The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

You’ve got to admit, this country has gone weird. Maybe it’s always been so, but if a Massachusetts Mormon wins South Carolina, the state that started the Civil War, you know something is not right with the world.

Most of the pundits are predicting that an uber-rich Mormon from Massachusetts is about to be the Republican nominee for president. According to the Irish odds-maker Paddy Power, the largest bookmakers in Europe, Mitt Romney is the odds on favorite to win the South Carolina Primary at 2-5. Newt Gingrich should take second at 7-2, while the odds on Rick Santorum stand at 11-2. It’s 25-1 for Ron Paul, 33-1 for Rick Perry and 100-1 for John Huntsman.

If Romney wins there, experts say it is going to be hard for his rivals to continue their presidential campaigns, to raise the money to go on and build a national infrastructure to take him on.

The same press release from the Paddy Power press office has Romney the 1-8 favorite to become the Republican nominee, but he only has a 6-4 chance of becoming president. The black guy from Hawaii, President Barack Obama, is favored 8-11. I’ll take that bet and throw in a 12-pack of Sweetwater Georgia Brown.

According to Gallup, Romney has finally broken the 30 percent barrier among Republicans. In the latest poll on the subject, Gallup reported that Romney has “finally surpassed 30 percent support among Republicans nationwide and is now their majority pick for the GOP candidate most likely to win the party’s 2012 presidential nomination.”

Woo-hoo!

Karl Rove, of Utah, must be celebrating with a toast to the memory of Lee Atwater, of South Carolina, today. He kicked Rick Perry’s butt, the other conservative Christian Texas Governor. And Michelle Bachman, the crazy woman who was a stand-in for Sarah Palin in this race, has already dropped out after a miserable showing in Iowa.

Rove is about to have the guy he wants in the big race. Romney is rich, good-looking and moderate. The problem is, and Rove must know this, he can’t win the South, which has been the only sure-fire solid ground for Republicans since Ronald Reagan and his pitchman Atwater managed to turn the working folks of Dixie from die-hard Democrats into “Reagan Republicans” in the 1980s.

What is he thinking? Has he lost his touch?

It appears so. That’s a good thing. For the country.

One more prediction. The presidential election of 2012 will draw far less voter turnout than 2008, when 132.6 million voters showed up at the polls to elect Barack Obama after eight horrifying years of Bush. That accounted for 56.8 percent of the voting age population of the U.S., not an all-time record in terms of percentage, but on the high end.

Voter turnout could drop below 50 percent again this year, as it did in 1996, since many on the left of the political spectrum are not totally happy with Obama’s performance. And it is hard to imagine Southern Baptists holding their noses and voting in great numbers for a Mormon.

I suspect a lot of little old ladies in the South will be sitting at home on November 6, 2012, watching Little House on the Prairie on the Hallmark channel and wondering what happened to their country. Of course, many of them have Alzheimer’s now, and probably think they were characters in Gone With the Wind anyway.

If Karl Rove were truly smart, he would devise a voting booth for nursing homes. That’s the only way he’s going to win this election.

Tags: Karl Rove, Massachusetts Mormon, South Carolina, The Black Guy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 9:19 am and is filed under Elections 2012, GOP Politics, Opinion, Political News, Politics and Government, President Barack Obama, Public Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.