I watched a little of the early results from Dad's hospital room last night (he's doing a lot better, btw), and the early stuff, as usual, was nearly unintelligible. There was no pattern on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, it seemed to be an all Barak night, although this morning's stories say Clinton and Obama are in a dead heat.
I listened to Hugh Hewitt try to make a silk purse out of Mitt Romney's sow's ear all evening and Townhall.com should have to declare coverage as an in-kind contribution to the Romney campaign. Here's how Patrick Ruffini tried to twist the results:
what is clear that Mitt Romney battled to within a single digit deficit nationally of the frontrunner, making this the closest nomination contest since 1976. For a campaign that started at 3% in the polls, it came a long way.
Y-yes-s-s, it 's true that Mitt Romney came a long way, but as Keith Olbermann bloviated, Romney probably spent $1 million for every vote he's gotten. Let's face it: Mitt Romney is the poster child for campaign finance reform. True, it's his own money to spend as he likes, but Romney, who had little recognition, wasted his cash running slimy negative ads when he should have used the money portraying a positive image.
I guess Rush Limbaugh will be crying for three hours on the radio today. It makes me happy I can no longer stream him at work. After all, Rush endorsed Mitt yesterday and look at the results! I know Rush will declare that he doesn't speak for the party or that his audience makes up their own minds. To some extent that's true, but his advertisers obviously thinks he has some influence on them. Maybe not as much as he'd like.
In vote totals (according to Yahoo), McCain had 613 delegates, to 269 for Romney and 190 for Huckabee.
Listening to Hewitt last night, who sounded desperate for a Romney victory somewhere not expected, I heard over and over how a McCain nomination would split the Republicans and cause the GOP to have a meltdown. The truth is, the Republican party is already fractured, without either vision or a strong leader. And the mask slipped from the ugly side of the party with the anti-McCain rhetoric of talk radio which Hewitt has crowed about for three weeks.
The fact is, for all the people who hate John McCain, he is still more electable than Mitt Romney. Those self-same talk radio hosts should be spending at least five minutes of their shows examining why so many people would not ever vote for Mitt Romney instead of excoriating conservatives for choosing John McCain. At least some conservatives would vote for John McCain, but the independents and moderates Laura Ingraham sniffs at wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney were he the nominee. They would probably vote Democrat.
That may be acceptable to Rush and the gang. After all, they would rather be pure than enact any legislation. But for the rest of us, A candidate with a chance of winning is better than no chance of winning for the simple reason that there's far more at stake than just the presidency. There's judges. There's the war on terror. And there's redistricting, a point made by Michael Steele. If Democrats control the House, Senate, and presidency, redistricting will erase Republican gains of the last 20 years, plus give us every piece of bad legislation (2 words: Fairness Doctrine) in the Democrats' arsenal. For all the "there's no difference between McCain, Hillary, and Barak" crowd, that's something to think about.
Victor Davis Hanson has some interesting observations about McCain Derangement Syndrome, including the idea that there's no choice in trying to change any minds. Don't know that I agree with that assessment (I'm an argumentative sort), but he might have a point.
|