There are just two rules for success:
1. Never tell all you know.
Roger H. Lincoln
Romney Wins Impressive Hat Trick: MD, DC, WI
57% of Delegates (Counting) For the Nomination
I voted early today for the candidate I had earlier announced: Romney for President and former Secret Service Agent Daniel Bongino for Senate. As of 11PM, Romney had 48% of the vote statewide to Santorum's 30%. Bongino at 33% of the vote appears to have won the GOP US Senate nomination by a 4-point margin over Douglas. Romney swept DC with 70% of the vote (note: Santorum was not on the ballot) with about 60% of the vote tabulated. Romney's victory in Maryland was overwhelming across counties, and he has won virtually all (if not all) delegates available in the 2 elections.
Wisconsin was a tighter battle, but with about 80% of the vote in, Romney with 42% of the vote beat Santorum by 4 points. CNN and WSJ now estimate Romney's total (including unpledged delegates) at 648-655 delegates, with Santorum picking up, according to WSJ, 6 delegates in Wisconsin, when he needed over 70% of remaining delegates going into the contest.
Intrade now rates Romney's chance of the nomination at 94% and all of the states for what I call Northeast Super Tuesday in 3 weeks rate at over 90% chances of Romney victories, except for Pennsylvania, but even there, Romney rates an almost 70% chance of winning. Santorum on Sunday talk soup sneered at chances he'll lose his home state, with a recent poll showing Romney within 2 points. Santorum claimed two recent polls north of 15 points. But a different poll was released today showing Romney within 6 points. I think Romney's hat trick puts Santorum in a difficult position in his own home state; we have seen Romney come from behind in states like Ohio and Michigan.under similar circumstances. There are something like 209 delegates available on April 24, and I believe Romney should come out with a delegate total surpassing 800 (not to mention a chunk of delegates out of Missouri just before then). The only primary Santorum has won in a purple/battleground state is Missouri, uncontested because there were no delegates at stake: Romney has consistently beaten Santorum in every other purple/blue state primary, including Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and New Hampshire. (I would add Virginia but Santorum didn't even get on the ballot.)
Santorum's standard talking point is that 60% of the GOP faithful is voting against Romney. If he's going to be consistent, that means that over 70% of the faithful is voting against him. The Gallup tracking poll is showing Santorum behind by 15 and Romney now consistently over 40%. The populist conservative media outlet newsmax is heavily promoting any anti-Romney piece it can find. For example, it's trying to spin that new polls showing Romney within 6 points in Pennsylvania, but it's claiming that the edge is more like 20 points among "real conservatives". Oh, give me a break! Santorum was in a leadership position for the first 6 years of the Bush Presidency, and Bush had added significantly to the national debt; Santorum voted for every earmark he could get. He helped add a new, unpaid-for Medicare entitlement (prescription drugs). Whatever that was, I'm sure it wasn't a fiscal conservative. If you are up against the $5T Man, you better not have a spendthrift career in Congress.
A second point is that I'm sufficiently annoyed by incessant Santorum's scapegoating Romney for ObamaCare. It's time that we point out that Santorum had a union-friendly voting record during his 16 years on Capitol Hill, but his election year conversion to national right to work isn't politically expedient?
Finally, I'm getting annoyed by Santorum and Gingrich constantly whining about the Romney campaign outspending them; the fact of the matter is that both politicians had only single-digit support until Herman Cain's campaign imploded last fall; they never had populist conservative support behind them on their own merit, and the only reason either of them have won even a single state is because they have benefited by default of a relentless anti-Romney campaign over the past year-plus by populist conservatives. Santorum constantly engages in anti-Romney rhetoric because he knows his campaign would have folded a long time ago running on his own merits. So spare me the poor pitiful me act: running an anti-Romney campaign 4 years after you endorsed Romney to be President with the same background and positions...
Barack "Wildcatter" Obama?
As Barack Obama channels his inner wildcatter T Boone Pickens in yet another Obama election year with gas going over $4/gallon and tries to take credit for an uptick in domestic production (which had more to do with private/state resource development), energytomorrow.org published the following chart, which it calls Administration Oil Strategy Contributes to Price Increases. The chart uses the following icons to reflect Obama's record: "stop" means things like canceling leases or rejecting permits, "$$" reflects increased tax burden, "gavel" looks at increased regulations, "hourglass" refers to bureaucratic delays; "magnifying glass" suggests increased scrutiny/bureaucratic inertia, e.g., environmental impact studies (delay tactics), and "scissors" identifies things like declaring certain areas off limits to exploration and development.
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| Courtesy of energytomorrow.org |
Obama's Unethical Attempts
To Intimidate SCOTUS Over ObamaCare
Obama recently said this about SCOTUS reviewing ObamaCare:
[Obama was] "confident" the Court would not "take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."The idea that the Democrats ran an election on this 2000-page monstrosity (that had Justice Scalia joking about constituting cruel and unusual punishment on judges) that most of the legislators never even read is a pathetic lie. The American people primarily elected Obama and the Democratic Congress in 2008 mostly because of economic uncertainty following the economic tsunami and against a highly unpopular Bush Administration--not because they bought into a progressive political agenda.
As a court of appeals testily responded to the Obama Administration, it certainly has been the case since 1803 that enacted laws can and have been declared unconstitutional, regardless of the nature of Congressional elections. Perhaps if Obama didn't want an "unprecedented, extraordinary" SCOTUS ruling of unconstitutional, perhaps he shouldn't have signed an "unprecedented, extraordinary" law requiring an individual mandate and a unilateral raising of eligibility for Medicaid, with states being forced to pay half the costs.
Passed by a "strong majority"? It's beside the point, but let's keep in mind this was a PARTISAN law passed without a single GOP vote, it was opposed by the public in polls for months preceding law passage, Obama lost some 30 Democrats in the House on the bill and had to come up with a side deal with a small group of pro-life Democrats to gain barely a simple majority, NOT a "strong" majority, on a corruptly bargained partisan Senate bill that barely reached the Senate floor and the House, demanding a stronger bill with a public option, had declared was dead on arrival. The reason the Democrats had to do this version of sausage making was because newly elected Scott Brown (R-MA) had vowed to be #41 (filibuster-enabling), which meant the Dems couldn't risk a normal Senate/House bill reconciliation which could be filibustered; instead, they abused process by making "fixes" through budget reconciliation, not subject to filibuster.
I know Obama loves to put lipstick on a government-owned pig, but his revisionist history is disingenuous. This was a former lecturer on Constitutional law whom opposed the individual mandate on principle during his path to the Democratic nomination, but he is hypocritically opposing its overturn on relevant Constitutional grounds? Let's not forget this is a White House that never took leadership on the health care "reform" because they knew any bill they came up with was dead on arrival and would be a political loss. Obama, an unprincipled demagogue, has been, and always will be, Cheerleader-in-Chief, not a leader.
Political Humor
"I read that the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot were only 1 in 176 million — or as most people put it, 'Well, yeah. That's why I bought two.'" - Jimmy Fallon
[Barack Obama said, "That's nothing. I won the Mega Trillions jackpot; those odds are 1 in 308 million: it's called a Presidential election. You get to run up trillions on your tab, you get a mansion to live in, your own cooking staff, and use of your very own airplane; you never have to wait in line anywhere you go, and you get to go on any TV show you want, whenever you want. And Donald Trump thinks he's the only one whom can fire people? I can terminate the career of any US General whom calls Joe Biden a doofus; I'm the only one whom gets to call Biden a doofus."]
"I always think it's funny that people wait in line for hours and hours when [the Mega Millions jackpot is] $640 million, but if it's a hundred million, it's not really worth it. None of the people in that line were winners in any sense of the word. They stood in line for nothing, wasting a whole day." - Jimmy Kimmel
[Well, unless we're talking Detroit, and it's the Obama Money Stash Jackpot. Or the government is handing out free cheese.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Doobie Brothers, "Long Train Running"
