2012 Race for the White House II: The Two Towers

Since both Alabama and Mississippi award delegates proportionately, Mitt Romney will get approximately the same number of delegates as the "surging" Santorum and maintain his sizable lead. The black eye that is the nominating process for Romney just keeps getting worse...

 

According to AP, updated with tonight's results...

Delegates Needed for Nomination: 1144

Gingrich- 131
Paul- 47
Romney- 476
Santorum- 246

 

I hear a lot of this "Obama is a secret Muslim" conspiracy theory going around.

So I wonder... let's assume for the sake of argument, that Obama is in fact of the Muslim faith.

So how does this change anything? Can Muslims not hold elected office in America? To the best of my knowledge, your first amendment rights give you the freedom to pursue any or no faith, and there is no religious test for the office of president.

Would Mohammed Ali be ineligible to run for president?

 

Seems to me the "Obama's a secret Muslim" stuff has less to do with anti-Muslim sentiment (though that certainly is part of it, and it certainly colors it), and much more to do with racists grasping for ways to express their hatred for Obama without having to admit that what they really hate about him is that he's black.

 

They view it through their own national prisms, rather than the proper contexts.

 

but much like (paraphrasing) "iraqi government had something to do with 9/11" or "under Bush, we've never been attacked (after we'd been attacked) " lies that get repeated often enough become gospel to some people.... and when i use the word gospel... it's a totally intended pun.....Obama being a Muslim has stuck on some minds, so has the idea that he has raised taxes, or that we was born elsewhere or that he's taking away people's gun... It's ridiculous.... but people who have studied these things have long ago realized how easy a strategy it is to repeat falsehoods in the media with nary a challenge and when finally confronted by someone have the steel cojones to point towards the same media and go : " But everyone is saying it....!"

 

First of all, there is NOT a lot of "Obama is a secret Muslim" talk going around. Where are you hearing this? Don't bother, because you aren't.

Secondly, you know the answer to the Ali question as well as anyone else. And it's Muhammad Ali, NOT Mohammed Ali.

 

The panel on Morning Joe flatly said that it's unlikely that Romney will get to the convention with a majority of delegates. That surprised me since he a) has well over 50% of the allocated delegates so far and b) the winner-take-all states are coming up.

But there may be something in the caucus process that hasn't played out, and as a result overstates Romney's dominance.

 

Romney surges overnight...!

Hawaii
Romney- 4250 (45.4%)
Santorum- 2369 (25.3%)
Paul- 1712 (18.3%)
Gingrich- 1034 (11%)
100% reporting

Mitt also cleaned up in the American Samoa caucuses, winning all 9 delegates.

Romney Wins in Hawaii, American Samoa - The Hill

 

Updated to include the overnight results, according to AP...

Delegates Needed for Nomination: 1144

Gingrich- 131
Paul- 48
Romney- 495
Santorum- 252

 

Well, there was a poll last week that concluded "There's considerable skepticism about Barack Obama's religion with Republican voters in them. In Mississippi only 12% of voters think Obama's a Christian to 52% who think he's a Muslim and 36% who are not sure. In Alabama just 14% think Obama's a Christian to 45% who think he's a Muslim and 41% who aren't sure." Of course, it's a PPP poll, and the NYT's Andrew Rosenthal points out that "PPP is a partisan organization that conducts automated surveys. That means it’s not clear who answered the questions and whether the sample is statistically representative. {Also,} {c}urrent law prohibits automated dialers from calling cellphones. So PPP is likely missing a big chunk of the population. (The latest research shows that about 25 percent to 31 percent of people now use cellphones exclusively.)"

Of course, he also acknowledges that "there’s no question that far too many people buy into this propaganda..."

 

Plus Romney has won all the big blue/purple states so far, with Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, suggesting that he should also run the table in Illinois, New Jersey, New York, California. Add those delegates to his existing delegates plus the fact that Romney is competitive even in the states that he loses, and yeah that surprises me. But I haven't tried to run the numbers myself.

 

Perhaps the analysis is based on the assumption that Newt either drops out after last nights catastrophic loses or is hurt enough politically to lose a substantial portion of his support to Santorum. If Santorum moves up even 10% at Gingrich's expense (while Romney gets a much smaller piece), then Santorum can win pretty much every red or red leaning state from here on out.

 

You're surrounded by northeastern liberal elites. You don't hear it.

 

You could also ask the MPAA and RIAA how much good all the money they poured into SOPA, PIPA and ACTA did them...

If anything the Internet's influence on politics grew since 2008, and Obama sure knew how to tap it back then.

 

And it is not like the Australians and Canadians elected particularly progressive governments as of late.

 

Their conservatives are our RINOs, same with England too. Not so sure about France and the Netherlands, though, as they seem to have about 20% of the population that would be all over Newt.

 

Newt makes Wilders and Le Pen seem balanced and smart, so I don't really agree on the last part. Your Democrats are more to the right on many issues than most European conservatives (without the populists obviously) because here they don't question social democracy. I think in AUS and CA the conservatives are somewhat in line with American moderate democrats, but that is more gut feeling than actual sience or knowledge.

 

Wow they seem pretty unhinged from a distance, not that Newt isn't of course, but still ...

 

Romney Sails to Puerto Rico Win - Associated Press

 

Via Twitter...

Andrew Kaczynski Puerto Rico: Buddy Roemer leads Newt 1,304 votes to 1,260 votes. Fred Karger leads Ron Paul 925-676.

 

Thanks to Santorum's own goal with his "English has to be PR's official Language" play.

 

The only way that made any sense is if he was writing off Puerto Rico and playing to his base, but if that were the case, why go there in the first place? I think your "own goal" description makes more sense.

 

I thought about that, too, but when I found out PR has 20 delegates, I couldn't see why he'd make it so easy for Romney to get them. Unless he had polling that said he wasn't going to win no matter what. Still, not sure if feeding your base that sort of thing is worth it.

It's puzzling. I can't see any reason for him to be this dumb other than the fact that, maybe, he's just this dumb.