2012 republican presidential nominee III: can romney get santorum out of his hair?

there's a show about modern republicans right now on radio 4 if you're interested in hearing about this from the point of view of a guy who sounds like a waistcoated lepidopterist

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

guy from the american enterprise institute says that demographic changes mean that the only way republicans can eke out narrow victories is by winning the working class white vote by massive margins

the 'volk' if you will

sorry

haha

yeah i guess i kind of knew that already but it is helpful to remember it as an explanation for pretty much everything these candidates say

he said that "a variety of cultural factors" have meant that wealthy people are actually less likely to vote republican now than in the past

Lots of stuff up about how Michigan is suddenly close again, with Santorum leading some polls. If Romney wins--he probably will--it'll be because of a huge margin in advance voting. That seems to have saved him a couple of times thus far; lots of people vote for him before they see him up close and/or he starts saying silly things as each primary nears.

Tracer: is the show Analysis?

huh, you don't say. did this get linked here?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/11/rick-santorum-s-italian-family-speaks-out.html

In the tiny town of Riva del Garda in northern Italy, 83-year-old-Maria Malacarne Santorum keeps her family’s secrets—including those of her late husband’s cousin, Rick. In an exclusive interview with the Italian weekly magazine Oggi, Mrs. Santorum recalls fondly when Rick visited her in 1985 during his law internship in Florence, and when he came back again in 1986 and 1989. “He loved our culture and cuisine so much, he brought his wife-to-be, Karen, a massive cookbook of Italian recipes,” she said.

But the elder Santorum matriarch doesn’t understand why he has diverged so far from the family’s longtime political stance. “In Riva del Garda his grandfather Pietro and uncles were ‘red communists’ to the core,” writes Oggi journalist Giuseppe Fumagalli, likening the family to “Peppone” after a famous fictional Italian communist mayor who fought against an ultraconservative priest known as Don Cammillo and about which a popular television series is based. “But on the other side of the ocean, it’s like his family here doesn’t exist. Instead he draws crowds as the head of the ultraconservative faction of the Republican party, against divorce, gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.”

i didn't even get that santorum is an italian name

gukbe - yep

lol goole can you imagine if those were obama's european communist relatives??

of course the correct analogy would be if obama had fascist relatives or something

well africans are 'into' genocide, you may have heard

huh, you don't say. did this get linked here?

yes, back in January

I can't believe I had never heard of Santorum's hardcore commie cousins.

Matt Taibbi on the primaries as the natural end result of the paranoid resentment psychodrama of the last few decades:

No, it was while watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.

http://m.rollingstone.com/?redirurl=/politics/blogs/taibblog/arizona-debate-conservative-chickens-come-home-to-roost-20120223

lol taibbi goes brooks on us

brooks would have cited "a recent study"

lol taibbi goes brooks on us

http://netrightdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/David-Brooks.jpeg

"What should shame the GOP is how an increasing reliance on what I call the Waffle House vote over the Starbucks constituency is an example of what David Langford, a professor at Wharton, calls the narcissism of spoiled cream"

rofl

I missed that Ron Paul quote he references - that's some crazy head-in-the-sand shit.

idqg how intrade 'works' but 20% is absurdly high for this

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=756901

if you have some money lying around, this is an easy return i think

the rules of that trade do say

"If the Presidential nominee is not decided after the first round of delegate voting at the party convention the convention will be considered "brokered" (i.e. it takes multiple rounds of voting by party delegates to decide the nominee)."

but even that seems like dreaming imo

shorting things is very expensive on intrade

huh well fuck that!

basically you have to put up 80 cents to the dollar to short a contract that's at 20.

that sentence might have well read 'my cat's breath smells like cat food', good thing I quit my job at goldman sachs counting money weeks ago

haha this is not high finance this is an internet game basically

I would like to short dr. morbius's lent commitment

haha

Nate Silver ‏ @fivethirtyeight Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
I think our Michigan forecast might literally show a tie.

It's probably even the right height.

it's crazy what a big difference santorum winning by 1% and losing by 1% can make in this race in partic

Kid Rock giving a concert for Romney is on the news right now & it may be the grossest thing I have ever seen.

All of these young earnest preppy (Mormon?) bros fist pumping and holding lighters aloft for Kid Rock and Mitt.

Newt must be suffering about this. Suffering!

http://i.imgur.com/uEG4X.png

disclaimer: all polling recorded previous to kid rock event

RICK ROMNEY IN A LANDSLIDE GOP #1 YEAH

man, this is all too hilarious. congrats on a hard fought campaign, Mitt Santorum.

I'm slowly learning to temper my excitement over such chaotic scenarios--Romney keeps weaseling his way off of life support.

Yes, if by "weaseling" you mean spending $4 or $5 million. But, by many political definitions, spending big money = life support.

plus all this time Obama for America hasn't had to spend any money to improve O's favorables; the jobs numbers are doing all the work

hence this goofy primary being so delightful

I don't know what I mean, Aimless. I'm just getting a 24-hour head start on being mad.

In NewtWorld:

"We are not going to fix Afghanistan. It is not possible. These are people who have spent several thousand years hating foreigners. And what we have done by staying is become the new foreigners. This is a real problem. And there are some problems where you have to say, 'You know, you are going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life because you clearly don't want to learn from me how to be unmiserable.' And that is what you are going to see happen."

Obama spent about as much as Romney last month, iirc, though he had much more saved.

Romney got a grilling from the rocker for more than an hour, campaign aides said. Would he help the state of Michigan? Romney said he would. Would he help the city of Detroit? Kid Rock himself had just committed to help raise a $1 million for the struggling city’s symphony. Romney said yes. And the singer born with the name Bob Ritchie pressed Romney about how he would support U.S. service members as president.

Romney left without an answer about the performance. The next day, he received an email: Kid Rock was in.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/romney-woos-kid-rock-landing-rocker-rapper-and-born-free-for-last-rally-before-mich-vote/2012/02/27/gIQA21v0eR_story.html

I think that he makes some pretty good music and I like listening to his music,” Romney told Detroit radio station WXYT when he was asked if Kid Rock portrays values that people should emulate.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-02/228022340-27181154.jpg

MY NAME IS MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT