Last time we talked, Willard Romney was squeaking out a win in Michigan, Rick Santorum was frothing at the mouth, Newt was complaining about something, and Ron Paul was freezing gold bars in his Frigidaire.
That was over a week ago, though. Tonight, tonight is the big one my friends. Super Tuesday! Polls in Ohio close at 7:30, and the dominos start falling from there. Ten states are up for grabs, and with Romney whittling away Ricky’s lead in Ohio in recent days, it certainly looks to be anyone’s guess who walks away from tonight the big winner.
If Romney shows strongly enough, expect the calls to grown in the coming days for Santorum and Gingrich to step aside and cede their delegates. Until then, let’s think of tonight as a chance to get our best shots in. Your loyal live-blogger KotBR will be here closer to 9, when results start coming in.
Important programming note: Tonight the Crasstalk Politics Team is going to attempt the do a commentary livestream. Will it be a disaster? Probably, but that won’t stop us. We will embed the channel here around 8:30 EST for your viewing pleasure.
8:38- Alright, childrens, I’m on now. I’m going to stay here and talk you through this the old-fashioned way, and let GI and the rest of the crew go on with the livestream. If you want to follow along at home, we’re going to start out on MSNBC and move from there as necessary. One tip for MSNBC: ‘Ohio too close to call’ is not ‘Breaking News’.
8:40- Oh, Newt is letting his wife-bot read a statement. Must have some Siri-like upgrade on this thing. PS-Her roots look awful, don’t they? BOOOOO!
8:42- ‘Real American’ by Rick Derringer? Oh, Newt, prepare to hear from Hulk Hogan soon.
8:44- Was Newt such a pussy in high school that he got beat up by the editor of the newspaper or something? Because he really needs to let up on this whole ‘media-elite’ thing.
8:45- Has anyone discussed the possibility that Newt might go third party? I mean, he hates everything, including the ‘forces of Wall St.’ and the ‘party establishment’.
8:46- Congratulations, Rick Santorum! Your froth runneth over. Oklahoma goes to you, you vile shell of a human. If my math is correct, that’s 95 delegates for Santorum tonight, if the results hold.
8:51- Newt, ask the bottom half of the socio-economic ladder how the ‘Contract for on America’ worked out for them. You know, after you step over them on your way to a speech.
8:53- I flipped channels, and everyone is showing Newt. I even stopped on CNN, which is basically news for 6th graders produced by 3rd graders at this point, and even they were staying on the speech. Lame.
8:57- Every time Newt is allowed to prattle on about how much smarter he is than everyone else, I’m reminded of the remark ‘Newt is a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person should sound like’. Though, I am shocked that calling an African American dumb is playing so well in Georgia.
9:00- There it is! War with Iran while we drill for more oil. It only took 18 minutes. Newt shouldn’t even be allowed to stand in one place that long, let alone speak.
9:03- Did you guys know that the President actually sets gas prices? And that Barack Obama was America’s first President, and that the country was founded in 2008, even though our Constitution was written in the 18th century? Nothing happened in the intervening 240 years. NOTHING!
9:05- Thank science. That was awful. Newt will now retire to his lair, to feast on the blood of poor children and wash it down with the semen of oil executives.
9:10- MSNBC is pointing out Newt’s total and complete lie about the President’s remarks on gas prices. I’m sighing because we don’t even bother disagreeing about policies anymore. We just make shit up.
9:15- Because I can only take so much of Ed Schultz, I flipped over to Fox. Then I saw Megyn Kelly, poured bleach in my ears, and flipped back. According to Fox, though, Ricky’s about to get up and give a speech in Ohio. Yeah, he’s here, and he’s actually not that far away from me. In other news, I hear there was a run on glitter at the craft stores today.
9:17- Howard Dean just said something about the ‘whole omelet’ being up in the air. I don’t think Howard Dean knows what an omelet is.
9:17- Let me tell you a story about Steubenville, OH. There’s a reason nobody goes there. Rick Santorum is in a HS gymnasium b/c that’s the only place his campaign could afford to rent out. I guess it’s okay to put political propaganda in the schools in this case, eh Ricky?
9:19- Stop making these people feel important, Rick. Steubenville isn’t a place that was ‘left behind’. It’s south of Canton, and just north of a place called Mingo Junction. It’s not left behind, it never got there, based on the way these people are lapping up your drivel.
9:23- ‘All the valleys of this country’?? That’s right, you folks who live up on hills? Fuck you.
9:25- Oh, the budget buster talk from Mr. Spendthrift, pretending that finishing off the middle class won’t have horrifying effects on our debt levels.
9:27- What Rick Santorum won’t tell you is that his savings also includes a Congressional pension, and the couple million he’s made since he ‘retired’ (was voted resoundingly out of office in his home state) from the Senate.
9:30- Fundamental liberty, unless you have a uterus. I wonder if his two young adult daughters secretly just fucking loathe him.
9:33- Seriously, MSNBC! ‘Ohio Too Close to Call’ is not breaking news! Just stop!
9:34- I hate Rick Santorum’s parents, just on principal. Rick, the Greatest Generation was great because they were willing to make actual material sacrifices towards the war effort. Ask the last Republican president about all the sacrifices we asked of people at the beginning of the Iraqi and Afghan wars. Have you heard the belly-aching from these wangs everytime Obama mentions shared sacrifice?
9:39- A correction to something I said above. The proportionality rules are coming into play in Tennessee and Oklahoma, and Santorum is up to roughly 25 delegates, not the full 95 as I mentioned earlier.
9:41- One item that’s not getting a lot of play tonight is Santorum and Gingrich’s absence in Virginia. That’s a healthy chunk of basically uncontested delegates for Willard.
9:44- Another speech coming up? Crap. I need to get a snack. Is Ann Romney busy telling everyone how ‘not rich’ she is?
9:46- Alright! Who’s ready for Willard to sound ‘folksy’, as only a rich man who looks down his nose at everyone who doesn’t have a second home can. What’s too bad is that even when I think he might actually be speaking sincerely, he still sounds like he has a flag pole up his ass.
9:48- Serious question. If, and I mean if, Romney was able to win the White House, how long after inauguration would it be before he slipped and said the White House felt ‘cramped’?
9:51- ‘The stagnant Obama economy’. Again, from the verge of a second Great Depression to now in under three years? A $15T economy doesn’t exactly exist in a static vacuum.
9:53- ‘You have not failed, the President has failed you’. Wait, I thought America was a place where everyone needed to be responsible for themselves, because of freedom and liberty, and if they failed, tough shit. Am I in the right country?
9:54- Okay, that was a good money line, I’ll give him that one. He has no concrete plan to back it up and his economic plan would recreate the 1920s, but it was a good money line.
9:58- Here we go, Romney is giving his serenade to the 1%. Please, Mitt, make it easier for me to invest my money in the market, so someone else can get rich whether I make any money or not. I like funding other people’s casino games. Asshole.
9:59- ‘Saving the soul of America’. From whom? Joseph Smith?
10:01- Romney is going to save the future! Christopher Loyd is officially out of work. So much for creating jobs, Willard. Dick.
10:03- The best news about this? No more platitude filled speeches. Ima go grab a snack.
10:05- Oh, they rolled Brokaw out of mothballs for a primary night? I know it’s Super Tuesday, but Tom Brokaw should only come out for the following: general elections, declarations of war (by Congress, none of this Executive Order bullshit), and the passing of historic figures. Let’s just agree on this.
10:11- I mentioned this offline, but if you look at the map that MSNBC just showed of all the Ohio counties, it’s not a surprise to anyone who follows politics in Ohio. In the cities, Romney is playing well, and everywhere else, it’s Santorum.
10:15- Chris Matthews just compared Mitt Romney to bad dog food. A more apt description has yet to be given.
10:16- Matthews’ advice for Santorum? ‘Get off women’. Somewhere, his wife is nodding feverishly.
10:19- Can I tell you guys how much I love that my adopted home state is likely to be giving the Romney campaign a major headache right now? Watching that classist, corporatist cock master squirm pleases me the way talking down to the poors pleases Romney.
10:23- If Santorum is going to move continue move on in this process, it’ll be interesting to see if he start trying to temper some of the anti-woman, anti-choice stuff. Strategically, it would make sense, but, in reality, the man truly believes that stuff. He’s going to ride it to the bitter end, all of Chris Matthew’s advice aside.
10:26- Michael Moore is an example of an unattractive person who’s not aging well. Also, I know he has lots of opinions, but this really isn’t the place for him.
10:30- North Dakota to Rick Santorum! I’m actually moving past rooting for him and getting a little uneasy now.
10:32- Well, it’s going to be a while before Michael Moore gets to come back on MSNBC. I like my ‘pull-out’ jokes as much as the next guy, but, yeah…
10:34- You know why it takes Cuyahoga forever to count, Chuck? It’s fucking HUGE! And I don’t know about the Republican side, but there are a ton of local/county/tax issues this year. Okay, I’ll stop now.
10:40- Romney is starting to close the gap in Ohio. It was up over 15K, it’s now down to 6K as the Cleveland and Cincy-area counties start reporting. Don’t be surprised if, based on population density, and the spread we’ve seen in those counties all night, if Romney finishes closing that gap in the next 20 minutes or so. Then again, I don’t think they’re going to be able to call it tonight.
10:43- I just had to flip over to Fox. They’ve got the Ohio map up, going through the counties that are still outstanding. Of course, they’ve also got Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincy mapped out, for the Fox viewers who failed 5th, 8th, and 11th grade Social Studies, which is ALL OF THEM.
10:48- Okay, that was all the Fox I could take. Honestly, there’s only so much I can take of any of these clowns. Again, I reiterate, Ohio isn’t going to be called tonight unless Fox decides that they are tired of this charade, calls it for Romney, and triggers the domino effect. It’ll be like 2000, but way more boring.
10:57- I won’t lie, gang, I’ve gotten sucked into watching what happens as much as you all have. I think we’re going to be waiting a while on Ohio, and we’ll probably end up with a recount here. Thanks everyone for sticking it out, I’ll wander down and join you in the comments.
11:08- I lied. Romney has now inched into the lead in Ohio, with a just shy of 90% of the vote in. His lead is hardly insurmountable, but I can’t say I’m surprised, based on where the counting still had to happen here in Ohio. We’ll see if it holds up.
