Monday, February 4, 2008

Mitt Romney’s supporters

In a recent interview on National Review Online, Mitt Romney was in a conference call with “conservative bloggers” when he had occasion to answer a question about what his strong states were going to be on Super Tuesday. He stated that the “world of conservativism is pretty solidly behind my effort.”

His evidence?

To most people, that is the world of conservatism. Unfortunately, it has little or nothing to do with being a conservative.

When you’re relying on the trolls for your support, there’s something seriously wrong with your campaign.

Super Tuesday

Tomorrow will quite possibly winnow down the Republican candidates to two. Huckabee’s support has been slowly eroding and is currently hovering just under 20%. Romney’s isn’t much better, at about 25%. The big kahuna at the moment? McCain, with about 45%. Not bad, given that two weeks ago, he was hovering at around 30%. Most of that support appears to have been picked up from the Giuliani camp, which is odd, because Giuliani is a corrupt reactionary, and McCain is a moderately honorable (if befuddled) stand-up guy. But the rhetoric is close enough, I suppose.

“Unsure” is the next most popular candidate, running at about 10%. Ron Paul is hovering at about 5%, and has been for weeks now. In order to stay in the race, he’ll have to declare as an independent—which is fine with me. His base is quite passionate (if naïve), and that likely means 3% less for the Republicans in the general election. (Some, of course, will defect to the Republican nominee.)

So the Republicans don’t seem to be very passionate about any given candidate, and The Unfortunate Ann Coulter in particular has emerged to screech her hatred of McCain (along with James Dobson and others), so even the trolls appear to be a bit fragmented.

Well, good.

On the Democratic side, the departure of John Edwards has thrown the race from a clear win for Clinton to a very close race indeed, as Obama has apparently won over most of those who had been planning on voting for Edwards. “Unsure” takes up a good 6%, and that’s enough to throw it one way or the other. Of course, Mike Gravel is in the race, but I’m guessing that his 2% isn’t going to prove critical.

Yes, tomorrow will be very interesting indeed.

I do hope Romney gets pummeled tomorrow, so that I don’t have to see that smarmy grin and plastic awkwardness continue to insist that he is the one, true conservative. Ugh. The man is a used-car salesman, willing to say anything in a feeble attempt to show he has a personality. (Sadly, you can’t fake your way through that.)

Between Huckabee and McCain? I respect both men, kind of. Huckabee has, in spite of his short-sighted theocratic bent, been relatively candid and has shown genuine signs of being an interesting guy. McCain deserves our extreme respect for having honorably and courageously served in the Vietnam war (not only surviving years of torture at the Hanoi Hilton, but also having survived the catastrophic incident on the USS Forrestal, where he was pretty much the guy at ground-zero in that tragedy).

Yet I loathe their platforms, which hinge on fear, intrusion, erosion of our rights, a continued and unwise presence in an unstable region, and paranoia.

Between Obama and Clinton? I’m having a hard time figuring out who I’d like to get the nomination. It’s difficult to ignore the historical nature of these candidates, as much as I would like to. Honestly, I wish that it didn’t matter so much—but given that this nation jerked both women and minorities around quite a lot these past few centuries (and in some areas, continue to do so), I suppose it’s not really possible to set that aside.