2012 Republican Primaries (March) - my analysis

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so basically, there are 4 candidates left.

romney. gingrich. paul. santorum.

despite the media making this look like a yo-yo rubber band race, i think all of the candidates have carved their niches.

romney - northeast and western states. moderate voters. people who prefer business experience.
santorum - middle america. social conservatives. people who prefer experience in washington.
gingrich - the south. conservatives who want bigger reforms.
ron paul - caucus states. libertarians. people who are against the wars overseas.

ron paul is stagnant as of now. he has not won a single primary, and has been coming in last place in a lot of them. if he does not win any primaries in super tuesday (march 6th) he will be in an even more difficult position. he has proven that he has his base (anti-war republicans, liberals, libertarians, and some independents) but is largely rejected by the majority of the republicans, and that is still his fundamental problem.

there is talk of a romney-paul alliance as those two candidates have attacked each other the least. my guess on that they are both unthreatened by each other's supporters. romney knows he's not going to get paul's supporters and paul knows he's not going to get many of romney's supporters. paul does not have enough votes to threaten romney and romney is helping to take away votes from the other 2 candidates.

romney was rejected by a lot of the party, and the more conservative wing has propped up numerous different candidates to be that anti-romney. all of them fell short and there's 2 left, each of which with their own shortcomings. i think republicans overall are just accepting that romney is not so bad compared to the alternatives.

it's santorum and gingrich that will steal votes from each other.

gingrich is depending on super tuesday in the south to make a comeback. if he does not, he will be in a difficult position, and with lack of momentum santorum will take his votes.

if all of the anti-romney voters unified under santorum or gingrich, then romney will face a challenge. but as i said above, it is likely that some republicans will switch over to romney once they realized the alternatives were not as great as they seemed to be.

Right now, it seems that the GOP is interested only in putting forward a candidate who will defeat Mr. Obama - there seems to be very little (if any) interest in fielding a GOP candidate that can actually do the job.

I would be shocked if anybody but Romney ended up winning the nomination. He has such a big advantage when it comes to money then the other candidates that it would be quite pathetic if he couldn't pull it off.

a common theme in politics.

if it is between something ideal and something doable, the former will be pursued but only until the last minute.

Eh, Romney will win but it will take him some time. He's going to take a beating next tuesday.

Michigan, his home state, is being sold as a win by Romney (and he needed it), but really he evenly split the delegates with Santorum. Not a great result for his home state. He won't have that advantage in Ohio.

Even is The Mitt gets the nomination I suspect he will loose in the general election. The Independent Voters have had a good look at what a goldbrick Mitt the Plastic Mormon is. I think they will abandon him which meas that the Lion King will win in November.

ruveyn

Four more years of Obamanation compared to ... what? I'm afraid (literally) that Mr. Obama may actually be the best person for the job.

Romney is being hammered over at RedState after it was revelealed that he had in fact encouraged Obama to adopt his Massachussetts mandate, including tax penalties. Recently he said that it was great for Massachussets but shouldnt have been tried at the national level.

What's funny is that the GOP primary is soon to be over and his opponents couldnt find a 2009 USA Today Op-ed? Gingrich, Perry or Santorum could have killed him with this. tt's political malpractice to have missed it.

As one who is known to wager now and then, place your bets on a brokered Republican convention. You will hear it here first -- the nominee will former Senator Frist. Bet the house!

Primaries don't determine most of the delegates. Neither Santorum nor Newt have qualified in enough states to win enough delegates. The best they can do is spoil and hope for a high cabinet position, perhaps through a brokered convention.

If there is a brokered convention, you may even see a 5th non-candidate win, such as Jeb Bush. It'll be up to the party hacks to whip the delegates into line once they find someone who is actually electable (i.e. mostly unknown like Obama was four years ago).

As for Paul, even if he did win the nomination, the establishment would run a spoiler against him just like in 1912 when they ran Theodore Roosevelt against Taft.

Santorum can still win, Gingrich can't. For Santorum to have a chance Gingrich needs to quit. Short of that, Romney wins. No brokered convention. But next week Romney has to fight in the south and he's going to lose there again because the conservative base doesnt like him.

For all of the tea party talk, Republicans are going to nominate another McCain. Someone they arent really sure is a reliable conservative. And Romney is much worse than McCain in that sense.

This is true, but the sad thing is, if people actually paid attention to people's voting records instead of their rhetoric, Santorum is the biggest big-government guy of the group. And that's saying something!

Ron Paul does not have a whisper of a chance. The great American Public just loves their government handout.,

ruveyn

Almost any Republian who was in Congress under Bush can be hit with that. They backed the party and the party wanted what Bush wanted.

But in Romney's case he created "RomneyCare", which is the big brother of "ObamaCare" and then urged Obama to do the same. This is the signature issue that has most ignited the base in the past four years and Romney has the absolute worst record of any R candidate on the issue. Gingrich also wanted mandates, but he wasnt in power. Worse, Romney can't tell a straight story about it and people have noticed. The guy has flip-flopped on so many issues, sometimes in the same day.

Some conservatives are in shock that he's going to win. But it's very hard to beat the establishment's pick.

They shouldn't be. Sanatorum is about as palatable as running Oral roberts and Gingrich has shoved his foot in his mouth many times. If anyone is electable, it's Romney. A choice between Romney and Obama might lead to a fair chunk of dems to stay home on election day if they aren't particularly happy with Obama. That was a concern that a dem friend of mine fears.

I don't think that would be as applicable to republican voters since many want Obama gone at all costs (think 1 issue voters such as 2nd ammendment voters).

Oh please. The Republicans have been the party of big government since its inception (which was created out of whigs and free-soilers). They were the progressives who emancipated slaves by enslaving free men. They were the party of railroad subsidies and central authoritarianism. The only exception was when Robert Taft was their leader, and he ruled a minority.

Since when has a Republican cut spending?