Posted by
Steve on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 1:52:46 PM
Yesterday was the Florida primary. Mitt Romney won in a blowout. Romney got between 46 and 47% of the vote. Newt Gingrich got 32%. Rick Santorum got 13%. That means that Romney got more votes than his next two challengers combined. That is a blowout by any definition.
Newt Gingrich was not gracious in defeat. He did not concede Florida to Romney. That would have been the gentlemanly thing to do. Romney did that in South Carolina. Newt promised to carry on through the remaining states.
Rick Santorum and Ron Paul knew they had no chance in Florida, so they were long gone by the time the votes were cast. They were in Colorado and Nevada. Those are the next two states to hold events. The speed of the process speeds up over the next month until you get Super Tuesday where a large number of states hold primaries. By then the nominee will be determined, probably not by delegates but by momentum.
I read some blogs last night about what is next. I do not remember for sure who wrote this, but one speculated on what the loss means to Gingrich, Santorum and Paul. He said that even though the press people may not know it yet, they are likely to start leaving the campaigns of those candidates. He speculated that by the time of the Super Tuesday primary election we may not even remember the name of Rick Santorum.
The lifeblood of any campaign is press coverage. If the press stops covering the campaigns of Gingrich, Santorum and Paul, they are effectively over. The funding sources will dry up as nobody is going to give money to a candidate that cannot get his message out. They might still be running, but without money and press coverage they might as well be at home with the wife and kids.
After a lot of searching I finally found the victory speech by Mitt Romney. If he gives speeches like that all the time, Barack Obama will not win a single state. He was fantastic. He did fall into his usual campaign mode at the end. But, the first half or more of the speech was pure gold. He skewered Barack Obama numerous times with quotes from Barack Obama and Thomas Paine. When he got into the campaign speech portion of his talk, you could tell that the fire was not as bright.
If Mitt Romney means what he said in the victory speech in Florida and follows through with those commitments, he will be a two-term President. He will also go down as one of the very best Presidents in history. He said that he would make America a great place for entrepreneurs and businesses. If that happens, unemployment will be a thing of the past. We would have full employment. He also said he was going to make actual cuts in the budget. Not the fake cuts you get from Congress, but actual cuts that make the budget go down. That is something I would love to see. Just pulling that off would put him in the top 5 of all Presidents.
As a side note, I saw that Mitt Romney is now receiving Secret Service protection after the victory in Florida. That means that it is pretty sure that he will be the nominee. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, but this one seems like it will happen.