As of 11:00 Central today, Romney has won just three primaries all year and all of them are effectively his “home turf.” All of his other wins have been caucuses, many of them not strongly contested by his rivals.
P.S. It’s hard to gauge the outcome from county results, but so far every county that has reported shows a strong showing for McCain and a fairly anemic Romney result. It’s not out of the question that Romney wins few or no districts.
P.P.S. Is it too early to call on Romney to drop out so that he stops splitting the conservative vote? Maybe not.
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February 5th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
MDCLXVI
Hey, help me out here: where’s your post about how horrible McCain is? I can’t find it.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Daniel Larison
That’s a ridiculous thing to ask. I deride McCain all the time, and I have been speaking out against him in particular for years. A long time ago I dubbed McCain one of “the Terrible Trio,” and I have hammered McCain for his immigration and war views time and again. I don’t dwell on them quite so much at present because they should be blindingly obvious by now and legions of others are making these arguments. On the other hand, Romney receives a pass from way too many people when he is really no better and in some ways much worse than McCain. As I have tried to do with Huckabee to some extent, I have aimed at providing a critical view of Romney’s candidacy.
Not too long ago I said: “I can think of few things more terrifying from a policy perspective than the prospect of another administration that marries aggressive hegemonic foreign policy with saccharine moralising pseudo-piety and policies that encourage mass immigration.” I have repeatedly argued in recent weeks that McCain represents continuity with the current administration, and it is impossible to think that this counts as anything other than a harsh criticism coming from me. McCain’s Russophobia, his interventionist meddling in the Caucasus, his jingoism and his warmongering are all appalling to me, as I have made clear on many occasions. The frequency with which I use the word “horrifying” in connection with McCain’s name should earn me some kind of decoration from the anti-McCain brigades. I’m sure I could dig up more from the archives, but you get the point. The fact that I haven’t bought into Romney’s fraud and don’t accept the standard assessment (disproved tonight) that he is the “most viable conservative” in the race does not mean that I am in any way sympathetic to McCain. I clearly oppose the main things McCain and the modern GOP actually stand for, so I’m not sure where anyone could get the idea that I have been giving McCain an easy time. Romney’s candidacy offers a false alternative to McCain, whose views I once again described as “horrid” just days ago. Satisfied?
February 6th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Daniel Larison
To drive the point home, here is a comment that sums up just how much I think is wrong with McCain.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:17 am
kranza
Daniel has been focusing on the most important thing about the past few weeks–this especially depressing period in our country’s life–which is that the idiots who suddenly tried to rout McCain with their ad hoc Reagan stool actually made this mess. They haven’t been bested in some epic battle of true conservatism versus McCainism; they just blundered around all year not knowing what to do because they don’t know how to get themselves out of the Bush era they helped sink us in. In that fog McCain never had opposition and he won by default with his stature–and the active support of some on the Right that the default Romney-backers insist on counting as allies (if only cause they’re all allied against the islamofasicsts).
I mean really, I’ll always love to laugh at Hewitt, but the guy did the thing right. It was obvious conservatism was screwed anyway in ‘08 back when he picked Romney. With McCain and Giuiani the options at the time, it made sense, at least from the blinkered Bush-supporting perspective he and all the recent Romney desperadoes were coming from.
Of course, conservatism was screwed by then because conservatism has been screwed ever since the “conservatives” picked Bush in ‘99 (yes, and for years and decades before that, and I don’t unequivocally endorse any poltiical development since magna carta, but you know what I mean…in the lowest depth a lower deep opens..) but that leads me back to the original point: they made the Right safe for Bushism and now they don’t understand why their Reagan stool didn’t work out for them.
They’re not going to learn the lesson, of course. They’ll just see themselves as the beautiful losers in a nefarious liberal capture of their beloved party, and vow to fight on until the glorious day when they get an imperialism-immigration-insolvency statesman who isn’t so rude to them. And then won’t David Brooks be sorry!
February 6th, 2008 at 7:21 am
bsebse
One good thing, if McCain loses, they can’t blame his “anti-immigration” stance.
He will have lost on the war, and the war alone.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:50 am
OldNewEngland
The war alone? Alone?? Come on! If anything, McCain’s lost will be overdeterminded. That is, there’ll be more factors than you could ever hope to nail down. Among them: Bush’s unpopularity, conservative hostility, Democratic enthusiasm/hunger to reclaim the Oval Office, immigration (he’ll be hit from the left by Dems and from the right by Repubs), etc. In fact, I’d say the war might be the least of his problems, especially if things continue to go “well” over there, or at least if the situation keeps getting a pass by the media (which it might not come general time).
February 6th, 2008 at 10:46 am
MDCLXVI
I apologize, you’re right, I should have assumed better. And you can write about whatever you want. Comments are too easy to post.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Daniel Larison
It’s not a problem, and it’s a fair question to ask given my tendency to bash Romney more often in recent weeks. I did want to make it clear that I am in no way interested in McCain’s success. My apologies if I was a bit sharp in my response.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:22 am
bsebse
OldNewEngland, you don’t list any issues.
“Bush’s unpopularity” is not an issue. Why is Bush unpopular? The war, mostly.
“Democratic enthusiasm/hunger to reclaim the Oval Office” is not an issue. Why are they more enthusiantisc than normal? Because they HATE, HATE, HATE the war. Or better yet, they see the public hates the war and they smell blood in the water.
Immigration? Please, McCain is the open border water boy for the Republicans party. McCain is the Republican neutralizer on this issue (assuming it is a loser, which it is not).
Yeah, Bush was a big spender but that is not driving moderates and other Republicans to democrats, as they are even bigger spenders (other than for the war).
The economy is still pretty good and was great in 2006, but the Republicans still lost.
Bottom line, it is the war.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Howard J. Harrison
Bsebse writes,
This is correct as far as it goes, but I am not sure that it goes all the way to the bottom line. Even if not for the war, would the Republicans not still have lost in 2006?
In every republic and parliamentary monarchy in the West of which I know, every party in power inevitably accumulates a growing weight of opposition over time. People accrete to the Democratic party precisely because they feel dissatisfied with the Republican. This is what makes two-party politics inherently cyclical.
Republicans were in ascendancy 1994–2006. Like the tide, it was time for the wheel to turn. The war gives the appearance of motive to a motion that was already underway. Indeed, one could argue that it was the war that prevented the wheel from turning two years earlier, in 2004.
Howard
February 7th, 2008 at 2:16 am
bsebse
If George Bush had just invaded Afghanistan and had focused on settling that country, and he was still trying to track down Bin Laden (or perhaps caught him), and we were not passing huge budget overrides for the war in Irq, and gas was 25-50 cents (or more) lower than it is now, yes the Republicans would have won 2006 and GW Bush would have been a candidate for a great president.
Yes, it was, and still is, the f-ing war.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:38 am
bsebse
I think conservatives are confusing their anger at George Bush for his betrayal of conservative issues with the general anger in the nation at Republicans.
The general population does not care very much about George Bush’s spending, his drug program for seniors or his weakness on a bunch of social conservative issues.
And they certainly are not being driven to the democrats over these issues, where they will only get more of the same.
The general population hates bush for mostly for the war and related side effects ( such as high gas prices).
February 7th, 2008 at 2:56 am
bsebse
Bush’s policies on civil liberties in the US could also being hurting him with the general public, but that is less clear to me. Phone tapping, holding people without arrest, torture.
I think of this as part of the war in Iraq, but really it is something different.
This was one area where McCain distinguished himself, although weakly IMHO, and which I do support him.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Zarathustra
The majority of polls indicate that either the public doesn’t care about these issues or outright supports the President’s positions. As much as libertarians would like this set of issues to be hurting the President, it doesn’t seem as if it is quite doing that.
As you said, it isn’t “corruption” or “overspending” or “not being conservative enough” that did Bush in (which much of the broad right appears to believe - or wants to believe), it’s the war and, to a lesser extent, gas prices that were the fatal blows.