News from the Votemaster          

Ron Paul Suspends His Campaign     Permalink

Ron Paul announced yesterday that he will not spend any more money in the few remaining primary states. The main reason for saying this is that some of the upcoming states are quite expensive to campaign in, including New Jersey, Texas, and California. Paul is simply out of money. However, he very coyly did not mention ending his campaign or anything like that. In caucus states, the actual delegates have not yet been chosen and he will make a play to get the actual delegates to be people who support him. He did this successfully in Maine and Nevada, for example. In some cases he is planting "stealth delegates," that is, people who overtly say they will vote for Romney, but in reality will be taking instructions from him. While highly unethical, such behavior is not illegal, as caucus delegates are not bound to vote for any specific candidate. However, to get his name placed in nomination, he needs to have the majorities of five states support him and it is not clear if he can jump that hurdle. The RNC is certainly hoping he can't, but probably doesn't really know either.

Primaries Today in Nebraska and Oregon     Permalink

Two states, Nebraska and Oregon, are holding primaries today. Now that Mitt Romney has no official opponents, he ought to get 100% of the votes in both states, but that is unlikely to happen. The Republican Party is gradually unifying around him, but the process is far from complete. Romney has the difficult task of moving to the center to attract independents while at the same time not alienating voters on the right who were wary of him to start with and definitely afraid he will try to shake the etch-a-sketch. His only real hope is to move to the center and hope that the base hates President Obama so much that they will hold their noses and vote for him as the lesser of two evils.

Obama Starts Getting Nasty     Permalink

Obama's team has put together a long powerful, emotional ad attacking Romney's tenure at Bain Capital as a job destroyer. The Web version of the ad runs 6 minutes but the one being televised runs only 2 minutes, which is still pretty long. It features former workers from GST Steel, which had been in business for 105 years until Bain took over, looted it, and shut it down. This is another sign that Obama has completely abandoned the "Hope and Change" campaign of 2008 and is going to hit Romney very hard. Many voters haven't tuned into the election yet, and if Obama can define Romney as someone who doesn't care about people and animals (Seamus the dog is dead, but not really), he will be most of the way home. People won't vote for someone they don't like personally, even if they like his proposed policies. Ask Al Gore about that.

Needless to say, Romney is not going to take this lying down. He is going to fight back very hard. But he is at a disadvantage here because he can't define Obama. Everyone already knows him well, for better or worse. No challenger can redefine a sitting President. What Romney has to do is make the election into a referendum on the economy and not on his own personality. If he can do that, he could win. Clearly with such negative ads already running in five swing states, it is going to get very bloody very fast.

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