The reason that the Republican party will in August unify and go all out in the upcoming general election campaign are three words.
Barack Hussein Obama.
I need though to point out a bit as of now, make a comparison and backup why we will be behind whoever gets the Republican presidential nomination.
First it is the process.
Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele set up the delegate formula and states determine how delegates are awarded. And a lot of states decided that it will not be a winner-take-all proposition.
Because there are fewer winner-take-all states and there are quite a few that have a really complex formula to awarding delegates, it is why we are where we are.
For instance, California was a winner-take-all state. One can win with as little as say 30% of the Republican vote and take all the delegates. All 172 of them. But since the 2008 contest, they are more or less awarded by the candidate that wins a congressional district. And there are 55 congressional districts. Thus 165, or three a district are awarded to the candidate that wins the district. And the remainder are won by the overall winner. It does help to create interest, even at the late date of June when our primary is held. Because no matter what, there are going to be two candidates vying for every delegate they can.
The long story short is that this is creating the race that we see now between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich is but the gnat that will not go away and Ron Paul is, well Ron Paul.
As a result of this an interesting trend has developed between Messrs Romney and Santorum.
In the states contested so far, Mr. Romney almost always wins the urban and immediate suburban counties. Mr. Santorum wins everywhere else. And that is what happened in 2008 between Hilary Clinton and then Sen. Messiah Barack. And note that their battle almost got to the convention. Mrs. Clinton did not get out of the race even though the deck ended up being stacked against her. It did make then Sen. Messiah Barack a better general election candidate.
So essentially we Republicans are having the same race in 2012. The outcome will probably be different in which the so-called establishment candidate, Mr. Romney, will be the nominee and not the outsider, Mr. Santorum.
Oh, remember in 2008, we heard all the same gloom and doom about the Democrats. That they could not unify and that it could be a tougher race, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Please.
They were out of the White House for eight years against that yokel, W. They would have voted for the fire hydrant and brought along a lot of people to do the same. And the Democrats did have then Sen. Messiah Barack. And lets face it, he ran a flawless campaign in the general election.
The key to winning is going to be, as it is becoming clear, winning that 20 percent of the electorate that really does not vote by party.
We are a 40-40-20 nation.
By that I mean that 40% of voters will vote Democrat no matter what. Ditto for the Republicans. It is about 20 percent that do not identify with a party but a candidate and or ideology or just the way that they are generally feeling at that point of time.
And this time, the fortunes are against the incumbent, the Dear Leader, President Obama.
There are a lot of reasons not relevant to this post and I won't go into them here.
But the 20 percenters are not really in the Dear Leader, President Obama's corner. But they are not in the Republican one necessarily either.
That is what is getting the so-called establishment panties in a bunch.
But they should take it easy and let the process play out.
Because once the candidate is chosen in Tampa at convention in August, then the real battle begins for the 20 percent.
And the battle-tested candidate, the Republican one, will unify his party and begin the real campaign.
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