Posted on 01/28/2008 10:43:14 PM PST by WFTR
In a few minutes, I'm going to bed. When I awake in the morning, Florida Republicans will be voting in the Republican primary. By this time tomorrow night, we may know which candidate has won Florida's 57 delegates to the Republican National Convention. The media will spend all day promoting the Florida primary as the deciding factor in 2008 primary race. Doing so will help them get better ratings tonight and sell papers tomorrow.
By Thursday, the media will be declaring that the race for the nomination is not finished. Whether they believe that the race is finished or not, they have to say that the race is still competitive in order to hype coverage of Super Tuesday. In this case, the media will be telling the truth.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, the race will continue for at least another week and likely longer. Candidates will be slow to quit this race not because they believe that the voters desire them but because they hope to capitalize on voter discontent with the other guy. The sad fact is that all of them have good reason to hold this grim hope.
Even if John McCain wins tomorrow and does well on Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney has reason to stay in the race. John McCain has made a career of betraying the Republican party in general and conservatives in particular. He claims that campaign finance reform is intended to solve the problem of too much money in politics. Of course, he refused to support efforts to include union money as money that he would remove from politics while doing everything he could to keep pro-life and pro-gun groups from being able to influence elections. I guess money in politics is okay if the money is taken from workers by force and used to support Democrats but isn't okay if given voluntarily by citizens to support conservative causes. He has Mexican officials who have advocated identity theft against Americans to benefit illegal aliens working on his campaign. His immigration bill was crafted to benefit Mexico, illegal aliens, and employers who take advantage of illegal aliens. His bill wasn't crafted to help Americans. He has a pro-life voting record, but he's worked behind the scenes in the Senate to keep pro-life legislation from coming to the floor. He claims to be good on national security, but he wants to close the terrorist prison at GitMo and stop waterboarding of our enemies. He embraces extreme environmentalism.
Mitt Romney or any other surviving Republican has good reason to believe that in a two-candidate race, many Republicans will abandon lesser candidates and support whichever candidate isn't John McCain. Until John McCain has a majority of delegates, this hope can keep another candidate in the race.
On the other side of the coin, John McCain probably believes that he can benefit from an anti-Mitt movement. Mitt Romney is a member of a denomination that many core Republicans hate. Even some who don't believe that Mitt Romney would take his orders from the Mormon church would see a Mormon in the White House as a sign of acceptance of the Latter Day Saints into our society. As someone whose interest in life has been managing companies and not political ideology, Mitt Romney has not been aware of the ideological passions that drive many voters in the Republican base. As a result, he's said things and done things that have offended that base. To govern in Massachusetts, he had to tolerate a strongly liberal legislature that would not have given him conservative polices even if he'd fought for those polices. He had to choose his battles, and his choices were bound to offend some Republicans.
John McCain or any other surviving Republican will have good reason to believe that in a two-candiate race, many Republicans will abandon lesser candidates and support whichever candidate isn't Mitt Romney. Until Mitt Romney has a majority of delegates, this hope can keep another candidate in the race.
While Rudy Giuliani seems to have lost the race, he has his own negatives. He has been the poster boy for those who would destroy our Second Amendment rights. Mitt Romney never tried to be a prominent anti-gunner on the national scene. Rudy Giuliani was. Rudy Giuliani was the poster boy for pro-abortion forces. A Republican electorate that is embarrassed by Tom Foley and Larry Craig really doesn't want to see a nominee who has appeared several times in public in elaborate drag. For all of his talk about security, he ran a sanctuary city, and that kind of sanctuary gives terrorists more freedom to plot against us. A win tomorrow really doesn't put Rudy Giuliani back into a front-runner position, but if he becomes the front-runner again, other candidates have reason to stay in the race to benefit from strong anti-Giuliani sentiment in the Republican base.
Mike Huckabee's record isn't that great, but there may be fewer die-hard "anti-Huckabee" Republicans than there are any other group. He may win a few southern states, but at this point, there's no reason to see him as a serious contender to be the front-runner. The biggest mistake he's made is destroying his own credibility by siding with John McCain too often.
No matter what happens later today, the race will continue.
The fact that we’re even talking about John McCain in the context of presidential primaries perplexes me: This is the same John McCain that tried to ram amnesty down our throat about six months ago. This is the same John McCain that keeps conservatives from using their first amendment rights. This is the same John McCain that derailed numerous conservative judges. This is the same John McCain that was censored by the Congress in the Keating Five scandal. This is the same John McCain that was nearly recalled by the voters of Arizona not that long ago. This is the same John McCain that graduated fifth from the bottom at the Naval Academy and just admitted that he doesn’t know anything about economics. This is the same John McCain that has a violent temper, an elitist attitude and is hated by fellow senators and staffers, alike.
Its over tommorrow, one way or another. Don’t kid yourself. Florida has become the Alamo. Hopefully Romney will pull it out, but if not I highly doubt there is a possibility of him recovering, especially in the Northeast or California.
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