huntsman, Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum to bounce before we have a repeat performance of the trouncing that McCain and Palin received from Obama.

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Related Posts

• Done With Politics
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