Then There Were Two

Well it looks like the republican presidential primary has weeded out some more of the contenders for the nomination. Ron Paul has left Florida for Maine where he will still try to corral delegates to give him a voice in the Republican convention. Rick Santorum is back in Pennsylvania (to prepare his income tax return?) and may or may not return to the battle between Mr. Incompetent and Mr. Inept depending upon his ability to convince contributors to throw more of their money down the rat hole called Santorum for President. So where does that leave American voters? Obviously an estimated 30% or more of people who will cast a presidential ballot will never vote for Barack Obama. It will not matter who is opposing him for this group of voters. They are like the proverbial blue dogs who would vote for a blue dog before voting for their opposition. By the same token, there is a block of voters on the left, who now call themselves “progressives” because they have allowed “liberal” to be turned into republican profanity, who feel the same way about voting for anyone on the right. Like the last election won by a democrat before Obama, this election will be decided by those in the middle. Thankfully for Obama, the republican primary contest has forced Newt and Mitt to try to out-right the other. Whether it was felt that both should try to cater to the Tea Party and the more extreme right of the republican party or whether either actually is as conservative as each claims to be, their “mirror, mirror, on the wall; who’s the most conservative of us all” war dances will only serve to strengthen Obama’s centrist position. The sad thing about this entire election process is that all of the money spent on futile efforts to win votes could be put to far better uses. Just imagine all of those dollars going to reduce the country’s deficit. Perhaps someone who was truly interested in helping America would step up and declare that “instead of spending all of this money on trying to get elected, all campaign contributions will be turned over to the treasury to reduce the deficit. If you feel this is best for America, vote for me!” You can be certain that the news coverage this would receive would more than make up for not buying idiotic commercials and those watching TV might just appreciate the lack of political commercials enough to vote for that person.