The Nevada caucuses are tomorrow; the polling has all-but-certain nominee Mitt Romney way out in front.
Is there any reason to pay attention? Sure. Two things to keep an eye on. First, of course, the better Romney does, the more the press will treat the race as a done deal (as, in my view, they mostly should); the less likely that Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum will have yet another surge; and thus the more likely Romney can ignore them and focus on bashing Barack Obama. At least once he gets his lines straight.
And then there's the much-anticipated Ron Paul "delegate" strategy, which is supposed to show up in the caucus states. As I've said, I don't think there's really much to this; on the one hand I doubt that Paul's delegate haul overall will be even as high as his vote share, let alone higher, while on the other hand I don't think that his leverage at the convention is particularly related to how many delegates he has there. But still, it's going to be something of a story, and Nevada is a test to see how that goes.
I suppose there's also the question of when Rick Santorum will finally drop out...it's certainly possible that a blowout Romney win in Nevada could finally push Santorum over the edge.
So while the whole contest has certainly become a lot less dramatic, there's still some relevance to at least the first of the February contests.
Friday, February 3, 2012
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Now a comment on Sargent's post since I can't bring myself to register for WaPo. :)
ReplyDeleteSargent calls this statement from Romney "utterly incoherent":
We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery.
I'm sorry, there is nothing incoherent about stating that job creation is good but would have been better if not for Obama's policies. I disagree with it, but it's a logically sound, coherent argument.
Sargent's derision is kind of like saying that "the stimulus worked" is incoherent because the economy is still suffering. Well, of course it's possible that the stimulus worked because it prevented the economy from being even worse.
Out of all of Romney's statements in the past two months, this might be the most coherent thing he's said!