Nothing much has changed, but...

More and more, it looks as though the Republican nominee will be Marco Rubio. That at least two former candidates who have dropped out, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, have specifically endorsed Rubio (though, from my point of view, Santorum's support is a negative!) shows that Rubio is collecting support in the way he needs to be nominated.

But this is really what I've been thinking for some time, and most recently stated in a post a few days ago. While I would prefer to see Chris Christie or John Kasich, I can certainly back Rubio if he is the nominee. And so nothing is really any different. There isn't much more to post about this election.

Mike Bloomberg

The Wall Street Journal has an article dated February 3 entitled “Why Mike Bloomberg Can Win,” by Douglas E. Schoen. It makes the case that the Republican Party has moved so far to the right, and the Democratic Party so far to the left, that Bloomberg, running as an independent, could win. I admit that if the Republicans nominate Ted Cruz they would lose my vote, and Bloomberg would get it if he ran. However, against any other Republican now running (since both Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum have withdrawn) I could not support Bloomberg, in part because our electoral system is so biased against third parties and independents that I do not give him a chance, unlike Schoen.

But Bloomberg is an attractive candidate. He certainly did a good job as Mayor of New York, extending the accomplishments of Rudy Giuliani, who in fact recruited him. I'd rather see Bloomberg as president than anyone the Democrats could come up with. And although I would probably still vote for Trump or Rubio against Clinton or Sanders even if Bloomberg were in the race, I think in some ways I'd actually prefer Bloomberg. But unless Cruz is the nominee and I vote third party/independent in protest, I can't see leaving the Republican fold this year — the real task is to defeat the Democrats, and unlike Schoen, I hardly believe Bloomberg can win.

Sorry for my absence

I haven't been posting here for a few months, in part because of my own life's being complicated (including a surgery and more than a month in a rehabilitation facility), and in part because I do not know what to make of the large support being gathered, according to the polls, by Donald J. Trump in his candidacy for the Presidency. I see him as a very poor choice, though if he is nominated against Hillary Clinton he will get my vote in November, mostly because his direction for the country is closer than hers to what I would like to see. He has no political experience (which his supporters see as a positive! and seems not to understand the Constitution (based on some of his proposals), and thus I see him as really poorly qualified for the office of the Presidency. I certainly would prefer Chris Christie or John Kasich.

However, the Iowa caucus just completed inspired me to resume posting. I was, on the one hand, glad to see Trump receive a lot less support than the polls indicated, though, on the other hand, not very happy that the man who beat him was Ted Cruz, who I like even less than Trump. Yet Cruz' victory is not a big surprise. Iowa seems to be very hospitable to the religious Right; in the two most recent previous elections it gave its support to Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

I do not, however, expect Cruz to be the nominee, any more than were Huckabee and Santorum. For some time, I have been predicting that the eventual nominee would be Marco Rubio. And Rubio's near-tie with Trump for second place makes me even more convinced that this will be the outcome in the end. And while Rubio is not my first or second choice (or even my third or fourth!) I see him as certainly a nominee I can live with.

But New Hampshire may tell a different story next week. We will have to see.

Returning to the blogging scene: The 2016 candidates

Recently I got a question as to whether I was sill blogging. And that reminded me that it has been a long time since my last post, and that I ought to get back. A lot has happened since my last post, and it will take a bit to get current.

One development that I do not like is that Chris Christie, my preferred candidate for the nomination, seems to have lost a lot of his support, and instead of being at the top (or near the top) in the polls, is somewhere in the middle of the pack. While I still consider him the best candidate, unless he recovers that top position, I suppose I will have to consider other options. There are other candidates, such as Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker, who could be good Presidents, and my only reason for not supporting them for the nomination is that I feel they have less chance of actually being elected, so if they begin to look electable to me, I could certainly support them.

A couple of candidates have been discussed recently who have a number of attractive attributes, but who lack, to my mind, some important qualifications for the Presidency. If Carly Fiorina had won the election for Senator from California when she ran, I would consider her a high-quality candidate for the Presidency. However, as it is, she is totally inexperienced in the ins and outs of partisan politics, and I can't consider her ready for the Presidency. Her executive experience, to be sure, is excellent, and this is an area where the current incumbent's total lack has shown. So perhaps she would not be a terrible choice, and if she should secure the nomination, I would certainly vote for her against Hillary Clinton in November of next year.

The other person I consider attractive in some ways but insufficiently experienced in some areas for the Presidency is Ben Carson. He is certainly an intelligent and thoughtful man, who could be very useful in a Republican administration as Surgeon General, or at the head of a task force on finding a replacement for Obamacare, or as HHS Secretary, but he has none of the political experience I think necessary.

There are also a number of people who are more experienced in politics and who have, specifically, the executive experience needed for the Presidency: such Governors and former Governors as John Kasich and Mitch Daniels. I could easily support either of these two or others like them, but I fear they need to become better known to the public. They suffer the same flaws that Jon Huntsman did in 2012.

There are a couple of people that I could never support, however. If a religious-right extremist like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum (Is Rick Perry going to run? If so, he falls into this class.) should get the GOP nomination, the GOP loses my vote. I still would never vote for Hillary Clinton, but my vote would go to any obscure third-party candidate I could find rather than one of these men.

The biggest threat to sanity in the GOP

The poll that I cited yesterday certainly had some good news. But one thing is troubling. And I do not mean the fact that Rand Paul was first; he has some hard-core supporters, mostly former supporters of his father, but they will never number enough to take the nomination. (I like some of the ideas that are subsumed by the term “libertarianism,” but the Pauls' isolationism and anti-Israel sentiments turn me off; the elder Paul also brought his libertarianism to the point of near-anarchy, though the younger seems to be rather more reasonable.)

No, I have no fear that Rand Paul will be the nominee. He will do as well as Ron Paul did in 2012, at best. What I consider the biggest threat to sanity is that apparently the Santorum/Perry/Huckabee Religious Right has settled on its candidate: Mike Huckabee, who finished in a tie for second, equal to Chris Christie's position. If there is anything that could get me to vote for a non-Republican in 2016, it would be the nomination of Huckabee (or another one of the Religious Right, but he is the leader among those). I don't mean I would vote for a Democrat such as Hillary Clinton — my vote would go to some third-party candidate. But unless the people favoring Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, etc. (who are all meritorious candidates, to be sure) coalesce behind Chris Christie, Huckabee could be nominated. And that would be a disaster.

A British view of the recent happenings

An interesting blog post on the site of the British newspaper, The Telegraph, recently appeared. It was written by Tim Stanley and dated October 16^th, 2013, and entitled: “US debt ceiling crisis — Barack Obama has won the shutdown. His prize is a lame duck presidency.” It is quite interesting to see how the events of the last week or so are viewed by others; of course, The Telegraph is a conservative paper, so this needs to be taken into account. But the title alone makes it clear that, to Mr. Stanley (who is a historian whose area of specialty is the United States) at least, President Obama has won a battle, but at a serious cost to his own ability to govern:

The shutdown is basically over and the President has won. Or, at least, he's won because the Republicans have definitely lost. Not only did they not get what they wanted — that “life or death” delay on Obamacare implementation — but they've given the impression of dragging partisanship to new lows. Obamacare had been passed already, the Supreme Court had okayed it and Obama had won an election on it, yet the GOP was still prepared to bring the country to the brink of ruin to cripple it. When Grover Norquist is saying that the Right went too far (he of the “drown government in the bath tub” fame) then the Right probably went a bit too far.

So much for the “won a battle” part. Then, however, he continues:

But there are caveats to that narrative. First, the Republicans aren't the only ones who ought to hang their heads in shame. It was the Democrat-controlled Senate that first rejected the House's bill and so sparked the crisis. It was the President who refused to talk to anyone about it (and went campaigning instead). It was the federal government — even when in shutdown — that behaved like a spoiled child, covering war memorials in fences and trying to stop military priests from saying Mass. And it was the mainstream media that took the side of the President and helped foster the impression that the GOP is run by a bunch of blowhard crazy people. For example, Dave Weigel points out that, contrary to reports, wild child Ted Cruz actually had “no intention” of delaying the critical final vote in the Senate. His image of being Sarah Palin 2.0 is entirely a media myth.

Many of these things, particularly regarding the Senate, the President, and the media, coincide with my own recent posts, so naturally I was happy to see someone else in agreement.

Continuing, Mr. Stanley writes:

Second, what has Obama really won? He keeps his precious healthcare reform and he gets government open again — but tomorrow morning he'll still have the same gridlocked political system that he had the night before. The shutdown is a rare example of him winning, but remember that this lame duck president has not only had a very simple (and, frankly, inoffensive) gun control bill killed in the Senate but was so spooked by bad poll numbers that he tried to dump responsibility for military action in Syria onto the Congress — before quietly dropping the idea altogether. Any thought that the shutdown payoff will be that he can sail an immigration reform package comfortably through Congress is pure fantasy. This is a broken presidency living out its last few years either holding off Republican attacks or lazily cruising the country on some pointless, endless, fatuous campaign trail. Obama's administration is politically bankrupt.

Very interesting. The media in general are unwilling to concede this, but I believe Mr. Stanley is right. The House of Representatives must approve any new legislation, and after this débacle, the House will be less inclined than before to pass anything with Obama's stamp of approval on it.

And finally, Mr. Stanley writes:

The talk for the next week will be about how the Tea Party is dead and Republicans must elect a politically correct, middle-of-the-road, unimaginative, establishment, compromising candidate in 2016 (preferably a singing sloth, cos the polls show that Americans just love those). But the reality is that US politics right now is a mess for both Left and Right, and the country is stuck in partisan limbo until the 2014 midterms or even the 2016 presidential election. This is not a Republican problem, it is an American problem.

Here, I part company to some extent with Mr. Stanley. A “middle-of-the-road, … compromising candidate” is necessary. There is no way a Rick Perry or Rick Santorum could get elected in this country in 2016. This, of course, is why I have been pushing Chris Christie. He will show, in three weeks, how he can get votes even in a deep blue state like New Jersey. This is clear. And no Republican can win unless he can get at least some people who are not convinced Republican voters to pick him. This is an important factor, which Mr. Stanley does not point out, and perhaps which he does not realize to be the case.

The perils of purism

Yeaterday I ran a post about a column by Cal Thomas in that day's Washington Examiner which surprised me in that I often disagree with Thomas' columns, but found that particular column to be totally in accordance with my thinking. Today I'm also posting about a column in the Examiner, but while I am just as much in agreement with today's column as I was with yesterday's, this time it causes no great surprise, because the column is by Noemie Emery, whose posts I usually find make a lot of sense to me. As it happens, it says much the same thing as a remark in Thomas' column in yesterday's paper:

If the Republican “tent” isn't large enough for Chris Christie, then it will resemble a pup tent for some time to come.

Emery's column is entitled, “Conservative crisis management.” At the beginning of the column, she says:

When in a hole, keep right on digging. That's the attitude of a number of movement conservatives, who, in reaction to last year's shellacking, seem to want to make certain they never climb out.

And, addressing those conservatives, she makes the point (emphasis mine):

…don't complain about Republicans running the Bushes, John McCain, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, when you run Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan and Rick Santorum against them. If you want to win nominations, you might try running candidates. (And a better message might help matters, too.)

That's a powerful dig, but they deserve it. The fact is that most Americans are not far-right conservatives. If a conservative is to win their votes, he needs to be moderate enough to get the votes of people closer to the middle of the political spectrum, who would never support a Santorum. Which leads ino her next point:

check the urge to purge heretics, which died out long ago in most of the world. Movement conservatives now scourge their party's most popular governors. Yes, blue- and swing-state Republicans always enrage some conservatives; the problem is that conservatives need them if they want to become a national party. If they like to throw tantrums, they should keep on what they're doing. If not, they should throw them some slack.

Why? Andrew Cline explained this two years ago, just after Scott Brown, having thrilled conservatives by winning the seat of Ted Kennedy, enraged them with one of his first Senate votes. “Scott Brown does not represent the Republican National Committee in the United States Senate. He represents Massachusetts,” Cline said then, correctly. “If Scott Brown voted as though he were from Alabama, the voters of Massachusetts would send him there.”

The really important thing to note is what Emery says a little bit further along:

…Chris Christie, with his Ralph Kramden vibe, is the closest thing they are likely to get in New Jersey — and, though conservatives would prefer a Reagan conservative, in those states this is not in the cards. Christie and Bob McDonnell represent their blue and swing states, not Utah or Texas, and the alternatives to them are not stronger conservatives.

The alternative to Olympia Snowe isn't Ted Cruz, it's Angus King, who votes with the Democrats. The alternative to Scott Brown isn't Rand Paul, it's Elizabeth Warren. We have Obamacare now because of the Club for Growth and Pat Toomey, whose primary threat scared Arlen Specter back to the Democrats, where he became the 60th vote for Obamacare's passage.

In other words, the far right's insistence on purity has driven the center of American politics leftward, hardly a desirable goal from their point of view.

I wish Noemie Emery's words could be read by the people who keep insisting on ideological purity.

Charlie Crist, Democrat?

It seems that former Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida has now become a Democrat. Given that he supported President Obama's re-election this year, I suppose this is not a big surprise. And I don't really know Crist well enough to say that he's made a mistake; perhaps he is actually closer to the Democrats on important issues than he is to the Republicans.

But it is troubling to see moderates leaving the Republicans and joining the Democrats. Perhaps it is a reaction to the fact that a right-wing extremism is becoming more dominant in the GOP. But it does not recognize the left-wing extremism that has come to dominate the Democratic Party.

I actually see people claiming that President Obama is a “moderate.” It is actually clear that he is no more a moderate than his opposite numbers in the GOP, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. His gyrations to put pro-union members on the National Labor Relations Board when he saw the Senate would not confirm them, his positions on such issues as the current “fiscal cliff” and the “Obamacare” disaster — all these make this clear. And it is not just President Obama. Both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders in the two houses of Congress, have staked out far-left positions. When Arlen Specter, who had almost lost a primary to a right-wing opponent in 2004, decided that he could not stay in the GOP because it was likely to defeat him in 2010 and nominate the same right-wing candidate that he had barely defeated six years earlier, he found out that the Democratic primary voters were no more inclined to support a moderate. He lost the Democratic primary, by a much larger margin than he had won the GOP primary in 2004.

Moderates who leave the GOP for the Democrats will, I'm afraid, find that their new party is no more congenial to them, or to the idea of moderation, than the GOP. They are more likely to pull the GOP toward moderation if they stay than to pull the Democrats toward moderation, since they will not have the status of anything but “newcomer” in the Domocratic Party.

I hate to see you go, Gov. Crist, but it was your decision to make, and I am not so sure ypu won't regret in in the long run.

Yes, it DOES depend on who he's running against!

Newt Gingrich has been criticized for the tepidness of his endorsement of Mitt Romney:

I’m asked sometimes, ‘Is Mitt Romney conservative enough?’ And my answer’s simple: Compared to Barack Obama? You know this is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical, leftist president in American history.

But Gingrich is justified. Certainly he has every right to believe that Mitt Romney is not his ideal candidate, but the choice is Romney or Obama, and he's making the choice between those two. I have my own misgivings about Mitt Romney — as you can tell if you read the things I posted about him back in 2007 and 2008. (Just one example) They happen to be the opposite of Gingrich's — I'm afraid he may be too conservative. So four years ago, with first Rudy Giuliani and later John McCain in the running, I had a relatively low opinion of Mitt Romney. This year, when his only rivals for the nomination were right-wing extremists like Rick Santorum (and Ron Paul, who isn't exactly a “right-wing extremist,” but rather such a caricature of a libertarian that even a relatively libertarian Republican like me could not support him!), it was much easier to support Romney. And in the general election campaign, where the alternative is Obama, there's no question. Mitt Romney, though as far from being my ideal candidate as he is from being Newt Gingrich's ideal candidate, deserves my 100% support this year.

What is there to write about?

It's hard to write a blog post right now. Mitt Romney seems unchallenged in his quest for the Republican nomination, but it won't actually be given to him till late summer. The Supreme Court has heard all the arguments on “Obamacare,” and probably has even voted on how they will rule on the case, but their practice is to keep everything secret until June, when they adjourn for the summer, so nobody knows what the decision is. I've said about all that comes to mind on Trayvon Martin and on Hilary Rosen — though it seems that Bill Maher has raised the ante on Rosen's comment. So what do I write about?

Well, today I noted a Rassmussen poll that showed: “In a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney earns 48% of the vote, while President Obama attracts support from 44%.” That's close, too close to gloat over, but a sign that the trends are going the right way. Obviously, I want to see a Romney victory over Obama in November — I say “obviously” because anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a strong negative opinion of President Obama, and while I have some negative points to raise against former Gov. Romney, they are overwhelmingly dominated by the positive ones.

But there still seems little to write about. In addition to the poll I just cited, it's a good thing that the North Korean rocket launch failed — and even better that they publicly admitted it. But this and the Rasmussen poll hardly make material for a detailed blog posting.

The primary contest is over. Now for the general-election fight

Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign. It appears that the real cause is his daughter's serious illness; such a reason is not something I'd wish even on someone I dislike as much as Santorum, but regardless of the reason, it appears that this opens the way for Mitt Romney to go into general-election mode, and train all his big guns on the real target — President Barack Obama. It will still be a difficult task, not to make the conservatives feel he's abandoned them as he points to his centrist record. But fortunately, it seems Obama has the same problem — with extreme-left Democrats who feel Obama has sold them out.

But the extreme right will vote for Romney over Obama, and the extreme left will vote for Obama over Romney. So both are going to have to try to capture the political center. And I am wondering how well each will succeed.

1976, 1980, ... or 1964?

Rick Santorum has a pretty weird view of history. He looks back at the 1976 election, in which the GOP nominated Gerald R. Ford over the more extreme conservative Ronald Reagan, and seems to think that the reason the Republicans lost that year was Ford's moderation. He said recently:

“Let’s not make the mistake of 1976 again. Let’s bypass that era, and move straight to 1980, and let’s defeat a Democratic incumbent.”

In fact, after Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign and Ford pardoned him, the public disaffection for Nixon, more than anything else, was responsible for Ford's loss. And in any case, this is not 1976, and Santorum, in any case, is certainly no Ronald Reagan. Reagan was certainly a far more open man to the moderate wing of his party than Santorum has demonstrated himself to be. In 1976, Reagan had indicated that, if nominated, his vice-presidential candidate would be Richard Schweiker, about whom Santorum must have heard — he was a Senator from Pennsylvania, a post that Santorum himself has held. But Schweiker, unlike Santorum, was a moderate — and one well known as such. Reagan, in putting forth Schweiker's name, signaled that he wanted to include the moderate wing of the party in his vision of a Republican government. And in 1980, he did the same. Moderates in the party had favored George H. W. Bush, and Reagan named him as the vice-presidential candidate.

For that matter, Barack Obama is hardly a Jimmy Carter. Carter was, in 1976, a fairly obscure Governor of Georgia, whose record if anything was relatively conservative as Democrats go. Obama, by contrast, has pushed a hard left agenda for four years in the White House, with a clear record.

Ronald Reagan also embraced the ideas of libertarianism, which Santorum disdains. (Santorum was quoted as saying “I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.” You can't get more hostile to libertarianism than that! Reagan, on the other hand, said “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism” in 1975.)

The biggest analogy to a 2012 in which the GOP might nominate Santorum is 1964, in which Barry Goldwater read the moderates out of the party in his acceptance speech: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” (Though, in fact, unlike Santorum, Goldwater's conservatism was very close to libertarianism.)

And we know what happened in 1964.

And now, some more waiting

This morning I went to the polls, as today was Maryland's primary day. Mitt Romney is expected to win big here today, and of course, he'll win even bigger in the District of Columbia, where Rick Santorum is not even on the ballot. So the real wait will be till late tonight when the results come in from Wisconsin, which is supposed to be closer.

Voting for Romney required me to make seven X's on the screen (we have touch-screen voting machines here); one vote for Romney himself, three for the three Romney delegates in my district, and three more for the three alternates pledged to Romney. It's not like the electoral college, where you vote the name of your preferred candidate, and it's automatically counted for all the electors pledged to that candidate. I did also vote for a candidate for Senate and one for the House of Representatives — I ignored the judgeship elections, which were uncontested, and the contests for the Board of Education, for reasons I've given before. So I voted nine times — seven of which votes were for Romney!

Romney already has more than half the delegates he needs for the nomination — more than twice as many as Santorum — but Santorum is still not convinced. Will he really have to get all the necessary delegates before Santorum concedes? That will be an even more frustratingly long wait.

A good sign

The Republican Party supports a lot of things that I do as well, and that is one reason I remain a Republican, even though there are some things that Republicans tend to favor that appall me. For example, the fact that Michele Bachmann was, and Rick Santorum still is, considered a serious candidate for the Republican nomination, testifies that enough bigoted homophobes inhabit the Republican Party that the kind of appeal to that kind of hostility can work in the party. Closer to home, gay District of Columbia Councilman David Catania, originally elected as a Republican, found the party so uncomfortable a political home that he became an independent a few years ago. That this sort of thing exists in the Republican Party saddens me, as I feel some grief that the party I consider my political home can be charged with such an intolerant stance. And therefore, I was happy to read a posting in The Daily Beast (under David Frum's name, but by Ryan Prior) entitled “A Strong Republican for Congress… Who Just Happens to be Gay.” (The posting was made 3 days ago, but I just saw it today.)

It seems that Richard Tisei, an openly gay Massachusetts state senator, is running for the GOP nomination for Congress in a district where the incumbent Democrat, Rep. John Tierney, just might lose because of his wife's possible involvement in a gambling scandal. And though Tisei has a primary to get through in September, he has the support of the most important Republicans in Massachusetts, especially popular Senator Scott Brown. While there have been two openly gay Republicans that have served in the House of Representatives, Steve Gunderson and Jim Kolbe, they were originally closeted and were involuntarily outed. If Tisei wins the nomination in the September primary and goes on to win the election in November, both of which seem likely, he becomes the first openly gay Republican elected to Congress. And that may send a message to gay Americans that they don't have to choose between being gay and being Republicans. Which is a very good thing.

There is absolutely no reason why there is any incompatibility between supporting conservative economic ideas and being gay. But gay people have felt that the GOP is hostile to them, and have flocked to the Democratic Party for that reason. I think that the election of Richard Tisei would be a great thing, not just because it may be a Republican takeover of a Democratic seat, but because it would place in the Congress the kind of Republican that is sorely needed: someone who does not share the “social” agenda of the Bachmanns and Santorums, but still hews to Republican ideas on the things that matter. Let's hope he wins.

Of course, I wonder how Michele Bachmann will take it, sitting in the same caucus with him!

Rick Santorum - closet Democrat?

Today I read this post in Tom Bowler's blog, Libertarian Leanings:

Rick Santorum now says he would just as soon have Barack Obama win a second term if Mitt Romney beats him out for the Republican nomination, which at this point seems assured.


“You win by giving people a choice,” Santorum said during a campaign stop in Texas. “You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there.”

Santorum added: “If they're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.”

Santorum was referring to an unfortunate statement by Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom who said that the fall campaign would be a new start, “almost like an Etch A Sketch.” Santorum jumped all over it, promoting it as evidence that Romney will say anything to win the presidency.

Hmmm. Pot, meet kettle. It's a stunning statement by Santorum which he made while campaigning in front of conservatve crowds in Texas. If it has any effect at all, though, it may just hasten his departure from the race. Quite frankly, I'm in favor of that. With his strongest support coming from the most conservative of us, Santorum strikes me as a candidate most unlikely to win in the general election.

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, it seems, doesn't disagree. While Rick Santorum was turning the Romney campaign gaffe into a major gaffe of his own, DeMint stepped up to say, it's time for the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns to reassess.

“They can drag it out to the convention if they want, but I think if some of them look at where they are, the best thing they can do is maybe look at throwing their support behind the one who might be our nominee — and that’s beginning to look like Romney,” he said.

Even though he has so far steered clear of making any 2012 endorsements, Senator DeMint is not at all uncomfortable with the Romney as the Republican candidate. He was, after all, national co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid. Now, his focus is on defeating President Barack Obama.

“What I can tell conservatives from my perspective is that I’m not only comfortable with Romney, I’m excited about the possibility of him possibly becoming our nominee,” DeMint told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Santorum as the conservative savior is an image that looks less and less realistic the further along we go. He's now gone so far overboard campaigning to save us from Mitt Romney, that he offers an Obama second term as a viable alternative to himself. Could he have come up with something dumber to say? Senator Santorum, please go away.

It is clear that Rick Santorum has no business putting himself forward as a Republican. His campaign is clearly designed to do one of two things: either win the nomination and lose to Obama because 75% of the American public hates everything Santorum stands for, or lose the nomination and make sure Mitt Romney loses to Obama. Either way, Rick Santorum is clearly simply a closet Democrat, running so that Obama's winning is assured. I concur with Tom Bowler's “Senator Santorum, please go away” comment.

The Illinois result

At first last night, it looked as if Mitt Romney would actually get twice as much of the Illinois vote as Rick Santorum. I suppose that was because the Chicago area vote came in faster than the downstate vote. But the final result was a bit closer. As I read the results, with 99% counted, it was 46.7 percent to 35 percent, and that is still a landslide.

Santorum wins the rural vote; Romney the urban and suburban. And this is just like Ohio and Michigan — except, because Chicago is such a big part of the Illinois electorate, Romney's win was bigger in Illinois than in those other two Midwestern states. Everything falls into pattern. This is the way it is in the Midwest. (In the Northeast, Romney wins everyone's vote. And in the South, Santorum wins — except in Gingrich's home state of Georgia and next-door South Carolina.)

Mitt Romney now has a big lead in the delegates — more than double Santorum's total mdash; and it is going to be just impossible for Santorum to make up this deficit. And this is the way I like it.

A pattern is appearing

It happened in Michigan. And in Ohio. And it appears to be happening in Illinois, where tomorrow is Primary Day as well. In the large states, as the actual primary approaches, people begin to realize that it's important to have an electable Republican candidate, and swing toward Mitt Romney.

According to Real Clear Politics, the Chicago Tribune poll taken March 7-9, showed Romney leading Rick Santorum by only 35% to 31% -- almost a tie. The Fox poll, on the 14th, showed Romney's lead growing to 37-31. The Rasmussen poll on the 15th had it 41-32, and the most recent poll, by Public Policy Polling, shows Romney beating Santorum in a rout, 45 to 30! Romney's lead is biggest in urban and suburban areas, and this is typical as well — it was those areas that he won in Ohio.

But these, of course, are not the final poll — that will come, at least in Illinois, tomorrow. As they used to say in old-time radio, stay tuned for the result!

Since Gingrich stays in, what does this mean?

Well, Newt Gingrich remains in the race, as mentioned in the previous post. So what does this mean? Probably, it hurts Rick Santorum, since some of the people who really dislike Mitt Romney and would be voting for Santorum will instead vote for Gingrich in the later primaries. Gingrich isn't going to take away many votes from Romney — most people whose first choice is Gingrich and second is Romney (are there any?) will vote for Romney since it's obvious Gingrich is out of the race. So Romney, if anything, has an easier path to the nomination. His opposition remains fragmented. Any attacks by Gingrich on Romney, obviously, don't help, but he's got to be concentrating his fire on Santorum, not Romney, since it is prospective Santorum voters he's looking to get. And any effort by either Santorum or Gingrich to hurt the other means that much less effort can be devoted by Santorum to attacking Romney — and that much less effort is needed by Romney to defend himself from the Right instead of attacking President Obama's record.

Thus, as one who favors Romney's nomination, I think that Gingrich's staying in is actually a plus.

Gingrich won't give up

Apparently, even though Rick Santorum beat him in both Alabama and Mississippi yesterday, Newt Gingrich remains in the race. He's really an irrelevancy, of course, but he takes votes from Santorum, helping Mitt Romney. And I can't be unhappy about that. The real story is that even Santorum is far behind Romney in the thing that counts: delegates. The estimate is that Romney has nearly twice Santorum's delegate count — 494 to 251. And big states that Santorum has no chance in have yet to vote. Things don't look all that bad for Mitt Romney.

"Super Tuesday" results

The results are in, and the big one, Ohio, was slow in coming because it was close. The first returns showed Mitt Romney ahead, then Rick Santorum led for most of the night; when I went to bed, Romney was leading, but it was too close to be certain whether that lead would hold. The final difference is still so close that Santorum can claim a tie. And so there will not yet be pressure for him to withdraw, and the contest will go on.

And the pattern of the results is interesting. Romney won all the counties that were anywhere near the biggest three cities, Santorum won the rural vote (and smaller cities like Toledo). Yet, because the delegates were awarded by a formula that was not strictly proportional, although there was only a 1 point difference in their percentages, Romney gets almost twice as many delegates.

Of course, nine other states voted as well. In some cases, the results were predictable. Neither Santorum nor Newt Gingrich was on the ballot in Virginia, so it was just Romney and Ron Paul. Apparently, Paul got some of the vote from people protesting the ballot restrictions — I can't believe he would really get 40% of the vote in a more open election. But Romney got 60%, and might win just about all the Virginia delegates because of the way they were apportioned.

And two states were “home turf” for candidates — Massachusetts for Romney, where he used to be Governor, and he ended up with almost ¾ of the vote, and Georgia for Gingrich, where he was a Congressman (although representing just one district, of course), and he won nearly half the vote, a big win in a 4-man race. Vermont went to Romney, who seems to be solid all over New England, and Tennessee and Oklahoma to Santorum, who can claim that Romney is not conservative enough to win anywhere in the South (though Romney did win Florida a month or so ago, but that state is geographically in the South but demographically more Northern.)

And that leaves two small, relatively inconsequential states. Idaho was a state some were saying might go to Ron Paul, because it's a caucus and he was working hard there; in fact it was Romney's biggest win, in percentage points, after Massachusetts. And Santorum picked up North Dakota.

In delegate totals, Romney seems to have picked up abouit the same proportion of the delegates at stake yesterday as he had up to then. Santorum will probably say he won enough to keep slogging on. Gingrich got a bunch of delegates, but mainly from one state — Georgia — so his run seems quixotic, as does Paul; yet I can't see any of the three trailing candidates wihdrawing yet. So while yesterday solidified Romney's command, it didn't seem to make much difference in the process.