Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Politics

Super Tuesday Post-Mortem

by Clay Staggs

Since it’s all over but the exact computation of the delegates, I’ll opine on the state of the race post 2/5.

On the Democrat side, what a contest! The dems have this requirement that delegates be absolutely proportionally allocated. So, since HRC won a few big states, and Obama won more smaller states, they just about evened out, once you proportionally allocate the delegates at stake. Many commenters I’ve read suggest that a brokered convention is a likely outcome for the dems, and I think their arguments are plausible.

What’s interesting is whether the Democrats will heal up or explode at a brokered convention. If HRC wins and does not choose (or is not required to do so by the super-delegates as a condition for their support) Obama as a running mate, or if he wins and does not choose her as a running mate, then I suspect there will be a massive party split, with women and Latinos offended at HRC’s exclusion, or black Democrats offended at Obama’s exclusion, as there are fairly pronounced splits along these demographic groups in the exit polls. However, if by choice or compulsion, one chooses the other, and especially if Obama is at the top, then they will be extremely difficult for the Republicans to beat.

Speaking of the Republicans, I suppose we’re all McCainiacs now. Huckabee and Romney split what McCain didn’t win, but he won the big important states like IL, CA, and NY. Rush argued today that this demonstrates his weakness, as those states have been written off by the GOP for the last few election cycles - i.e., he can only win in the bluest of blue states, and may not be able to win in the south, which is a sine qua non for the party to win in November. That seems a flawed argument to me since McCain came in second in the south, and was the second choice of many according to the exit polls.

Much is being speculated about McCain choosing Huckabee for VP to make up for perceived southern weakness. I sincerely hope not. McCain is weakest not with social cons (he’s always been and voted pro-life; he just doesn’t advertise it, a fact that I suspect will change), but rather with economic conservatives. Given the fragile state of the economy, and his lack of interest or expertise in this area, a good solid economic conservative/supply-sider would be a more logical choice. What if you could find one that could self-fund? Maybe who had been the choice of the conservative talking heads, had a private sector background, and could possibly heal the party rift? But can McCain be gracious enough to extend the olive branch to Romney? I doubt it. Look instead for Florida Gov. Crist, SC Gov. Sanford, MN Gov. Pawlenty, or, who knows, maybe even former FL Gov. Jeb Bush (who, but for his last name, would be the nominee this time anyway).

McCain will give a speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee tomorrow. Look for him to invoke Ronald Reagan (who would be 97 years old today, had he lived) repeatedly. No surprise there. A little toning down of the class warfare rhetoric by McCain would be good. Perhaps even an acknowledgment of the contributions of the private sector to America. He might want to consider adding this nugget of info I ran across today to his speech: Exxon Mobil, the much maligned energy conglomerate, paid 30 BILLION DOLLARS (that’s $30,000,000,000) in corporate taxes in 2007. Here’s some context for that staggering number: If you take the total amount of taxes paid by the bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, it would roughly equal what this one (1!) evil, greedy, wicked corporation paid in one year. How’s that for paying your fair share?

Oh, yeah, and in case you’re interested, that’s a 41% effective tax rate (and before anything is paid to any state). Find all the Exxon number crunching here.

I somehow suspect that no one, not even the Republican presidential nominee, will bring that up.