It's HERE! As Oreo reported, the MSM is getting the number of delegates per state wrong, again. No wonder they so often get the counts wrong. Yesterday in their First Look email, MSNBC even got the number of contests wrong. I saw it and kept wondering if there was an eleventh I didn't know about. No matter. Luckily, we all have Matt and Oreo, who have gotten it right, and will have an accurate count after today's contests are over, both real and projected. Remember as you watch that Virginia is all but done as only Mittens and Paul are on the ballot, with no write-ins. In addition, Spawn was unable to file a full delegate slate in Ohio, so even if he wins the votes, he cannot get the delegates.
The delegate count actually matters less then some other things today. There are 416 at stake, and if you assume a projected 194 for Romney and add the 416, you get 610. by my abacus, that's less than the 1144 needed to win. If this were a fair primary process, you would contend that with the big states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas and California, and their combined delegate count of 563, left to vote that there was all sorts of time left...but the GOP hoi polloi wants a decisive enough win by Mittens today so they can move on to their other problems. This whole "who's gonna be the candidate" issue pales in comparison to the much bigger problems they have.
Kudos to John Boy McCain, a true Republican who yesterday said that the US should bomb Syria AND that Rush Limbaugh was unacceptable. (Batting 50% - wrong on the first, right on the second.) He spoke out about two of the four big issues. Before we can all slog to election day, there is Syria and there is Iran, and they are going to have to be dealt with. Thankfully, we have a commander in chief who is not any of the Republican nominees. The two more immediate Republican problems are Rush Limbaugh and the Federal budget. Those two thing promise to be a disaster for whichever guy becomes their nominee.
First, Rush. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that he spent 3 days libeling Sandra Fluke and the women of Georgetown University. His advertisers are fleeing, two stations dropped him, and it turns out he's been lying for years about the size of his audience. It's finally becoming obvious even to Republicans that he is in charge of the propaganda wing of the GOP, and it's a crap shoot as to whether he does more damage to their brand on the air or off it.
Second, the budget. The House has to come up with a budget within the confines of pandering to the 87 freshmen teabaggers, meeting the spending cap in the debt ceiling cap, and working around the triggered cuts. The 87 want something lower then the $1.047 debt ceiling cap, which they felt was too high, and a lot of other Republicans want to avoid more defense cuts, if not add back funds. (Especially in light of Syria and Iran.) The likely architect of the budget will again be Paul Ryan, and if Boehner allows his budget to go forward, it will fail, potentially facing a government shutdown in October, a month before the election. No doubt that will cost them in November. Therefore, it will be necessary to consider a budget that Democrats can sign on to, which will protect Medicare and Social Security, at least temporarily, be bipartisan as it will get some "moderate" GOP votes, but will anger the far right. The budget promises to harm not only their presidential candidate, but a lot of House members.
In addition, the GOP has to contend with the fact that in one South Carolina county, to get on the Republican ballot, you have to sign a paper saying you never had sex before you got married. Really. This is a problem for a party that wants to be a party and not a laughing stock. These are serious times, and this is ridiculous.
Remember, we, the readers, are not out of the woods yet. There are Senate seats to be concerned with, and there really is the budget which affects us all. We're all distracted by the jello wrestling that the Republican nomination process has become: hopefully, Mittens will get enough done today so we can move on to the real issues of the day. Serious problems require serious people to solve them, and the sooner they name him "candidate" the sooner we can move on, vote out the teabaggers and move forward. I leave you with this:
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