This week: Michigan & South Carolina
This week may give us some answers about how the Republican nomination is shaping up. Tomorrow we’ll see whether a strong Republican winner emerges in Michigan. In a state with such high unemployment figures and a true economic crisis (one-third of Detroit residents are living below the poverty line), it remains to be seen who has the strongest money message. Will people be inspired by Mitt Romney’s experience in turning around economic catastrophe’s and his demands for leveling the global playing field? Will they respond to John McCain’s plans for retraining unemployed auto workers with viable technical skills? Will the large bloc of evangelical voters make this another win for Mike Huckabee? In spite of polls, one showing McCain in the lead and another with Mike Huckabee as the projected winner, we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night for the answer. We’ve all seen that polls aren’t forecasting well this year.
On the Democratic side, no candidates even bothered to show in Michigan, since the Democratic Party stripped the state of it’s delegates for holding the primary so early. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have focused on Nevada and South Carolina. Meanwhile, John Edwards is banking on South Carolina to keep him in the competition.
Thursday, Nevada will tell us more about the Democrats while South Carolina will be ‘make or break’ for Fred Thompson and possibly, Ron Paul. Both have campaigned heavily in the state.
What I’ve been wondering most about for the last few days, is how the Democratic or the Republican Party can eliminate delegates from a state just because they hold their primaries earlier than the National Party wants. In fact, I’m kinda upset that this could happen for any reason. And how can the candidates go along with this? It seems to me that a lot of voters are being disenfranchised by these policies. Of course, each voter can vote in the General Election in November, but if these sanctions hold, there are several states that won’t have a fair shake at deciding who the candidates will be in that election. Seems rather high-handed to me and grossly unfair. But then . . .
Looking back at national conventions for both parties over the years, it’s easy to see that delegates to the conventions don’t always vote according to what their state primary results said they should anyway. What a system, huh?
Well, maybe we’ll have better answers by the weekend.
Tags: Barack Obama, delegates, Democrats, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Michigan Primary, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Nevada Primary, Politics, Presidential, Presidential primary, Republicans, Ron Paul, South Carolina PrimaryLeave a Reply
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