Primaries, Caucuses, and the GOP...

As many of you know, I am in working to get a well on line for our farm in Tlacolula, Oaxaca. I got here in mid-January and will not return to the states until well after the Nevada Caucus dates. That means I will not be getting a chance to participate in, or read all of the breathless blather that will try and tell folks that anyone else other than Mitt Romney has a shot at the Republican nomination. Folks, here is what the GOP needs to understand. The nomination is going to Mitt Romney barring an 11th hour move by the party big-wigs to choose a different type of candidate. No matter what their supporters think, the reality is that Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul have absolutely no chance to actually capture the nomination. Santorum has no money and is too far to the right on social issues for the average GOP voter. Paul is too old and not enough of a military hawk to appeal to the military industrial wing of the party. And Gingrich, well he’s Newt. In spite of all of the money Las Vegas zillionaire Sheldon Adelson is pumping into his campaign, Newt can’t out run the facts... he makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of moral virtue. And so that leaves Mitt. And a bunch of questions as we move achingly slow to the Republican Convention in Tampa later this year. Why are these folks still in the race? In 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled all the way through June. Why? Because there was a conceivable path to victory for both of them. Not a single partisan supporter of the three GOP losers can give a reasonable explanation of how their candidate will get the nomination. So I ask again, why are they still in the race? It must be because while they believe Mitt will be wrong for America if he wins and that he cannot beat President Obama, they are hoping to get something out of staying. Is it a nice book deal? Is it the Vice Presidency? Is it a cabinet spot? Or is it front runner status in the 2016 presidential elections after Obama wins reelection this year? There has got to be reason, or maybe these guys are all just folks with oversized egos who can’t understand that they have already lost the election to a man named Mitt. You tell me. PS... the postcard is in honor of Dmarks, a big post card guy and another blogger who occasionally checks in here at the mission...

Better the Devil You Know?

Today is the day. Today millions of Americans will head to the polls to either take America back from someone, presumably the Anti Americans, or to vote against the extremists. You’ll be able to tell who is voting against the extremists because they include the Code Pink people and folks who wear cow costumes to political events. Here in Nevada, the biggest race is between Senator Dirty Harry Reid and Sharron Extreme Right Angle. I am amazed at the conversations you can have here if you are willing to put up with a little foaming at the mouth from folks. Those supporting Ms. Angle decry the government getting involved in all walks of life, yet they reject her ideas to privatize Social Security, the VA, and Medicare. Apparently anti government ire has its limits and those limits run about like this… Keep the governments hands off of my Medicare. And while many in the crowd supporting Angle believe that elected officials should just follow the will of the people, many in Nevada suspend that view when it comes to Yucca Mountain and a national nuclear repository. The Reid supporters, who are apparently unable to say Ms. Angle’s name with adding the extremist moniker, seem fundamentally unable to grasp that folks are worried here and want to see an end to the economic crisis and the way it is impacting our state. Everyone knows Reid is prone to making verbal gaffes, but he does not have the personality of Joe Biden to weather the storms connected to those gaffes. The Reid camp does not seem to understand that his statement that the war in Iraq was lost, true or not, was offensive and hurtful to people, especially in a military state like Nevada. Calling a sitting President a liar, another Reid classic, does not win you a lot of friends back home. And so here we are, forced to choose between the lesser of two evils in our little insignificant state that is made up primarily of land owned by the federal government. As for me, I am a living example of the old Tip O’Neill adage that “All politics is local.” States like Nevada do not have a lot of influence back in Washington. I believe that it is not in our best interest to enter the fracas known as the next national budget cycle with one hand tied behind our back. Nevada will need every resource, friend, and trick in the book to guard our interests in the coming season of declining revenue. Freshman senators do not have that kind of clout, but I fear I am in the minority with that thinking here in Nevada. I believe tomorrow morning we will wake up to the news that Sharron Angle has upended Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. **Update** The Associated Press and Fox News have just called the race tonight for Senator Reid. At this moment, Sharron Angle is not winning her own county. Like Former Vice President AL Gore in 2000, the people that knew her best, her friends and neighbors, did not have enough confidence in her abilities. Here's hoping this will be the last we see of the person the conservative newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, twice called the worst legislator in the state.