On Florida and Jan Brewer and Ann Richards

It is interesting to see the national media try to make sense of the HispanicLatino vote in Florida before the Republican primary on Tuesday.  The media speaks of it as one vote, and it is in a sense.  The HispanicLatino vote next week could be as much as 80 percent Cuban American.  But most HispanicLatinos in Florida now vote Democratic, so the media would be more accurate to describe the group voting next week in the GOP contest as the Cuban Republican vote, and they should point out that it is shrinking as each day passes due to its aging nature.  Continue reading

South Carolina Sends Message to….Obama

In this uproarious year, it now is not outside the possibility that President Obama could lose this election.  One does not have to be an expert in these things to sense something is not plumb with things-as-usual.  I have been around journalistically and politically long enough to be confounded totally by what has happened in South Carolina.

For conventional thinkers, this is not the year to be conventional.  My thoughts have been all along that Obama was going to sweep over any of the Republican candidates.  Now I am not so sure.  Will Florida tell the tale?  Perhaps.  Watching Mitt Romney on television was looking at someone who, it turns out, is not as good as he thinks he is.  This business of running for President is not like directing a takeover of another company – running for President is not insider work.  Romney talked tonight as if he were talking to his staff instead of the country.  His spiel was canned and repetitive.  Newt Gingrich offers something new: New language, new energy, new anger – the stuff of which most elections are made and won. Continue reading

What Luck!

Newt Gingrich’s proposal for local citizen juries to decide which of the individuals illegally in the country gets to stay is of course nuts.  Why even discuss it?  The arguments against it are monumental.  The idea is being laughed at across the board and it shows one of the reasons Gingrich would be an excellent choice for Republicans to nominate as their candidate for president – if they want to lose in a landslide.

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