I have made known my thoughts and objections to the various candidates in the field. I have come to accept that the ones I think would be best are the ones running the most perplexing campaigns. I think we will wind up with Willard Mitt Romney as the nominee. I see a path to victory for Rick Perry. I don’t see him taking it. I | Read More »
In 2008, the Democratic party had one of the longest, one of the most expensive, and one of the most bitter primaries in American political history. It was a drawn-out, unpleasant affair where Hillary Clinton, the expected front-runner, was eventually beaten – despite the fact that she won almost all of the top Democratic-leaning states, arguably won the popular vote, and nobody actually won enough | Read More »
Three quick polls of New Hampshire came out this week to try to measure the effect of Iowa on New Hampshire. Predictably, the top three of Iowa are now the top three in New Hampshire. This matters most to the one candidate that put nothing into Iowa and everything into New Hampshire: Jon Huntsman.
According to CNN, both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are set to win 6 delegates thanks to their close 1-2 finish in the Iowa caucuses. Ron Paul fell to third place. He didn’t win, and he fell further and further behind as the votes were counted last night. Not one poll projected Ron Paul to drop to third, and PPP stuck to Paul being in | Read More »
The results of the Iowa Caucuses are in. To the extent that you can draw conclusions from the votes of 123,000 individuals, here are some quick observations. 1) The Media will invariably focus on which conservative candidates should drop out. They will also focus on the fact that there is nobody who has a definitive roadmap to defeat Romney. But the larger point they will | Read More »
2011 was a disastrous year for our debt. Yes, the Republican Congress prevented Obama from passing his budget, which would have added $1.6 trillion in new deficit spending. Instead, they passed a budget that added an additional $1.3 trillion to the national debt. Overall, federal outlays in FY 2011 (which ended September 30) were $141 billion more than the previous year. For FY 2012, thanks | Read More »
Newt Gingrich had about six weeks at the top or tied, but that run is over. Gallup has shown a slow decline for the Speaker, and now Mitt Romney benefits. He takes his first national lead since early November. Just in time for the actual delegate selection process to begin.
Rick Santorum. Now? Seriously? This is ridiculous. How are prognosticators supposed to do our jobs if we get a break so late it makes Mike Huckabee look like an early frontrunner? Seriously, Iowa, simmer down now. All I know is Ron Paul isn’t winning. Beyond that, anything’s possible.
“His only contribution to the party has been his five-year interminable presidential campaign, despite his insistence that he never intended to run for office again after 2008.” When Mitt Romney was seeking the Republican nomination in 2008, he deflected criticism of Romneycare by blaming its disastrous effects on the liberal legislature in Massachusetts. That was four years ago, when Romney was attempting to win the | Read More »
Remember 2004? Insurgent Democrat Howard Dean uses a rash of young people online to raise surprising sums of money and gather incredible “buzz” for his candidacy. And yet he drops to third in Iowa, then second in New Hampshire. He would not go on to California, and Texas, and New York, nor would he take the White House. Now between the PPP poll I covered | Read More »
I’ve been telling people PPP’s polling Iowa was making nonsense predictions. The pollster has doubled down. I’m going way out on a limb here, and if the actual results refudiate what I’m saying then I’m going to have to take some taunting, but I just don’t see how this poll remotely reflects reality, and I’m flatly saying it’s not predictive of the caucus results.
The Republican Party has gone insane. For the better part of the last three years the Republican Party has exercised itself into a frenzy over the need to repeal Obamacare. For the two years leading up to November of 2010, mostly middle aged working white people took to the streets in sizes rivaling a NASCAR race to protest the socialization of the American health care | Read More »
Newt Gingrich has now led eleven national straight polls, counting just the latest Gallup tracking, and now covering a span of four weeks. He’s been ahead a month. That’s already four times longer than Herman Cain ever led, and getting close to the span of Rick Perry’s lead, which lasted about five weeks. But is there any sign of weakness?
Ideas don’t run for president; people do. That’s as true today as it was four years ago. So, it is understandable that much of the press and blog coverage of the 2012 GOP primary race has focused on the personalities, experience and record of the candidates rather than their ideas. In fact, until you know the candidates by their actions, you cannot meaningfully judge what | Read More »
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