Gridiron Politics

Goodbye Mitt Romney. It was nice knowing you. And even though I never understood why the journalists were always raving about your “Hollywood good looks”, “chiseled features” or “shoulders you could land a 747 on”, I think you were a nice guy.

For those of you who do not ingest politics or accidentally look at the front page of MSNBC on someone else’s computer while you’re daydreaming in class, well, this is the day we say goodbye to Mr. Romney and his latter day ambitions of grandeur. By all accounts, he makes a great businessman and a good governor of a super liberal state, but strangely enough Republican voters didn’t buy his conversion to their cause and split up the vote between Bible belter Huckabee and Golf-ball-cheeks McCain. (Seriously, have you ever LOOKED at the guy’s jaw? His head is shaped like a giant Mr. Peanut.) Romney dropped out of the race suspended his campaign today after pulling out his TI-85, adding up his electoral delegates and Huckabee’s delegates and comparing them to McCain’s delegates. Could he spend a gazillion more dollars of his personal fortune? Yes. Would it buy him anything besides ridicule?

No. So he dropped out. And it’s kind of sad, really. I blame it all on New Hampshire and its stupid open primary, where pollsters claimed Obama had a solid lead in the Democratic race and all the independents that probably would have voted for Obama instead crossed over and voted on the Republican side for McCain, thereby denying Romney what would have otherwise been an easy New Hampshire victory. Oh, and it did Obama no favors either, as the move sapped his Iowa momentum and ceded a win in the state to Hillary.

I had this crazy idea, before Super Tuesday, that if Huckabee just reached out to Romney, maybe they could run on a combined ticket where Huck got to be president and Romney took the vice. You ask yourself: Why would Romney do this? Well, the indications were all there before Super Tuesday that McCain’s nomination was inevitable. Huckabee would almost certainly get the veep slot from McCain, while Romney could do nothing but tank. So instead, if they’d allied together, maybe Romney could have dropped out, thrown his endorsement to Huckabee and instead of splitting the votes the conservatives could rally behind Huckabee and take back the nomination from Chipmunk-Cheeks McCain.

It’s obviously a little late for that now. Huckabee will stay in the race for another week, but barring supermajorities in the primaries this weekend plus a landslide in the Chesapeake Primaries next Tuesday, he’ll turn it over to McCain so the guy can Unite the Clans and woo Rush, Dobson and the other conservatives who hate his guts right now back to his side. As for Romney, there’s always 2012. People really like you, Mitt. It’s just that conservatives doubted your sincerity until it was too late. Yes, you believed we should double or triple the capacity of Guantanamo Bay. That was nice and all.

But you also believe that angels fluttered down in the 19th century with a big stack of golden tablets and great news of the Mormon life. And just think of it: You also get a private planet and passel of wives (if indeed you were a upstanding Mormon fellow.) All these things seem pretty foreign to the Republican base. Don’t worry, though: After they spent the next four years under a liberal president (Hillary, Obama or McCain, take your pick), they’ll be happy to nominate you and embrace your new-fangled beliefs and supplemental texts to the Bible.

Well, this blog fell asleep once the college football season got all wonky, but an exciting primary season for the presidency should get things back on track. First things first: OMGWTFOBAMA!!! And WTF, HUCK? There, I singlehanded proved why ‘net abbreviations and politics don’t work.

Tuesday was a big win for Obama. It wasn’t as big as some pollsters were predicting. For instance, Zogby predicted an Obama win by 14 points instead of the real outcome of Hillary winning by 10 points. But if someone had predicted two weeks ago that Obama would take 13 states on Super Tuesday, take a 14th race down to the wire in New Mexico and concede only 8 states to Hillary, that someone would have been laughed at. By me, for one. Heck, even a week ago after Edwards dropped off there was no consensus about where his support would go and which candidate would surge. What was known: Hillary was on top of the polls and enjoying a significant national lead. What’s known now: The two turned out a near identical number of supporters nationwide on Tuesday, and they’re pretty close to tied on delegate counts (about 850 a piece, depending on whose figures you use and how you count super delegates. Obama had an obvious surge of support that started moving the polls last Friday and continued up through Tuesday. If the super primary had been held February 12 instead, Dems might have crowned a nominee instead of simply raising the stakes for both candidates. But I’m sure of this: Early voting makes it really difficult to predict outcomes. When states like California issue half a million absentee ballots and people began voting 10 days ago, it can definitely sap the momentum a surge might otherwise bring. Oh well. That’s a polling problem, not an election issue. And don’t even get me started on Oregon’s vote-by-mail nonsense.

Back to Obama vs. Hillary - I gotta be honest: I didn’t care about Obama. Just another Democrat to split the vote with Edwards and give Hillary the win. But I changed my mind last night after hearing Obama’s victory speech. Here’s a YouTube link, if you’re interested. (It gets good after the first minute and a half.) Obama’s speech made me think that maybe we could finally get a Democrat that focuses on getting things done instead of whining about what’s not getting done. “Our time is come, our movement is real, and change is coming to America.” Nothing about the bad Republicans, or vote for me because I’m black, or vote for me because I’m a woman, or vote for me because I represent your interests. His message is different: He’s saying, “I represent America as we want it to be, and I represent your hopes and your dreams.” No pandering, just hope and a promise of a different Washington.

Is this realistic? I really don’t know. Obama has the same savvy political operatives of any other politician, and I’m not saying he won’t make mistakes. But hopefully, he won’t get jaded and hopefully he’ll shellack Hillary and beat McCain in the generals. Now, it’s possible that Obama just looks good next to the nepotistic crybaby formerly known as Hillary Rodham Clinton and now called by her first name by everyone including me.  But here’s hoping.

Tommorrow: Analysis on the Republican side. Maybe I’ll actually update this thing two days in a row!