Friday, March 9, 2012

Elsewhere: Kansas and On; Jobs

Over at Post Partisan, I had some fun at the expense of Republican spinners, and talked a bit about the economy and the election. At Plum Line, I looked at the upcoming WH GOP 2012 events: Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Hawaii, and, always lots of fun, the territories. Although if I recall correctly we rarely get rapid results from those.

The tricky part in writing about all of this is talking about both tracks the nomination is on at the same time. On the one hand, there's the long slog and the delegate count. For that, everything matters, and it's possible for a small state to matter a lot more than a big one if the allocation rules differ -- Idaho was huge! On the other hand, there's also the very real possibility of a stampede starting for Romney which will make all of that sort of irrelevant. As I've said, I still think the latter is fairly likely. But the things that might create that stampede are only sort of thinly related to the delegate count -- for example, had Romney won Colorado it might have made a rapid end to the nomination fight more likely, but it would have had very little effect at all on the immediate delegate count. The problem is that if I want to get down into the delegate count discussion, which is interesting and possibly relevant, I don't want to do it without reminding everyone that these long slog calculations are still very hypothetical and there's every possibility that Rick Santorum will be long gone by, say, Texas in late May...but I don't want to bore everyone by constantly including that disclaimer.

7 comments:

  1. I agree that if Romney wins Alabama or Mississippi, it probably will trigger the stampede (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). A great deal of the source of my skepticism that Romney could lock up the nomination was his weakness in Southern states with large conservative-evangelical populations. If he wins just one of those states, it will greatly undermine Santorum's or Gingrich's rationale for being in the race. Of course, it might then be blamed on vote-splitting between Santorum and Gingrich.

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  2. I really agree with you guys about the likelihood of a mitt stampede, but still think a three way tie that goes to mitt in AL MS could treated just like the squeeker victories he got in MI and OH (Ohio is filled with rural conservative evangelical voters)? I personally could see mitt doing very well next week-just like super tuesday-and GOP big wigs complaining about mitt and remaining on the fence and blathering on about delegate math. The media narrative of a long hard slog might be set to much to easily break, no matter how many senators endorse mitt.

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  3. Could it possibly be that Mitt is a weak candidate, and that all the failure to coalesce is because folks are speaking their minds and saying "well, Mitt IS weak"?

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  4. It may all be moot if Romney can't wind over Evangelicals. Otherwise they may opt not to even vote if he wins the Republican nomination.

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  5. This sounds like remaining publicly neutral GOP party actors are placing all the power to decide the nomination contest in the hands of the perception-shapers in the media who are obsessed with the arbitrary sequencing of the primaries and constructing narratives of momentum. (A small number are delegate-counter geeks are also given some due in coverage, but they aren't the main focus of headlines and media narratives by an means.) The befuddling thing is: why would GOP party actors want to give over so much of their power to these non-party actors, when they can sew it up themselves? Is it all a mere coordination problem, structurally resolved by the fact that everyone can us Wolf Blitzer as a stand-in for media conventional wisdom mediocrity?

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  6. Perhaps no one is willing to be the first one to start the stampede, or they are waiting for Romney to decisively beat Santorum before taking the plunge?

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  7. I know your blog is about american politics, but any feed back on this would be appreciated http://slimneddy1.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-take-on-far-right.html my first blog- on the far right (uk)

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