"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men
from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
(Thomas Jefferson)


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Galen: Republicans Can't Run a Caucus (Understatement)

Anyone else wonder if Nevada GOP was out to get Romney 50% of the vote?  We heard that Ron Paul people were turned away from the caucuses.  Why?  What was the Romney camp afraid of if all the Paul votes were counted.  No way they could offset the Mormon vote.

Saw outright lying on Twitter about the fact that there were only 7% Mormons voting in the Nevada primary when it was closer to 25% to 30%.  That's a huge difference and why the Nevada GOP had to make sure that Romney won by a bigger margin.  Am I accusing Nevada GOP of shenanigans with the counting of votes and how they ran the Caucus?  You bet I am.  Don't think the results would be changed but the percentages certainly would have been changed.  No one takes that long to count votes when it is on the up and up.

Just like in Iowa where they managed to lose ballot boxes and took forever to say Romney had not won but Santorum won.  Then the Iowa GOP Chair resigned amid the fact there are still missing ballot boxes in what we would assume was friendly Santorum country.  Do we think Iowa was rigged?  Without a doubt.

Think the Romney camp will do anything to get him the nomination but what are they going to do when a large percentage of Conservative Republicans leave the block for President blank or vote for someone like the Libertarian Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico.  With Roseanne Barr running on the Green Party who knows some might vote for her as a protest vote against Romney and the RNC.  A lot of people are getting it through their head that Romney is Obama Lite and not a very nice person who is out of touch with the vast majority of Americans or anyone not wealthy.

One more Caucus state added to the list of states that ethics seem to be missing including New Hampshire.  How many absentee ballots in the high rises of south Florida came from people from New England and New York who are also registered in those states but heavily favored Romney?

Galen said Preibus needs to step in but he is part of the cause of all of this with all the debates with liberal moderators aimed at Romney winning.  The fact that Preibus refuses to follow RNC rules and award the delegates out of Florida proportionately is reason enough not to trust him to oversee any election.  What is a moderate from Wisconsin doing heading the RNC anyway.  Is he the best we can find as he is more concerned about WI recall then anything?  In fact, why doesn't the RNC get the best person they can find and change the rule that they have had to be a member of the RNC.  It is a dumb rule which must have been put in by the establishment inside the beltway group to control the RNC and thus the Presidential primary.
Republicans Can't Run a Caucus
By Rich GalenFebruary 6, 2012
Subscribe to Rich Galen's posts 
The Nevada GOP couldn't get the votes counted. By halftime of the Super Bowl, CNN.com was reporting that a full day after the caucuses only 83 percent of the precincts had been recorded. 
The Iowa GOP chairman resigned in disgrace after it took nearly two weeks to decide that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney had been the winner there. By that time, whatever minor momentum Santorum had gained by "losing" by only eight votes on caucus night had long dissipated and he was but a footnote in the South Carolina story. 
The results from Nevada as of 7:50 pm Eastern time last night (Sunday) were:
Mitt Romney - (13,442) 48%
Newt Gingrich - (6,043) 22%
Ron Paul - ( 5,239) 19%
Rick Santorum - (2,952) 11% 
I kiddingly Tweeted, after Iowa announced its final ruling, that international observers would be called in to oversee the Iowa caucuses in 2016. 
Happily, for everyone involved, Romney has such a big lead that the inability of the Nevada GOP to count all the votes in a timely matter will not likely change anything. The only possibility would be Ron Paul edging out Newt Gingrich for second place, but that doesn't look likely.
I am serious about this: RNC National Chairman, Reince Priebus, should immediately dispatch anyone in the nation who has any idea how to run a caucus and tell the state parties that the RNC-designated person is in charge. 
This is a little time sensitive in that there are two more caucuses scheduled for tomorrow - Minnesota and Colorado. In addition there are two states with rolling caucus dates this month. Maine is now underway through the 11th, and precincts in Wyoming can meet anytime between the 9th and the 29th. 
Missouri has a non-binding primary election on Tuesday, but that has drawn almost no attention from the candidates or the media. 
As of the end of halftime last night, the Nevada GOP had counted 28,356 votes. The percentages had shifted to: 
Mitt Romney - 49%
Newt Gingrich - 22%
Ron Paul - 19%
Rick Santorum - 10%
It is likely that Romney will crack the 50 percent ceiling by the time the counting is over, even though that might not be until the next Superbowl. 
Sheldon Adelson, who has been funding Gingrich's super PAC, owns the Venetian and Palazzo hotels - a total of 7,100 rooms. Assuming an average of two people per room, Adelson's operation is able to check 28,200 people in and out every two weekends at his two hotels on the Strip.
The Nevada Republican Party has taken 24 hours to count the same number of voters and still has a way to go. 
The Iowa GOP had to count about 120,000 ballots including some made out in favor of long-forgotten names like Bachmann, Perry, and Huntsman. Nevada will only have to count slightly more than a third of that number and they can't get it done. 
It's not just that this is unfair to Republicans - the national polls shift up and down with results of elections in individual states - it's downright embarrassing. 
If I were the Democratic National Committee I would be running an ad saying: 
Republicans tell you they want to run the country. Republicans want you to trust them to run the world. They can't even run simple elections in small states. Who would you trust? Obama 2012
Excerpt:  Read More at CNS
The ads tailor made for the Democrats to use are like taking candy from a baby.  My favorite suggestion was an ad showing John Kerry on the beach with Mitt Romney handing Romney his flip flops.  That speaks volumes and would be a perfect ad.  There are so many ads waiting to be used against Romney that one has to wonder how dumb the establishment Rockefeller Republican group has to be to want him as our nominee when conservatives not only don't like him but have no respect for his flip flopping all over the place.  When a candidate is not comfortable in their own skin, why should we vote for them?

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