January 30, 2008

Florida, the demise of Giuliani, and a Clintonian "victory"

For those in the blogosphere who have been living under a rock or in Iraq for the last week, in particular the last twenty-four hours, brace yourselves:

Florida had a primary yesterday and a "New Yorker" won.

To the surprise of no one, however, it wasn't the "real" New Yorker. Rudy Giuliani came in a weak third place, just barely edging out Mike Huckabee for fourth place, in the the Republican primary. Arizona Senator John McCain took 35%, slightly ahead of Mitt Romney, to take all of Florida's Republican delegates.

Of course McCain is not from New York, so that leaves the other "primary" to parse.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton took 50% of the votes cast in Florida's symbolic primary. Much like the Michigan primary, Clinton pandered to disenfranchised Floridians in order to score a victory of zero delegates. For those unfamiliar with the situations of Michigan and Florida, use Wikipedia, because it's not worth explaining the stupidity of front-loading primaries.

That being said, I disagree with the DNC's decision to strip both states of all delegates, I disagree with the states' unwillingness to comply, and I disagree with Billary Rodton Clinham's campaigning in both states despite a so-called moratorium on campaigning in them. All in all, it's a disagreeable situation.

WSJ has an article on A4 today on how former President Jimmy Carter waxes sympathetically for Barack Obama, but still has not issued an endorsement. On the same page, another article also looks into how the primaries have become "racially divisive" - though I could not disagree more with that meme. The only matter divisive about these primaries are the Clintons and how they will stop at nothing to get Bill a 3rd and 4th term via Hillary's proxy. Barack Obama is the Great American Hope and there's nothing racially chraged about that.

-rl

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