January 6, 2012: The People will Speak, Wrong-Ward Drift, Santorum on the Outside

In Iowa the party activists spoke, in New Hampshire the people will speak for in the Granite State the nation will observe the first presidential primary election of the season.  

The primary, sampling as it does a much broader cross-section of the electorate, will favor the more moderate Mitt Romney the former governor of Massachusetts who is campaigning here in his ‘back yard’. 

New Hampshire is to Boston what New Jersey is to New York City, that is the media markets of these cities dominate the landscape heavily influencing neighboring states.  Accordingly the Boston media market  is important not only in the Massachusetts primary held later in the year but in the New Hampshire primary as well.  It is significant to note that four years ago the Boston Globe endorsed John McCain over Romney and McCain emerged victorious.  This year the Globe endorsed John Huntsman, former Utah Governor, over Romney citing Mitt’s penchant for changing his stripes in an effort to appeal to the ultra-conservative base of the party.  Romney’s wrong-ward drift has been well documented and need not be repeated here, and Mitt’s efforts ring just as hollow as those of ‘Baby Huey” who is being rejected by the very ideological purists he recruited into the party, because he proved not stalwart enough for their liking. 

Be that as it may, Romney’s efforts have not been hollow enough for the Boston Globe.  The editorial chiding by the Globe may, in the end, prove beneficial to the Romney campaign. The Boston Globe may have unwittingly given Romney the bona fides needed to help convince the unwashed that he is acceptable to them. The wrath of the editorial board of the major organ of the ‘liberal East’, may have been just the tonic needed to immunize Romney from rejection by a sizable portion of ideological conservatives, if not it’s fundamentalist purists.  That remains to be seen, in the meantime Santorum is gaining

January 4, 2012: Romney by a whisker, A Party Divided, On to New Hampshire

After years on the hustings, countless campaign appearances and many millions of dollars later, Willard “Mitt” Romney ended with just a fraction fewer votes than he received 4 years ago.  Last night Mitt Romney was able to eek out an 8 vote victory over the surging Sanitorium primarily because the Rescumlican field proved, on balance, less convincing than the last time around.  With a lower turnout than in 2008, Romney was able to finish just ahead of Rick Santorum for the bragging rights to Iowa.

 The results produced by the ‘retail’ politics of Iowa reflect the huge divisions that lurk just beneath the surface of the Rescumlican Party.  Divided between the so-called “moderates”, that is the marginally sane candidates represented by Romney and Huntsman, and the “ideologues” represented by the likes of Ron Paul and, to some extent Baby Huey, the base of the wrong is further subdivided by the emergence of ultra-conservatives who pander openly to the crypto-fascist brown shirts so evident in the 2009 shenanigans over the Health-Care fiasco.  This base element was represented most markedly by Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry who pandered shamelessly to the likes of Dick Armey and Rush Limbaugh embracing every cracker-headed idea from ‘Birther’ to ‘death panels’ to repeal of the 14^th amendment and the direct election of the Senate.  Not since the days of John C. Calhoun has the politics of ‘nullification’ been so openly advocated.  The idiot wrong has moved to obstruct, delay and otherwise impede the efforts in the waning days of the last Republican administration as well as President Obama to right the ship of state before it flounders on the rocks.

 What we have here, then, is a race between the relative voices of reason with the voices of intolerance and greed.  The results showed that among hard-core activists the latter hold the majority within the Rescumlican party but are divided concerning who should carry their standard.  As long as those divisions hold and the ‘anybody but Romney’ movement cannot come together behind the standard of a single alternative then the voices of ‘reason’ and ‘moderation’--always in short supply within the Rescumlican ranks--will win out.

To date the fundamentalist base of the party has been unable get behind a consensus candidate.  It remains to be seen if the emergence of Santorum as the latest ‘I-am-not-Romney’ candidate will prove to be more than a mere 15 minutes in the spotlight.  It will depend on if he can now turn this performance into a compelling candidacy by raising enough money and building the organization needed for the long haul ahead.  Both time and money are in short-supply. If he doesn’t act or the base of the party does not move to his assistance quickly enough Santorum will go the way of Michelle Bachman who won the straw-poll in Iowa last summer and withdrew from the race today saying that the people had spoken.  And so they have, and now it’s on to New Hampshire.

January 2, 2012: Caucus in Iowa, Field Divided, How Well He Runs

The nation will tomorrow witness the beginning of the all-too-shortened process of selecting the nominees for the major parties’ presidential nominations.  On the Democratic side there will be no contest with the incumbent Barack Obama running unopposed in his bid for re-nomination by the Democratic Party.  On the Rescumlican side of the ledger, however, the past, and momentarily at least, front-runner Mitt Romney is being opposed by at least half a dozen lesser lights in his latest bid to become the presidential nominee of the party of greed. 

Deep in the heart of the plains lies Iowa, the first contest in this election year.  As noted previously the process of selecting delegates for the respective parties conventions is a rather convoluted one in the ‘Hawkeye” State.  Of the 1.3 million or so eligible voters in the state, some 120,000 or so will gather in at some 17,000 caucus sites throughout the state.  These sites range from churches and school auditoriums to citizens living rooms and barns where the faithful of each candidate will gather, listen to some speeches and then cast ballots.   Those groups representing candidates that fail to reach a “threshold” level of strength, around 15%, will then either leave or be asked to switch their votes to another candidate, much like what would occur at a state or national conclave if we ever get to witness another convention go past the first ballot.  In this way a ‘dark-horse’ candidate can gain strength, move up into the top tier or perhaps pull an upset much as the “Huckster” Mike Hucklebee did four years ago in upsetting the plans of Mitt Romney. 

It is an odd way to begin such an important undertaking, restricting as it does participation to a miniscule fraction of the electorate.  It favors candidates who are ‘one issue’ or

‘ideologically pure’ as well as those candidates who have built an organization in the state.  For in the final analysis, the outcome depends more than anything on the ability of your campaign to identify ardent supporters and insure that they get out into the cold night, show up at the caucus, and fight for the candidacy.  While lacking the ideological support of the idiot-wrong, Romney has built a respectable organization which, hopefully, will have learned a lesson or two since the set-back four years ago. 

 Romney is also favored by having the fundamentalist base of the party fractured in it’s divided support of the candidacies of Ron Paul and the up-and-coming Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania and darling of the supply-siders who the good people of Pennsylvania had the sense to expel from the Senate some years ago.  Nevertheless with the nosedive taken by ‘Baby Huey” in recent weeks, as Romney and others began a telling series of negative ads simply citing Gingrich’s record and behavior when he was last a player in Washington, the brain-dead base of the party has moved toward Santorum seeking a less flamboyant and more suitable substitute.  While Santorum is polling ahead of all others among the fundamentalist base of the party, his lead is only a few points ahead of Ron Paul with Gingrich trailing a not-so-distant third. 

 What one must keep in mind about this process is that on the Rescumlican side of the ledger most of these contests are winner-take-all, meaning that one can claim all the delegates with a mere plurality rather than a majority of the return.  As long as Romney is opposed by two or three contenders on his political right, he can carry the day and claim the lion’s share.  It is in his interest to keep the candidacies of at least two, possibly three, such ultra-conservatives alive at least until the process has wound it’s way through the Southern states. 

 The exercise in Iowa will not necessarily determine the nominee.  What it will do will be to  define who has emerged as a ‘top-tier’ candidate, with the top three or four--depending on how closely they poll together--receiving the boost they need by way of media attention and subsequent campaign donations.  From this perspective it appears that Romney, Paul, Santorum and, perhaps, Gingrich will survive Iowa.  The candidacies of Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Huntsman will take a serious body blow.  The question for Romney is holding it together thru New Hampshire and then finding a way to survive the Southern primaries.  If he can hang on in the South, he has the inside track to the nomination.  The Question for the conservative wrong is whether they can decide which candidate to rally around in order to deny the Mormon the nomination.  Given the divided opposition it appears that Romney has some open field, how fast it closes on him will depend on how well he runs.

December 29, 2011: Four Years Gone, Reach Out In the Darkness, Requiem for Benazir.

The following is from a post at this time 4 years ago following the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhuto. In honor and remembrance, I have reposted one of my favorite columns.

“I think it’s so groovy now
That people are finally getting together
I think its wonderful now
That people are finally getting together
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
And you may find a friend” --Friend and Lover “Reach Out in the Darkness” 1968

I was standing in line at a gas station when that song so rarely played stabbed my consciousness like hot steel on a cold night. It seems so long ago now as we approach yet another presidential election cycle, the 10th such season of promises, since that song was popular, since that terrible time when the universe came unhinged. There was a certain inexorable logic behind that season of tragedy. The nation was deeply divided between rich and poor, black and white, young and old, war and peace. The Tet Offensive had demonstrated the total bankruptcy of our war policies and the nation, after several long summers of rioting and rage was bracing itself for another “long hot summer”. Yet we had emerged strong and promising, pregnant with possibilities, challenging the established order, dreaming things that never were and asking “why not”?

First Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota emerged to challenge Lyndon Johnson for his party’s nomination. In February, McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in New Hampshire. By mid-March Robert Kennedy, after re-assessing his situation was drawn into the race, and by the end of March Johnson announced his retirement. It seemed as if the heavens had parted and a new dawn had come to America. But throughout the season dark clouds loomed on the horizon like the ugly protesters that ringed the outer fringes of the Kennedy rallies.

I remember watching on television Robert Kennedy announce his candidacy for the presidency on March 16 from the old Senate chamber. Kennedy had been drawn into the battle much sooner than he had wanted, preferring to defer a presidential bid until 1972 or 1976. But the conflicts both at home and abroad had caused many of his friends and political supporters to look elsewhere and Bobby knew that his national stature demanded that he step forward. I watched with a certain foreboding as he picked up the mantle of his brother and began the campaign, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

As April Fools day dawned Johnson had fled the field and it seemed as if victory would come without firing a shot. But within days the long national nightmare began. Martin gunned down in Memphis and the rioting that followed, the entrance of Vice President Humphrey into the race to carry the standard of the party regulars, and finally, after winning all the remaining primaries save Oregon (which went to the anti-war McCarthy); Bobby too was gunned down as he reached for his party’s nomination. Within 90 days it was over, all that remained was to vent our rage at the convention. It was like a Greek tragedy beginning with the hubris of youth, and ending by cursing the fates; beginning with so much promise and ending with the ultimate booby prize: Richard Nixon.

“Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I lay traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay”
--- The Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil”

In this frame of mind I returned home. Going into the living room, I turned on the television and up came the financial news network. I was watching the market numbers and noticed on the crawl space a news report that former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated following a political rally. I turned to CNN and followed the initial reports that she had died following an explosion set off by a suicide bomber. Later this was revised to include shots fired at her motorcade at close range. It felt like de ja vu all over again.

The truly redeeming quality of politics is that by participating one can experience a certain mobility otherwise unattainable. Through political action one can transcend one’s station in life and meet not only interesting, though largely self-absorbed, individuals but on occasion rub shoulders with the powerful. In 1968 I was drawn into the Kennedy campaign, first working with his advance men organizing a political rally at Campau Square in downtown Grand Rapids, and then later in Indiana running a sound truck and doing door-to-door work in Michigan City and Marion. And so it was that four years later a son of a poor factory worker found himself in a Hotel room in Cambridge Massachusetts sitting on a bed talking politics with Benazir Bhutto.

She was 19 at the time, a freshman at Radcliff, daughter of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, young, intelligent and articulate. I was 23, a senior at Grand Valley State. We were drawn together as participants in the Harvard Invitational Model United Nations held at Cambridge Massachusetts. She was representing, of course, Pakistan. I was representing, not so obviously, the United States. I was deep in my senior thesis on the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 when I received a call from Dr. Junn, the head of the political science department, asking if I wanted to participate in a model U.N. sponsored by Harvard. I asked which country we would be representing and he told me the United States. It seemed a set up: why with all the colleges and universities attending would Harvard ask a small teachers college in western Michigan to represent the United States? The answer: Vietnam. Here was a golden opportunity for the debate teams of Harvard and Yale, not to mention several others, to beat up on United States foreign policy. We would be the perfect “straw man”.

We called a meeting of the several members of our delegation and I was chosen chairman, principally because I had written several papers on Vietnam and was something of the resident expert on the subject. This made me in effect the United States Ambassador to the United Nations playing the role of then UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush. I preferred to see myself as a young Adlai Stevenson but was forced to consult the record, largely one of abstaining from votes on Security Council resolutions that characterized the Nixon White House. Fortunately I knew the history of Vietnam and American involvement in it as well as all the arguments in favor of our prosecution of the war. In addition I was an outspoken early critic of the war and knew the arguments of dissent. So it happened that I became the unanimous choice to sit at the Security Council and face the debate teams of America’s most prestigious universities.

The first day was a rough go. Villanova, representing Germany stood with us, but the school representing France bolted to our adversaries and followed the Chinese by launching an all out attack on American “imperialist” foreign policy. Represented by the University of Utah, who had spent two weeks with the Chinese delegation at the UN in New York, the debate teams of Harvard and Yale representing countries like Cuba lined up with several others to oppose our intervention in Indochina. At the end of the first of the three day session our delegation met at our hotel suite to map out strategy given that many of the participants were not faithful to the policies of the governments they were purporting to represent, but were instead using the forum to express personal opinions. We determined that drastic action was needed. I asked how much money we had brought with us. Dr. Junn gave me a figure and asked why. I responded that we must now do what diplomats the world over have always done—order large quantities of alcohol and play the gracious host. In a word: PARTY!

We sent someone out for the requisite liquor and let it be known that our suite, which in due course became the entire floor, would be scene for an “international” social event. It was during a bit of banter with my friend from Utah, a slightly older man who had fought with the Montignard tribesman in Vietnam and who would later, playing the Chinese role magnificently, refer to “running dog American Imperialism” that I was elbowed by a young lady who introduced herself as the representative of Pakistan and asked if I could speak with her. We went to a room and she impressed upon me the urgency of the United States introducing a Security Council resolution concerning India and, if memory serves, had something to do with Kashmir. I told her I would do the best I could and we talked for some time about Pakistan and its relations with her neighboring countries, Kashmir, and the United States.

The next day I met with her again, but unfortunately things were tight at the Security Council as I struggled to stave off a full fledged assault on the United States. Benazir stopped by and importuned me once again but I tried to explain that I had greater problems to deal with at the moment. She left disappointed. Finally, midway through the second session, the Council voted by a majority of one to strike Vietnam from the agenda. We had dodged a bullet but there were still issues in South Africa, Rhodesia, and elsewhere that consumed the time. Mostly it was theatre. I had stopped while walking through the “yard” and bought a socialist rag being hawked by a vendor which I read whilst the Chinese “Ambassador” from Utah railed on about “American Capitalist Imperialist Aggressors”. The Chairman of the Security Council, who was in real life a legal counsel to the United Nations, asked me in a terse Eaton accent if the United States had any response. I remember saying’ as I peered up from my worker’s party rag, “It is the position of the government of the United States that the ranting of the honorable ambassador from the People’s Republic is unworthy of comment and that if he is interested in serious boilerplate I have a copy of an excellent publication he might find informative”. In any case events dictated that Pakistan would not emerge as a major player as long as the Cold War lasted. I had tried to teach, on that day so long ago, an important lesson in international politics: that the United States has no friends, it has only interests; and that United States support could be uncertain.

But it was not Benazir’s nature to remain undeterred. Critics, and there were many in Pakistan, saw her re-emerge as a political figure too closely allied with the United States. She had promised to allow the Americans to use Pakistani territory to establish bases of operations against the growing lawlessness in the tribal provinces along the Afghan border where Bin Laden is believed to have taken refuge. But most importantly she represented, as her father before her, an attempt to transform Pakistan from tribal feudalism into a modern secular liberal democratic state.

I sensed all those years ago that Benazir was in large measure enamored with all things American, attending an American university, adopting western dress, and with her father attempting to impose a western style republic on a tribal culture. I felt then it was risky business. Many transformational political figures have paid the last full measure for their effort. The Gracci brothers in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar for creating pax Romana, Lincoln, the Kennedy’s; and in her own part of the world Mahatma Gandhi, Neru, Indira and Rajib Gandhi, her own father. I watched with a certain foreboding as she went home to once again pick up the mantle of her father, hoping for the best but fearing the worst; and as I watched her bloody return from exile I told my wife that Benazir was going home to die. It had the inevitability of 1968 about it, as certain as the setting sun.

Go gently into that good night Benazir Bhutto; we are left now to reach out in the darkness.

December 28, 2011: Boner Backs Down, Crumbs From the Table, Cowardice on the Ramparts

We have been treated this week to the spectacle of one John Boner doing some serious backtracking as his Rescumlican majority were forced to cave in to pressure from the White House and their Senate colleagues and approve the extension of reductions in payroll withholdings for what John McCain and Sarah Palin so derisively dismissed as ’Joe Six-Pack’ and his family. As it stands, befitting the partisan brinksmanship that has characterized the behavior of the No-Nothing Party, the compromise reached extends for only a paltry two months as the Rescumlicans use whatever tools they can for the benefit of their rich benefactors, this time being the oil companies over a proposed pipe line into the United States from the oil-rich sands and shale of Canada.

Meanwhile public approval of Congress continues to plummet to record lows. It is ironic that the American people should blame their institutions for this mess. After all, they voted for gridlock by returning the idiot-wrong to power, why then should this come as any surprise?

The great chasm that is dividing the parties, itself merely a reflection of the divisions within the country, grows ever wider. Yesterday Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Oklahoma, announced that he will not seek re-election giving the Rescumlicans an ever greater probability of taking control of the Senate. Nelson’s announcement is part of a series of setbacks for the ‘Democratic Leadership Council’ that championed the election of people like Nelson, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and others who have either lost bids for re-election or are now retiring rather than face a referendum on their actions while in office.

What many tried to tell them, as they sold the soul of the Democratic party for what they saw as safe political strategy, was that by gutting national health care, and adopting what in effect was simply a weak and watered down health insurance reform bill, they would lose in the bargain their own political base and gain no pass, for their misguided efforts, from the modern Rescumlican party. So, with the dawn now of the next election season, we can say goodbye to the likes of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman as we said goodbye to Blanche Lincoln and several others last year. You will not be missed, for your service has not only brought about the discrediting of Democratic Party values, but has cost your party it’s majority in the bargain. We did not elect you to be Bush-Lite, We went to the polls and voted as Democrats, not for some watered-down version of Bush-Cheney. We voted for change and got chump-change. We elected you to be our champions and for your cowardice on the ramparts you have earned the calumny of Democrats everywhere.

December 20, 2011: Caribou Barbie, Not a Single Precinct Captain, Pipe Dreams of the Lotus-Eater.

Let me reiterate: the political process does not recognize unorganized opinion. It is almost ridiculous to have to utter these words, so apparently obvious stands the reality, but when dealing with Rescumlicans, particularly those on the idiot-wrong, the business of rendering obvious what is apparent and clear to the rest of humanity is a work of paramount, albeit futile urgency.


So today it was reported that Caribou Barbie, otherwise known in this column as the ‘guttersnipe’ from Alaska, has told Fixed News that she has surveyed the Rescumlican field and found them wanting. Again, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and so it is with the idiot half-governor late of Alaska. It was the last part of her statement that caught my eye. Bemoaning the lack of real Presidential timber currently in the field she went on to say that “it is not too late for someone else to enter the race”.

Forty years ago this may have been true, but with the number of primaries and the front-loading of nearly all of them--particularly the big states--it has long since become necessary to raise nearly 100 million dollars before the first citizens gather at caucus across the state of Iowa and cast the first ballots. Only a complete political neophyte could possibly have uttered such an absurdity, for the time has long passed when the money would have been raised to staff the field operations, set up the phone banks, purchased the voter lists, printed the mailers and brochures, set up the internet sites, bought the newspaper, radio and television advertising. With Iowa only now a matter of days away, New Hampshire quickly to follow, and with only 120 days or so left before the issue will be decided, it should be patently clear to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of such things that it is far too late to even think of throwing one’s bonnet into the ring. But not Sarah Palin who, despite having been on the last national ticket, appears to have learned nothing about Presidential politics.


If she is testing the political waters for a possible late bid, she will find that her supporters have long since been laboring on behalf of other candidacies, that she is woefully short of money, and that she is without a single precinct captain. None of this registers in the simple mind of the ‘guttersnipe’, who’s prevailing psychosis can be measured in the awful gap between her ambitions and her achievements; a chasm that can only be bridged by the pipe dreams of the lotus eater.

December 19, 2011: Adults in the Sandbox, Ron Paul as 'Spoiler', Precious Little Time Left.

“A Republic does not recognize unorganized opinion”
                                        ---from the 'Quotations of Chairman Joe'

It was announced over the weekend that the Des Moines Register, Iowa’s most prominent and influential newspaper, has endorsed Mitt Romney in the upcoming Republican contest. Citing ‘Baby Huey’s’ record of rabid partisanship and calling him a ‘divider’ and not a ‘uniter’ the paper’s editorial board chose Romney instead because of his record at not only cleaning up the failing winter Olympics held in the 1990’s in Utah, but his ability to work across party lines to move the state of Massachusetts forward on several important issues.

Today, was announced that Bob Dole, former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican Presidential Candidate also announced his support of Mitt Romney for the Presidential nomination.


It has been my experience that there is almost an inverse correlation between a press endorsement and winning an election. Most of the candidates I have worked for over the years, including myself as a candidate for County Commissioner, have received, sometimes reluctantly as in my case, the endorsement of the local paper only to see office slip from our grasp albeit by the narrowest of margins. Conversely, I have worked in and managed campaigns were we did not get such endorsements and walked to victory. It is as if the public takes perverse pleasure in thumbing their collective nose at the megaphone of the elite.

Be that as it may, it is refreshing to see the adults in the playground begin to pass judgment, for it is clear that several of the Rescumlican wannabees are completely devoid of the maturity and judgment, not to mention native intelligence and political organization, to be serious Presidential contenders.

Still, one must remember, the Iowa contest will not be decided by primary vote, or even a closed primary vote, where only registered party members cast ballots. Instead delegates to the national convention will be chosen at causes held in living rooms and school gymnasiums all across the state. Only those candidates who reach a certain ‘threshold’ of support will be considered, meaning that those supporting say a lightweight like Michelle Bachmann will soon discover that she has insufficient support and will then throw their weight behind another candidate, say Rick Santorum or Ron Paul. This is the reason Bachmann has taken on Ron Paul in the latest debate, not only has Paul perhaps the best organization in the state, but his pre-caucus polling numbers suggest that many of Bachmann’s and Santorum’s supporters are looking for a place to go after the first ballot and they would rather have Paul be in the position of having his supports desert him and come to them instead of the scenario that now seems likely. Clearly, this system, being so closed and involving such a low percentage of the qualified voters, gives immense advantage to those who have spent the time and the resources to build an organization and are now among the front-runners. As with Obama’s victory in Iowa four years ago (see previous posts), often the winner becomes every one else’s second choice.


This scenario favors Ron Paul, inasmuch as he has the national exposure and, like a stopped clock, is right twice a day. In his case he managed to parlay his opposition to the war in Iraq into a great deal of campus support in 2008 building a national organization and name recognition in the process. His ideas on spending and taxes are deplorably regressive and reactionary and will do material damage to the middle class should he prevail, but his early emergence on the war issue blinded many in the upcoming generation as to his domestic agendas. As a consequence he now stands before us as a first-tier contender who has the campaign experience and the organization to be a real spoiler in the race.

Recently the polls were showing ‘Baby Huey’ in the lead, Romney second, Paul Third. Bachmann and Santorum have been maneuvering to try to replace Paul so as to survive the Caucus and head to New Hampshire. To this observer, that seems unlikely. Neither have the organization to sustain them and their increasingly shrill campaigning will not suffice in this non-primary setting. From here it looks as if Paul may be the spoiler as Gingrich’s support begins to wane. Romney, I think will hold, but the party is still looking for some kind of viable alternative to the Mormon, and is now torn as it looks to alternatives. Gingrich, with all his baggage and his inability to organize, will struggle to win this contest. For Romney, despite his religion, has the inside track. That’s why the voices of influence are beginning to jump on his bandwagon. The issue will be decided at the South, the question being will the party be able to ‘organize’ around an alternative in time to grab the prize from the Mormon’s grasp. Not in Iowa, not in New Hampshire. Romney will hold his own in Iowa, win New Hampshire and then the real contest begins.


What the ‘tea baggers’ and the idiot wrong have to understand is what George Wallace did not. It is not enough to campaign and get crowds, one has to organize and for that there is precious little time.