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[PTTG??]

Aside from the state of the union, Obama's biggest campaign move has been to have the Republicans exist. And it remains by far the most effective.

However, this is not a good thing. The democrats don't need to do anything to secure the liberal vote. If Obama was turned into a tree by some kind of wizard, then he would still handily defeat the republicans by virtue of not being a philanderer, a christian taliban, or a monopolist.*

When the liberal option is a man who operates a vicious internal witch-hunt, explodes growth in police-state internal monitoring (drones, TSA, buzzwords, ect.) coddles banks and billionaire criminals, and who thinks a moderate approach to diplomacy with Iran is "We won't attack unless we decide to, or Israel tells us to"... then you have to ask yourself what state our politics is in.

In order to have a strong liberal side, you need a strong conservative side. I want to have to study carefully the positions both sides make, and make agonizing moral choices to determine which side is really the one I want to support.

This isn't an election- it's a mugging. We're being given the choice between giving up all our cash, or getting our faces smashed in. And all our cash taken.

*Oh, or a borderline insane idealist gold-fetishist supported by the Klan.

[RedKing]

Really? I mean....really? Okay, so Obama has turned out to be more of a Clintonian centrist than an FDR New Dealer, but seriously.

[mainiac]

Really? I mean....really? Okay, so Obama has turned out to be more of a Clintonian centrist than an FDR New Dealer, but seriously.

+1

I find Obama's reversals on civil liberties to be genuinely confusing but other then that he's really what you'd expect given the American political framework you have to work with.  You could resurrect FDR or LBJ and make them president today and you'd probably get results pretty darn similar to Obama.  FDR and LBJ probably would infringe on the same civil liberties that Obama has to boot.  Obama doesn't have a congress that is 90% New Dealers like FDR.  And FDR did a stupidly premature pivot to hard currency and closing the budget deficit in 1937, pretty closely mimicking Obama's biggest mistake.  LBJ only got medicare and medicaid as a watered down compromise of what he originally wanted.

In other news, Intrade has Romney up to 89% chance of being the nominee.  Pretty close to his all time high again.  About what you'd expect seeing as Super Tuesday had no big surprises and he got slightly more then half the delegates.

[RedKing]

You knew it was only a matter of time: Santorum's main SuperPAC calls on Gingrich to drop out of the race.


In more WTF??!? news, Pat Robertson made a speech on the 700 Club in which he first called for decriminalizing marijuana (!!),
blamed "liberals" for tough drug sentencing (??),
and then insinuated that people whose homes were destroyed by the recent tornadoes were partly at fault for not praying hard enough, because

“If enough people were praying, He would intervene. You could pray. Jesus stilled the storm. You could still storms.”

(?!!?#$%!&??)

[GlyphGryph]

Many "liberal" politicians are the ones responsible for tough drug sentencing - it scores them easy points to counteract the normal "soft on crime" view of liberals and lets them convert some independents. I'd say overall there are more anti-drug politicians on the right than the left, but more anti-drug PEOPLE on the left.

It's a weird thing.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think Robertson is genuinely senile now.

[Nadaka]

Yea. You shouldn't expect anything out of ol' Pat's mouth to be full of anything but WTF.

[GlyphGryph]

I think he's been that way for a long time, though.

[roflgar]

I think he just loves money, and he gets a loooooot of it.

[RedKing]

I will henceforth refer to him as "Pot Robertson" and assume that any and all sense he fails to make isn't senility, it's just the weed talking.

A round-up of the op-ed headlines this morning is hilarious, and shows just how confused the situation is.

It Ain't Over, And Won't Be For a While - Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard
It's Over: It Will Be Romney vs. Obama - Peter Wehner, CNN

No, the GOP Isn't Doomed - Rich Lowry, FOX News
The Real Winner On Super Tuesday? Obama - Ruy Teixeira, Foreign Policy

Barack Obama: Israel's Best Friend - Thomas Friedman, New York Times
Can Israel Trust Obama? - Thomas Sowell, Investor's Business Daily

Romney Takes Another Step Towards Nomination - Carl Cannon, RCP
No Clear Path to Nomination Now For Rommney - Avlon & Jacobs, Daily Beast

Basically for any one viewpoint a pundit has, there's an equal and opposite reality that another pundit lives in. 

[roflgar]

But that's how it goes down whenever literally anything happens.

[RedKing]

Polls, we got 'em!

National
Obama vs. Romney? Obama +4
Obama vs. Santorum? Obama +8
Obama vs. a small, cute puppy? TIE GAME.

Alabama
Yesterday, poll had Santorum at +4, today's poll has Romney at +10?? That's a pretty big divergence, which makes me think a lot of people just haven't gotten around to making up their minds. Hopefully more data will come out over the weekend before next Tuesday. Unclear if Gingrich is eating into Santorum's base, or Alabamians are quite as asshat-crazy as I expected, or what.

New York
Romney turf (+15), but Santorum is polling a surprising 23% to Romney's 38%. Romney is not a strong buy, which is a surprise given his essentially New England Republican motif.

California
Yes, it's a long ways out. But Romney only has a 6-point lead on Santorum at this point (28-22). Santorum is actually tied for 2nd with "Undecided" (although this poll was taken before Super Tuesday, apparently). This is potentially huge down the road -- California is a BIG chunk of delegates, and it's winner-take-all. If Santorum were to take California and a sizeable chunk of Texas....he could cut deeply into Romney's lead.

It's Caucus Day tomorrow in Kansas (40 delegates) and in three island races (Guam, N. Marianas, Virgin Islands, 9 delegates each). No poll data available for any of those. My guess would be that Santorum edges Romney for Kansas, and Romney wins pretty easily in the islands (for one thing, much of the US territories in Polynesia have a sizeable Mormon population in them). Word is, if Romney wins the Virgin Islands Rush Limbaugh will start referring to them as the "Slutty Islands". 

[mainiac]

If Santorum doesn't win California it's very hard for him to win a plurality.

[RedKing]

If Santorum doesn't win California it's very hard for him to win a plurality.

Agreed. Which is why I'm still leaning towards this being a brokered convention either way. The difference is who's in the lead going into the convention, and what share of delegates they have. If Romney wins California, he probably goes in with 40-49% of the delegates and has a stronger case for being the nominee. If he loses California, he may still go in as the frontrunner, but with only a 35-40% share and a much more tenuous case for his candidacy. In a scenario like that, I still think some Faustian bargain between Santorum and Gingrich will be struck, that they'll agree to a joint ticket and pool their delegates. The big question would be who's on top and who's bottom. (and when you parse that with Santorum involved....it just gets messy).

[mainiac]

If Santorum doesn't win California it's very hard for him to win a plurality.

Agreed. Which is why I'm still leaning towards this being a brokered convention either way. The difference is who's in the lead going into the convention, and what share of delegates they have. If Romney wins California, he probably goes in with 40-49% of the delegates

I'd give you even odds that he has 50+%.  He has 50+% right now and the schedule in front of him is fairly favorable long term, he's expected to win most of the winner take all states and split the delegates in the states he loses.  If you left all other things equal and switched California from Romney to Santorum, then Romney would still be expected to have plurality, just not majority.  But if California switches then Santorum is probably having momentum elsewhere so all other things aren't equal.

Furthermore the superdelegates generally are friendlier to Romney then the other candidates.  Even if Romney does badly and only takes 45% of the pledged delegates, the super delegates will probably give him the nod to avoid a brokered convention.  It's only if Romney hits a real wall and does really badly that the super delegates can't push him over.