The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup For March 9, 2012

Bill Kristol says it's just getting started. Sarah Palin says all bets are off. Other GOP luminaries say that so far, what they've seen has been "a collective yawn." What are they talking about? The GOP race for the 2012 presidential nomination, that's what. And all of these assessments have been handed down from on high in the wake of Super Tuesday's results. But wasn't Super Tuesday a pretty unequivocal win for Mitt Romney, leaving him as the only candidate with a path to the nomination that doesn't require a series of miraculous events?
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Bill Kristol says it's just getting started. Sarah Palin says all bets are off. Other GOP luminaries say that so far, what they've seen has been "a collective yawn." What are they talking about? The GOP race for the 2012 presidential nomination, that's what. And all of these assessments have been handed down from on high in the wake of Super Tuesday's results.

But wasn't Super Tuesday a pretty unequivocal win for Mitt Romney, leaving him as the only candidate with a path to the nomination that doesn't require a series of miraculous events?

Well, sure, if you're going to be all realistic and practical about it, concentrating only on fundamental factors like Romney's swollen war chest and his superior organization and the likelihood of him having success in the backloaded winner-take-all primaries to come and his current delegate count. But if you do like most of the media has done, and stare into the blinding lights of cloudcuckooland and allow yourself to be dazzled by all the SHINY SHINY so that you get a little light-headed and trippy, then maybe you can see that Romney's big wins Tuesday night were actually some sort of devastating setback.

OH, WE GET IT. You want to "keep things in perspective." You read Nate Silver's curtain-raiser on Super Tuesday, where he projected that Romney would likely net 224 delegates, and he won 213, and surely we're not going to start tearing our eyes out over the fact that he underperformed by eleven delegates. Well, did you go on reading? If you had you'd have seen that Silver's "upside scenario" was 267 delegates. So what's Mitt Romney's fatal flaw, that prevented him from succeeding as successfully as he could? Ron Paul stole three delegates in Virginia, after all!

Look. The important thing to realize is that the people who cover politics hate it when the game gets called early. Yes, Romney has the clearest path to the nomination. Rick Santorum, who remains in the next best position to win, would have to either win a staggeringly high portion of the remaining delegates or benefit from some sort of unforeseen Romney mega-mistake that causes the complete collapse of his support in order to get to 1,144 delegates and win the thing outright. But he (as well as Newt Gingrich) have not technically been mathematically eliminated, and coming up soon are contests in Mississippi and Alabama, where Romney is likely to lose. And if we squint at that at just the right angle, maybe Romney is actually in total disarray.

But if we're looking at this with clear eyes, it's actually become apparent that Mitt Romney is no longer running in a contest against Santorum, Gingrich and Paul as his competition. His only opponent now is the faint specter of a deadlocked convention. It's more likely, at this point, that his three co-competitors can deny Romney the 1,144 votes than it is that any one of them can overtake him and win them for themselves.

And that's the story of Super Tuesday. Which is now over! Welcome to much less super part of the primary season.

In other news from the campaign trail, Newt's exhaustion led to an awkward naptime, Mitt's Olympic-sized round of government gold-digging came back to haunt him, Santorum-speculators offered a bright assessment of his political future, President Obama may end up with an enemy delegate at his convention, and we're left to wonder -- are pollsters giving Ron Paul the stink-eye? All of this and more is waiting for you to enter the Speculatron for the week of March 9, 2012.

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup, March 9
Rick Santorum(01 of05)
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Rick Santorum's Super Tuesday results didn't enable him to come out and break Mitt Romney's stride in the same fashion as his win in Colorado did. He ended up taking Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota, so he added wins and delegates. But in the state of Ohio, Santorum watched as his big lead in the polls was whittled down, culminating in a tight Romney win. Because everyone likes to stand around with wide eyes and remind everyone that no one's won the Republican nomination since whenever without winning Ohio, this contest had long been designated the night's pivotal match.But Santorum had ample reasons -- beyond the creeping death that Romney's money machine brings to all other campaigns -- to downplay expectations ahead of the polls closing. Even if Santorum had won the statewide vote, the candidate was unable to "get a full state of delegates on the ballots in nine congressional districts in Ohio," which meant his potential delegate haul from Ohio was limited before the voting ever began. Santorum's failure in Ohio is just another example of the limits you face while running a shoestring campaign. And he's got organization problems ahead of him, as he struggles to get ballot access in Illinois and Washington, D.C.Despite having taken the opposite position a few weeks ago, what Santorum would very much like to do is get Newt Gingrich knocked from the race, so that he could take on Romney one-on-one-on-Ron Paul. As it happens, his chances aren't terrible: Gingrich has conceded that he'll lose Kansas, Santorum is up slightly in Alabama, and he's hoping to prevail in Mississippi. If Gingrich were denied wins in the Deep South, it would be hard to see why he should stay in the race.And Santorum has continued his attacks on Mitt Romney's history of inventing "ObamaCare." As Katrina Trinko reports:
"Mitt Romney passed government-mandated health insurance in Massachusetts, and argued and tried to persuade the president in this debate in 2009 to adopt his government-mandated health care system for the federal government," Santorum said in a conference call with reporters, presumably alluding to Romney's 2009 USA Today piece that's been circulating throughout media reports today.Romney, he continued, had "misled the public as to what his position was" on health care. "To continue to mislead," Santorum added, "and to try to obfuscate by just throwing negative ads at someone, and not having to respond to the fact that he was an advocate for something he says he wasn't, is further evidence that conservatives will not trust him, will not rally around him through this primary season, and ultimately, I don't care how much money he will spend, we will be the nominee."
He's also accusing Romney of interesting conspiracies! Per Igor Volsky:
During an appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio show this morning, Rick Santorum suggested that Mitt Romney's campaign pressured USA Today to remove a now-infamous 2009 op-ed, in which the former governor urged President Obama to "learn" lessons from Massachusetts' health care reform plan and use "tax penalties" to avoid "free riders" in the system. The article -- first uncovered by BuzzFeed -- is not on the paper's website and was only discovered through "the former Governor's old website via the web archive." "I don't know how that happens," Santorum exclaimed to Ingraham.
Santorum has also been forced to be a lot nicer to Guam, because suddenly their delegates could be quite useful to him. Hey, Santorum is already on his presidential "apology tour," bowing to people from Guam. It raises the question: How will he face Ahmadinejad if he can't stand up to Guam?! (Ha, just kidding. Or are we?)And of course, Santorum isn't happy about President Obama's tendency not to drop thousands of bombs on Iran: "He says he has Israel's back ... From everything I've seen from the conduct of this administration, he has turned his back on the people of Israel." If getting a bunch of bunker-busters are what you get from Obama when his back is turned, we wonder what you get otherwise.What is Rick Santorum's future? For the time being, he's trying to maintain his mostly implausible path to the nomination and/or his slightly more possible path to being a guy who forces a deadlocked convention. But Alex Pareene wonders if he hasn't already secured the "next in line" status that would allow him to consider himself the frontrunner in 2016. Which assumes Obama wins, which is by no means a done deal. So it's also time to start wondering if Santorum isn't VP material.
Ron Paul(02 of05)
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Ron Paul had an entirely different version of Super Tuesday than the rest of the world. While everyone was obsessing over Ohio and Oklahoma and Georgia, Paul was running game up in North Dakota and Alaska, and working to hold down Romney's support in Virginia. The results were a mixed bag: Paul's hoped-for first win continued to elude him, as North Dakota went to Rick Santorum and Alaska went to Romney. Still, he did steal some delegates in other states, beat Newt Gingrich in numerous states, and was hard on Santorum's heels elsewhere. (While he only bested Romney in North Dakota, he could take solace in the fact that he's won the support of some members of Romney's extended family.)In other words, Paul's "slow and steady" plan is still in effect, and as John Avlon notes, Paul is still a big player in terms of his ability to affect the underlying dynamics of the race:
But Super Tuesday totals could begin a shift from the Paul campaign's caucus strategy to a delegate strategy.It's the day when Paul could start to adjust the narrative just a bit by creeping ahead of Newt Gingrich in total delegates. Right now, Gingrich is one delegate ahead of Paul in the totals -- 39 to 38. Mitt Romney's organization, by comparison, has earned 182 delegates to date.While Rick Santorum and Gingrich have some overlapping support from conservative populists looking for a red-meat alternative to Romney, Paul has the libertarian side of the conservative coalition all to himself. That creates an underlying logic for a long three-man race, likely between Romney, Santorum, and Paul.
As far as Paul's impact on the issues, this week Paul weighed in on the quality of various apologies. Of Rush Limbaugh's apology to Sandra Fluke, the Texas congressman was decidedly unimpressed, saying, "I don't think he's very apologetic. He's doing it because some people were taking their advertisements off his program. It was his bottom line that he was concerned about." And he at least weighed in with an opinion on the underlying matter, rather than restrict himself to the Rush Limbaugh pseudo-event of the week:
"I, as an OB doctor, certainly endorse the whole idea of birth control," Paul said. "But this is something different. This is philosophically and politically important.""Does the government have a mandate to tell insurance companies what to give," Paul continued. "So they're saying that the insurance companies should give everybody free birth control pills.""That strikes me as rather odd," Paul added.
The other apology-based evaluation Paul offered had to do with his fellow 2012ers' anger at the administration apologizing for U.S. soldiers accidentally burning Qu'rans in Afghanistan:
PAUL: I think the Republicans who are condemning it are a little bit over the top, too, because you know, in '08, some of our soldiers in Iraq took the Quran and used it for target practice. You know, just to humiliate the Muslims in that country. Ronald Reagan [sic, actually, George Bush] apologized. And what is so terrible about that if it might calm things down.
Two things to watch for as the Paul campaign soldiers on:First, it was reported that the super PAC that's primarily been supporting Ron Paul is "reassessing" its involvement in the 2012 campaign. As Politico Influence reported:
"Yes, we are reassessing our efforts, but we have always felt that we are a part of a larger movement rather than just a single election," Endorse Liberty leader Abe Niederhauser told PI today. "We will continue to support Dr. Paul, but ultimately, we support an idea. We will support candidates who uphold the principles of liberty. We may also get involved in some of the Senate and House races."
Second, we weren't the only ones to notice that Paul was inexplicably left out of the pre-Super Tuesday polling in Alabama, which led to a high number of undecided voters, among whom are likely a fair number of Paul supporters. We've no idea how this adds value to the results, given the fact that Paul's been adamant about remaining in the race for the long haul, but you should keep an eye on this to see if it becomes a trend. (We suspect it may.)
Gary Johnson(03 of05)
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There's no getting around the fact that Super Tuesday really stole whatever sliver of spotlight your third-party hopefuls usually manage to get on a weekly basis. That said, is Gary Johnson optimistic about his chances? Does he enjoy campaigning as a Libertarian? SPOILER ALERT: Yes, and yes.
"I like being a libertarian," he said. "I've been a libertarian my whole life. I arguably got to serve as the two-term libertarian governor of New Mexico as a Republican."Despite his renewed focus and happiness to be back in the state, Johnson was still a little disappointed he wasn't able to catch on. He mainly blames the national media for not giving him the same coverage as they do other Republicans, like Mitt Romney, who served less time as governor of Massachusetts, and Rick Perry, whose campaign crashed and burned almost immediately after takeoff, despite the greater exposure."What was happening in New Hampshire was I was knocking on doors and the people I was reaching were the people whose doors I was knocking on," he said. "If Mitt Romney would have done that, hundreds of millions of Americans would have known that ... If he biked around the state, everyone would have known about it."Media attention to his new campaign has improved. The day before he changed parties, Johnson noted, the Wall Street Journal had a major feature on his campaign, something they hadn't done in the previous 18 months he had been running for president."It was a really nice article ... but where was that when I announced running as a Republican? It wasn't there," he said. "A lot of this has been really surprising."
So there you go.
Fred Karger(04 of05)
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Mitt Romney successfully cast a vote on Super Tuesday in Belmont, Massachusetts (we're guessing it was a vote for Paul Tsongas, right?), which means that Fred Karger's efforts to challenge Romney's Bay State Massachusetts voter registration were all for naught. And that's about it on the Fred Karger front this week! At the top of his campaign website, they've got a message to reporters: "Want to contact us? For press inquiries, please email Brian Wilson, at brian@fredkarger.com."Would any of you like to contact Fred Karger? I mean, why not, right? We're not going to tell you how to do your jobs.
Barack Obama(05 of05)
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While the rest of the media was doing whatever they could to suggest that Super Tuesday came with some sort of devastating mixed result for Mitt Romney, very few noticed that President Barack Obama actually had a pretty bad Super Tuesday. Relatively speaking, of course -- he's still going to get nominated and junk.But in Oklahoma, Obama was actually bested in 15 counties by anti-abortion performance artist Randall Terry, who is running in the Democratic Primary, because why not? The upshot here is that Terry looks like he'll end up with a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, because the rules apportion delegates to anyone finishing with over 15 percent of the vote:
Oklahoma Democratic Party Chairman Wallace Collins said he wanted to review party guidelines before pronouncing that Terry had cost Obama a vote at this summer's convention."If under the rules he (Terry) is awarded a delegate, we'll be sure he gets one," Collins said.
So if you want to interview Terry's protest delegate at the DNC, just look for the guy who's standing around having a miserable time.Elsewhere on Super Tuesday, Obama held a quasi-thunder-stealing press conference with the White House Press Corps, who -- as Jon Stewart pointed out in hilarious fashion -- rather than asking questions of the president, spent most of their time trying to instigate a beef between the president and the GOP 2012ers. Because they are fearless! On occasion, Obama took the bait. He made an appeal to women voters -- an opportunistic move, given the fact that the past few weeks have been something of an assault on their personhood and an occasion for extended jags of insults from Rush Limbaugh. He also snapped back on Ed Henry after he asked a question about whether or not he actively supported higher gas prices, saying, "Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think that the president of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go higher? Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?" There did not seem to be anyone at the time.Mitt Romney also briefly came up:
A reporter just asked Obama if he has any words for Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney on Super Tuesday. "Good luck tonight," he said wryly. "Really?" another reporter asked."Really." The press room erupted in laughter.
But really what the press corps wanted to know was: When we would be having WARRRRR with Iran!? Obama had spent the previous part of the week at the AIPAC conference trying to lower the ol' temperature on all of that! So he continued that effort:
"We will not countenance Iran getting a nuclear weapon. My policy is not containment. My policy is to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, because if they get a nuclear weapon, that could trigger an arms race in the region, it would undermine our non-proliferation goals, it could potentially fall into the hands of terrorists," Obama said. "At this stage it is my belief that we have a window of opportunity where this can still be resolved diplomatically. That's not just my view. That's the view of our top intelligence officials. It's the view of top Israeli intelligence officials."
He did take a not-so-subtle shot at the 2012ers:
But, Obama went on, "the one thing that we have not done is we haven't launched a war. If some of these folks think that it's time to launch a war, they should say so, and they should explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be. Everything else is just talk.
In the territory of underreported stories, this week -- despite what we presume to be his semi-somewhat determined drive toward maybe "evolving" on the matter of gay rights -- the administration is apparently no longer willing to even comment on a long-promised but now-forgotten pledge to enact a "formal written policy of non-discrimination that includes sexual orientation and gender identity or expression ... for all Federal contractors." Maybe after he wins reelection, guys! And in a move that -- as Daily Intel's Joe Coscarelli surmises -- seems designed to send the ACLU into the warm embrace of Gary Johnson, Attorney General Eric Holder told a group of law students at Northwestern University that the president had the right "to legally kill American citizens abroad 'in full accordance with the Constitution.'" Somewhere, John Yoo is rubbing his hands together and whispering, "Ex-cellent."Oh, and there was a big story this week about this time Obama hugged a guy, which was a big deal because the media didn't report it, except they did, but on so doing, they didn't touch off a howling fit of caterwauling and garment rending. Next time two black guys embrace each other, everyone will totally know better.

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