The Twisting Route Back to Romney
By FRANK BRUNI
NYT
This just in: the Iowa caucuses have been moved up significantly, lest the state jeopardize its status as the nation’s Capital of Disproportionate Political Influence.
They will be held on Wednesday.
State Republican officials said they had no choice and could take no chances, not after their peers in Florida set a new date for their primary, Monday, Oct. 31st, and then, in a cunning bid for maximum television coverage, promised Halloween candy to voters who came in costume as the candidate they supported. This understandably infuriated South Carolinian Republicans, who rescheduled their primary for Monday, Oct. 17th, even though 9 of the 213 Republican debates won’t have been held by that point.
Far-fetched? Only a little. Whether judged by the leapfrog that states are playing with the contest calendar, the quicksilver rise and fall of candidates du jour, the showy dithering of supposedly would-be contenders or the dogged persistence of also-rans sprinting nowhere fast, this has been an epically silly primary season, and (cue the Carpenters) we’ve only just begun.
Almost makes you wonder why we bother with it at all. On the far side of Super Tuesday, which at this rate is going to have to be nicknamed Afterthought Tuesday, the victor will most likely be Mitt Romney, the very politician on whom the party establishment placed its bets from the start. Things weren’t so different in primary seasons past with John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole. The arc of Republican history bends toward the foregone conclusion.
(More here.)
NYT
This just in: the Iowa caucuses have been moved up significantly, lest the state jeopardize its status as the nation’s Capital of Disproportionate Political Influence.
They will be held on Wednesday.
State Republican officials said they had no choice and could take no chances, not after their peers in Florida set a new date for their primary, Monday, Oct. 31st, and then, in a cunning bid for maximum television coverage, promised Halloween candy to voters who came in costume as the candidate they supported. This understandably infuriated South Carolinian Republicans, who rescheduled their primary for Monday, Oct. 17th, even though 9 of the 213 Republican debates won’t have been held by that point.
Far-fetched? Only a little. Whether judged by the leapfrog that states are playing with the contest calendar, the quicksilver rise and fall of candidates du jour, the showy dithering of supposedly would-be contenders or the dogged persistence of also-rans sprinting nowhere fast, this has been an epically silly primary season, and (cue the Carpenters) we’ve only just begun.
Almost makes you wonder why we bother with it at all. On the far side of Super Tuesday, which at this rate is going to have to be nicknamed Afterthought Tuesday, the victor will most likely be Mitt Romney, the very politician on whom the party establishment placed its bets from the start. Things weren’t so different in primary seasons past with John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole. The arc of Republican history bends toward the foregone conclusion.
(More here.)
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