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[Loud Whispers]

I think it'd be hillarious if vermin supreme got a recognisable amount of votes.

You know America is broken when Vermin Supreme seems like a legit candidate :d

[Aqizzar]

And his margin of delegates at this point (25 to Clinton's 24 and Edwards' 18) frankly wasn't much different than what Romney's got (14 to Ron Paul's 10 and Santorum's . Gingrich was polling as high as 45% at one time in Florida, and it looks like he could rebound there with enough ads and enough bomb-throwing (and frankly, bomb-throwing is what Gingrich does best).

You make an honest point.  I put no stock in polls taken before the primaries begin, but they are officially underway, so what people say now is a lot more likely to play out in reality.  A reality in which Romney is still on top of every opinion poll taken anywhere, shifting margins or otherwise.  I was about to do some rambling around prognostication, but I keep forgetting the most important rule of elections - every one is different.  (Even if this one does have some eerie similarities to 1996, in which the "conservative" vote was split apart and eventually moderate Bob Dole was nominated by margin.)


I forgot there actually is a piece of news this weekend.  Tony Perkins - head of the Family Research Council parochial think tank, and headmaster of Holy Texas Emperor Rick Perry's Jesuspalooza shindig back in August - put out a call for a conference of American evangelical "leaders", TV personalities, and megachurch pastors.  A hundred and fifty men (and they are all men) for whom religion is politics and politics is religion sequestered themselves in the hills of Texas' German Country, to make a plan of action: Operation Stop Mitt Romney.  Whether its his past stances on things like abortion and gay marriage, or his unpredictability in the future, or being Mormon, Perkins decided it was high time for religious Republicans to make a stand and make sure they didn't hand him the nomination by allowing the cultural-conservative vote to be segmented, and rally into one jihad to support one candidate.

To no particular surprise, they picked Rick Santorum as their great white hope.  It is a little ironic that a group composed about 99% of Protestants, Methodists, Baptists, and Lutherans would decide a Catholic was the man to carry their standard into the White House, but then they're all closer together than this group is to their "enemies" so its not that weird really.  Gingrich is Catholic too by the way, but who cares.  And now to see what kind of money and support Santorum starts getting.

[Nadaka]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/colbert-super-pac-goes-negative-on-romney-in-first

Yes. The Definitely not coordinated with Steven Colbert super PAC has released their first definitely not coordinated with Steven Colbert ad. In this add they condemn Mitt Romney's record of brutally murdering corporations (who are people) and and desecrating their corpses.

[warhammer651]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/colbert-super-pac-goes-negative-on-romney-in-first

Yes. The Definitely not coordinated with Steven Colbert super PAC has released their first definitely not coordinated with Steven Colbert ad. In this add they condemn Mitt Romney's record of brutally murdering corporations (who are people) and and desecrating their corpses.

and yet, its still better than most attack ads.


Where is this country going and why is it in a handbasket?

[Frumple]

News was saying Huntsman's dropped out. Does that mean there's no longer a (facsimile of a, at least) sane Republican choice?

[Heron TSG]

Source at Yahoo says that he's endorsing Romney now. Gack.

[RedKing]

Confirmed. Huntsman is out of the hunt, endorsed his cousin. I figure about half the votes he would have gotten will go to Romney, the remainder maybe to Ron Paul or possibly Buddy Roemer. Of course, since he was polling single-digits, it's not like this is a tectonic shift. Shame...Huntsman had potential. Maybe in 2016.

[FearfulJesuit]

Sigh. The sane man has left the race. What a pity- I really quite liked Huntsman. 2016.

[Nadaka]

Sigh. The sane man has left the race. What a pity- I really quite liked Huntsman. 2016.

I disliked him the least. though I have found some stuff I don't like about him after some research (he supports prison privatization). But I really am FAR too liberal for that to affect most peoples decision on a republican.

[Heron TSG]

Aye. His ideas for a flat tax and prison privatization were a bit ridiculous, but he was better than the rest. (Which isn't really saying a whole lot.))

[Aqizzar]

OP updated with Hunstman's exit.  I'll bet money that opinion poll that showed him at 4% below South Carolina native Stephen Colbert at 5% (who wasn't even in the poll) had something to do with his decision.  This is going to be a goofy primary.

I think I need more polls.

[RedKing]

I've been hitting up RealClearPolitics for most of my polling data. For some reason, I haven't kept up with Nate Silver's blog this year (I wasn't that thrilled when he went from having his own site to being part of the NY Times).

[palsch]

538 has been a lot worse as part of the NYT. They don't have links to the actual polls and do a lot less open analysis of numbers than they used to. It's still my most trusted source and I keep it in my RSS reader if only reading one of every few articles.

RCP is better for links to (most) polls, but are a lot worse on the numbers side. I remember losing all respect when they treated the straight average of multiple different polls as meaningful.

One site I haven't been looking at but should be (eg, just adding to google reader now) is DemConWatch. It was invaluable back in '08 for it's focus on delegates, convention procedure and various other party minutiae. It looks like they are doing a similar analysis of the Republican primaries this year. They are partisan and not single focus anymore, but still should be worth keeping an eye on.

[trees]

I guess that Rick Perry claimed that Turkey was run by Islamic terrorists in the SC debate last night.

[Nadaka]

I guess that Rick Perry claimed that Turkey was run by Islamic terrorists in the SC debate last night.

His  "reasoning" for this was that Turkey was willing to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza in order to deliver food and medicine Palestinians and that they condemned Israel for slaughtering their citizens.