On the day after November 9th a titanic struggle within the GOP will begin…

It’s the first thing you notice. A physical manifestation of what you’ve come to understand on an intellectual level. When you walk into the Republican National Convention, as I did earlier this year, you’re met with a sea of faces. White faces. Like a statue of old in some great city, the GOP has stood stoically, unchanging in the face of rapid transformation unfolding around it. The demographic shifts in the United States have been profound, changing, in a very …

Read more…

Congressional Brinkmanship Kickin’ Up Fiscal Whiff

So the long drawn out process of selecting a US President is over. Barack Obama won a second term, quite comfortably in fact, with nearly a 100 more electoral college votes and 2% more of the popular vote. The process of picking over the caucus of the GOP had already begun live on air during the announcing of the winner. Fox News seemed to go into meltdown. Karl Rove, in particular seemed to have great difficulty grasping the result of …

Read more…

Romney,,,,yet another comeback.

It hasn’t been an entirely convincing process but Mitt Romney’s wins in home state Michigan and in Arizona have certainly dented the momentum of the the latest upstart, Rick Santorum. The New York Times has the numbers and observes: His victory over Mr. Santorum here in Michigan was far from commanding, but it was most likely sufficient to dampen the rising clamor from across the Republican Party about his ability to win over conservatives and connect with voters. The tussle …

Read more…

GOP Primaries – the plot thickens with a clean sweep for Santorum.

Romney isn’t closing this out. Yesterday saw a primary in Missouri (well a non binding beauty contest really) and two caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota. From RealClearPolitics: Santorum has taken Minnesota and Missouri comfortably. Romney was banking on Colorado. Here Nate compares his 2008 and 2012 performances. Broadly he’s at 60% of his 2008 level and things are looking close there. Fox News is reporting Colorado in real time. At 5.30am our time, with 46% of precincts reporting Santorum and Romney …

Read more…

Florida – All Over?

It looks that way. From Fox News –  looks like a landslide for Romney. But can Romney beat Obama? Piles of stuff to read on RealClearPolitics…make up your own mind. DewiWelsh Nationalist. Rugby Fan. Know a bit about History and Railways…

Romney newtered in South Carolina…

A comfortable win for Gingrich in South Carolina as the BBC reports. The scale of the win (40-28) must be of particular concern to Romney. RealClearPolitics is particularly damning with it’s three takeaways from SC. 1) There is no good news buried in here for Mitt Romney …2) This is worse than George W. Bush’s loss to John McCain in New Hampshire. John McCain caught Bush off-guard in 2000, but Bush was given an opportunity to regroup. He hadn’t fired any major …

Read more…

The GOP knows what it doesn’t like, but…

I’m hoping Ruarai will be able to give us more of a US perspective on the GOP’s Iowa Caucus, but before he does, this from Dana Milbank struck me as going to the heart of the matter for US Republicans: The Iowa Republicans’ indecision captures perfectly the existential struggle within the GOP nationally and within conservatism. They don’t know what they want — or even who they are. Are they Tea Partyers? Isolationists? Pro-business? Populists? Moralists? Worried workers? Do they …

Read more…

US Republican party forsaking the Republic for an aging Culture War?

The US Primaries are almost upon us, and the great dizzying (for us foreigners at least) race for the Republican party nomination gets started in earnest. Last time out, Iowa was where the soon to be President Obama first appeared to walk on water (to his followers at least), now the bettings on an outsider, the semi detachted Ron Paul. Watching some of the debate the major problem for the Republican party seems to be discerning which of their candidates …

Read more…