I am getting tired of the media downplaying that Romney has been the winner of numerous primaries and is headed toward the Republican GOP nomination (and is without question in a strong position to take down Obama).
Let’s just ignore that no GOP candidate has ever gotten as high as Romney is currently at about 40%.
From RealClearPolitics 3/8 (that one in purple at the top is Romney)
Then let’s deal with the fact that it’s pretty much a mathematical impossibility that Romney isn’t going to win the delegates.
R S G P
Total - 2,286 409 163 111 61
Iowa 3-Jan 28 6 7 0 1
New Hampshire 10-Jan 12 7 0 0 3
South Carolina 21-Jan 25 2 0 23 0
Florida 31-Jan 50 50 0 0 0
Nevada 4-Feb 28 14 3 6 5
Minnesota 7-Feb 40 2 17 1 9
Colorado 7-Feb 36 12 17 2 1
Maine 11-Feb 24 9 3 0 7
Michigan 28-Feb 30 16 14 0 0
Arizona 28-Feb 29 29 0 0 0
Wyoming 29-Feb 29 10 8 1 6
Washington 3-Mar 43 16 7 0 8
Georgia 6-Mar 76 15 2 47 0
Ohio 6-Mar 66 35 21 0 0
Tennessee 6-Mar 58 13 27 9 0
Virginia 6-Mar 49 43 0 0 3
Oklahoma 6-Mar 43 13 14 13 0
Massachusetts 6-Mar 41 38 0 0 0
Idaho 6-Mar 32 32 0 0 0
North Dakota 6-Mar 28 7 11 2 8
Alaska 6-Mar 27 8 7 3 6
Vermont 6-Mar 17 9 4 0 4
Unpledged RNC 23 1 4 0
So right now Mitt has 409 delegates. Let’s project into the future. Of the 8 Winner-Take-All states left Romney is ahead in 7 of them. Puerto Rico (23 delegates), D.C. (19), Delaware (17), Utah (40), Maryland (37), California (172) and New Jersey (50). Those Winner-Take-All states have a total of 358 delegates between them. So added to Romney’s current 409 delegates…that would bring the total to 767. In other words he will have 70% of the 1144 needed locked down.
Now let’s look at some of the proportional other states that aren’t winner take all. Now we all know that Romney does well in New England and the North East. So Rhode Island (19), Connecticut (28) and New York (95), a total of 142 delegates, it would be safe to say that Romney will take half of those delegates (71) bringing the total to 838.
Now interestingly Romney does well in the off shore parts of the U.S. as well. Hawaii (20), Virgin Island (9), North Marianas (9), Guam (9), Samoa (9) so again it would not be hard to see Romney getting half of the 56 delegates (28) bringing the total to 866. Or he only needs 278 out of the 846 votes left…or 32% for a man who has averaged getting 52% of all of the delegates currently issued.
And given the fact that he is AHEAD BY 8 POINTS in Mississippi and tied in Alabama (!!! When Santorum and Gingrich can’t win in the Bible Belt it’s over!!!) I get the slight feeling that Romney will come out of this next week with more than just a third of the delegates.
So there are only a few people dumb enough to believe the Romney won’t be the nominee (most of them are a mentally impaired bunch of Communist Italian stock…Santor-something or other)
So while many have conceded to the self-evident fact that Romney is the nominee…some on the right are still being stupid and saying that Romney won’t win the general election. Which is mind-boggling as well. For instance there is this idiotic article from Reason magazine “Obama is a Lock.” (It’s a shocker that libertarians are not making practical assessments of the current situation…because libertarians are so known for treating everything so practically and pragmatically). Among their killer evidence that Romney can’t win is
“There is no evidence that Romney can unseat President Obama in November. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has Obama beating Romney handily in a one-to-one contest, with Obama drawing 50 percent support to Romney’s 44 percent.”
So because in one poll Romney can’t beat Obama it’s over. Let’s ignore little things like the fact that in March of 2008 McCain was up by 6 against Obama and Kerry was up by 6 in March of 2004 …and those polls appeared so accurate in the end. Or let’s deal with the fact that they used an NBC/Marist poll (hint they’re almost always skewed to the left). What would happen if we actually looked at the latest round of, you know, consistently accurate polls. Let’s take a look at the RealClearPolitics list. How about the last 4 Gallup polls, two of Romney v. Obama are tied and one has Romney up by 4 and the most recent has Romney up by 2. Or maybe the last 5 Rasmussen polls, two of which have Romney and Obama tied and the other three Obama is up by only the margin of error. “No evidence whatsoever.”
Especially if you consider that Santorum, Paul and a few Gingrich supporters are probably telling these pollsters that they wouldn’t vote for Romney (hell they’re probably saying they’d vote for Obama) just to make their guy seem better, that will go up a point or two at least.
But also there are a few things to consider. Right now the Republicans are taking hits because of the social issues (you have Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh for this debacle….thanks guys, we are having an easy win with economics and you fall for the bait. Dipshits.). When Romney is officially the nominee this will largely disappear. Another point or two. And hey, does anyone forget we’re looking to a summer of $7 to $8 /gallon of gas. You think that’s not going to be an extra point or two…or ten?
From RealClearPolitics 3/8 (keep in mind this is generic Republican against Obama...not Romney who plays well with the moderates.)
But let’s take a look at the Electoral College (you know the only thing that actually counts). I will be using RealClearPolitics’s current projections which has Obama at 227 electoral college votes, the GOP at 181 and 130 in the swing category. Colorado (9 electoral college votes) and Nevada (6) have high Mormon populations, so that should swing them in Romney’s favor. Florida (29), which is always a close call, has a high Jewish population and we know the only way Obama could get less popular with the that population is if he actually said what he was thinking and started using words starting with a K (yes I think the bastard is a disgusting anti-Semite and I dare you to prove me wrong). And given Virginia’s (13) recent switches to a Republican Governor, it seems safer than not to assume that this will be a Republican advantage. So that leaves us with Obama 227 to Romney 238…yes clearly there is no reason to believe Romney could pull this out.
As it almost always does it is going to come down to Ohio, Pennsylvania (you remember the state that voted out Santorum by 18 points…they just love him), Missouri and Iowa. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Romney’s VP come from one of these states. (While I’m not the biggest fan, looking at this, Governor John Kasich of Ohio is looking like he may have the tactical advantage for the number 2 spot).
However I would like to point out a few things in the longshot category. For some reason, favorite son status always gives a candidate a few points in the state they live in and the state they were born in. Which means that Michigan (16) could easily move from the leans Democrat category to the toss up category. And given Scott Brown’s popularity in Massachusetts, it, while highly unlikely to go red, is not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Not that this is going to be easy, running for President never is, but to say that Romney can’t win is just a lie and I wonder why the right wing media is so hell bent against the guy who actually stands the best shot against Obama.
