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The Republican primaries, for all intents and purposes, are over. Mitt won. But since this has become general knowledge, I certainly haven't noticed Mitt tacking anywhere but far to the right. Perhaps he took a "centrist" position in there somewhere, and I just missed it. Or perhaps, as I started with, he is just now realizing the corner he's painted himself into.
Today is, of course, the day when the entire political universe pivots from the 2012 primary election season to the 2012 general election season. This was precipitated by Rick Santorum exiting the race early today, much to Mitt Romney's relief.
While we're all waiting for the verdict from the Supreme Court, I thought it would be worthwhile to dig into the actual origins of the concept of the individual mandate. Now, the idea itself may have been around for much longer than the documentation I could find online, but the real political push behind the idea seems to have started in 1989, from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation.
To put it in plain English rather than mathematical figures, the Republican Party's plan of creating a more competitive race by awarding proportional delegates is simply not working, at least between the two frontrunners. If none of the Republican state contests were proportional, Rick Santorum would be a lot closer to Mitt Romney right now. Proportionality has made for a less competitive race between the two.
You might not know it from the extended bouts of hair-pulling-and-garment-rending anguish emanating from the Republican Party establishment these days (see: any recent GOP commentary by a party elder or deep thinker which uses the phrase "brokered convention"), but the Republican Party is getting exactly what they asked for. Not just asked for, in fact, but specifically planned on.
But the focus from the media has so far been on the wrong car -- at least as far as I am concerned.
The primary season opens with so many Republican candidates for the party's nomination for president that it seemingly takes forever just to ask each of them a single question in the televised debates. Three different Republican candidates win the first three states' races, in a wide-open contest with no incumbent on the ballot. The first results thin the large field of hopefuls, as minor candidates run out of funding and throw in the towel. As more states vote, the two top candidates get to a point in early February where they are neck-and-neck in the number of individual states won -- with the third candidate lagging, because his support is based mostly in the South. Ron Paul is also running, but not winning any states. Dark mutterings are heard about the presumed-frontrunner not being able to "close the deal," and about his overall weak support among conservatives in the party. The media is in a frenzy, all but drooling over the prospect of an open convention, where no Republican candidate has the magic number of delegates to secure the nomination.
Today is the first multi-state event in the 2012 Republican primary schedule, and I am shocked -- shocked! -- that the punditocracy has miserably failed to come up with a cutesy-poo name for today's voting.
The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.
I realize everyone is probably already sick of hearing predictions about the Iowa Republican caucuses, and if this does indeed describe you then you should probably go watch a football game or something -- because that's exactly what we're going to do today: throw prognosticatory Hawkeye darts at the wall, and take our chances as we may.