Mitt Romney finally won Ohio late last night, long after he gave an arbeit macht frei victory speech in his third home state, Massachusetts:
Tomorrow, we wake up and we start again. And the next day, we’ll do the same. And so we’ll go, day by day, step by step, door by door, heart to heart. There will be good days; there will be bad days. Always long hours, never enough time to get everything done.
The delegate count shows that Mitt has it right — this thing will go on for a while, even though he’ll probably win. If Sheldon Adelson told Newt that the book tour is over, and if Newt threw his delegates over to Santorum, Mitt would be looking even worse. Luckily, Newt’s ego won’t let that happen.
Even so, the next few contests don’t look good for Mitt. I can’t see anyone but Santorum winning in right-to-life Kansas on Saturday, which has 40 delegates at stake in a caucus. Newt or Rick will probably do well in the South, and Mississippi, Alabama and Missouri are all coming up. There are many rivers to cross, and many panties to sniff, before this thing is over.
amk
mr 1% proves his nick yet again by winning by 1%.
beltane
What were the overall turnout numbers from yesterday like? The fact that Virginia’s were at 5.5%, supposedly a record low, tells me that evangelicals uncharacteristically stayed home. Is it possible that some of these people will find themselves physically unable to cast a vote for the Mormon Satan in November?
c u n d gulag
Poor Shitt!
His supporters will have to do a lot of work, and he and his corporate sponsors have to spend a ton of money, as they continue on his “Bataan Wealth March!”
beltane
The clown show just gets worse and worse. If Rick Santorum had actually been on the ballot in every district in Ohio (he was not) he would have beaten Romney by 3 percentage points. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/07/1071971/-Add-Santorum-s-missing-Ohio-votes-and-he-beat-Mitt-by-3-
Someone needs to invade the Republican party and teach them about democracy.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane:
Why do you hate the troops?
Linda Featheringill
@beltane:
Santorum:
I find it scary that this man with next-to-no organization is still alive in the race for the most powerful position in the nation [at least]. Are there that many people out there who like the protofascist message?
MikeJ
@beltane: Understandable that they would have low turnout. Who was on the ballot other than Romney? Was there any point in going to vote if their chosen candidate was too stupid to get on the ballot?
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: I don’t think it is as scary as it looks. The number of voters in these primaries is really small.
amk
/fixed
Answer : Yes
Linda Featheringill
@Omnes Omnibus:
Okay. That makes me feel better.
chopper
wow, that was an epic VICTORY in TN.
Egg Berry
beltane
@Linda Featheringill: Yes, there are that many people out there who will be drawn to a protofascist message. We are called shrill when we refer to these people as Christofascists, but the name describes them perfectly. These are people who were born to obey and submit, and they feel the need to destroy those people who were not born to obey and submit.
A charismatic leader could easily get these people to do anything, anything, and that is what is frightening about them.
RossInDetroit
Hey, it’s only been 236 years. Give us time to sort out this Democracy thing.
The Ancient Randonneur
The half-term former governor of Alaska says she voted for Newt. Maybe she’s bucking to be the next Mrs. G? Once Newt figures out the current model can’t get him the nomination he’ll be looking for another one. If two people were ever made for one another it’s Gingrich and Palin.
Palli
Republican primary elections have an occasional bright side, Rep. Jean Schmidt lost her race in southern Ohio!
beltane
@The Ancient Randonneur: Palin and Gingrich really are made for each other. They would be like the Justinian and Theodora of the Wingnut Welfare Circuit. Also, Palin has better hair than Caliista.
Quincy
Does it make sense for Mittens to even put up more than a token effort in Kansas, Alabama or mississippi? He’s not going to win them in the primary or lose them in the general. Outspending the other clowns 5 to 1 again would be a waste of money.
PC
Ron Paul’s “strategy” of focusing on caucus states and delegates is doing wonders for him. Maybe he should go back to openly courting racists.
Keith G
Mitt will be doing okay from now on.
He will lose a few going forward, but he will win more, and as the weeks pass he can alter his campaign back to the independents. Yes, he is quite damaged now, but our fellow citizens and the media have no attention span. The memories of the sordid few months can easily be displaced.
His next big task is to begin to find a away to exert control over the National Convention. If he can do that, he can significantly change the media narrative.
Southern Beale
Also, looks like it’s gonna be Marcy Kaptur vs Joe The Plumber. God I’d love to see her give him a spanking.
Nemesis
So the goat rodeo has up KS, AL, MS and MO within the next week or so.
One cant imagine Mitt Davey Magic Underwear Crochet Romney doing well at all in any of these states. As a result, he will look even weaker next weekend than he looks today, which is kinda hard to cogitate.
The election is shaping up to be a blowout. Sure there will be culture war bullshit and maxed out gop alternate reality nonsense, but in the end, President Obama should pound mittbot, given that ObamaCare is the single least popular legislation the Pres has passed and mittbot cant attack on this issue because of his own albatros-RomneyCare. Mittbot got nuttin but the sky is falling rhetoric.
dmsilev
So, we’ve established that Mitt can win, barely, if he outspends his hapless opponent by 4:1 (Ohio) but not if he outspends him by 3:1 (Tennessee). Money may not be able to buy love, but enough of it apparently can buy RNC delegates.
gibsojj
Newt is still buying tons of ad time here in MS. We have an open primary so my friends and I are all going to vote for the Reptoid.
Wait a minute, reptoid could describe any of the candidates now that I think about it.
Schlemizel
All I can hear now is “And miles to go before I sleep”
This is going to cause me screaming nightmares – thanks!
Schlemizel
@Palli:
That IS good news – except it scares me, what did she lose to?
cmorenc
@Linda Featheringill:
To them, it doesn’t seem fascist at all because they don’t see that any of the things they consider core “freedoms” are threatened by Santorum’s message at all, but instead they see Santorum as defender of those freedoms from invasion by barbarian hordes intent on burning and pillaging everything they consider sacred to civilization. If you respond to pro-Santorum men and women that no one is proposing mandating that you marry anyone but someone of the opposite sex, nor is anyone proposing that every child must sample the “gay lifestyle” to see if it is for them in the name of diversity, nor is anyone proposing that anyone be forced to use contraception…these bits of sensible logic fall on deaf ears, because to them, none of this lies within the sphere of things they are willing to imagine as properly within the sphere of protected liberty, but rather as belonging in the sphere of things government should protect their own liberties from. Yeah, the logic of this is twisted, but it’s not a logical sentiment or thought to start with, but one rooted purely in atavistic fear and emotion.
ET
Paul did very well in VA which should tell camp Romney whole hell of a lot. Sure Gingrich and Santorum weren’t in the fight, but it seems more like that Romney would have gotten less votes if they had been.
The longer this goes on the weaker the eventual candidate and more importantly, the longer Americans can see what the GOP has become.
ExurbanMom
Mitt is a terrible public speaker. He looks and sounds like he’s in a hurry to get out of there, like he’s too close for comfort to the great unwashed masses and he needs to leave immediately.
The quote you provide above sounded as bad live as it reads on the page: platitudes, thrown out there by a speaker who didn’t give a shit, with all the emotional depth of a teaspoon. A silver teaspoon, like the one he was born with.
Uncle Cholmondeley
Actual headline in the dead tree edition of the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune this morning: “Romney struggles to put away Santorum”.
If I burn in hell for eternity for laughing at this, do I have a cause of action against Santorum?
Sly
But tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
Cacti
Schedule for the rest of March:
Kansas – 03/10
US Virgin Islands – 03/10
Guam – 03/10
Alabama – 03/13
Mississippi – 03/13
Hawaii – 03/13
Missouri – 03/17
Puerto Rico – 03/18
Illinois – 03/20
Louisiana – 03/24
At a minimum, I see losses for Willard in Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Louisiana.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Linda Featheringill:
The 27%ers (ie the Crazification Factor) at work.
curiousleo
The longer this [email protected] GOP primary runs, the worse it is for my state — North Carolina. If the GOP primary is over & done in May then the proposed gay-hating constitutional amendment has a better chance of getting beat by the forces of sanity. NC could actually defeat the thing if it were on the ballot in Nov. or if there’s no GOP primary to pull in the fans of Mr. Google Problem.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
raw money is edging towards existentialism. i expect him to go from davey crockett to camus before the convention.
slag
I love how Willard is trying to turn himself into the stable and secure candidate. The rugged, tried and true, sturdy fellow who will hunker down and put his shoulder into it to get the job done. You can count on dear old Dad to set things aright!
So funny. So un-Rmoney.
Chris
@cmorenc:
In other words, much like the original fascists.
There’s a caricatured image of fascists with their swastikas, goose-stepping and heiling in brown uniforms while waving copies of Mein Kampf, and of course because they don’t do that they think they can’t possibly be fascistic. But real fascism grew out of exactly that “looking for saviors to defend us from the barbarian hordes of Different People” sentiment.
mdblanche
@Schlemizel: Half a dozen of the other.
IrishGirl
@beltane: Also, too, Palin’s endorsement of Gingrich will make it all the more likely he’ll stay in the race and NOT quit, giving his delegates to Santorum.
It’s funny how the three GOP candidates represent the three major groups with GOP voters: Grifters, Haters, and 1 Percenters (I’ll let you figure out who is who)
IrishGirl
@Chris: Well their core freedoms are threatened so long as they are white, Christian and well behaved….until Santorum and his ilk decide there are other factors one should consider when choosing who have freedoms and who doesn’t. Odds on the next criteria….If unmarried, only virgins?
Don Moors
@Cacti (32)
As someone from the U.S. Virgin Islands I doubt that all four of them can muster more than a dozen votes from all three islands. (We don’t do republican in the V.I.)
During the 2008 general there was nary a peep in support of McCain and we went positively wild over President Obama.