Mitt surrenders

As predicted here yesterday, the terror of $40 million of his personal fortune squandered and the fear of even more of it wasted in the continuance of a fool's errand forces Willard Romney to submit to the will of his children's inheritance:

"... (I)n this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

"So therefore I am cutting and running from the global war for the Republican nomination, and am graciously letting the terrorists -- err, the liberal John McCain, win. God help us all."

Audience members were heard screaming "No!", moaning and rending their garments. Seriously:

There were shouts of astonishment, with some moans and others yelling, "No, No."

And on their way out of the conference, as the PA announced the next speaker would be McCain, a chorus of boos greeted the presumptive GOP nominee.

Senor Juan McCain -- that's actually what they are calling him because he's not a xenophobe regarding undocumented immigration -- has earned the enmity of a diverse group of right-wing freaks, including Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Richard Viguerie. The locals are whining loudly. But it's not all bad: Senator Lapdog Corndog flip-flopped and endorsed the Maverick today.

That might actually hurt Cornyn in the current conservative environment. LMAO

Texas in Play

*I, combined with currents events, am slowly turning Open Source Dem into a regular contributor...

==========================

Forget Boyd RICHIE’s attempt to collaborate with the GOP to move up the primary date and deliver Texas for Fred BARON -- err, John EDWARDS. It failed, and it was lame in the first place. Now he will try to deliver for Garry MAURO -- umm, Hillary CLINTON.

That is pathetic and no more a favor for CLINTON than it was for EDWARDS.

The best interests of our state and, interestingly, of John EDWARDS -- still the potential kingmaker -- are best served today and every day by plain old republican democracy, specifically by contested state and national conventions … exactly what is shaping up.

Here are Josh MARSHALL and PDiddie on that likelihood.

Already OBAMA is moving his crack South Carolina team to Texas. Both he and CLINTON will be in Houston on 28 February for the Greater Houston Partnership/Sierra Club debate on energy, environment, economy, and security issues (E3+S). Policy wise, John EDWARDS still dominates this race. So ...

“We are the Deciders!”

Not just our votes, but our voices -- and they are many and diverse -- can be heard, if and only if we stop attempts by the state party establishment to “lock down” the state convention and to perpetuate themselves at the risk of losing the general elections -- the one thing, other than wasting money, they are certainly proficient at.

The state and national party hierarchies -- a patronage/daisy chain -- are describing brokered conventions as “chaos theory”. That is just a cute phrase. They no more understand that math than “queuing theory”.

Literati, not technorati, run this party. And they are now in panic mode. We have been in convention planning mode and now need to move towards execution. That needs to be calm and deliberate. This is the populist moment, our moment.

We are prepared. We need to be urgent but not frantic. We are not in danger of losing careers, retirement sinecures, or millions on bad bets; that would be the state party overlords. As Ed Kilgore notes, neither the state nor the national party establishment actually know how to run an orderly convention, as distinct from a beauty pageant. In his own way, that is exactly what Peck Young told us. Ed confirms at the national level what will happen in Austin on June 4: the state party machine will try to turn the convention over to Garry MAURO, less to deliver for Hillary CLINTON than to maintain their own death grip on the party.

So what a caucus of progressive populists can and should do is clear: as we are the party-building caucus, we should take the lead in providing all Texas Democrats with an orderly, productive, and fair convention process.

We do not have to create chaos. The party establishment is doing that for us on their own.

Oh, and the national party of bi-partisan collaborators proves once again they cannot design or proof-read a ballot, this time in Los Angeles. Their “counter-vote suppression theory” of racism hides simple incompetence and legalistic self-deception. Watch this story. The legal particulars of yet another “butterfly ballot” are peculiar to California.

But the general pervasiveness of bi-partisan and non-partisan administrative failure is certainly true of Texas. Yup, the party does not know how to run orderly conventions or even elections. Manipulation and obfuscation come naturally. Republican democracy are mysteries. People are fed up, if not fired up.

Take your Dramamine

...because it's all spin all the time.

Clinton won.

Expectations can be a bitch. The recent polls showing Obama moving up (especially in Clinton country i.e. CA & NJ) plus those early exit polls today certainly created some expectations for tonight that simply weren't met ...

No wait; Obama won.

I don't see how Clinton can win the nomination now. I think she still has a chance...she didn't get knocked out...but it's now Obama's race to lose. He's got more money, he's got more mojo, and Clinton doesn't have any more Arkansas or New Yorks left on the schedule.

As previously snarked, it depends on what the definition of "win" is.

Oh, and while you were watching the piefight, the recession got here. You better have saved the good meds.

Catholics get their ashes, but Mitt bites the dust

He'll be out no later than the weekend:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney pledged to fight all the way to the Republican nominating convention this summer if necessary, despite being overpowered by John McCain in Super Tuesday contests.

Where have we heard a candidate pledge to battle all the way to the end, only to quit in the next breath? (That doesn't sound too bitter, does it?)

Now if I were Romney, I would withdraw today and endorse Huckster, just to jack with McCain -- and every other Republican who has slammed them both. Of course Mittens despises both men so much that I doubt he will endorse anybody.

McCain-Huckabee? Or McCain-Giuliani? Lord have mercy on their souls.

H2O? No.

Big Ornge:

Obama has, at this point, won 11 states, of 22 in play. Worst-case scenario, he's already won half. If he picks up Alaska, which I suspect he will, he wins the battle of the states.

California is looking like it might head SUSA's way, so that'll be good news for Hillary. But the rest of the night is bleak. She didn't exceed expectations anywhere. She lost states she led big in just a few weeks ago. She's hurting for money. The calendar up ahead is tailor made for Obama. The momentum is there.

And hey, look at that -- Obama just took the lead in Missouri.

Clinton has a big win in CA. Obama has an upset in CT and a comeback victory in MO. Obama wins at least eleven twelve states, significantly exceeding expectations (ten days ago he led the polling in just two states). Clinton leads overall in delegates. Update: Obama wins with over 60% in eight states and three of those with more than 70% of the vote; Clinton wins only one state with 60%+ (Arkansas).

And the attention now turns to Ohio and Texas, voting in exactly one month.

All the way to Denver, all the way down to the wire.

Update (2/6): A great take here from Richard Dunham at Texas on the Potomac:

Best line of the night: Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee has accused Republican rival Mitt Romney of flip-flopping on issues including abortion, gun control and gay rights, declared that Romney now has changed his position on "whining." You see, Romney complained bitterly on Super Tuesday about the tactics used by Huckabee to win the 18 delegates in West Virginia.

"You know, yesterday, Mitt Romney was saying, 'Don't be a whiner,'" Huckabee told CNN. "Now, yesterday he was against whining. Today, he's for whining."

Worst endorsement: John Kerry (of Barack Obama).

The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee couldn't even deliver his own home state.

Best endorsement: Scarlett Johannson (of Barack Obama).

Kerry and Teddy Kennedy failed to bring Massachusetts into the Obama column, but the 23-year-old movie star did her (small) part to create record turnout in Minnesota's Democratic caucuses, including unprecedented participation by the young voters Johannson targeted. Plus, she looks better in photos than Teddy and Kerry.

Biggest upset: Huckabee's win in Alabama.

Mitt Romney ran far below expectations in Alabama, and conservative evangelicals gave Huckabee a narrow win over McCain.

Most interesting race of the night: Missouri.

In the state that has the best track record of picking presidents of any state in the union, both parties had very close contests. With 98 percent of the Missouri vote in, Obama was clinging to a 1 percentage point lead over Clinton. And the Republicans had a tight three-way race, finally won by McCain.

Least interesting race of the night: New York.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain won landslide victories. Lots of delegates. No drama.

Best newspaper story of the night: Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune.

Tackett began his story on Super Tuesday by declaring:

As a former president might put it, maybe it depends on what the definition of "win'' is.

McHuckaney

Chaos theory in evidence on the starboard side:

Huckabee beat rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney in West Virginia, Alabama and his home state, and early returns showed him leading in a few more Super Tuesday states. He said he would emerge from the virtual national primary contests as the alternative to McCain, the Arizona senator and Republican front-runner.

"I've got to say that Mitt Romney was right about one thing — this is a two-man race. He was just wrong about who the other man in the race was. It's me, not him," Huckabee said.

Mittens was the winner in Utah amd Massachusetts -- huge upsets for him. But the story of the night has to be the surging candidacy of Gomer Pyle, who has swept through the South and upset the applecart for the GOP. The chattering class seems to think he's won his way into the vice-presidential slot.

McCain-Huckabee. That is really, really funny.

Super Fat Tuesday

Lots of partyin' to do:

The Weekly Wrangle

As you recover from Super Bowl Sunday, check out this week's Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Round-Up, compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Why would Bill Peacock write a commercial for the energy industry? Find out on Bluedaze as TXsharon shines a light into the dark corners of Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the messy finances of state supreme court justice David Medina, and wonders what else is out there that we haven't heard about yet.

Phillip Martin at Burnt Orange Report says thank you to John Edwards.

McBlogger takes a look at the Free Market Foundation's campaign against the Parent PAC and its leader, Carolyn Boyle. Apparently they are unhappy that we endorsed her in 2006. And that she's been beating them and their lame candidates.

Nat-Wu of Three Wise Men tells us why free trade isn't everything it's cracked up to be, at least for the American worker.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson has more from the recent House Elections Committee hearing on voter fraud -- Abbott May Have To Explain His Partisan Voter Fraud Record.

XicanoPwr begins a Politics of Humanity series. The first takes a look the Department of Homeland Security recent decision to eliminate the Violence Against Women Act's domestic violence program that was meant to protect undocumented immigrants from abusive spouses who use their position as citizens to intimidate their spouses who did not have legal immigrant status in the United States. The second post in the series takes a look at Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) inhumane policy of of drugging immigrants and their recent settlement case.

North Texas Liberal notes that we recently passed the one-year mark, meaning President Bush now has less than one year left in his job. Is he planning on coming home to roost when his tenure ends? Not everyone in D-FW thinks that's the best idea.

Open Source Dem at Brains and Eggs has the inside dope on the Harris County Democratic Party's efforts to turn the county blue (and why the partners-in-charge may be shooting themselves in the feet).

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News sent people to his other blog for a lesson in how to put someone to sleep with government lies about economics, among other items.

Vince at Capitol Annex wonders if State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) will actually make good on his claim that he will ask AG Greg Abbott to answer to charges that his "voter fraud" prosecutions are race-based.

We might have a debate in town

With no dog in the Super Bowl fight (sorry Mike Vick), I'm still talking presidential politics, and I'm hoping we have still something to talk about by the time our primary election rolls around:

The (Greater Houston) Partnership and the Sierra Club Foundation have long planned to hold a presidential debate at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Feb. 28, just five days before the March 4 Texas primary.

MSNBC has promised to air the event, with NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert as moderator.

The plan calls for the remaining Democratic candidates to face off in one session, with the Republicans going at it in a separate debate that same evening — assuming no candidate has clinched a party nomination by then.

Originally, the organizers had expected the debate would focus on energy and environmental issues, given the energy sector's importance to the Houston economy.

But realizing theirs could be the last debate before the nominees are finally chosen, the organizers decided to broaden the topics to be discussed, although energy would still be emphasized.

Alas, there is a scheduling conflict:

CNN has announced plans for a presidential debate in Ohio on the same day as one scheduled later this month by the Greater Houston Partnership and MSNBC.

And that could prompt an earlier debate within the campaigns: Which state is tactically the better venue if the nominations aren't decided after next week's Super Tuesday showdown?

Texas awards more nominating delegates, but Ohio is more likely to be a November battleground.

Somebody is going to blink and reschedule. I'm guessing we lose again. It sure would be cool to have a contested Democratic nomination still nip-and-tuck with Texas being able to figure in to the winning difference, and a debate locally to go watch.

Conservatives are neurotic. Whooda thunk?

*Gasp*

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

This brings to mind the possibility of payback for the book right-wing mentalist Michael "Weiner" Savage wrote regarding liberalism as mental disorder.

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Do you think the doctors anticipated the sputtering outrage, the apoplectic blog posts, the rabid frothing of the goonbats?

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

See? Fair and balanced.

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."

Chronic and hopefully terminal, in Will's case.

Conservatives desperate to stop McCain

As Super Tuesday looms — and the possibility that McCain could all but wrap up the nomination — the chattering conservative class is in an uproar. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh has warned that McCain as standard-bearer would destroy the Republican Party. Author and pundit Ann Coulter, in jaw-dropping heresy, said she would campaign for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain wins the party nod. Commentators Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin have come out in support of McCain's rival, Mitt Romney. ...

"If you are a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now, and that's Mitt Romney," said former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

No matter how irritated I find myself at the Democrats in the Democratic party, all I have to do is cast a glance rightward and my heart warms.

In the short-term, McCain is helped by Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher who remains in the race and could split the conservative vote with Romney in the Bible Belt and elsewhere. Seeking to capitalize, McCain visited Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia on Saturday.

In the long-term, "it is critical for him to build a strong and stable bridge to the constituency that every cycle rings the phones, knocks on the doors and gets the vote out," said Greg Mueller, a conservative Republican strategist. "Endorsements alone will not be enough. Many conservatives will look to see what issues he emphasizes on the campaign trail from now until Election Day."

And that's where he will very likely lose. The base is so utterly demoralized that if they refuse to work for McCain as the nominee, then he is doomed from the beginning.

Frankly, I can't see that happening. Coulter's "endorsement" aside, Republicans will no more stay home in droves than they will vote for the Democrat. The one thing I'm sure of is that it will be a close contest in November if Clinton is the nominee -- too close -- and it won't if Obama is.

With Clinton and McCain still the probable big winners on Tuesday as this is posted, third-party entries will begin to gain momentum. Some combination of Michael Bloomberg, Ralph Nader, almost certainly Ron Paul and possibly a reactionary right candidate could easily combine to siphon off 15% of the popular vote but little of significance in the Electoral College.

An uninspired electorate with demotivated activists on both sides ultimately produces some plurality president in the mushy middle. In 1992 its name was Clinton.

In other words, business as usual.

Sunday Funnies