Santorum Bows Out

View 720 Tuesday, April 10, 2012

We are slowly catching up again, but it is taking time. I’m dancing as fast as I can. My physician just called, and my MRI is good. Nothing deteriorating that he can see. Bit of sinus inflammation but it’s the pollen season, and I haven’t had any particular distress. The fact that I got up the four mile 800 foot hike yesterday and working today seems to indicate that I’m still in fairly good shape. There’s a dance in the old boy yet…

Breaking news items. I don’t usually deal in breaking news, and I don’t intend to start now, but some things can’t be ignored.

Rick Santorum has withdrawn from the Republican Primary. That leaves Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich as official candidates for the Republican nomination. So far Santorum has not endorsed anyone nor released his delegates, but the nomination of Mitt Romney now seems very nearly inevitable. Speaker Gingrich is not likely to withdraw and Ron Paul even less so. That leaves Romney, who will certainly be a better President than Mr. Obama – if he can win.

Obama inspires passion in some groups. One presumes there are some passionate supporters for Mitt Romney as well, but how many of them are organized or have political experience is not clear. Politics is messy, and it’s not exclusively a media game. One needs party workers, poll watchers, get out the vote troopers, and the whole mechanism of what is generally called the ground game. Building that organization is important. That is Romney’s next task.

Romney has the general support of the Republican establishment, but many do not trust him much, with reason since he’s not really one of them. Of course that’s also true of the traditional anti-establishment right. Romney has a number of fences to mend in that direction. He’s going to need some sparks and fire in his campaign. We’ll see what he does next. Do understand, I intend to vote for him and make certain that any of my Republican neighbors do as well. This is a crucial election, and it is important to the country that we don’t have four more years of Obama.

The strange Zimmerman/Martin case gets stranger. And as Sharpton and Jackson and others use this case to build race hatred, they won’t be alone. Others will find examples of whites harassed by blacks in what are unambiguously hate crimes, as for instance the Baltimore St Patrick’s Day incident. Given that in this year of our Lord the 2012^th black on white crime is more frequent than white on black except on prime time media shows, it won’t be hard to find some. It’s harder to make a living now as a white demagogue, but the more of this there is, the more of it there will be. It may be a long hot summer.

Wall Street is running scared as the threat of European sovereign debt defaults grows. This will greatly affect US trade as well. The Chinese economy doesn’t look so great. And the American debt grows. Inflation is a tax on savings and fixed incomes, and is almost inevitable in the face of rising deficits. We are not out of the economic woods yet.

I’ve got a bunch of the work on taxes done, and it’s time for dinner. I’ll catch up. I really will…