"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)


Showing posts with label Alabama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alabama. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Results from March 13 Republican President Primary -- Is There a Deal in the Making?

Alabama Primary

98.4% precincts reporting
CandidateVotesPct.Del.
SantorumSantorum
212,34334.5% 18
GingrichGingrich
179,91929.3% 12
RomneyRomney
178,60129.0% 11
PaulPaul
30,4945.0%
OthersOthers
13,5832.2%
50 delegates

Mississippi Primary

99.3% precincts reporting
CandidateVotesPct.Del.
SantorumSantorum
93,20132.9% 13
GingrichGingrich
88,71131.3% 12
RomneyRomney
85,94130.3% 12
PaulPaul
12,4984.4%
OthersOthers
3,0371.1%
40 delegates

Hawaii Caucus

100% precincts reporting
CandidateVotesPct.Del.
RomneyRomney
4,25045.4% 9
SantorumSantorum
2,36925.3% 4
PaulPaul
1,71218.3% 1
GingrichGingrich
1,03411.0%
20 delegates

When you take a look at those numbers, it jumps out that if you add up the conservative numbers of Santorum and Gingrich in almost every Romney is getting scorched.  The lack of voters in Hawaii is joke to even be mentioned.  Why are states and territories with such few people voting awarding that number of delegates.  RNC needs to revamp the way delegates are awarded including giving states who went RED in the last election more delegates and taking ones away from BLUE states.

Are Republicans going to nominate someone that cannot get the conservative vote.  Would bet at least 50% of the current conservative votes against Romney will never go to him after his 'scorched earth' policy against our candidates. 

 In 2008, most of us swallowed hard and supported McCain/Palin but that is not happening this time.  Most conservatives have had it with the power brokers inside the beltway for the Republican Party that want to shove the liberal Romney at us.  You cannot believe a word the man says about where he stands as he panders for votes like using y'all in Mississippi and talking about grits is the perfect example.  Does he even knew what grits looked like?  

Over the last month the words inevitable have been used to describe Romney which is a code word to get over it, shut up, sit down, and vote for the nominee Romney.  That's the attitude we are seeing on the net and in the media from the Romney camp.  They are choosing to ignore that figures don't lie as evidenced yesterday in two states that the pollsters told us that Romney was going to win going away as he was up ten points.  They wish that was the case but the voters had a different message to send.  They don't want Romney as the candidate when you take the numbers from the other three and add them together.  He has a threshold he has only broken once and that was in the Nevada caucus where he got over 50%.  If Romney is not in a state with a lot of Mormons, he doesn't do well.

Never heard evangelicals turned off so much to a Republican candidate as they are to Romney.  After all this time, he is still not attracting conservative votes in large numbers.  Yesterday afternoon I received an email from the RNC which was telling. The subject:  Don’t Abandon Your Party which was a plea for donations shows that the RNC IMHO is getting a lot of  'not donating' remarks when they call.  I am one of them.  After the debacle they have made of his primary, why would I donate one red cent to that organization where the chair seems more concerned about the WI Recall for Governor then he does anything.  

One big problem is electing a Chair from a state that goes blue for President instead of getting a good conservative to head the RNC who is the best person for the job even if they were not a former member of the RNC.  This Chair was behind all the debates with almost all liberal moderators that was done to showcase the Rockefeller establishment nominee Romney until the other candidates got wise and went after Romney on facts and now it is no more debates.  My note back to the RNC was to ask when Florida was going to proportion their delegates like the rest of us who voted before 1 April.

Another problem I see out of this primary is reporting caucus votes like they are real delegate votes when the delegates are not chosen until the convention so they should not be counted until the State Conventions have met and chosen their delegates.  In some places the site will count delegates for Romney out of the caucus states but not for Santorum.  Little bias there leading to the inevitable mantra from the Romney camp.  

Today there is an article out from the Gingrich camp talking about the way to stop Romney is to cut a deal:
Gingrich plan to block Romney may result in a deal for delegates
By Cameron Joseph 
Newt Gingrich's plan to keep Mitt Romney from winning the necessary delegates for the GOP nomination means the presidential contenders may have to form a deal in order to avoid a brokered convention, a leading Gingrich surrogate told The Hill. 
Former Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) said an agreement between the candidates would be preferable to taking the fight to the convention floor in Tampa this August. 
“If the four candidates that are involved decide to somehow put delegates together to make somebody the nominee based on the delegates they've earned I don't think I'd call that a backroom deal,” he said. “A brokered convention [could] go against the wishes of all the voters and maybe pick someone who wasn't even running. No one I know wants a brokered convention.”

Gingrich has publicly stated that his goal is to keep Romney from winning the 1,144 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. 
Read the story here.

If you believe that Gingrich is talking about all four candidates sitting down to determine the nominee, then that swamp land is still for sale in AZ.  No way would Gingrich cut a deal with Romney.  If there is a deal after the voting ends in June, it is going to come from Gingrich and Santorum.  I would expect Ron Paul to take his few delegate votes to Romney UNLESS he thinks that would hurt the chances of his son, Rand Paul, running for the nomination in the years to come.  If he decides that would hurt Rand, look for him to join the Gingrich/Santorum deal.  Yesterday I saw a Santorum/Gingrich ticket discussed on several sites after the Santorum win in AL and MS.  Now that would be an interesting turn of events.  

My second question would be why anyone would interview Bob Smith the former Senator from NH or in fact, anyone from New England unless you wanted to make sure that Romney was mentioned in the deal?  First of all, Smith became an independent like Romney was so his credibility in the Republican Party is pretty nil.  The only camp I can see talking to him would be Romney.  

The thought of Newt Gingrich being over the Senate makes me laugh.  Senators would not know what hit them with Gingrich fulfilling the constitutional duties of the VP to reside over the Senate.  I can see him taking the gavel a lot more times then we have seen in the recent past.  Would love to see Gingrich gavel Reid out of order.   Just the thought of seeing the establishment go nuts would be enough to make me support a Santorum/Gingrich ticket.  Then there is the little detail of the Obama opposition research being done on Romney which would have to have them switch gears.  

Will Republicans nominate a Santorum/Gingrich ticket instead of bowing to pressure to nominate Romney?  Stay tuned as this could get interesting.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Alabama and Mississippi Vote Today; Celebrate Negative Ads Demise Tomorrow

Having lived through the barrage of negative ads from Restore our Future, Romney's Super PAC, I feel for the people of AL and MS.  You cannot turn on your radio or TV without one of their negative ads which are some of the most disgusting ads I have ever seen or heard.  Over and over again to the point where you say you will never vote for Romney.

Whoever came up with the idea of Super PACs needs to go the way of the dinosaur.  They have supported campaigns which should have died.  Without the Super PACs would the Republican Party have better candidates?  Something to ponder because most Republicans I know think this primary has been a debacle.

Only other time I have heard so many negative ads here was in 2004 when the Democrat ran such ads against Dr. Coburn for Senate.  More and more the Romney campaign reminds me of Democrats and their 'scorched earth' but then the Romney Super PAC did hire the person responsible for the Willie Horton ad used against Dukakis by Bush 41.

Tomorrow the good people of AL and MS can celebrate the fact that Presidential primary ads are going to disappear off their airwaves.

How Romney can think this brings him supporters is beyond me.  His 'ya'll' along with his 'grits' comments which I found offensive out of the New England liberal shows how far he will go to pander for votes.  A lot of people in New England have great disdain for the south and Middle America not to mention southern California.  Never saw such arrogance, rudeness, and disdain for the rest of the Country as I did when my husband was on an Industry assignment for the Air Force in Massachusetts.

This Republican primary has been about the wealthy donors determining who stays in the race and who has to exit the stage.  It is no way to run a primary.  We have four years to get it right after this because no way should the Republican Party be stuck with a candidate because he and his Super PAC run the most negative ads to drive down the numbers of other candidates.  What a poor excuse for a primary we are witnessing and it is not getting over anytime soon.

We will have a brokered convention?  Who knows when the RNC Chair has not demanded that FL proportion their delegates like the rules require!

Stay tuned for more of this nonsense in the days ahead -- condolences to the states ahead that get to endure all these ads.  My advice turn off all broadcast media as you are going to want to throw your radios and TVs out the window with all the negative ads.
Super-PACs Dominate Republican Ads Aired in Alabama, Mississippi
Monday, 12 Mar 2012 06:29 PM 
Television advertisements in Alabama and Mississippi aiding Republican presidential contenders have been paid for almost exclusively by independent political action committees rather than the candidates’ campaigns. 
So-called Super-PACs supplied 91 percent of the 5,592 campaign ads that aired on broadcast television stations in the two states in the past 30 days, according to data from New York- based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising. 
(snip) 
Super-PACs are dominating the spending on television because they can collect unlimited contributions and replenish their treasuries more easily than candidate committees, which are limited to raising $2,500 per donor for the primaries. 
Super-PACs are “providing the campaign advertising that the candidates can’t afford,” Anthony Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, said in a podcast March 9 on the website of the Brookings Institution, a research center in Washington. 
Pro-Romney Group 
Restore Our Future, a super-PAC backing Romney, aired ads 2,098 times in Alabama, compared with 279 spots from Romney’s campaign, according to CMAG. 
Winning Our Future, which supports Gingrich, aired ads 411 times in Alabama, compared with 131 ads by Gingrich’s campaign. Santorum’s campaign hasn’t aired broadcast ads in Alabama; the Red White and Blue Fund that backs him aired ads 282 times. 
In Mississippi, Restore Our Future paid for 1,548 ads, compared with 454 for Winning Our Future and 300 for Red White and Blue Fund, CMAG data show. Gingrich, with 89 spots, is the only candidate who has aired broadcast ads in Mississippi. 
Restore Our Future aired 65 percent of all ads in Alabama and Mississippi, CMAG data show. 
The PAC had $16.3 million in leftover funds at the end of January, Federal Election Commission data show. 
(snip) 
Read more on Newsmax.com: Super-PACs Dominate Republican Ads Aired in Alabama, Mississippi 

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Napolitano Sounds Hopeful Note on Oil Leak, but BP Says She Has Wrong Info

This Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is going to go down in history as someone who is asleep at the switch. She has to be the absolute worst Secretary of Homeland Security that this Country will ever have. We can see why the people of Arizona were so anxious for her to get the job and get her out of Arizona. Hard to believe she is in such an important position but maybe it is not important to Obama.

Napolitano was late visiting the Nashville flooding and now she is just getting around to going to the Gulf Coast after how many weeks? Maybe that picture of her during the State of the Union was more right then we knew at the time. She was asleep on the job then and looks like things haven't changed for as long as she takes to visit disaster areas. We expect her to look at the tornado damage in Oklahoma maybe next year or probably never since Oklahoma is a total Red State. Democrats will probably tell her to stay away -- at least the ones running for office.


She couldn't even get the right information on the amount of oil still being released as she said it is slowing when according to BP it is essentially the same flow. Wouldn't you think she would at least get that right? We think she needs fired with all her gaffes but she fits in perfectly with the rest of this inept Administration.

We thought Carter was bad with who hired for his cabinet but Obama has taken it to a new low with the women he has surrounded himself with. Do they make him feel superior? Napolitano, Seibilus, and Clinton all have a tendency to put their foot in their mouths from time to time.

Napolitano Sounds Hopeful Note on Oil Leak, but BP Says She Has Wrong Info
FOXNews.com

Homeland Security secretary said the spill is slowing and called it good news, but it turns out that might not be accurate.

AP

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano expressed hope Tuesday that the worst is over in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- but the experts may beg to differ.

Napolitano, on a trip to Alabama, said the spill is slowing down, and that tests indicated less oil and more natural gas was coming out of the broken well. She called that good news even though she admitted it hadn't been verified.

Turns out it might not be accurate.

A BP official told the Associated Press late Tuesday that there has always been a mixture of gas and oil coming up since a crippled oil rig sank last month. Company spokesman Mark Proegler said scientists haven't noticed any significant change in the leak.

Napolitano was in Alabama to tour the Mobile Incident Command Center in Mobile, Ala., with Gov. Bob Riley.

Excerpt: Read More at Fox News