There were no surprises on Super Tuesday. It worked out just as everyone expected, pretty much, with Mitt Romney coming out ahead, but not by much.
So, what I thought was far more interesting was the result of the exit polls. Here's an excerpt from McSweeney's:
Nearly 60% of those who have nicknamed a body part voted for Newt Gingrich.
Ron Paul was the choice of 72% of voters who have fired a crossbow at a ferret.
Rick Santorum was the clear winner among those who have tried to charge admission to a fetus. ...
Ron Paul was backed by three-quarters of the voters who purchase their meat from the trunk of a car.
Romney was the overall winner among ascot-wearers. ...
Gingrich won a plurality of voters who fart during shoeshines.
Romney won among voters whose favorite movie includes Honey, I Shrunk the in the title.
Santorum performed very well among voters who have crocheted a toilet seat cover. ...
Gingrich won a majority of voters who regularly send back hash browns.
Ron Paul won 63% of voters who have accidentally baked their car keys into a pie.
Romney took 88% of the votes among people whose primary issue was yacht parking.
Interesting, huh? But really, no surprises there, either. As Mother Jones put it, the other candidates are still pursuing Romney "like the undead trodding after the barely living."
Mitt Romney faces the fundamental problem confronted by all zombie hunters: How do you kill that which is dead already? ...
The fundamental reality of the Republican GOP 2012 death march is that none of the candidates ought to win. Romney is a robot reprogrammed to appeal to a base that isn't keen on a former Massachusetts governor who once proudly proclaimed his fealty to moderation and progressivism. It's taken millions of dollars (much of that spent on mud-encrusted negative ads) and a Titanic boatload of cajoling from the GOP establishment to raise Romney to the mid-30s in Republican polls and election results. And, for what it's worth at this point, in national surveys this clubhouse buddy of NASCAR team owners trails a president who is presiding over an anemic economy at a moment when nearly 60 percent of the public fears the nation is stumbling in the wrong direction.
Yet Romney is heads, hair, and broad shoulders above what remains in the Republican field. (Woody Allen might have predicted this race in his 1977 film Annie Hall, when he quoted the old joke about two elderly women at a Catskills mountain resort. One says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions.") After Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, and Herman Cain self-deported from the circus, GOP voters were left with—besides Romney—a maniacally self-aggrandizing former House speaker with more baggage than a 747 who is better suited for a reality TV show than residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a little-known senator who lost his last election (in his home state) by a historic margin and who seems to believe Cotton Mather was a wimp, and a conspiracy theorist who supports drug legalization and decries American empire (positions not usually embraced by garden-variety Republicans).
So, that's where we are after Super Tuesday - exactly where we were before it. It's hard to believe that we Americans would be dumb enough to elect any of these guys as President of the United States. Then again, we re-elected George W. Bush in 2004, didn't we?
And Barack Obama is presiding over a terrible economy. Sure, it's better than when he took office. Sure, it was Republicans who collapsed our economy in the first place. And sure, Republicans have been doing everything they can to drag their feet and even to actively sabotage the recovery. But apparently, we Americans can't be bothered with the details.
Obama is not perfect, but in a rational world, his election would be a cakewalk, even though he's a black man with an unusual name.
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