2012 GOP Presidential Campaign -- "This individual's going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time."

primary is just a straight ballot vote; most GOP primaries are winner-take-all but that may have changed in a few places.

caucuses are more like a big meeting. people physically get together in a big room (a high school gym generally) and, at the appointed time, bunch together with the other supporters of their first choice.

if there aren't enough people in a bunch, at that time, to meet the lower threshold %, then all those people have to choose someone else, and after another half-hour or so resort themselves for another count (or go home i guess). and that's where the unpollable combo of secondary & tertiary preferences combined with local relationships and just lucky charisma or whatev comes into play.

i dunno what those lower % thresholds are btw. 5? 15? in small communities or if there is low turnout, there's plenty of room to game this shit because the margins are so wacky. it's also why organization matters, a network of folks to just be at these places and hopefully yak their way thru the night. and also why long-duration enthusiasms like ron paul's core of fanatics can have a big effect over flash-in-the-pan polling leads like newt gingrich's.

idk how many rounds they go through either. probably when there are no more candidacies left below the margin. we could probably go to wikipedia or sth right?

Surely sometimes the second or third choice for a voter whose first choice becomes unavailable is: fuck this, I'm leaving.

This was taken at last year's Democratic caucus in Nevada. Look's quite bizarre.

http://www.american-buddha.com/aeyes29d.jpg

Yeah the caucus really seems to favor pauls campaign

is the pledge legally binding & enforcable, bc i think the best way to treat such a thing would be writing SURE DO! XOXO on the dotted line & then vote for the assholest as planned

lol my mom is a longtime democrat with no real 'extreme' or unorthodox or even notably leftist beliefs, but has a bizarre taste for single-digit outlier candidates.

i asked her in 08 if she was gonna caucus and she said she really liked joe biden (i know, right?) (i was fishing for her take on hrc vs obama vs born in a meal). so i was like, uh ok, who's your second choice then? "bill richardson".

then i recalled back in 88 when she had talked a whole crew of old people from the home she managed to go caucus for... bruce babbitt.

no real point to this story other than: caucuses are kind of fucked up and nobody ever explains wtf happens at them until like the night of.

Given what the pledge 'requires', it could not be legally binding. It is just a load of hokum.

"I promise to vote for the Republican nominee for President of the United States whether or not, in the intervening time between the primary and the national election, it is determined that he is a 'Manchurian' salafist candidate, a socialist, the author of the 'texts from Bennet' or a 34 year old Guatemalan drug runner."

ha rand paul: "it must be frustrating for Newt, to see something he feels he's entitled to slipping away"

"I do hope he enjoyed that cruise to the Greek isles."

(xpost) Ditto those of us who were hoping for a train-wreck of a Republican nomination process. We feel it slipping away, and it's very frustrating.

What could be more of a train-wreck than the inevitable Bob Dole-ization of the 2012 Republican candidate?

Newt-ization would have been preferable.

Bob Dole still thinks Bob Dole had a lot to offer the American people. Bob Dole resents the implication he was a stiff.

Bob Dole was actually funny at times. He's still a loser.

I remember getting really drunk one night not long after the '96 election and referring to myself as Bob Dole for a good part of the evening. ("Bob Dole can't keep his head up.") Just looked at his Wikipedia page--he turned 88 this year. I actually used to find him very funny.

Btw, via a perusal of the longest booms (as opposed to rece/depre-ssions in American history; the longest under one President? Clinton.

The only way I can imagine Twitter being even vaguely interesting would be if in every tweet, you had to refer to yourself as Bob Dole.

The upcoming Iowa caucuses make Bob Dole fresh and interesting again.

lol my mom is a longtime democrat with no real 'extreme' or unorthodox or even notably leftist beliefs, but has a bizarre taste for single-digit outlier candidates.

i asked her in 08 if she was gonna caucus and she said she really liked joe biden (i know, right?) (i was fishing for her take on hrc vs obama vs born in a meal). so i was like, uh ok, who's your second choice then? "bill richardson".

then i recalled back in 88 when she had talked a whole crew of old people from the home she managed to go caucus for... bruce babbitt.

All Catholic blue-blazer-wearers. I think I actually flirted with Babbitt too for '88 (the preteen-neb primary was a big deal that year); Gore was too conservative and hadn't yet showed his enviro side. Paul Simon became my favorite after Hart dropped out.

Nice bow ties

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/12/kelly-clarkson-endorses-ron-paul-on-twitter.html

Kelly Clarkson may be a country star in denial, but last night on Twitter, she proudly declared herself to be a Republican backing the man who may triumph next month in the Iowa caucuses. "I love Ron Paul," she wrote. "I liked him a lot during the last republican nomination and no one gave him a chance. If he wins the nomination for the Republican party in 2012 he's got my vote." Though her endorsement prompted fellow chanteuse Michelle Branch to also out herself as a Paul fan, Clarkson's followers quickly brought up the controversy surrounding Paul's recently unearthed newsletter statements, and the singer clarified, "I have never heard that he's a racist? I definitely don't agree with racism, that's ignorant ... I love all people and could care less if you like men or women. I have never heard that Ron Paul is a racist or homophobe?" Ultimately, wrote Clarkson, "I do not support racism. I support gay rights, straight rights, women's rights, men's rights, white/black/purple/orange rights. I like Ron Paul because he believes in less government and letting the people (all of us) make the decisions and mold our country. That is all." Justin Guarini, care to weigh in?

Orange ppl can fuck right off

i see a purple motherfucker and i going straight for my .357

i'm

I keep wondering if there is someone out there that is going to run as a 3rd party canidate, as this seems like a year where someone could actually get some traction.

I'm not sure if Perot doesn't run in 96 that Bob Dole would have won. Clinton might have still won, but it would have been way closer.

can't think of a viable 3rd party candidate other than Paul, and even then I think he'd struggle for money.

MSNBC Alert Thread?

Politics nerds might be interested in checking out Howard Fineman in jeans right now. His suit stuck at the dry cleaners?

Goodbye to any residual like I had for Kelly Clarkson. For not just the politics, but the dumb.

pop star is a dipshit, news at 11

I keep wondering if there is someone out there that is going to run as a 3rd party canidate, as this seems like a year where someone could actually get some traction.

I'm not sure if Perot doesn't run in 96 that Bob Dole would have won. Clinton might have still won, but it would have been way closer.

― earlnash, Thursday, December 29, 2011 5:35 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

http://sportcardsauction.com/images/scan0526.gif

Meanwhile a surprising number of commenters agree with John J. Miller's 2012 predictions.

I'm on board with the Tigers winning the World Series

The choice of "centrist Republicans":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/vote-obama-centrist-republican

haha -- I was waiting for someone to post it. I didn't want to be typecast.

2 bad the cult of Paul is more about exalting Him than any purported libertarian ideology, or i guess Gary Johnson could gain some third party traction once Mitt's inevitability becomes apparent to even the most die hard.

(that is assuming Paul doesn't go for a third party run. and for some reason i just don't think he will)

he won't. gary johnson or, god forbid, buddy roemer could get some traction if not for the cult of paulsonality.

"Dead Skunk"'s a thousand times better, but right off the wire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn9DSeDxnnI

whatever point he's trying to make is undermined by presence of ukelele

i hope paul wins in iowa (have no idea how actually plausible this is) and then makes the gop beg him not to crush their dreams with a third-party run; i also hope he goes after obama's drones in an actual debate so that we can watch all the others try to change the subject before they're forced to heap too much death-fetishist praise on the kenyan commie.

LOL

http://concord-nh.patch.com/articles/mitt-romney-s-sons-meet-concord-seniors-video#video-8805057

^one of Mitt’s sons telling reporters that his dad doesn’t have to release his tax returns until President Obama releases his birth certificate and school transcripts.

um wait, not reporters. senior citizen group apparently.

Wolf Blitzer was pressing Romney on the tax returns the other day. I don't get quite why he's dodging. If there were something unseemly there, that's going to come out in time anyway; if it's just that he's obscenely rich, well, that can't be news by now, can it? Looking like you're hiding something always looks bad, and comments like his son's ain't going to help.

Tagg Romney?

eh I think he's just dodging 'people talk about how rich he is'

There's a difference between people sorta knowing he's rich and people knowing an exact dollar amount to put on that idea. If he's worth over $50 million, it's going to turn off a lot of voters.

I'm picturing Romney and his wife getting busted as they pull a Morty Seinfeld, walking into Denny's at 6:00 p.m., an hour after the early-bird special.

ha probly a repost but new to me

http://www.anyclip.com/movies/bruno/ron-paul-interview/