Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Eye-oh-wha? 

In the past I've been uncharitable towards consultant Mike Bayham's political analyses, and have harped on his miscues. But Bayham is on the ground in Iowa, writing compelling firsthand reports on the GOP campaigns. He'll be liveblogging the Iowa caucus results at his blog. Check it out.

I'll be at an undisclosed location tonight, watching other entertainments. I don't have any exciting predictions about the Iowa results. All I can say is that I hope there's an upset because it will make things more interesting. (Romney is still evitable, I maintain, but the GOP seems intent on proving that in the autumn rather than the spring. They're reluctantly falling in line behind ole Mittens in the hope that he, a candidate with inch-deep support, can somehow prevail over an incumbent President with inch-and-a-half deep support. (As George Will observed, they'd do better redirecting their energies to Congressional races this year, and find a stronger nominee in 2016. But the GOP's previous political virtue of long-range planning is now inhibited by their fevered, apocalyptic-thinking.)

One last thing: the way [the] conservative establishment stoned Newt Gingrich in December was an obscenity. I've never seen them pound one of their candidates like that, all at once, with such intensity. It was absolutely incredible. I've seen GOP pile-ons before, but never a national campaign assassination like that one, against a  surging candidate (and former GOP hero!). Makes their dismantling of Huckabee in [2008] look like an evening of courtship on the porch swing.

It would be interesting to compare the intensity of the establishment's "jihad" (Bayham's word) against Newt to the missives they wrote against David Duke 20 years ago.
posted by oyster @ 2:27 PM
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