Republican Primary headed for a deal?

[BigSkyBob]

It's simple math - Romney did ok - but he didn't do well enough to secure himself the nomination.

If Santorum ever wants another lobbying job in Washington, he better drop out soon? Same goes for Captain Moon Base.

Are you serious in threatening Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich? In a Representative Republic folks stand for office and the electorate chooses from them. In a banana republic goons are sent to intimate potential foes, or worse. The majority of Republicans in this country have yet to have had a chance to have their say in whom is the nominee, and, the clear majority of those folks want to vote for someone other than Mitt Romney. Your threats against Santorum and Gingrich are not merely impudent, they are a slap across the face of the majority of Republicans in the this country!

[BigSkyBob]

Santorum has not really broken out of, for the most part, primary and caucus victories except in states where evangelical Christians comprise a very major sector of the Republican caucus and primary vote.  So Santorum's prospects are, at best, dismal, and most realistically, non existent.

Romney has won in states with either New Englanders, or a large number of transplants, or  states with large Mormon populations. In the rest of the country, he is running in the mid-thirties in Northern states, and in the high twenties in Southern states. No wonder he is desperate to have Santorum and Gingrich drop out. Having rigged the calender, changed the rules, and manipulated the delegate allocation formulas to favor Romney, the establishment is desperate to make Romney appear to the candidate of choice of rank-and-file Republicans by presenting them ballots in the remaining states with "Romney" being the only option.

[BigSkyBob]

Assuming Mittens falls short in the end of getting X number of delegates (whatever that is, to put him over the top on his own power), just who is the zombie person who gets nominated?  How is this all going to work? The story line is going to have to get really convoluted, and whomever the zombie is, it is then put two months until the General election. How is that going to work out?

There in my view just a surreal quality to all of this chatter.

Rick Santorum/Rand Paul with Gingrich promised a prominent position. Or, maybe, Gingrich/Paul with Santorum as Secretary of State. That is unless a fifth candidate enters the race late.

Clinton and Obama slugged it out until June. It ended with both coming up short of the necessary number of bound delegates. If two candidates ran close for the entire schedule without a decisive winner, why expect a decisive winner among a field of four bunched candidates? If Mitt Romney can't break away from the pack, Mitt Romney has noone but Mitt Romney to blame for that fact.

It is a pathetic sight to see the candidate who can't win on his own merits demand unilateral surrender.

[BigSkyBob]

Mittens is demanding nothing. He is just going about the business of carrying out his blueprint - step by step. I think he assumes that his opposition will never drop out.

Granted, I do tend to be rather hostile to these alternative Pub self inflicted seppuku narratives. Maybe I am delusional about the quantum of sanity and pragmatism from my point of view that is left in my party. I certainly hope not.

The Republican seppuku narrative began when Romney embraced scorched earth tactics, and ends with the defeat of Mitt Romney. It is just of question of badly Romney is willing to damage the Republican party to pursue, but not achieve, his personal ambition of being President.

The race has become more of a hostage situation than a campaign due to Romney. What you call "sanity and pragmaticism" I call capitulation to those intent on "rule or ruin." If Romney have had a legitimate claim to leadership of the Republican party he would have made it by now.

[BigSkyBob]

I guess your above post may give folks a hint as to why we support different candidates perhaps. We just see the world through totally different lenses. Cheers.

At least I have the decency to argue why I believe that my position is better and truer, as opposed to smearing anyone whom disagrees with me as "insane."

[BigSkyBob]

I guess your above post may give folks a hint as to why we support different candidates perhaps. We just see the world through totally different lenses. Cheers.

At least I have the decency to argue why I believe that my position is better and truer, as opposed to smearing anyone whom disagrees with me as "insane."

Well I take your point actually. But to be "fair" to myself, I think I explain my policy views pretty throughly, and in some detail, and why, and why I don't think either Rick or Newt (who granted is worse than Rick because he displays a contempt for the rule of law every chance he gets it seems) are fit to be POTUS (that is the important thing), and certainly not electable. I just didn't do it on this thread. This thread wasn't about that.

1) Here is an example of "rule of law." In some jurisdictions, if you don't shovel your sidewalk, if someone falls it is "an act of God" according the law and your are immune from civil action. However, if you shovel your sidewalk, and someone fall your may be sued for being "negligent" in how you shoveled the snow. That is the law disfavors the civic-minded homeowner.

If you asked a thousand people, "Should the justice system favor or disfavor homeowners whom shovel the snow along the sidewalks in front of their homes?" I would suspect the vote would be 1000 to zero in favor of the shovelers because that is the self-evidently more just option. Somehow, we have a system that noone would choose for themselves, but, has been chosen for us.  That system is "rule by law." As "rule by law" tracks further and further from what is just, decent and equitable a righteous contempt for the system results. Newt is speaking for middle-America here.

You can try to kill the message by killing the messenger, but that won't change the reality that people find jokes like, Q: "What do you call fifty lawyers chained together at the bottom of the sea?" A: "A good start!;" and "Why don't you read about lawyers being attacked by sharks off the coast of Florida?" A: "Professional courtesy," to be funny for a reason.

2) Calling people whom support candidates you oppose "insane," and calling the candidates you oppose "unfit for office" are merely variations on the same theme: personalizing policy differences.
Gingrich has thirty years of relevent experience, while Santorum has over a dozen. If anything, they compare favorably to serving one term as a politically failed governor. I won't even go into how tone deaf it would be to nominate a former Wall Street wheeler-dealer after the trillion dollar bailouts. While Romney has the wrong resume, and is light in relevent experience, I am not going to try to disqualify him as "unfit for office." I believe people can sort these things out at the ballot box.