August 3, 2012: Hang Down Your Head Tom Dewey, Ignorance Abroad, A Horse is a Horse of Course.

Not since Thomas Dewey challenged Harry Truman in 1948 has a campaign for the Presidency been conducted on terms so vacuous, so devoid of content, so breathtakingly mundane.  In Michigan, Romney waxed long upon the virtues of the trees, opining that they are “just the right height”, and talked about the “lakes”, not just the “Great Lakes, but all the lakes”, without saying precisely why he is so fond of them.  In Tennessee he sang the theme song of Davey Crockett.  Being a “Boomer”, and an early “Boomer” at that, Romney should know the theme song to the old Disney T.V. show.  Davey Crockett in the hands of Walt Disney was all the rage in the mid-1950s.  The nation was awash in Crockett T-Shirts and “Coonskin” caps.  In fact I had one myself, won in a local Wonder Bread Coloring contest.  But Willard fumbled the lyric singing “he killed him a bear when he was only three” Any Baby-Boomer worth his salt knows that the song goes “he kilt him a bar when he was only three”.   Willard “Mitt” Romney is campaigning for the Presidency in such a way as to make Thomas Dewey and even old Dubya look like policy wonks. 

It gets worse.  This week the campaign went abroad in search of photo-ops, headlines and campaign contributions.  It quickly became a comedy of errors as the clown from Utah stumbled over himself outraging in the process the Brits, the Palestininians, the Poles and a sizeable chunk of the public back home who are deeply embarrassed for him.   First he touched off a mild firestorm on Fleet-Street when the British press took him to task for mildly suggesting that they weren’t ready for the Olympics.  British Prime Minister David Cameron openly challenged the challenger by suggesting that it is much easier to organize an Olympics out in ‘the middle of nowhere’ and the London Mayor before a gathering of about 60,000 raised a chorus of cheers by asking the assembled if they were ready.  Next it was on to Israel where the club-footed Romney once again stumbled, this time on the rocks of middle-east politics: this time suggesting Israeli cultural superiority over the Palestinians.  Then it was on to Poland where an aid cursed the press which was growing tired of simply witnessing the fool walking around to no apparent purpose.  Having answered a total of 3 questions from the press pool they were in the words of Gretta Van Susteren the fox newsperson sent to cover the trip, left to feel like animals in a petting zoo.  So now Romney has limped back into the states leaving his wife and her horse in London where the beast is set to compete in an Olympic event from which the Candidate has now distanced himself. 

However Romney runs, wherever Romney turns, he confronts not Obama, but Romney.  In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams Romney professed not to know much about the horse or the event or even when the event will be held.  Telling NBC that the horse belongs to his wife and feigning little interest in it saying that he is too busy to even attend the event whenever it is held, Romney moved to put as much distance between himself and the dancing, prancing equine as politics and physical distance will permit. Under no circumstances will he be photographed watching the beast but, it has been reported, it did not prevent the Vulture Capitalist from declaring the horse as a business deduction to the tune of $70,000 in his only so far publicly released tax form.

This is how one with hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth gains admission into the lowest tax bracket in the country.

“Go to the source

And ask the horse

He’ll give you the answer

That you endorse”  --Theme Song to the Television Show “Mr. Ed”

But the horse presents problems of a different color for it threatens by simply showing up to overshadow the performance overseas of the candidate himself.  Should the horse take a Gold Medal, and win in the process the hearts of the world perhaps Willard will consider not John Bolton as Secretary of State, but the Dancing Horse instead.  It would certainly be an improvement for the horse is unlikely to be a neo-con and would certainly, on any given occasion, give you the answer that you endorse.   

Romney isn’t the solution, as Obama says, he is the problem.  He is the poster boy for how the United States has gone off the rails since that actor from California took office.    

August 2, 2012: Odd Man Out-Front, Flat-Earthers, Completely Baked

“The odd man out, in the Republican contest in Michigan, will be Mike Huckabee who is exploring the outer geographical limits of fundamentalist appeal.  He will discover that those of us who hail from Ludington’s old fourth ward like our whiskey strong, our talk straight, our women loose, and our children and our politics without benefit of clergy.” ---from the “Quotations of Chairman Joe”

I wrote these words about the candidacy of Mike Huckabee in my post dated January 14. 2008

The same fate awaited Rick Santorum this time around in the Michigan and Ohio primaries.  Romney had besmirched himself years earlier by writing in the Detroit News that, with regard to the then pending auto industry rescue, Detroit should be allowed to go bankrupt.  That kind of tone deafness to the interests of the people has brought previous and constant embarrassment ranging from his critical remarks concerning the dress of his supporters at NASCAR races, his criticism of donuts baked for him on a campaign stop, and his remarks about liking to fire people and not paying a penny more in tax than he is required to by law.  Romney worked to ingratiate himself by speaking before a nearly empty Ford Field in Detroit about how beautiful the lakes are and that the “trees in Michigan are just the right height”.  Ever the political whore, his efforts might have gone for naught had it not been for the ham-handed and self-destructive efforts of his only remaining foe.

In the race to see who could lose Michigan, Santorum began by saying that he nearly “puked” when he read John Kennedy’s speech in Houston Texas about the separation of church and state.  Then followed a series of right-wing fundamentalist statements about abolishing birth control; witnessing once again predictable breaking of Southern Fundamentalist populism upon the forbidding rocks of the outer geographical limits of Fundamentalist appeal. The result was that in the process of losing both the Michigan and Ohio primaries, he lost the Catholic vote as well. The way was now cleared for the previously unthinkable to happen: the party of the Fundamentalist Christian wrong is about to nominate for president a former bishop of the Mormon Church.  This paradox has left us with the “odd man out-front”. 

Santorum was quite right when he said that Romney is the wrong man to take on the Democrats over health care since what emerged from the ugly days of conservative brown-shirt politics was a law that simply duplicated what Romney himself had done in Massachusetts.  What Santorum didn’t say but what other rivals for the nomination like Rick Perry of Texas and Newt Gingrich did say was that Romney represents a form of crony, exploitive, risk-averse Capitalism that Perry promptly and aptly dubbed “Vulture Capitalism”, the modern Capitalist ethic in its most nefarious form.  As such, Romney stands as a poster boy for not what is right with the system, but what is wrong with it.  The result has been that the former Governor of Massachusetts who gave the state universal health care, and reduced the rate of its job creation to 47^th among the 50 states, has been left to run from his record as an elected official and reduce his campaign to a series of meaningless platitudes hoping against hope that the memory of the electorate is short and that the voters don’t look too closely. 

Meanwhile a note to the flat-earth leaders of the Rescumlican Party:  Senator James Inhofe (Rescumlican Oklahoma) has long ridiculed the scientific evidence of Global Warming, or Climate Change as it is now called.  He has stood in the well of the Senate and said that Climate Change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon the American people.  Yesterday the temperature at Oklahoma City reached 112 degrees, and is expected to top 114 today, an all-time record.  In fact the temps at Oklahoma City were expected to top 110 degrees for three straight days.  A week ago, it was announced by the weather bureau that over 41,000 new high temperature marks were set this year in the United States alone, and that 2012 will be the warmest year on record.  Senator Inhofe I want you to spend this recess speaking to your constituents, not in some air-conditioned arena but out in the open sun where you can tell your supporters with a straight face that this isn’t happening. As an added benefit perhaps after you have stood sweating in the heat your head will become, like the earth you stand on, completely baked.

August 1, 2012: The Thrill is Gone, Purging of Moderates,

“The thrill is gone

The thrill is gone away

The thrill is gone baby

The thrill is gone away

You know you done me wrong baby

Gonna be sorry someday”        ----B. B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1)

Since the good people of this country have elected grid lock over progress the know-nothing, no-nothing Congress has managed to pass a mere 80 bills in the last session, the lowest on record.  Accordingly the Congress now has an approval rating now in single digits, lowest on record. Richard Nixon upon leaving office, Paris Hilton, used car salesman, all have higher ratings as this congress continues to ignore the problems facing the country as it votes now for the 31^st or 33 time (depending on the count) to repeal ObamaCare.  Today, as over half the counties in the entire United States are now declared disaster areas—mostly due to the drought—Congress went on recess to get back to the urgent business of getting their individual and collective backsides re-elected but not before tabling indefinitely the farm relief bill.

Such is the state of political life in these here United States.  The purging of “moderates” from the Rescumlican party continues unabated as the likes of Richard Lugar of Indiana are eliminated in primary challenges by the idiot wrong.  Today a clown named Cruz defeated Rick Perry’s lieutenant governor in the Texas Senate primary in a contest to succeed the retiring Senator Hutchinson.  Cruz won the race with heavy backing by the so-called “Club for Growth’ and other right-wing operatives and by openly accusing his opponent of the sin of moderation.  So far wrong has the base of the Rescumlican party drifted that they now have abandoned their attacks on liberals and are now vilifying moderates.  What is now emerging are a new class of would be freshman senators who openly ridicule and deride the very idea of compromise.  It’s now our way or the highway and the mischief th to the political and economic order are too frightening to contemplate.  If elected and if this wrong-ward drift continues to find validation at the poles, what will happen the next time the debt ceiling is reached?  Will we default on our obligations?  Already Moody’s has lowered the credit rating of the nation the last time the idiot wrong engaged in such economic brinksmanship.  What will happen to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, housing assistance, food stamps, education funding, highway bills, farm supports, etc.?  

The thrill is gone.  Gone are the day when Obama could campaign on hope and change, for, alas, the nation has seen hope and change dashed on the rocks of Rescumlican obstructionism.  Instead we are now facing a campaign based on fear.  Romney and his Rescumlicans will do what the Scums have always done: wage a campaign based on divide and rule, label the President the resident Alien, raise fears about the future, and intimidate and restrict access to the polls.  Obama and the Democrats are left with no alternatives now except to raise fear about the prospect of the king-hell Vulcher himself presiding from the oval office as we watch the operatives of Wall Street finish the job of picking our pockets clean.      

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(1) www.lyrics.com/thrill-is-gone-lyrics-b.b.king.html

February 5, 2012: Stunning Series of Upsets, A Page from Obama, Showdown in Michigan

In a stunning series of upsets, Rick Sanitarium, or Mr. Sanctimonious as he is otherwise known, won a series of victories that threaten to upset the Romney juggernaut at the moment it was starting to gain momentum.

Largely written off in the wake of a poor showing in South Carolina, the Sanitorium campaign for all practical purposes skipped the Florida primary citing lack of money and the inability to match Romney dollar for dollar in such a large media market.  Instead opting to score victories in the smaller states, the Sanitorium campaign took a page from the Obama strategy of 2008 by seeking to counterbalance the victories of the frontrunner in the large states by out organizing and winning tactical victories elsewhere.  To that end Santinorium in a surprising showing won the Colorado and Minnesota state caucuses and the Missouri primary outright.   With the final returns now in for the Iowa contest earlier in the year in which Mr. Sanctimonious eked out a narrow victory by a handful of votes, Rick Santorum has now won four states and can now be seen, albeit narrowly, as the marginal front-runner for the Rescumlican presidential nomination. 

To add insult to injury Sanitorium took Colorado, a state handily won four years ago by Romney by a margin of 5% 40-35% with Baby Huey finishing down around 13% and Ron Paul at 12%.  In Minnesota, land of Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone, not to mention Jessie Ventura, Santorum won with 44.8% of those participating with Ron Paul finishing second with 27.2% and Romney a distant third at a mere 16.9%  In Missouri, a better test of strength, albeit nonbinding with no delegates at stake, Santorum carried a clear majority in a landslide scoring 55.2% to 25.3% for Romney and 12.2% for the aged Luddite from Texas.

Here is evidence of Santorum gaining strength and organizational ability but one must be a bit careful in reading the results.  In the first place Santorum won delegates by caucus, a procedure involving low participation.  The Missouri primary, because delegates are later to be chosen at county and state conventions later in the year, was merely a ‘beauty contest’, a straw poll as it were.   For this reason the Romney campaign quite rightly poured little money and organizational effort to get out the vote.  But what the campaign strategists in the Romney campaign failed to realize were the lessons of the 2008 campaign when such a strategy taken by the underdog derailed the inevitability of the nomination of Hillary Clinton.  Learning nothing from history, as Rescumlican are wont to do, the Romney camp finds itself now poised to repeat mistakes of the past and be outmaneuvered on the field of battle by a much less powerful and organized political force. 

How far Santinorium can ride this crest remains to be seen but he has now moved to the inside rail and has, at least momentarily, caught the front runner.  Romney now faces a showdown in his home state of Michigan which could well decide the fate of the son of Brigham Young.

February 1, 2012: Vulture Capitalism, Protracted Struggle, Frog in a Frying Pan

Willard “Mitt” Romney cruised to an easy victory in Florida last night crushing Baby Huey by over 15 points to win Florida’s 50 delegates to the Rescumlican National Convention. 
Here I must correct a previous error for it seems that in the interregnum between this campaign cycle and 2008 the Rescumlican Party has finally amended its rules and are now requiring proportional allocation of delegates instead of the winner-take-all in all primaries, caucuses or other contests held prior to April Fools Day.   All, except it seems, Florida where the Florida Rescumlican party moved it’s primary date up in the calendar and insisted on winner-take-all in an effort to steal the thunder in the early primaries and perhaps, in so doing, anoint a future President. 

What this means is that the Mormon will have to fight harder for the nomination and that the struggle will be protracted, perhaps long enough for a viable “I-am-not-the-Mormon” alternative to emerge.  Be that as it may, the victory last night was welcome news to the sons of Brigham Young as Romney swept Gingrich and the remaining field winning 46.42 percent of the vote to 31.93 for Gingrich, 13.34 for the faltering Santorum, 7.01 for the Luddite Ron Paul and 0.41 for the now departed Governor Rick Perry of Texas.

Perry pulled out of the race just prior to the South Carolina vote sensing his support evaporate as Gingrich sucked all the scum out of the pond.  As he departed he gave voice to a refrain that, if Romney should prevail, will reverberate from the mountains of the pacific coast to the canyons on the now occupied Wall Street.  Perry, gasping his last words, said that Romney, in his days with Bain Capital, proved himself to be not a great creator of jobs and economic growth but a practitioner of a vulgar form of “vulture capitalism” that proved on close examination to be a mere parasite sucking the blood out of the national economy. This is a charge of some substance and will dog the Romney campaign throughout the primaries as the tea baggers and ideological purists excoriate his record and, should he eventually emerge the Rescumlican nominee, the campaign in the general election as the liberals and the political center turn their guns on him. 

Perhaps Willard has no legs.  The critique of Romney’s economic record has spilled beyond his record as a public official which will be, in due coarse, problematic enough.  For in the Florida debates Willard was continually bombarded about his personal taxes.

Every time Willard is asked about is personal taxes he begins to jump like a frog in a frying pan.  Finally, after repeated inquiries his said that he pays “something like 15%” of his income in income taxes.  In truth it is more like 13.5% while the average schlock pays 18% in federal income taxes.  How is it that the Mitt pays less in income tax than his secretary?  Because, it turns out, almost all of his income is now derived from investments and capital gains which are taxed not at the old rate of 45% but 15%.  With deductions the Vulture Capitalist has been able to pear it down further to 13.5%.  This is the reason that the Son of Brigham Young has been so reticent about his fortune.  There have been some attempts to draw attention to this at subsequent Rescumlican debates but there is a problem here.

The problem for Baby Huey and the others is that Mitt stands before the nation not as the Greed Meister in their eyes but as a living demonstration of the success their several revisions of the tax code have made possible.  Romney is, in a word, simply a living symbol of  the success of Rescumlican economic policy.  The peculiar problem for Baby Huey, however, is that under proposals put forth by le infant terrible Romney would be relieved of his tax burdens for Gingrich and other Rescumlicans would eliminate income from investment and capital gains altogether.  This awkwardness serves to dampen the Romney critique in the primaries but his critics in the general election, being less greedy, will offer no such quarter. 

The question, which the primary in Florida had hoped to solve, is: do any of these fools have what it takes to prevail in November?  In the meantime the skillet keeps boiling as one frog after another pokes out his ugly head. 

January 22, 2012: Baby Huey’s Cesspool, Heresy Itself, Citizens Divided.

The sting of the citizens united vs. the Federal Election Commission, was felt last night as the returns of the South Carolina presidential primary came in.  With the infusion of millions of dollars from a billionaire Las Vegas casino owner and with 40.4% of the vote, Newt “Baby Huey” Gingrich defeated the nominal GOP frontrunner Willard “Mitt” Romney by nearly 13 percentage points 40.4% to 27.9 in a stunning upset that has once again cast doubts among party leaders that they are indeed backing the right horse. 

Willard, of course, saw it coming.  Four years ago he had the endorsements of over 200 state and county Republican officials as he attempted to administer a quick coup de grace
to the struggling McCain campaign by winning big in Baptist country.  It didn’t work.
This time around with the support of the newly elected female governor of the state and not much else, he decided instead to run a much scaled-down effort here and concentrate his time, money and organization in the upcoming Florida Primary where his prospects appear much more favorable.  This was not met favorably by his former supports who, quite properly, felt that he had slighted them.  Many former Romney supporters and organizers voiced complaints but remained neutral allowing Mitt to enjoy a 12 point lead over Gingrich just days before the election.  It all evaporated with the massive infusion of mega-bucks as Newt’s political action committee began to swing into action. Mitt decided to cut his looses for he  does not need to win every Southern primary or caucus but he does, if he is to become a truly national candidate, must win somewhere in the South.  So he took his lumps in the Palmetto State with an eye to the upcoming Florida contest.

The story here in South Carolina is the emergence not of Santorum, who finished well down in the pack despite the recent endorsements by fundamentalist religious organizations,  but the rise instead of Newt Gingrich.  There are three reasons, it appears to this commentator, for his sudden emergence.

First he can be seen as sort of a ‘favorite son’ inasmuch as the former House Speaker represented a district in neighboring Georgia.  Second it is clear that the recent religious endorsements have not come in time for Santorum to make effective use of them.  Time as well as money are needed to build an organization and gain a place on the stage.  Gingrich, for reasons of greater familiarity in the region--if not the nation--therefore became the de jure “I am not the Mormon” of the moment.  How long he can hold that position is unclear but one suspects not long for the Lutheran turned Baptist, turned Catholic (1) womanizer will not, it seems to me, remain long in the fundamentalist intestines but will rapidly be expelled.  It is one thing to leave an established heresy in order to be ‘born again’ into Southern Baptism; it is heresy itself--in Southren eyes to reject Southern Baptism in order to embrace the ‘cult’ that is the Roman Catholic Church.  Third was the timely infusion of cash in an otherwise strapped campaign.  But what the emergence of Baby Huey demonstrates most clearly is not the pernicious influence of the citizens united decision but the fact that the idiot wrong has not yet been able to organize around a suitable alternative to the Mormon.  What Citizens United accomplished last night was not so much to raise the spectre of Baby Huey once again astride the American political landscape as in the terrible days of yore but to keep the “I-am-not-the-Mormon” movement alive.  I giving new life to bigotry and intolerance it has accomplished what its authors intended it to do, that is to keep the citizens divided. 


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1. See Newt Gingrich at Widepedia. Com

January 11, 2012: New Hampshire Speaks, Hollow Victory, On to South Carolina

The good people of New Hampshire spoke again last night.  In America’s first of its quadrennial Presidential primaries, the Granite state awarded favorite son Willard “Mitt” Romney the victory with 39.4% of the vote, followed by the Luddite Ron Paul with 22.8%  Governor Huntsman with 16.8%, Baby Huey with 9.4% and last, and certainly least, the great nullifier Rick Perry with 0.7%. 

The significance of  the New Hampshire Primary has diminished somewhat over the last few years with the advent of the nearly two-score more such contests since the reforms of the late sixties.  It was further diminished this season by the contest being dominated by Romney who, as governor of neighboring Massachusetts, can be seen as a favorite son inasmuch as the Boston media market dominates the state.  Nevertheless it is a victory, though somewhat diminished one, for not only was he expected to win the state but did so with fewer votes than four years ago.  Perhaps the vigor and enthusiasm on the idiot wrong is on the wane.  Only time will tell.  In any case it is a ‘hollow’ victory for one so well entrenched and well funded to end up short of 40% of the total.  The real challenge for Romney will begin with the upcoming contest in South Carolina. 

The Primary in South Carolina, coming as it does immediately following the New Hampshire results and before the rest of the southern contests, is positioned to be the southern response to the northern results.  As a consequence it has been, since its inception in 1980, of such consequence that every successful Rescumlican candidate for the presidency has entered the White House only after winning this contest.  This has been a national tragedy.

South Carolina, home of the likes of John Calhoun and Strom Thermond, midwife of nullification and mother to secession.  It was here that the first steps toward disunion were taken, here that the first shots in the bloody civil war were fired, and here that the modern creed of nullification--in the form of opting out of the national health care--were first given voice.  The state motto for neighboring North Carolina is “First in Flight”--referring, of course, to Kitty Hawk.  The state motto for South Carolina should be “First in Treason”.
Certainly Andrew Jackson, judging from his threats to hang his Vice President John C. Calhoun over ‘nullification” would have seen it that way.  In any case it is here, the battle ground scarred by the ’dixiecrat’ resistance to the end of ’Jim Crow’ and, more recently,  the scorched earth strategies of George W. Bush in his smear of John McCain, that we now turn.  For the sad truth, it seems, is that to enter the White House the Mormon must first wade into the cesspool of American Politics and emerge somehow clean.

And so its now on to South Carolina.

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.