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What the Sunshine State Foreshadows

Posted by ROBERT STEIN in Politics.
Jan 30th, 2008 | Comments

Mitt Romney loses a primary to John McCain that would have knocked a less loaded man out of contention for the Republican nomination, but Romney will buy his way on to Super Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton arrives for a made-for-TV celebration, complete with walls of printed placards, of “winning” a phantom contest for no delegates that she and other Democrats had promised to bypass.

Electoral weirdness goes on unabated in Florida, which gave us our unelected president in 2000, but yesterday’s results shed some light on where the 2008 nominations are heading.

Unless Romney’s money and vacuity win many hearts and minds on February 5th, the arch-conservatives will have to take a deep breath and embrace McCain as the Republican candidate. Wheel out the respirators for Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan.

Even the meaningless Democratic results hold clues to the future. Clinton won among those who cast absentee ballots weeks ago but apparently not among voters who made a choice yesterday. Obama has a long way to go but, with the Kennedy endorsements and more to come, his campaign is moving in the right direction.

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy month.

Cross-posted from my blog.

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superdestroyer

Once again, the media insist upon a winner to be named quickly. At least the Democrats have a chance to have meaningful votes on Super Tuesday. As the U.S. becomes a one party state, the Iowa Democratic caucuses and the New Hampshire Democratic Primary will be the defacto presidential election where the rest of us have to live with their decisions. Any candidate that cannot come in the top three in Iowa or win New Hampshire is basically unelectable. The Giuliani campaign demonstrates that.

DLS

Actually, the race between McCain and Romney isn't over yet, SD. Neither of them appeal to me or to many others (who obviously aren't "arch-conservatives," but merely not lock-step liberals) but there remains a contest. (OK, you may have a point insofar as whoever wins can likely choose the other guy as his VP. Will it be McCain-Romney or Romney-McCain? The suspense is overwhelming!) The Dem race is simply more interesting this year. Will Clinton repeat the attempted theft of the lost White House in 2000 by trying to force inclusion of Florida and Michigan delegates to forestall a possible lost nomination and White House? (If so, perhaps those states should be required to do something that would be legitimate this time, unlike in 2000: Have new, official elections!)

The central issue here with Florida and timing is that the states will continue to leapfrog each other's primaries (I heard some lib whining on NPR last night that California should be the first state to hold a primary, something worse than having any tiny, "unrepresentative" state go first) unless some kind of reform is imposed.

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