Ben Shapiro at Breitbart.com grinds on with The Vetting, this time looking at the inversions of #OccupyResoluteDesk during his time as a Constitutional lecturer. Looking at his final exam question, he concludes, formatting mine:
Obama’s an extreme legal leftist.
He thinks that banning infertility treatment for unwed couples is akin to sterilizing them.
He thinks that there is no connection between childbearing and childrearing and the integral value of marriage.
He thinks that arguments about “tradition” are troubling.
And he believes that all judges rule according to their experiences – which goes a long way toward explaining his love for Sonia Sotomayor, whose “wise Latina” experiences may shape her judicial reasoning, according to her own admission.
I think Shapiro is too kind. Obama is a fool, of the dangerous sort who’s convinced himself that his foolishness is the new wisdom.
Barack is in the rationally wasted tradition of Postmodernism. We have extended the benefit of the doubt to this hellish falsehood for far too long. Obama. Must. Go.
And, via Insty, anyone who would let his sorrypuss desecrate the flag, while certainly within the First Amendment, merits having abuse heaped about his head and shoulders. I was unaware that this was occurring at a Democ**t Party office. How sick, shameful, and wrong. In summary: Democ**t.
Legal Insurrection embeds video. My dudgeon is sufficiently high that I won’t embed the video or still photos. The fact that any Democ**t is too stupid to understand how antithetical this is to all we represent in this country just goes to show what a decadent little pack of lemmings the crypto-Marxists have become. I need to stop here before my rhetoric gets eliminationist.
“Romney campaign says losing nomination would take ‘act of God'”
— MSNBC, March 7
“Senator Santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign . . . He’s far behind in the delegate count, far behind in the popular vote count. If you look at the math, it’s a very difficult road for him.”
— Mitt Romney, March 13
“So far we have two, two and half times as many delegates as he has, millions of more votes than he has. . . . If he is able to pull off a miracle, then so be it.”
— Mitt Romney, March 12
Saw that last quote via It’s Only Words, who offers some excellent advice for Mitt Romney, although I’m not sure that he’s in a mood to listen. Nevertheless, there is evidence that despite all the bold talk of Romney’s “inevitability,” Team Mitt’s starting to sweat:
Romney was not planning to visit Illinois until Monday. Now, he adds a Friday morning campaign stop before flying to Puerto Rico.
Having complained bitterly about some of the Santorum campaign’s bungles, it is an undeniable fact that Santorum’s success is beginning to push the Romney campaign up against Mitt’s inherent limitations. If Santorum can keep up the pressure, it’s possible that Team Mitt could commit the kind of error that might turn the tide against Mr. Inevitable. And, regardless of what you may have heard, Romney is much weaker than the delegate-counters want to admit.
So, while Romney currently has 53% of delegates, he has less than 40% of actual votes. Santorum has 27% of delegates and 26% of votes.
Why the extra delegate edge for Romney? Because Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have drastically underperformed in terms of delegate count: Between them, Newt and Paul have 34% of the votes, but only 19% of delegates, so that votes for either of them have had the practical effect of adding delegates for Romney!
More troubling, however, as Dan McLaughlin further demonstrates, is that Romney’s popularity is actually declining among Republican voters as the campaign continues:
Romney’s share of the vote decreased every month, from 40.5% in January to 39.8% in February to 36.3% in March. This is not the kind of performance that you expect from a candidate capable of winning people over to his side. That spells trouble if Mitt wins the GOP nomination.
What happened to Newt? His January numbers were high because of his Jan. 21 win in South Carolina (243,172) and his second-place finish in Florida (533,117) on Jan. 31. February was a wipeout for Gingrich, while his March total was boosted by his win in Georgia, where he got 424,976 votes, 38% of his total for the month to date.
Compared to Gingrich, Santorum has run a far more balanced campaign: He has won in the Midwest, the West and South, and has won in both primaries and caucuses. In terms of viability as a national candidate, Gingrich’s campaign has been largely an illusion. He has never won a caucus, and just three primaries — South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, about 1.2 million votes — account for 57% of his total votes so far.
Santorum has run a relatively low-budget campaign throughout the primary season, but the campaign announced recently that it raised $9 million in February, as he rose in the polls. Gingrich’s financial picture is considerably more murky.
Campaign fund-raising and spending reports for February are not due to the Federal Election Commission until next week, but the Gingrich campaign spent little money on advertising in Mississippi and Alabama, even as Gingrich was saying the states were crucial to his success.
And Winning Our Future, the pro-Gingrich Super PAC that has been propped up by nearly $11 million in donations from the family of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has reduced its advertising on TV and invested in less-expensive radio ads, suggesting the PAC could be running low on money.
In that context, here is Santorum strategist John Brabender on CNN:
American Power headlines this, “Pressure Increasing for Newt Gingrich to Step Aside in GOP Race,” but there’s no need to “pressure” Gingrich to do anything. Newt’s losing and his campaign is probably broke, and what’s important now is for Republican primary voters to understand that there is no longer any point in voting for Gingrich.
If you want to stop Romney, vote for Santorum — period.
“Mitt Romney proudly supported the Wall Street Bailout that rewarded the reckless behavior of Wall Street Insiders — at the expense of the American taxpayer. Now that his campaign is looking to get some fast cash — he returned to the very people who benefited from the bailout — that Romney supported.”
— Hogan Gidley, Santorum campaign spokesman
We were told by Newt Gingrich’s campaign spokesperson, R.C. Hammond, that Mississippi and Alabama were must wins for Gingrich to be considered a credible candidate. Newt Gingrich is no longer a credible candidate after last night’s losses. Now he says the goal is to keep Mitt Romney from securing the 1144 delegates needed to win the nomination since he recognizes he can’t achieve that number himself.
But if Newt can’t win Mississippi and Alabama, where will he win? . . . He’s functionally done, not being able to beat a Northerner in his Southern backyard.
“Functionally done” is an apt description. And this result is not Jamie Weinstein’s fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not Rick Santorum’s fault. Unfortunately, some Gingrich supporters want to blame people who explain to them that Newt can’t win, as though he could win, if only we’d be quiet and pretend he could.
Lashing out at scapegoats is not a useful substitute for success.
A fuzzy memory of Mitt’s days as a pitchman for Computer Associates came to mind:
Romney is a timeless fellow. Hasn’t changed a bit since he cut that “How much software do you want to buy?” ad. Politics, software: it’s all sales to a businessman, no? There was one where the sales dude comes up under the door, but I couldn’t find it.
The decision produced a quiet storm of outrage among Romney’s allies in the state, who were bewildered by the decision to make a slam-dunk race competitive, and to grant an opening in the desperate scramble to reach the 1,144 delegates required for the Republican nomination.
“When there is a challenge filed because a campaign doesn’t file the required number of signatures, it’s pretty much a no brainer,” said a senior Romney supporter in Illinois. “The conservative folks started screaming bloody murder, and Rutherford caved.”
On the one hand, the party rules are a published affair. As with VA, Santorum was not in compliance. So Mitt has the rules clearly on his side.
On the other hand, if you’re truly confident that you’ve got it locked in, and represent the popular choice, being gracious is a sign of strength.
Karen Finney: “This woman vote really hurts me! …” Lawrence O’Donnell: “Working women went for Rick Santorum in a big way: 49%. …” Karen Finney: “It’s a little painful because I’m wondering if those women really heard the full message …”
— MSNBC, Tuesday, March 13
Oh, they “heard the full message,” all right: If you want to hurt Karen Finney, vote for Rick Santorum!
“Rick Santorum charged of out Tuesday’s wins in the South with a fresh claim to being the chosen son of the Republicans’ conservative flank. Mitt Romney limped out with something that could endure longer: an enhanced lead in delegates.
“Under the cruel math of the prolonged GOP primary race, Mr. Santorum’s victories in Alabama and Mississippi were more than negated by late-night Romney wins far to the west in the Pacific Ocean, in caucuses in Hawaii and American Samoa.”
— Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal
“If Newt Gingrich drops out of the GOP primary after losing in Alabama and Mississippi yesterday, it could enable Rick Santorum to unite conservatives against Mitt Romney.”
— Greg Sargent, Washington Post
“As it turned out, the Lindsay campaign was fatally flawed from the start. It was all tip and no iceberg — the exact opposite of the slow-building McGovern juggernaut — but back in February it was still considered very shrewd and avant-garde to assume that the most important factor in a presidential campaign was a good ‘media candidate.’ If he had Star Quality, the rest would take care of itself.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Went to bed last night — actually, about 3 o’clock this morning — happy to know that Rick Santorum had won Alabama and Mississippi and was on his way to a second-place finish in Hawaii.
And I woke up with a feeling of dread: Today is the day that I have to go through my travel records and gather up my expense receipts from 2011, because my wife has made an appointment Thursday for us to get our taxes done. The Beatles wrote a song about this.
Piled atop the tax-time misery, however, was the Fear and Loathing of what I was certain I’d encounter when I logged on this morning: Romneyites gloating about the delegate count.
According to the Associated Press delegate count, Mitt Romney won 42 delegates last night to 38 for Rick Santorum. By winning nine delegates in American Samoa and 45 percent of the vote in Hawaii, Romney wiped out Rick Santorum’s narrow wins in the Deep South. And, just like Saturday, when Santorum won Kansas and lost ground to Romney, today Santorum’s task to get to 1,114 delegates (as he promised last night he would) is that much harder. … Math, like gravity, can’t be ignored. . . .
There are 1,358 delegates yet to be awarded. Romney has 495. He needs 694 delegates, less than 48 percent of the remaining delegates, to wrap it up.
If you subtract nine Samoan delegates from Tuesday’s results, this seemingly inexorable March Toward Mittdom starts sliding back the other way, and we have passed the point in the schedule where Romney can keep padding his lead by scooping up uncontested delegates in farflung territories. Mitt’s got those 36 delegates from Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Marianas Islands and I’m sure they’ll all have a good time in Tampa, but the territorial RINO good times are over, baby.
Rick Santorum left Louisiana last night and flew to Puerto Rico for two days of campaigning. Puerto Rico votes Sunday, they’ve got 23 delegates and, while I’m not a Michael Barrone-type expert on stuff like this, do you think there might some Catholic voters in Puerto Rico?
Do you see what I’m talking about here? Rubin and Hewitt and all Mitt’s “inevitability”-mongers keep making the same mistake: They’re extrapolating the trend forward, as if this trend were a fixed factor in a polynomial equation and the actual campaign — you know, candidates giving speeches, shaking hands with voters and stuff like that — didn’t make any difference at all. Continue reading Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Mathematical Impossibilities Happen →
