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January 22, 2012
Three different candidates have won the opening three contests in the Republican presidential primaries highlighting the fractured nature of the Republican party in 2012. With Santorum winning Iowa, Romney New Hampshire and Gingrich South Carolina, the battle now moves to Florida.
Although Romney has a double-digit poll lead in Florida, it may turn out that the selection process shapes up as a Romney-Gingrich battle set to be fought state by state, month by month. That would be media heaven.
We can wave Rick Santorum goodbye in the near future. He is almost broke so cannot fund an expensive ad campaign in Florida, and there is less support in the state for his brand of social conservatism popular with Christian evangelicals. Romney now faces a troubling reality: He’s lost two of the first three contests, with his only victory coming in what is essentially his home state.
Maybe the Florida result won’t prove much at all. The South Carolina primary firmly establishes the GOP contest as a two-man race, with the Tea Party wing of the party largely uniting around Gingrich and everyone else siding with Romney. Will the GOP’s noise machine respond to Gingrich’s win Saturday night with panic?
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Gingrich is a sort of Ron Paul on steroids; someone deeply appealing to that redneck knot that is having so much trouble coming to terms with modernism.
Santorum's prospective departure ought not be mourned by anyone who isn't a lunatic.
Mitt-Willard-Romney was intended to be the establishment candidate, contrasted as a "moderate", against the mad uncles, but his enthusiastic uptake of some of the worst practical excesses of neoliberalism, both at public and private levels, is just too much a reminder of the role of Wall St in the current woes of millions of Americans.
Whoever gets up eventually, the regime will remain neolib, the question this time is really about a test of the extent and power of reactionary modernism's attempt to evacuate a younger, black, liberal president and his progressive rational rhetoric, if not practice.
As with Australia and Gillard, even a flawed small l liberal is more attractive to normal people who can't and shouldnt, embrace the alibi and endorse austerity and market economics, as practiced by the right.
Its an aesthetic thing, but it s true that even shit smells better if its perfumed and gift-wrapped a bit better.