Monday, February 6, 2012

Wherein Nevada Is Positioned to Remain a "Blue State" in 2012, Part III

Will #NVGOP finish counting #NVcaucus votes by the time @BarackObama wins reelection in November?

OK, maybe it didn't exactly work like this... But it might has well have. The damage has already been done. We may now know the final results, but we also know that Nevada Republican turnout actually plummeted from 2008 levels, not even reaching 33,000 caucus-goers last Saturday. And while we still don't know for sure what caused the exceptionally slow vote count, it definitely doesn't look good for Nevada Republicans.

“It didn’t need to happen this way. With more planning, more process — more space for observers ... people being in close quarters added to the tension,” said Carl Bunce, Paul’s Nevada campaign director. “A couple of changes and you won’t have national staffers breathing down the necks of county people. Cause we’re in different worlds.”

Republican Party officials held a tense meeting with lawyers from each of the presidential campaigns early Sunday. Uneasy campaign officials gave the county party room to continue counting before issuing public comments on the process.

But as the counting stretched past the 24-hour mark, political reporters from around the nation mocked Nevada’s inability to quickly finalize its results.

“The biggest loser in Nevada’s Republican caucuses? The state’s feckless GOP,” wrote Politico.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza tweeted: “Nevada not helping their case to hump further up in calendar with this sloooooow count.”

Even some of the volunteers counting ballots seemed to be aware that Nevada’s political stock was sinking as the count dragged on.

Indeed, it has. Politico (which has never had a reputation for being "progressive friendly") has a scathing article that holds nothing back in its declaration of the Nevada Republican Caucus as an EPIC FAIL. And it's not like the coverage in the local media has been any better for them.



Wow.



Wow. What a train wreck.

We already know the actual G-O-TEA candidates and their policies have been turning off voters, and the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll confirms this as President Obama has a solid lead over "Mr. 1%" Willard Romney for the first time in this poll for nearly a year. Yet again, as the economy improves along with the voting public's attention paid to the Presidential Election, Obama keeps looking better and better. But if that weren't bad enough for Republicans, their whole process is also hurting their electoral prospects. After all, who likes hearing that something they were led to believe was a fair election is now "not an election"? And who likes being turned away because one wasn't told the correct time, or because one couldn't sign a religious waiver?

And of course, this whole fiasco over the actual vote count isn't helping Nevada Republicans, either. How else can one explain their sudden embrace of "BIG GOVERNMENT SOCIALISM!!!" as they start making noise over switching back to a state run primary?

Well, at least we now know the big winner of Nevada's Republican Caucus: President Obama.

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