As generally predicted, Rick “Sanctimonious” Santorum won the Louisiana primary last night. Per Paul Constant, at The Stranger:
With 98% of the vote in, it looks like this: Santorum wins with 49% of the vote. Romney is second, with 27%, Gingrich has 16%, and Ron Paul’s got 6% of the vote. With the 175,013 votes cast, we’re already seeing a much higher turnout than in 2008, when only 156,101 Republicans voted… Romney’s 47,495 votes is certainly an improvement over last time around, when he won only 10,222 votes. Still, I think you can make a case that when Santorum wins a state, the turnout is generally better than 2008, and Romney’s wins happen when there are fewer voters than the last time around…
__
The Caucus is saying, and rightly so, that this is a two-man race, and that Gingrich and Paul are simply wasting their money at this point. But Santorum is still basically pissing in the wind, too. The next race is Wisconsin, where Romney is up 13 points in the last poll. Santorum’s only hope in Wisconsin is that this Etch-A-Sketch thing lingers a while, and that his efforts to defend Governor Scott Walker in the recall election will make an impression on Wisconsin Republicans. Even then, after Wisconsin, the primaries will turn largely to the Northeast, where Romney dominates. I expect the Republican establishment to start pushing hard on Santorum to get out after Wisconsin unless he can turn this convincing Louisiana win into something a little more sustainable…
And yet we’ve still got maybe two dozen more primaries! I prefer Gail Collins’ argument:
… We have heard a lot of complaints about how long and dreary these presidential contests have been, but they all seem totally wrongheaded.
__
The primaries have been great for the economy. Dimwitted billionaires are dumping money they don’t need into the campaigns of people who can’t win, providing much-needed jobs for ad-writers, poll-takers and yard-sign manufacturers.
__
Do you remember, at the depth of the recession, when Keynesians kept saying that we could jump-start the recovery by just paying a whole bunch of people to dig holes and fill them back in? This is exactly the same thing! Keep going, Republicans!
Apart from digging holes, what’s on the agenda for what remains of the weekend?
Off Colfax
I don’t know about you folks, but I can’t even consider the thought of either of these circus clowns as the GOP nominee without amazing and incredible consumption of alcohol.
If Obama loses in November, I’m definitely leaving the country. I hear Mozambique isn’t too terribly awful these days.
Mustang Bobby
I’m up early so I can do a sunrise drive to Key Biscayne (with the top down, of course) to support the Cystic Fibrosis walkathon; then I’m off to the printer to pick up the latest printing of my play script so I can sell it at the William Inge Festival in April, and then to a quiet hour of meditation at the Miami Friends Meeting.
I envision a nice long nap this afternoon over the New York Times crossword puzzle.
amk
nein, nein, nein cain still thinks he is in the race and doesn’t rule out getting back on the klown kar.
amk
Hate this lefty lean of the site.
WereBear
@Mustang Bobby: Sounds like an awesome day.
I will finish setting up a Chromebook for recovering mother-in-law. We are coming up with helpful links for her interests in history, health (duh!) and open source reading materials. She’s heard of these eBooks and would like to see one in the wild.
becca
I am drinking coffee as I sit by an open window upstairs, listening to FUV and waiting for my year old granddaughter to wake up so we can have waffles and bananas and then go weed the side yard. I’ll let her parents sleep in a bit becuz I’m just nice that way and my SIL and daughter will owe me big time.
BTW- our latest a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e addition is named Lily.
DecidedFenceSitter
At home day today – Dresden Files RPG that I run for friends. Building some IKEA shelves to go into my basement. Probably a pot roast in the slow cooker.
c u n d gulag
Why is Ron Paul even still in this race?
To annoy the living sh*t out of Conservatives, or to give him time to convince stupid Gitt R-money, that Rand would help him win in November?
Joey Maloney
@Off Colfax:
I like to spend some time in Mozambique
The sunny sky is aqua blue
And all the couples dancing cheek to cheek
It’s very nice to stay a week or two
And maybe fall in love just me and you.
Joseph Nobles
@c u n d gulag: I was thinking Mitt/Rand was on on on, and then Rand joined up with DeMint to actually end Medicare for everybody. So Romney/Santorum it will be.
c u n d gulag
Poor Rick.
He so doesn’t want to be on the tail-end of a ticket.
JPL
This might be a first but I’m linking to Frank Bruni’s oped piece in the NYTimes. link
The article titled Rethinking His Religion is well worth a read if you can access it. Normally I would not spend my time reading Bruni’s columns but I’m glad that I made an exception this time.
kay
Primaries keep the base and donors engaged. Without Santorum and Gingrich enthusiasm on the GOP side would plummet.
They’re the only element providing any juice at all.
Republicans haven’t attempted to appeal
to “swing voters” since 2004, and even
that’s questionable, probably 2002. That’s 8 to 10 YEARS ago. 8 to 10 YEARS of all base, all the time.
Mitt Romney’s got his work cut out for him in the general. He’s tasked with taking a GOP base that’s been fed nothing but raw meat for a decade and maintaing their enthusiasm ad engagement relying on nothing but their rabid hatred of Obama.
This is the EASY part for Romney. When the primary is over he faces REAL pressure to feed them the pure-vitriol diet they’ve been accustomed to, and he’s got to do that himself, w/out these surrogates doing it for him.
MattF
@JPL: Agree about the Bruni column– I’m still trying to understand that story at the end. Not the first time I’ve heard stories like that.
JPL
@kay: Ann Romney will play the part of the dutiful wife who tours the country talking about the man she married and how very kind he is. She’ll mention the difficulties of supporting oneself while in college and the American dream. She’ll conveniently leave out the part that they had to sell stock in order to put food on the table and the MSM will not mention this either because that would hurt their narrative.
Linda Featheringill
@WereBear:
:-)
WereBear
@JPL: Thanks for that: a very thoughtful piece that teaches a great lesson. Namely, that we are supposed to change and grow. Constantly.
Something the person at the end of the piece really really hasn’t grasped.
Narcissus
With the author listed at the end of the post, I don’t know what voice to read the post in
you know what I mean
WereBear
@MattF: The way I understand stories like that: How can they feel superior if they don’t lie to themselves?
JPL
@MattF: The comments are closed to head off a firestorm of murderers and liars posts, I assume. I would have written about the personhood amendment that bans many forms of birth control. According to the hypocrites, who knows how many lives, I have taken.
kay
@JPL:
The GOP base loved George W Bush. They loved him, in a weepy, personal way that had nothing whatever to do with his “real conservative” credentials.
The phrase I heard most often was “he’s a GOOD MAN”.
Romney doesn’t have that.
Right now the two paid hacks to his Right are keeping the base ginned up, but after June those voters turn to Romney, and there’s nothing there. They’re going to crash like addicts denied a drug.
Romney is missing one of the “Bush elements” and that element is “love”.
I don’t know what he replaces it with.
WereBear
@kay: I thank the Goddess every day that apparently W (perhaps like Reagan) was a phenomenon that is difficult to cobble together more often than every three decades.
kay
@WereBear:
I was at hearing after hearing all last week. All of the lawyers here are Republicans, with the exception of my husband.
They were embarrassed of the Etch a
Sketch gaffe, not because it “says” anything about Romney, but because one of the things they loved about Bush was he ran a great, flawless campaign in Ohio.
He was a “winner” and they back “winners”, because they’re “winners” too, mostly in their MINDS, but still.
They don’t like to be humiliated.
J.W. Hamner
Think I’m gonna go see Katniss Everdeen this afternoon.
jurassicpork
Dick Cheney’s Top 10 Reasons For Getting a Heart Transplant.
opie jeanne
I intend to spend some quality time in the garden once it warms up The past two days have been gorgeous once the sun appeared and the projected overnight lows are in the 40s for the next week, so we think we need to clear the raised beds in anticipation of planting seeds.
I have been awake since a quarter to five am, for no good reason. Posting from my phone as an experiment while mr opie jeanne snores beside me.
the fugitive uterus
digging holes also today – got a real nice post-hole digger!
gelfling545
@WereBear: and they never seem to realize that everybody’s situation is “different”. One of the multiple offenses of the the forced pregnancy movement is that they have packaged all women who require abortion into one neatly despised unit – careless, loose living,immoral, whatever. If some of the women in that movement would quit shouting and start listening they could find any number of people in situations where there is no happy choice and who are only doing the best they can for themselves and their families. I guess, though, that if you can’t even say to yourself” my situation was such and it might be the same for others” there’s not much hope of that.
Katherine H
this group is parked at our place this week / they are a group of young people dedicated to picking up litter across America and educating us all about the use and misuse of our resosources / if you missed the 60’s/70’s they are providing a wonderful enactment / merry pranksters without the psychedelics !
pickupamerica.org/
the fugitive uterus
@gelfling545: get between me and whoever i wanna f**k and i’m coming after you with a baseball bat. i’m just saying. :)
the fugitive uterus
btw, here in Redsville, apparently, there was a gathering in the park for justice for Trayvon Martin yesterday and i knew nothing about it! i have some local people on my political FB and one lady said something about it after the fact and i was floored! i had to question if she was talking about the same park because i absolutely could not believe it. i asked her to post pictures.
but that explains the traffic cops around yesterday, as i was driving to the convenience store.
i’m telling you, this has GOT to be big for something like that to take place HERE.
anyway, i still want complete absolute confirmation because i am still in disbelief and am not sure if i am dreaming.
MattF
@jurassicpork: I guess I can say here that I can’t think of anything even remotely positive to say about Cheney’s survival.
the fugitive uterus
@MattF: “best health care money can buy”?
i know, i know
WereBear
@the fugitive uterus: While nothing can help the grief of Trayvon’s parents, the fact that he WAS such an extraordinary young person is a vital element in how this cause has caught fire in the popular imagination. It seems to be a constant impulse in humanity; what Charles Pierce called “the topical anesthetic” of excuses that we apply to show that whatever bad thing happened, the victim brought it on themselves. The more one dwells in fantasy, the greater this impulse.
And, politically, “blaming the victim” absolves the viewer from feeling compelled to do anything about it.
But Trayvon’s parents lost a child who shares an important attribute with our current President: he was a truly good person whose upright and conscientious surface offers very few handholds for the vultures of the Right Wing. At least they can be proud of what their child accomplished by virtue of his character; even though he was robbed of the opportunity to bring it into full flower.
Elizabelle
Thomas “Mustache” Friedman’s column today: A Festival of Lies.
Silly me. I thought it was about the GOP primaries.
A whiff:
Um, I don’t think the 3 bad things Friedman finds in middle east regimes are limited to “their side.”
See: GOP primaries.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Is it possible, judging from the title of the column, that Friedman has read China Miéville’s ‘Embassytown’? I’m having a cognitive dissonance.
Elizabelle
@the fugitive uterus:
I think the Trayvon Martin murder is huge. Too huge for a bandaid or pandering.
Doesn’t just have to be racial. It hits anyone who’s got a 17 year old man-child among their loved ones, or young men approaching or grew through that age .
Although I don’t for a minute think my loved ones run the risk that Trayvon did, going out for his Skittles.
I feel for his parents, being Emmet Till’s mom and dad, circa 2012.
ciotog
Has Romney won a single state that the Republicans have any chance of winning in the general?
ET
Actually some bloggers were predicting Romney. I am from NOLA and knew better. LA is a state perfectly suited to Santorum.. Protestant and evangelical in the north, and southern, Catholic everywhere else. People like my uncle (rich, business, and snobby) who likely voted Romney are the minority.
the fugitive uterus
i checked out the pictures at the lady’s FB – it was a large gathering of African Americans, which explains why i knew nothing about it! it’s a public park in the heart of Whitesville, where i live, lots of rich people, too except for a few people like me who are just middle class people living in very old townhouses which will probably be razed if the housing market ever picks up again
anyway, on any given day, however, this beautiful park is filled with diversity – Hispanics, blacks, whites, some asians, and other nationalities – many people who were drawn here initially because of opportunity and cheaper living conditions
but living here in a neighborhood of republican whites surrounding this lovely park, i guess i hadn’t expected such a gathering to take place HERE, somehow.
my pasty, fish-belly whiteness is showing
kinda cool that it happened here because it is a bit “in your face” — i don’t mean in a violent way, but just “hey, you just can’t look the other way people. nobody can!”
my political FB is covered with grief and rage every single day over this
the fugitive uterus
oops nvm
anyhoo
Kristine
Sunny but cool here in NE Illinois. After weeks of unseasonable warmth, it may struggle to hit 60F. That’s still warm for this time of year, but we got spoiled. Nevertheless, daffs are open, grass is bright green, and trees are budding. And the weeds, oh holy, the weeds.
King and Gaby have breakfasted. Gaby’s lying out on the deck. King’s inside with me for now because he’s itching to bark at anything and it’s still a little early on a Sunday morning for that. He’s getting back at me by wandering the house and getting into trashcans and such. Had to close several interior doors against the onslaught.
I just had breakfast too–Bob’s Red Mill Thickly Rolled Oats, where have you been all my life??
The day will consist of indoor and outdoor work. My tomatoes are sprouting, and some are already tall enough that I need to think about moving them to larger quarters.
I need about three weeks of mornings like this.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JPL: Thanks for that. I would never have bothered with a Bruni column otherwise, but that is well wroth sharing.
Mike in NC
Willard hit the magic number! VICTORY!
Phyllis
@Kristine: I grabbed a bag of his apple blueberry granola at Big Lots last week for a trial run. Getting some more of that.
Kristine
@J.W. Hamner: She’s worth the time.
Kristine
@Phyllis: I’m going to be on the lookout for more of his stuff. I can cook a single serving of the oats in the microwave in 5 minutes, and they taste so much better than any of the other brands or types. Pinch of salt. Fruit. Shot of maple syrup. Even steel-cut don’t come close.
lamh35
@JPL: I may be just a lowly Michelle O-bot, but when comparing Ann Romney to Michelle O, I just don’t think there is a comparision.
Hell, aside from the usual racist Rush-heads and Briebart-heads, Michelle O has a high approval rating with Conserv too.
In a campaign of Ann vs Michelle, I’d take Michelle hands down.
Kristine
@JPL: You know what struck me? That the first thing that doctor thought when he saw that the woman on the ladder, his most vocal protestor, was not there was “I hope she’s OK.”
His other words fill in some blanks, but that defines him. I’m not sure I could be that kind.
Thanks for the link.
Frankensteinbeck
Isn’t this only the second state to have anything but tepid GOP turnout figures? The other one being South Carolina?
ShadeTail
Via the Washington Monthly blog, Rick Moran of the American Thinker lies about the President’s statement on Trayvon Martin by falsely claiming President Obama called for Zimmerman’s arrest and conviction.
GG
Trying to get holes dug today before the rain sets in, but we’ll see. Right now it’s very sunny. Hope to plant tomatoes, sweet peas, tarragon, arugula, mixed greens, monarda, and calendulas to get in. We also need to be at the local Sunday Farmers’ Market when they open – our favorite egg people are apparently now everyone else’s too, and last weekend they were sold out when we arrived 30 minutes after opening.
Elizabelle
@lamh35:
Yeah, I think the conservatives realize how perilous their “family values” situation when one of the most appealing, accomplished and principled families in American politics is the Obamas. Multi-generational; grandma’s under the roof too.
Which is why you get the Fox News commenters spewing about Obama being on the down low (closet homosexual/bisexual — that marriage has to be a sham) and Michelle being (fill in the blank — she hits all their buttons regarding strong and beautiful women).
It’s a good problem for us O-bots to have.
kay
@ShadeTail:
It’s funny. because Jeb Bush is the one who went too far. He said his stand your ground law doesn’t apply. The FL legislator who “wrote it” said the same thing.
Republicans in FL are now judge and jury? They say which law does or does not apply?
Obama would have been absolutely vilified for that.
rikyrah
the cartoon is funny.
rikyrah
the whole family values thing kills them.
the Obamas KILL THEM.
IT BURNS THEM UP that Barack and Michelle Obama know that they are BLACK and have acted accordingly.
hee hee hee hee
they have NOTHING on them.
TruthOrScare
@kay: Pure, unadulterated viciousness and lies? Generally works pretty well with the base.