And Then There Were Four

The Fantastic Four? We wish!


The results of Florida's primary are too close to call at this point, except to say that Rudy Guiliani will likely be out of the race. That will reduce the race from eleven to four candidates- but paring down those last four may be problematic. All of them have reason to stay in the race.

There are only two candidates who have both significant funds left and more importantly a built-in nation-wide network of supporters. Those two are Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Romney can count on a network of Mormons and a vast personal fortune while Paul has a network of Constitutionalists and demonstrated online fund-raising prowess.

Let's look at where Paul is first: While Rudy trumpeted his "wait until later to really get going" strategy, Ron Paul is the one who quietly executed that strategy with success. He spent less of his total resources on the early primaries than any other candidate except Guiliani. By staying low-key about his de-emphasis of the early states, Paul did respectably enough in them to stay viable while building an organization for Super Tuesday and beyond that is superior to the other candidates. For example, Paul has no less than FIVE state headquarters in Arkansas (Rogers, Ft. Smith, Jonesboro, Mena, Camden) while no other candidate even has a single one (I don't count Huckabee's hidden office). Paul's biggest problems: one-issue voters who agree with him on every issue EXCEPT the war, and would rather have someone who will lie to them than disagree with them on one thing and 2) a corporate media who maintain a near-blackout on the candidate.

Now lets look at McCain and Romney: They also both have reason to stay in the race. One of them will lead in delegates, the other will be second. At first glance, it may appear that no matter who wins tonight that Romney has the winning hand. McCain is going to run low on states with elections that include the independent voters that favor him, and he lacks Romney's nationwide network of co-religionists. Though he is a wealthy man, his personal fortune is not on par with Romney's. He led the push for amnesty that is anathema to the base of the party.

But McCain lots of advantages too. The media gives him millions of dollars worth of favorable coverage that Romney mostly has to buy. His record, while liberal by Republican standards is actually to the right of Romney. He is a stake president of a church that considers all orthodox Christian churches to be in apostasy along with a host of other curious doctrines. And that brings us to McCain's other ace in the hole.......

Mike Huckabee seems to be in alliance with McCain. His job is to help attack Romney and keep religious conservatives from going to Romney (as odd as that sounds on fact, on feeling tone and "look", Mormons and Fundamentalist Christians have much in common). Though as we have seen, the corporate media will savage him if he gets too far in front, they lavish him with positive attention when he is helping McCain double-team Romney. He has enough states coming up where he is strong to make it worth his while staying in the race even if he is broke. He does not have to get a majority of delegates- just a big enough pile to trade for a VP slot. With four in the race, it could happen. Especially since there appears to be no compelling reason for any of them to leave.