I was laughing as I was hearing this. He sounds like the petulant "bad boy" in high school who just stole the annoying rich guy's (aka Mitt Romney's) lunch money... Which may not sound like much, until we realize that annoying rich guy's lunch money is enough to take a whole pack of hungry teens to Morton's!
Apparently when G-O-TEA base voters compare and contrast this to Mitt Romney's flip-flops on just about everything, they're choosing Newt... And to a lesser extent, cherry picking the policy positions of "Tea Party Ideological Grandfather" Ron Paul. With Newt, they can "have their cake and eat it, too" with his embrace of neoconservative demands for more wars everywhere, total destruction of the American social safety net as we know it, and a bizarre far right twist on populism that "Mr. 1%" Mitt Romney just can't pull off. Maybe the media pundits really did "misunderestimate" Newton's ability to give "tea partiers" exactly what they want, regardless of how ideologically incoherent we see it.
So is "Mitt-mentum" so last week? We'll start to see an answer to that question tonight, so stay tuned here after 4:00 PM when we start seeing results. And tomorrow morning, I'll try to interpret what happened here and in South Carolina, and what we will see next as the campaigning shifts further south to Florida.
The Iowa state GOP says their certified results show Rick Santorum winning by a 34-vote margin over Mitt Romney, a reversal of Romney’s reported caucus night lead of 8 votes — but the party has nevertheless called the result a “split decision,” citing the matter of 8 missing precincts. But those precincts aren’t really missing. [...]
[...T]he results that were reported on caucus night by the state GOP are still online. And for those precincts, we can get an idea of how Santorum and Romney performed against each other. Of course, we should remain aware that there still could be a typo in these numbers — but on the other hand, the probabilities strongly favor them being accurate for both Santorum and Romney, as errors that do occur (if at all) could have been spread across the other candidates, as well.
And as it turns out, when incorporating the numbers from election night, Santorum’s lead actually becomes even wider. [...]
In those precincts, based on the reported caucus night results, Santorum received a total of 81 votes, to Romney’s 46.
If those results are added to the certified results, Santorum’s 29,839 votes would become 29,920, and Romney’ 29,805 would become 29,851 — for a “final” result of Santorum winning the caucuses, by a margin of 69 votes.
They don't like Mittens... They really don't like him. And with Perry bowing out to endorse Newt Gingrich and Romney's "dazzling Iowa win!!!" officially taken away from him, perhaps South Carolina will provide fireworks, after all...
But Nevada's G-O-TEA Caucus still looks to arrive like a dud. Now that Perry's out, Brian Sandoval's endorsement doesn't seem to be worth a hill of beans. And funny enough, the big candidate appearance that everyone is now talking about... Is President Obama's.
President Barack Obama will visit Las Vegas next week, on a five-stop swing through the West and Midwest.
Obama will be arriving in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Jan. 25 and stay overnight, departing on Thursday, Jan. 26. No further details about the trip were immediately available, except that the president’s visit — like Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Reno’s Galena High School on Thursday to talk about college affordability — is official White House business.
The two trips bookend the Nevada Democratic Caucuses this Saturday. While the vice president and president’s stops in the Silver State are not officially part of the 2012 reelection campaign effort, the high-profile visits are likely to drum up Democratic enthusiasm just before the Republican presidential field arrives in Nevada for the GOP caucuses on Feb. 4.
Add all this together, and the big picture looks far less rosy for Mittens. He didn't win the Iowa Caucus, he still may not win the South Carolina Primary, and a Nevada Caucus win still won't mean anything. He still has a tough primary schedule ahead to tackle, and his general election numbers are still lousy. So how again is Mittens "the winner"?
“I would not put the cart before the horse and define him as an unambiguous frontrunner,” DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told TPM in an interview at St. Anselm College in Manchester. “He’s coming off what at some point probably won't even be defined as a win in Iowa where fewer voters came out for him than came out in 2008.” She added that anything less than 50% in New Hampshire should be interpreted as a sign of weakness given his close ties to the state. [...]
“Mitt Romney, I think, is more of a job cremator than a job creator,” Schultz said. She added: “He was a corporate buyout specialist at Bain Capital. He dismantled companies. He cut jobs. He forced companies into bankruptcy and he outsourced jobs and sent jobs overseas. That’s not a record to write home about, that’s not a record to be proud of, and it’s something voters need to know.”
So what's going on here? The state of the race is in flux yet again. Mitt Romney still can't seal the deal, or even break 20% (!!!!), nationally. And in New Hampshire, the state where he now owns a house and next door to where he was once Governor, he can't even break 40%. The Republican Party faces a weird dilemma where it has a "clear frontrunner" (Romney) who's also simultaneously a "weak frontrunner". But because no single "anti-Romney" has yet emerged, he's been able to skate by with minority support.
Is this about to change?
Enter Sheldon Adelson. Apparently, he's Newt Gingrich's BFF. And apparently, he's just as mad as Newt about Romney trying to steal his "true conservative" thunder. So now, he's about to hit Romney right on his proverbial Achilles' Heel: Bain Capital. And what makes this even worse for Mittens is that "King Adelson of Macau" is about to target Romney in what may be his weakest early primary state: South Carolina, where Romney now clings to a fragile lead that may very soon evaporate once the "tea party" folks coalesce around one of their own.
So apparently, "we matter" again... Just not in the way Jon Ralston had originally imagined/desired. Amy Tarkanian may still be a complete joke who allowed the "tea party" loons to take over the Nevada GOP madhouse, but Sheldon Adelson is the local righties' top "money man" who can have more of an impact on the Republican primary war than any of the "Tark Sharks" could ever dream of. The Nevada GOP Caucus itself still looks to be a total train wreck in the making, but Adelson's emergence as Mitt Romney's worst nightmare ensures ensures that The Silver State will make some sort of impact on this increasingly weird primary fight.
And what really intrigues me here is that Sheldon Adelson indeed plans to hit Mitt Romney on his record of destroying American jobs at Bain Capital. Just as I had suspected last week, the Bain issue isn't just one that Democrats are now testing against Romney. It can also hurt him on the right side of the aisle, since "tea partiers" seem to hate slick "Wall Street elite" shipping American jobs overseas (even if they're all too often tricked into supporting these very policies that lead to the loss of American jobs) as much as all the rest of us. And Adelson clearly knows this, which is why he's targeting Romney's Achilles Heel in the exact state (South Carolina) where it can cause the most damage.
So perhaps this G-O-TEA battle royale really isn't over just yet... And maybe Nevada really will play a significant role in it (just not in the way that benefits the Tarkanians or the state party).
