As Ozzie Guillen’s public self-hoisting-on-his-own-petard continue too farfetched to surmise that the whole matter may have far reaching, and very unintended consquences: to wit, just about making sure that Mitt wins the White House this November.

After his election in 2008, Obama’s coronation in 2012 was being promoted in the MSM as inevitable..heck, we might as well cancel the election and use the money saved to reduce the deficit. Along with that, the GOP was being consigned to the dust bin  of political history, along with the Whigs.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to that party. Actually, lots of things….Obamacare, TARP, the economy, jobs, gas prices, the Arab spring, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the Tea Party, the 2010 election……well, you get the idea.

And soon after the 2010 vote, the shellshocked Dems began to float the idea that while Obama might not be the lock for the previously viewed as inevitable electoral landslide in 2012, they supposedly weren’t too worried because Obama had lots of “alternative pathways” to an Electoral College majority.

To that, I say pure, unadulterated, bulls**t…..

There is no really plausible pathway to an electoral win for Obama WITHOUT HIS WINNING FLORIDA.  Let me repeat that.

WITHOUT FLORIDA, OBAMA CAN’T BE RE-ELECTED. PERIOD.

To assume that Obama could, for instance, lose Florida, yet win North Carolina and/or Indiana is a 100:1 shot, at best.

And I am very positive about the GOP winning Florida. The state has trended RED since 2008. Gov Scott is doing a good job, the economy is beginning to turn around. We are going to retire Bill Nelson this November as well.

But we can’t take anything for granted, and must wage a vigorous campaign, from the top to the bottom of the ticket.

The Trayvon Martin incident is receiving a lot of attention nationally as race baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson attempt to once again inflame the passions of their base. And they will do so successfully, for they are very good at it, but it will blow up in their faces. Obama is going to get the votes of 95% of blacks regardless, but the Martin matter may enable Dems to increase turnout among blacks, which had dropped of in 2010, from the historic levels of the 2008 vote. This will help them.

However, the other major constituency which Dems rely on heavily is Latinos. Which brings us to Ozzie Guillen.

Latinos are a diverse group. There are Mexicans, Venezuelans, Dominicans, etc. And then there are the Cubans. People outside of Florida, especially outside of south Florida,  have no understanding of just how deep the loathing, the detestation, of Fidel Castro is in the Cuban community.

For Guillen, the manager of the Miami ( actually, little Havana, where the new stadium is ) Marlins, to publicly state his admiration for Castro ( and along the way, throw in a few nice words about Hugo Chavez) is about as damaging as if Arik  Shivek, the very popular manager of the Israeli national basketball team, said that he admired the way that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had managed to stay in power.

The Dems, the left, in this country have long had an infatuation with Fidel Castro. Going all the way back to Herbert L. Matthews, whose glowing portrayal of Castro as a mere “agrarian reformer” was ably satirized by National Review  (“How I got my job through the NY Times.”) the left has always adored Fidel.

Guillen’s stupid comments have brought the issue of Castro, and those in this country who support him, back to the forefront of the political discussion. And perhaps it is even more important today, as the future of a post-Castro Cuba, and the role of the US in restoring democracy to that islands, becomes  more and more likely with each passing month.

I watched all of Guillen’s press conference today, and the most tellig part was when he described the “women in white” those Cuban women here in the states who wear white to remember their sons, brothers, husbands who have suffered death, imprisonment, torture at the tender hands of Fidel. This story, and many more like it, will now become nationalized.

Here in Florida, the Cuban community has for the most part supported Republicans, but the Dems have been making inroads of late, because of various policies designed to appeal to Latinos.

No more. You will see an engaged, and enraged, Cuban community in south Florida, and they will take maximum advantage of the one way they can express their displeasure of Castro, and anyone and anything that supports him, or speak well of his regime….at the ballot box.

I make no pretense of expertise in analyzing demographics, but I expect that the Cuban American vote in Florida in 2012 will  be 100,000+ more than in 2008, and that the GOP will easily capture a significant percentage of that increase.

Coupled with increasing voter dissatisfaction with Obama, for the whole host of reasons, and the Dems have virtually no chance of taking Florida this November

And they can thus forget any chance of re-electing Obama.

Ozzie Guillen???..OZZIE GUILLEN???….Who’d have thunk it??