From Truth-Out:
How Pop Culture Influences Political Expectations
Saturday 25 February 2012
by: Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co. | Interview and Video

Film historian and culture critic Neal Gabler joins Bill Moyers to discuss how representations of heroism in movies shape our expectations of a U.S. president, and how our real-world candidates are packaged into superficial, two-dimensional personas designed to appeal to both the electorate and the media. As a result, says Gabler, we never get to the true pressing questions and issues of America.

“We love candidates who speak their mind in movies,” Gabler tells Moyers, adding that the same is not true for real life. “Movies are clean; democracy is a mess.”

Neil Gabler on How Pop Culture Influences Political Culture from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

BILL MOYERS: For all its many qualities, including some fine acting, “Contagion” was frozen out of the Oscars—not a single nomination. In fact, none of my favorites were nominated. Nonetheless, let’s go to the movies for some insights on our politics today, because when it comes to storytelling, Hollywood and Washington are co-dependents. Political conspiracies, skullduggery, and infighting have long provided solid plotlines for moviemakers. In turn, politicians try to embrace the values that movies depict as the noblest virtues of the American character: selfless courage, patriotism, sincerity and compassion. Both know that movie entertainment informs our image of what leaders should be but at the very same time capably and handily distracts us from certain grim truths.

So we’ve chosen this moment to talk with Neal Gabler, the historian of culture and film who expertly interprets how movies reflect our society and politics. Here in New York, Neal Gabler is an indispensable Saturday night guide to the movies on our flagship public station WNET/Thirteen.

NEAL GABLER on Reel 13: Welcome to Reel 13. I’m Neal Gabler.

BILL MOYERS: His books include biographies of Walt Disney and the powerful gossip columnist Walter Winchell, this one An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and my favorite, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. He’s back in town after a semester as a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Welcome home, Neal.

NEAL GABLER: Thank you very much.

BILL MOYERS: When you say life's a movie what are you saying?

NEAL GABLER: What I'm saying is that life itself has become an entertainment medium, that we are all actors in, and audience for, an ongoing show, that we have so steeped ourselves in the theatrical arts by watching them and ultimately by assimilating them that we have turned our own lives, and life outside of us, into a movie which we can watch and which we can perform in simultaneously.

I'll give you one example, you know, if you were to ask a farmer in the 19th century, or even in the 20th century for that matter, 'Why are you wearing overalls?' He would have looked at you in complete befuddlement. 'What do you mean why am I wearing overalls?'

But now we have people who walk down the street wearing cowboy hats from Ralph Lauren or wearing safari outfits from Ralph Lauren. You can, your clothing becomes a costume and you become a role player in some sort of fantasy.

And of course we see this in politics, you know, in spades where politics is a movie. And we're now, you know, in a campaign season where what we're really watching is not so much political debate, though it's called that, as we are watching a movie in which candidates are contending to be our protagonist-in-chief, as I would put it.

BILL MOYERS: Protagonist-in-chief--

NEAL GABLER: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Meaning?

NEAL GABLER: Meaning that they, themselves, see the country as a kind of movie and they want to be the hero of the movie because they understand that's what the American people really are looking for. They want a Clint Eastwood, they want a John Wayne. They want an Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the head of state.

BILL MOYERS: But we wanted heroes in the White House before there were movies. George Washington, hero; Andrew Jackson, hero; Ulysses S. Grant, hero. That was some-- that seems to be something inherent in human nature, not in the movies, per se.

NEAL GABLER: I mean, there’s a distinction between real heroes and celebrities who are people on whom we impute a kind of heroism who haven't really earned it. John Wayne is a perfect example. John Wayne never whenever to war, and yet almost everybody in America regards in as heroic because he played a hero.

So the lust for heroism I don't think is anything new. That's a product of human nature possibly, and it's certainly a tradition in America. But the difference is the nature of heroism, what we define as heroism and the way in which heroism gets framed. We have expectations now of our political leaders.

And the expectations are that our political leaders are going to operate the same way that movie heroes operate, not the traditional war heroes or whatever operate, but that movie heroes operate, and that they'll essentially slash their way through problems and vanquish them at the end of the presidency, which in this case is the end of the national movie.

BILL MOYERS: It used to be that the first reel contained a villain and the last reel contained a hero. But in politics it's just the opposite. Very often the hero, who gets elected is a villain by the time he takes office, right?

NEAL GABLER: Well, you know, the election is the greatest movie of all. And when the lights come up on election day and we leave the theater and we say as we did in 2008, as many people said, 'Boy, this is, what a great day for America that we could actually elect an African American to the presidency and that the slogans of hope and change that you can believe in, all these things are really operative.' But there's a sequel. And the sequel is governance. Now, as much as the movie of the election may be powerful and entertaining and even in some cases uplifting, governance is a whole different thing.

BILL MOYERS: So in the end are movies contributing to the paralysis and the frustrations of democracy? Because as you say, the movie is glamorous, governing is not.

NEAL GABLER: Absolutely. In fact I think the-- I would even go farther than that. I mean, governance is a very bad movie, it's a really lousy movie. Elections are a better movie because look at, elections fit into a clean framework of there's going to be a winner and there's going to be a loser. It's essentially a sporting event.

But then, that contest ends and after that we have a whole different set of problems and situations, but there aren't clear winners and losers. There isn't the clear framework. There's not the clear sense of hero and villain as there was during the election as we impute those things onto our candidates. So governance is as I say, is a lousy movie. And we don't know how to deal with that.

BILL MOYERS: One of my favorite moments in one of the best political movies ever made, The Candidate, Robert Redford--

NEAL GABLER: Ah, wonderful movie.

BILL MOYERS: Remember he runs this race for the-- and he's elected.

NEAL GABLER: He’s selected, tapped as the Democratic candidate in California partly because he's the son of a former governor, but also because he looks like Robert Redford.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

NEAL GABLER: You know, he's handsome and he's articulate and he gives the impression of sincerity, all the things that one needs to be elected. But there's no substance to the campaign whatsoever. And indeed, as the campaign goes on it becomes more and more about aesthetics.

About how one looks, how one appears, where one shows up. I mean, there's one scene in the movie where he walks down the beach just so he can be photographed for a television commercial and people come up to him and he looks like, boy, he's so relaxed, he's in his element. And then we get to the end of the movie. Now, he's elected and he goes to his political advisor-

MARVIN LUCAS in The Candidate: Okay, we have about 60 seconds of privacy before they find out we’re here now, so what’s on your mind, Senator?

BILL MCKAY in The Candidate: I don’t know.

MARVIN LUCAS in The Candidate: Okay, we got to get out there. See I told you they’d be here.

BILL MCKAY in The Candidate: Marvin, what do we do now?

MARVIN LUCAS in The Candidate: Wait a minute, wait a minute, what?

NEAL GABLER: Election's easy. Governance is hard.

BILL MOYERS: The hero of the campaign becomes a pretty weak figure at the moment of governance, right?

NEAL GABLER: If the campaign is about aesthetics. And that's what has happened in American politics.

BILL MOYERS: Earlier this week on CNN there was a headline that said, "Will the debate reveal a new Romney?" I mean, a new Romney is the-

NEAL GABLER: A new Romney? Well, here we have another debate and what's Romney's role going to be in this debate? How does he project himself? This is all about the narrative that the candidates are presenting to the public. And it's all about how well they can seduce the public. Now, the public's wise to this. It's not like the public is sitting back and they're stupid. The public gets this. They understand that this is-

BILL MOYERS: So why do we go along? Why do we go along with it?

NEAL GABLER: Well, I think--

BILL MOYERS: Because we-- after the election we are so frustrated, democracy's not working, nothing gets solved. And yet we were party to the movie, we were in the audience applauding when the new Romney emerged.

NEAL GABLER: You know, there's, I think, a kind of American schizophrenia about our politics. On the one hand we love to sit back and see these people be compelled to seduce us because elections are basically about seduction. And we understand, there's no fooling us that that's what the process is. So we sit there and we say, 'How well are they going to seduce us?'

But that also gives way to an incredible cynicism about the process. Americans are deeply cynical about politics generally. And one of the reasons we're cynical is because we get it. We get how it works. On the other hand we would have theoretically at our disposal the ability to change American politics, to say, you want to know something? I don't want to buy the new Romney, or the old Romney, or the new Gingrich, or the old Gingrich, or the new Santorum, or the old Santorum.

I want to know who a candidate really is. I want him to speak honestly and forcefully to me. And I also want to understand policy-wise what choices is he going to make? What interests are we going to-- is he going to serve? You know, these are questions that are almost never addressed in a political campaign and yet they're the fundamental questions of a political campaign.

BILL MOYERS: But let's go to The Candidate because there is another scene that I remember so well when Robert Redford, the candidate, tries to get his opponent and the media to take the issues seriously.

NEAL GABLER: This is the moment during the debate, if I'm not mistaken--

BILL MOYERS: Exactly.

NEAL GABLER: Where he's debating his Republican rival, a three-term Republican senator. And he's saying, 'Look it, we've got to address the issues here. We're not addressing the issues.'

DEBATE MODERATOR in The Candidate: Mr. McKay, you now have one minute to sum up. Mr. McKay?

BILL McKAY in The Candidate: In the begin-- I don’t, I think it’s important to note what subjects we haven’t discussed. We completely ignored the fact that this is society divided by fear, hatred, and violence. And until we talk about just what this society really is than I don’t know how we’re going to change it. For example, we haven’t discussed the rot that destroys our cities. We have all the resources we need to check it and we don’t use them. And we haven’t discussed why not. We haven’t discussed race in this country, we haven’t discussed poverty, in short, we haven’t discussed any of the sicknesses that may yet send this country up in flames. And we’d better do it. We’d better get it out in the open and confront it. Before it’s too late.

NEAL GABLER: And his handlers absolutely feel that he's done the absolutely wrong thing in trying to compel the press to address issues in an aesthetic campaign.

But the difference today would be that there would be a headline that the candidate says, Redford says, 'America is rotten,' or, 'America is sick.' And everyone would jump on it and then he would be compelled to come before the camera and say, 'I didn't say that America was rotten and I didn't way that America was sick.'

Now, interestingly, we've seen Newt Gingrich do a variation on this, and I think it's fascinating, it's kind of post-modernist. Because Gingrich is going around saying, that, you know, we don't talk enough about policy. We really ought to talk about policy. We're talking about personal things, but we really ought to talk about policy. But in talking about talking about policy, he never talks about policy. He's simply talking about talking about policy. Now, this is a wonderful trick. It makes him sound as if he really wants to address policy without ever having to do so.

To see more articles and videos from Moyers & Co., click here.

BILL MOYERS: So would Mitt Romney get the role of playing Mitt Romney if there were a movie about which Mitt Romney is going to win?

NEAL GABLER: Well, it depends on which Mitt Romney you want in the movie. I mean, I think what Mitt Romney has done is he's created the narrative that he is the strong businessman. And he looks the part, and that's one of the reasons why he can play this role.

On the other hand, that narrative has not played well with the Republican constituency. Because they don't care whether he's a strong businessman. What they want to know is, does he have the courage of his convictions which is essentially the courage of their convictions, their conservative convictions.

So Romney's problem in this campaign is his narrative is the wrong narrative. He's playing the wrong role. They want to see if he has courage. They don't want to see that he has the financial acumen to run the economy, they don't care. And this is a very difficult thing to do. He's miscast. What makes a great actor? What makes a great actor is the authenticity. You believe in that performance. That's great acting.

And, what we do is we get a candidate, Gingrich, you know, coming along and saying, 'Well, I'm authentic because I'm going to-- I say what I want to say. I don't pull my punches.' And then he gets taken down. Now Santorum is cast in the same way. Why is Santorum being boosted? Because he's sincere.

BILL MOYERS: You say in here that we escape from life by escaping into a neat narrative formula. Isn't that true of politics, as well? Movies give us a neat story, a neat drama with a beginning, a middle and an end and we like that even though politics isn't really like that?

NEAL GABLER: Politics is antithetical really to the values of movies even though the values of movies as I said earlier permeate politics, and that's a problem. You know, Americans love democracy, but they hate politics. And politics is one of the things that gives us democracy.

BILL MOYERS: I would have thought just the opposite. They love politics, witness the audiences for the debates, witness the enthusiasm of the crowd. But it's the working of democracy they don't like.

NEAL GABLER: Well they love the theatricality of politics. But when I say politics I don't mean the horse race aspect of it. I mean the bargaining, the negotiations, the policy, all of those things which are the essence of real politics and political decision making, Americans hate that and they are cynical about that. They feel it doesn't work.

And that is not a healthy situation for democracy. What we have to do is embrace the fact that democracy's a mess. Movies are not, movies are clean. Democracy is a mess. That's what makes it democracy.

It's about finding out how interests get resolved, that's what democracy's about. Movies aren't about that. Movies are about vanquishing a villain, that's what movies are about. And what happens in American politics is that notice how, and we see this in the Republican debate, that idea of vanquishing the villain, in this case Barack Obama, has become the political meme.

It's not about policy. It's not about interests. It's about, there's this bad guy in the White House and we've got to defeat him. That's Batman. That's not really the way the political system would operate. And it contributes to polarization.

BILL MOYERS: Have you seen Ides of March with--

NEAL GABLER: Yes, I have, yes.

BILL MOYERS: George Clooney? There's a moment in there where he talks differently about religion from the way many candidates including Santorum are doing. Let me play that for us.

GOVERNOR MORRIS in The Ides of March: I am not a Christian, or an atheist. I'm not Jewish or Muslim. What I believe, my religion, is written on a piece of paper called the Constitution. Meaning, that I will defend, until my dying breath, your right to worship, in whatever God you believe in. As long as it doesn't hurt others. I believe we should be judged as a country by how we take care of the people who cannot take care of themselves. That's my religion. If you think I’m not religious enough, don't vote for me. If you think I’m not experienced enough, or tall enough, then don't vote for me. Because I can’t change that to get elected.

NEAL GABLER: Of course, if anybody had ever said what Clooney says here, and again this is where we get this kind of schizophrenia, we love candidates who are forthright on the movies. We love candidates in the movies who say what they want to say and just rip the cover off the ball and, you know.

But in real life if a candidate ever said that he would have doomed his chances to be elected in a second because the headline would be-- and every one of his opponents would say, 'Doesn't believe in God. Clooney doesn't believe in God.' And then for a week the narrative that week would be him having to come back and def—'I never said I don't believe in God.' And you know, this is the kind of idiocy that absolutely overtakes the American political narrative. But this is the only-- the only thing we get is idiocy. We get one-

BILL MOYERS: We're a nation of idiots?

NEAL GABLER: I won't say we're a nation of idiots although I will say this-- I would never say that of course. Because if I said that-

BILL MOYERS: In a movie you would.

NEAL GABLER: That would-- in a movie I would, in a movie, absolutely. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: We'll do a movie.

NEAL GABLER: But I would say that we allow this kind of thing to happen, we let it happen. And we let the media promulgate this sort of thing and we don't put our feet down and say, 'You know, enough, enough.'

And I think we have to shame the public and the media, shame them, into saying, 'Look, as a citizen this is your responsibility. It's not your responsibility to watch, you know, woodpeckers in a debate, you know, knock one another's heads. That's entertaining and it's fun and all of that, but now you have a duty. You have a responsibility.'

We've got an Occupy Wall Street movement. We now need an Occupy Media movement in which, you know, ordinary people say, 'I want a real debate on issues.' And find the resources to do that.

BILL MOYERS: But in a society so thoroughly saturated with entertainment, aren't we losing our capacity for the sustained or more serious ideas?

NEAL GABLER: We are losing our idealism. We are losing our ability to process these things. We outsource our opinions. I mean, when you look at Fox News and MSNBC for example, and they're not the only culprits, what do they really represent? I mean, people always say, 'Well, they're, they market to a niche.' But what they really represent is outsourcing our own opinions.

Yeah, we don't have to think. We can outsource it to Fox. We kind of agree with them generally, we kind of generally agree with MSNBC, so now we've outsourced it. They'll do it for us.

So in some ways in this media saturated, entertainment saturated culture what we have to do, it's imperative for us to do this, is disenchant ourselves, get ourselves out of the movie, leave the theater for a moment and say, what is the real impact?

When we get into the cold light of the sidewalk after the movie is over, what is the impact of all this? What is it going to mean for my life? What is it going to mean for America? And if we don't start asking those questions we can't move this forward at all. All we're going to get is punditry and analysis of who's winning and who's losing and a movie. We'll get nothing but the movie. But the problem is movies don't answer the pressing questions of America. Policy answers the pressing questions of America and we have to demand to know what these guys are going to do and what choices they're going to make.

BILL MOYERS: Neal Gabler, we'll continue this conversation as the year goes on. Thank you for joining me.

NEAL GABLER: Thank you so much, Bill.

Update: Best page for 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries dates, # of delegates, winner-take-all or proportional through Super Tuesday

My developing table on 2012 Primaries and Caucuses for the Republican Presidential Nomination: (parentheses = probably)
The Republican National Convention will be held at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, Tampa, Florida, August 27 (Monday) to 30 (Thursday), 2012.

State	Date (Sat. elections in italics)	Caucus or primary	Open or closed	Winner-Take-All or proportional	Number of delegates
Iowa evangelical	January 3	Caucus	Closed	Proportional	28
New Hampshire libertarian but New England	January 10	Primary	Open to Republi- cans and Indepen- dents	Proportional	12
South Carolina evangelical	January 21	Primary	Open	Winner-take-all	25
Florida evangelical, Old South north; cosmopolitan southern section	January 31	Primary	Closed	Winner-take-all	50
Nevada libertarian West; besieged with foreclosures	February 4	Caucus	Closed	Proportional	28
Maine (municipal level)	February 4 to 11	Caucus	Closed	Determined at precinct level (Likely WTA)	24
Colorado social conserv., but libertarian	February 7	Caucus	Closed	Unbound	36
Minnesota	February 7	Caucus	Open	Unbound	40
Missouri (non-binding, see 3/17 cauc.)	February 7	Primary	Modified	Alloct. at convention	52
Arizona	February 28	Primary	Closed	WTA	29
Michigan	February 28	Primary	Open*	Proportional (15% threshold)	30
Washington	March 3	Caucus	Open	Mixed WTA/Proportional	43
Alaska	March 6	Caucus	Closed	Proportional	27
Georgia	March 6	Primary	Open	Mixed WTA/Proportional	76
Idaho	March 6	Caucus	Open	Mixed WTA/Proportional	32
Massachusetts	March 6	Primary	Semi-Open	Proportional (15% threshold)	41
North Dakota	March 6	Caucus	Open	(per state party's county convention rules)	28
Ohio	March 6	Primary	Closed	Mixed WTA/Proportional	66
Oklahoma	March 6	Primary	Closed	Modified WTA	43
Tennessee	March 6	Primary	Open	Mixed WTA/Proportional	58
Vermont	March 6	Primary	Open	Modified WTA	17
Virginia	March 6	Primary	Open	Modified WTA	49
Wyoming	March 6 to March 10	Caucus (County Convention)	Closed	(per state party's county convention rules)	29

Table in progress.

Source for winner-take-all or proportional allocation of delegates:
http://www.fairvote.org/delegate-allocation-rules-in-2012-gop
*In Michigan, voter may chose which party primary in which to vote, but once they have chosen that party, they must vote for all one party once they have entered the voting booth.
Source:
http://www.fairvote.org/congressional-and-presidential-primaries-open-closed-semi-closed-and-top-two#.T0nx_Ixj5ac

Projected winners in latest opinion polls; highlights are links to polls:
Arizona: Mitt Romney
Michigan: toss-up, leaning Romney
Big considerations, states with over 50 delegates, March 6, Super Tuesday:
Georgia: Newt Gingrich, but with only a three point lead on Romney
Ohio: Rick Santorum
Tennessee: despite being next-door to Gingrich's home state: Santorun

Key Ohio GOPer Switches from Romney to Santorum; CPAC and Religious Endorsements

KEY OHIO ENDORSEMENT:
Yesterday (February 17, 2012) in a major coup for the Rick Santorum presidential campaign, Attorney General Mike DeWine speaking publicly in Columbus, Ohio, switched his support from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum. This could have a detrimental effect on the state next door, Michigan, on February 28 when Romney's birth state holds its presidential primary, 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM, Central Time. 30 proportionally distributed convention delegates are at stake in the Michigan primary.

RIGHT WING GROUPS' ENDORSEMENTS:
Take a look at the meeting program of the crazy, far right Conservative Political Union's Conservative Political Action Committee "CPAC": February 9 to 11, 2012 at the Ballroom of the Marriott Park Wardman Hotel in Washington, DC:
http://cpac2012.conservative.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Schedule-Of-Events_Latest.pdf

The CPAC endorsed Mitt Romney for the 2012 presidential nomination, but well short of a majority, 38 percent supporting Romney; Rick Santorum won 31 percent, Newt Gingrich, 15 percent, Ron Paul, 12 percent.

RIGGED CPAC ELECTION?
Rick Santorum charged that the process was manipulated:

“Well, you know, those straw polls at CPAC — as you know for years Ron Paul has won those because he just trucks in a lot of people, pays for their ticket, they come in a vote, and then they leave,” “We didn’t do that. We don’t do that. I don’t try to rig straw polls.”

--As reported by The Raw Story blog.

Earlier post:
The CPAC is due to make an endorsement. In the past they have endorsed Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Political_Action_Conference
Which of the remaining Republican candidates for president in 2012 will they endorse?: Romney? Gingrich? Paul? Santorum?
DO these groups' endorsements have an effect?
Did the religious conservatives' January 14, 2012 endorsement of Rick Santorum at their Texas meeting play a role in his recent primary and caucuses wins (Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri)? (More than 150 religious conservatives such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference president Rev. Samuel Rodriguez and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer met at the Benham, Texas ranch of retired judge Paul Pressler.)

Mitt Romney says Romneycare should go national (8/5/07)

Social Roots of the Enduring Support Gingrich is Recieving --The Story the Media is Missing

The media have been abuzz with commentary about how former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is the front-runner in the 2012 Republican presidential contest.
They have missed analyzing the county-level returns. In contest after contest, the social conservatives, first former Senator Rick Santorum (Pennsylvania), then former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Georgia) have been cleaning up in the non-urban, cultural periphery parts of states and their primary or caucus contests.

First, in the Iowa caucuses, Santorum won the majority of the counties, and particularly, he won the rural counties. (See this county map of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses.)

Next, in the South Carolina primary (January 21) Gingrich swept to victory in the parts of the state that were outside of the state capital, Columbia and the Atlantic Ocean coast with Charleston and Myrtle Beach. (See this county map of the 2012 South Carolina Republican primary.)

In Florida on January 31 Gingrich got all but three counties in the western part of the state, including counties north and west of the county containing Alachua, and west of the county containing Jacksonville. (See this county map of the 2012 Florida Republican primary.) Presaging the Super Tuesday contest at the beginning of March, Gingrich handily beat Romney in the Florida panhandle, adjacent to Georgia.

Even in yesterday's Nevada caucuses, Romney's support was not quite as strong in the western part of the state.
In Minnesota we can expect some drama as this was one of the better Huckabee states (he was the leading social conservative since the 2008 race), as he got 19.88 percent of the votes in the 2008 caucus.

One can also see a county level map of the whole U.S.A.of the winning pluralities in the 2008 race as part of this 2008 comparison process. Assuming that these depictions are useful future predictions, in the next coming contests, Romney will do quite well in Colorado (Feb. 7), Gingrich will have a level of a come-back in the Minnesota caucus (Feb. 7), Gingrich will have a level of a come-back in Missouri (it has a non-binding primary on February 7 but its binding caucus is on March 17), Romney will will do well in the Maine caucus (February 11) but will share the win with Paul in parts, and Gingrich will have a resurgence in Super Tuesday, particularly in the authentic South (e.g., Georgia as opposed to Florida).

Santorum is in trouble and you would think that he would consider dropping out, he has not exceeded 18 percent of the vote any contest since New Hampshire on January 10, his highest recent response being 17.0 percent in the South Carolina primary.

The winner-take-all ("WTA") dynamic has a way of encouraging candidates to leave the race. Notice the heavy load of delegates racked up for John McCain in the 2008 contest; yet, Romney won many contests as well. However, the WTA delegate stack meant that the delegate accumulation did not happen for Romney, only in significant numbers for McCain. Note these patterns in the 2008 race, in a chronological wikipedia table of vote and delegate distribution for each primary; wearying of the delegate accumulation for McCain, Romney dropped out fight after the February 5, 2008 Super Tuesday primaries.
This year, 2012, however, with more contests having proportional distribution of delegates and candidates insistent on staying in the race after front-runner momentum shows futility for the less successful candidates. (i.e., Think of Santorum in particular.)

* * *
ROMNEY FAILING TO IGNITE REPUBLICAN VOTERS' PASSIONS AND GET WINNING MAJORITIES
It is interesting that Newt Gingrich has not pointed this out more clearly:
Romney is the sole moderate remaining in the Republican presidential race now. Four years ago in 2008 he split the moderate vote with John McCain.
Now, with no McCain in the race, he has not once been able to lift voter enthusiasm beyond the 48 percent mark.
With McCain out of the way, he should be able to win with rates of 70 percent or more.
(Compare with the percentages that Romney and McCain got in the 2008 primary season.)
Yet, look at the states where Romney and his media boosters have trumpeted; Romney has not once broken through the 48 percent point:
New Hampshire, January 10, 39.3 percent
Florida, January 31, 46.4 percent
Nevada, February 4, 47.6 percent

The 2012 Republican primary debate schedule

The last one, Jan. 22, Jacksonville, FL:
8 PM ET on CNN
http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012/01/video-watch-the-full-cnn-florida-republican-debate/

THE FULL LIST OF NEXT UPCOMING DEBATES:
Feb. 22 at the Mesa Arts Center, Mesa, Arizona [before the Arizona and Michigan primaries]
8 PM ET on CNN. Sponsored by CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona.

Cancelled: March 1, at a Georgia location [before March 6, Super-Tuesday]
8 PM ET on CNN All but Gingrich pulled out of the debate; see this National Journal report.

Cancelled: March 5, at Reagan Library, Simi, California [also preceding Super Tuesday]
TBD on NBC

March 19, at Portland, Oregon
9 PM ET on PBS. Sponsored by: Oregon Public Broadcasting, NPR, PBS, The Washington Times and the Oregon Republican Party.

Source:
http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012-debate-schedule/2011-2012-primary-debate-schedule/

* * *
Righty groups endorsements for 2012 Republican presidential nominee:
CPU's CPAC February 9 to 11 in the Marriott in Washington DC: they chose Mitt Romney over Rick Santorum, 38 percent over 31 percent.
Here's their meeting's program:
http://cpac2012.conservative.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Schedule-Of-Events_Latest.pdf

Earlier post:
Reportage on them; they are getting nervous about the nomination and President Obama. They might surprise us and endorse Romney; they've endorsed him in the past.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120205/NEWS09/302050037/Conservative-forum-carries-undercurrent-of-tension-about-options
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120205/NEWS09/120205002/-1/JUICE07/A-tough-crowd-Mitt-Romney-will-others-step-up-

But then, see how the evangelicals' endorsement of Rick Santorum was ineffectual. They endorsed, and Gingrich swept the next primary, South Carolina.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/25/1058345/-Rick-Santorum-and-the-Religious-Rights-Ineffectual-Endorsement

BREAKING: Court: Only Romney & Paul Qualify for Va. Ballot - No Newt or Rick in Virginia

Just in:
A court ruling today (January 21, 2012) confirms that only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul qualified for the Virginia GOP primary ballot. Thus, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will not be on the ballot.
Virginia law requires 10,000 signatures to get a candidate onto the ballot.
Source: SportNews.com, from Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com)

The Missouri caucus (March 17) also does not have former House Speaker Gingrich. Yet, it has everyone else on the ballot, even orthodox libertarian Gary Johnson. (The state has a non-binding primary on February 7.)
Source: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/MO-R

And:
LOYALTY OATH IMPOSED ON VIRGINIA PRIMARY VOTERS?
Ah, the chickens come home: Remember how much Republicans wanted loyalty oaths from Americans from the 1940s to the 1960s (and in some places until the 1980s)?
Well, now that courts are keeping the super Tuesday (March 6) primary a two-man race Virginia politicians are embarrassed by the oaths they wanted to impose on voters, binding them to support the Republican nominee for president.

A divisive “loyalty oath” requiring voters in Virginia’s March Republican presidential primary to support the eventual GOP nominee is being removed from the ballot in an expedited, last-minute request from the state Republican Party.

Scrambling to meet a Friday deadline for finalizing primary ballots, Virginia Republican chairman Pat Mullins and the party’s executive director, Dave Rexrode, polled the state party’s governing central committee by phone and e-mail.
The committee voted overwhelmingly to reverse its December decision to place the pledge on the GOP ballots, and the Virginia Republican executive committee made the decision official.

The central committee had planned to vote at a special meeting on Saturday, said Lee E. Goodman, an attorney and longtime adviser to the party, “but that would have been too late. The ballots are sent out on Friday.”

Rexrode rushed the executive committee’s authorization to Donald Palmer, executive secretary of the State Board of Elections, who said the proviso was being struck from the ballot.

Republicans, long suspicious that independents and Democrats were meddling with their nominating process in primaries, saw the pledge as a way to address the concern in a state where voters do not register by party affiliation. Virginia Republicans sometimes hold statewide conventions to ensure that only credentialed Republicans select their nominees.

Mullins began working to reverse the decision when it drew condemnation from across the political spectrum.

The American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the GOP unless it was rescinded. Democrats ridiculed it, saying it defines the GOP as an exclusionary party.

Read the full link below for end of the AP story.
From the Washington Post, from the AP, January 17, 2012: "Va. Republicans ask state elections board to delete loyalty oath from March primary ballot".

Update: Best page for 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries dates, # of delegates, winner-take-all or proportional

PLEASE SEE MY FEBRUARY 25 POST FOR LATEST UPDATE.
My developing table on 2012 Primaries and Caucuses for the Republican Presidential Nomination: (parentheses = probably)
The Republican National Convention will be held at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, Tampa, Florida, August 27 (Monday) to 30 (Thursday), 2012.

State	Date (Sat. elections in italics)	Caucus or primary	Open or closed	Winner-Take-All or proportional	Number of delegates
Iowa evangelical	January 3	Caucus	Closed	Proportional	28
New Hampshire libertarian but New England	January 10	Primary	Open to Republi- cans and Indepen- dents	Proportional	12
South Carolina evangelical	January 21	Primary	Open	Winner-take-all	25
Florida evangelical, Old South north; cosmopolitan southern section	January 31	Primary	Closed	Winner-take-all	50
Nevada libertarian West; besieged with foreclosures	February 4	Caucus	Closed	Proportional	28
Maine (municipal level)	February 4 to 11	Caucus	Closed	Determined at precinct level (Likely WTA)	24
Colorado social conserv., but libertarian	February 7	Caucus	Closed	Unbound	36
Minnesota	February 7	Caucus	Open	Unbound	40
Missouri (non-binding, see 3/17 cauc.)	February 7	Primary	Modified	Alloct. at convention	52
Arizona	February 28	Primary	Closed	WTA	29
Michigan	February 28	Primary	Closed	Proportional (15% threshold)	30
Washington	March 3	Caucus	Closed	Mixed WTA/Proportional	43
Alaska	March 6	Caucus			27
Georgia	March 6	Primary			76
Idaho	March 6	Caucus			32
Massachusetts	March 6	Primary			41
North Dakota	March 6	Caucus			28
Ohio	March 6	Primary			66
Oklahoma	March 6	Primary			43
Tennessee	March 6	Primary			58
Vermont	March 6	Primary			17
Virginia	March 6	Primary			49
Wyoming	March 6 to March 10	Caucus (County Convention)			29

Table in progress. Corrections, comments are welcome.
Aside from the above table,
the following is the link for THE best site for the races for the 2012 Republican presidential nominating convention: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/R-DSVE.phtml
The Florida and Virginia primaries (January 31 and March 6, and 50 delegates and 46 delegates, respectively) will be pivotal. Florida will be a winner-take-all state.
Florida polls hours: they are open 7 AM to 7 PM (yet, the West Florida Panhandle votes has a later deadline, as the 7 PM Central Time closing time is 8 PM Eastern Time.
(Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2017380004_campaignslog31.html)
Virginia winner-take-all at the district level; WTA at state level if a candidate gets a majority. These Virginia rules will be moot, since Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were the only ones that qualified for the ballot, one of the two will get a majority, of course.
So, in essence, Virginia is throwing the nomination to Romney, with its ballot qualification rules.

The following states had their allotted delegate counts reduced by 50 percent for moving their primary election dates earlier: New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Michigan.
1,128 delegates are needed for the Republican nomination; 2,255 delegates are available.

The site, "The Green Papers: Presidential Primaries 2012: Republican Delegate Selection and Voter Eligibility", gives a wide range of important details: not just election date, but also indications for primary or caucus, winner take all or proportional, number of delegates:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/R-DSVE.phtml

Other authoritative reference:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2011/1102/Election-101-What-s-the-Republican-primary-calendar-for-2012/The-Fab-Five --but only for first five elections

Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum

Gentically modified food may be harming our health

And when shopping, do we know which foods are modified and if so how?
"How Genetically Modified Foods Could Affect Our Health in Unexpected Ways: Yet another reason to test GMOs for safety.
January 11, 2012 from AlterNet.

Primaries, the Whiteness of Iowa, NH; Low Unemployment Rates

It is very curious that we are giving so much first in the nation stock to two states that are hardly representative of the United States.

Iowa and New Hampshire both have white populations of over 90 percent (IA: 92.6%, NH: 94.8%, for the 2005 to 2009 year range). The national figure for the white population is 74.5 percent. In Iowa and New Hampshire, of the other groups, African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic or Latino and Native American, none exceed five percent.

(See, for example, this Fact Sheet at the U.S. Census' FactFinder site: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_event=Search&geo_id=&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=&_cityTown=&_state=04000US19&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010
(By the way, on January 20, 2012, the Census' new portal will be :
factfinder2.census.gov )

More diverse Florida and Nevada
At the end of January and at the beginning of February, will come the primaries in Florida and Nevada.
Florida of course has a larger percentage of Latino voters, as compared to Iowa or New Hampshire.
Nevada will also be a more diverse state than the first primary or caucus states. It has become a magnet for Asian heritage Americans. Demographers in a USA Today article ("In a twist, USA's Asians are heading to the Mountain West" [7/6/2008], http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-07-06-Asians-West_N.htm ) hypothesize that Asians are doing what middle class whites have done for decades: moved to different states, to find easier costs of living. Nevada in the 2004 to 2009 period had an Asian percentage (6.2 %) higher than the national average of 4.4 percent. (Las Vegas' Asian percentage is 5.9 percent.
The 2008 USA Today article reports:

Filipinos are the largest Asian group here, at about 45%. Chinese are the next at 15%, Japanese and Koreans make up 9% each, Asian Indians and Vietnamese represent about 5% each, and other Asians make up 12%.

Because the Asian community is still relatively small in numbers, ethnic divisions are not as distinct as in places such as Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York.

Given voting patterns that we have seen in California and New Jersey, a "purple" or swing state status, between Republican red and Democratic blue could be in the cards for Nevada. The state might be a potential President Obama win in November and the Democrats might take the Republican senate seat there this year.

Ah hah!: Iowa and New Hampshire unemployment rates out of sync with the nation
Will the unemployment rates of South Carolina, Florida and Nevada provide a contrast in voting patterns to voting patterns in low unemployment states of Iowa and Hampshire?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics site ( http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm ), which uses December 20, 2011 data for the latest reported state-by-state unemployment figures:
The first states had some of the lower unemployment statistics:
Iowa, number 6 for lowest unemployment: 5.7 percent
New Hampshire was number 4 with 5.4 percent unemployed

South Carolina's primary (January 21) should bring out more of the mood affected by unemployment: ranking 42 in lowest unemployment (translation: one of the ten worst states for joblessness) with 9.9 percent unemployed.
Florida's rate (the state has its primary on January 31): 10.0 percent without jobs.
Nevada's caucuses (February 4) likewise has 13.0 percent unemployment, the worst in the nation.

Romney and demographics in NH primary vote; demogs & past votes for anticipating 1/21 SC and 1/31 FL votes

What exit polls tell us on which candidate did well with which voters:
In the 2012 NH primary Romney went very well with Catholic voters; this should portend well for him in central and southern Florida.
http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/10/10102559-possible-implications-for-november-in-exit-poll-data

Looking at voting patterns: Romney did well in college educated towns; these predominate throughout central and southern NH (see map in census page). (scroll down on this page for the key quote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/campaigns/early-exit-poll-results-show-economy-is-easily-the-top-concern-among-voters-in-nh-gop-primary/2012/01/10/gIQApi50oP_story.html)

South Carolina does not look like that: these are only in Columbia and the Atlantic coast.
In the January 19, 2008 primary Romney placed fourth there with 15.3 percent (on other hand his mirror, McCain led the field there -3 points ahead of Huckabee).
Gingrich will probably pull ahead of Santorum: he's from next door; Santorum is from Penn, and has an Italian name. Giuliani, a media darling in '08 placed sixth behind Ron Paul.
In South Carolina, expect a Gingrich-Romney battle for first, followed by Santorum, Paul, Huntsman.
In Florida, however, in 2008 Giuliani placed third. Expect Romney to win in Florida. Huntsman should show his best showing since NH in Florida.

Expect Ron Paul to slow down in the south: he place 7.8 in NH in '08; and half that in SC and FL. Anyway, word is that Paul is slowing down his race, shifting emphasis to the caucus states, which return on the 2012 scene next month in Nevada and Maine. Speaking of Nevada, expect Romney to pull ahead there, as he took the state in '08. Paul got his highest percentage of votes up to that point, 13.73 percent.

Border paranoia really doesn't play first place. Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, 2008 specialists in the immigrants and border card, got miniscule percentages in South Carolina, Florida and Nevada. Hunter dropped out of race after SC.

South Carolina Time Bomb for Romney in Bain-Created Job Losses?

Under Romney, Bain Capital Made Millions From South Carolina Business That Shut Down, Laid Off 150 Workers --From ThinkProgress, December 19, 2011.

Wonder if laid off South Carolina workers will tell neighbors in Gaffney, S.C. (in Cherokee County on the I-85 path between Greenville and Charlotte north of the border in North Carolina) about how good Bain Capital was to Holson Burns Group workers, and how Republican primary voters there will act on January 21, on hearing the news .... (Romney sounds like more of job killer than a job creator.)

In a wayward attempt to rebrand himself as a middle-class hero, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is running headlong into his history with Bain Capital. Not only does the firm have a history of making millions by buying up and gutting companies, but Romney also secured a plush retirement deal from Bain that brought him “millions of dollars in income each year.”

Of course, Romney has tried to spin his private sector role as that of a “job creator.” But a closer look at Bain’s modus operandi reveals that firm spent a lot of time laying off company employees rather than hiring them — all while turning a profit. More than 20 years ago, Bain — with Romney at the helm — opened a new plant in Gaffney, South Carolina with the promise of “highly anticipated manufacturing jobs,” only to shut down that plant four years later, laying off 150 workers while making millions:

More than two decades ago, Mitt Romney’s business venture came to town with a bounty of highly anticipated manufacturing jobs. The new plant, just past the gas station off Interstate 85, needed skilled workers to churn out thousands of photo albums.

Four years later, the Holson Burns Group Inc. – the company controlled by Romney’s Bain Capital LLC – closed the factory and laid off about 150 workers. Some jobs were sent north, where months later many of those were also eliminated. Other operations went overseas. [...]

For Bain, the plan was a financial success: Holson Burnes raised $24 million from its initial public offering on the over-the-counter trading market, with Bain executives retaining the majority of the company’s shares. Bain, in the end, reaped more than double the return on its initial investment. But workers were left jobless just as the local economy began to slump.

“In the real world, some things don’t make it,” Romney offered as an explanation for the layoffs he had overseen as Bain’s CEO. However, the plant in South Carolina is not an isolated incident. Under Romney, “four of the 10 companies Bain acquired declared bankruptcy within a few years, shedding thousands of jobs.” But documents show that “Bain investors profited in eight of the 10 deals, including three of the four that ended in bankruptcy.” Indeed, the firm pointedly made higher profits “by firing workers, seeking government subsidies, and flipping companies quickly for large profits.”

As Romney’s own business partner stated, “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation.” It’ll be an interesting display of acrobatics to see how Romney explains to South Carolinians that the profit his company made off the backs of 150 laid off workers proves his bona fides as a job creator.

* * *
And do not forget the impact of lies with statistics in this instance:
From DemocraticUnderground (http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002119578), citing ThinkProgress and Washington Post:
"Romney Camp Admits That Its Bain Job Creation Number Is Bogus"
"The Romney camp . . . admitted that the statistic is nothing but cherry-picked job growth from a few companies that did well after they were bought by Bain.

Statistics Slap Gingrich in the Face Over Labeling Blacks as Food Stamp Users

Newt Gingrich appeared in Laconia, New Hampshire and generalized African-Americans as a community needing lecturing about the importance of having a job rather than using food stamps.

(Before we get to the race angle, we should point out to Newt that seeking the two are not mutually exclusive. Wages are so low for millions of employed Americans that they must use food stamps to keep up their food intake. We would like Newt and other politicians, Republican and Democratic, to seek living wage legislation across the nation.)

Multiple times last year former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich labeled Barack Obama as the "food stamps president". But truthfully, since we are speaking about the races and food stamps, we should note that it was Obama's white mother that briefly was impoverished to the point that she used food stamps.

From Daily Kos, here is Gingrich's stereotype-laden quote:

“I will go to the NAACP convention, and explain to the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps."

But as Joy-Ann Reid in the blog, the Grio today (January 5, 2012) reported in "Newt Gingrich: 'I will tell black people to demand paychecks instead of food stamps'",

A 2009 study found that 1 in 8 Americans, and 1 in 4 children -- of all races -- received food assistance, in the wake of the 2007 recession. The study found that 28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Hispanics, and 8 percent of whites, received food assistance that year.

When it comes to total welfare receipts, Whites receive 34 percent of federal food assistance benefits, African-Americans 22 percent, and Hispanics 17 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

NRA Gun Policy is Killing Cops in 2011

The Second Amendment to the Constitution has language safeguarding an armed militia.

Interpreted in the 20th and 21st centuries has been allowing the loosest restrictions of high-powered firearm weaponry access. Practically speaking the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America have been opposing restrictions upon just about the most destructive guns.

All the hysterical lies that President Barack Obama will take away Americans' guns has the White House handicapped in critiquing the gun plague that even centrists such as New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg has.

So, to ABC TV News' report on "World News with Diane Sawyer" (January 5, 2012), about a spike in shootings of police we must cite the gun law laxity.

If this keeps up, we will probably see more police officers' associations lobbying for candidates that push stronger gun control laws, at least on high-powered "cop-killer" rifles.

South Carolina's Winner-Take-All Nail-BIter

The January 21 South Carolina Republican primary will be a nail biter.

The state's 25 delegates will ALL go to the highest winner. (Its delegate count got chopped in half from 50 because S.C. GOP moved its date early, to preserve its first in the South status.)
It's an open primary, which brings in Independents and Democrats in a no Democratic contest year. This is the only plus factor for Mitt Romney, and maybe for Ron Paul. But this is the evangelical Protestant Christian South, so look more to the avowedly social conservatives.
It's set for a Saturday, which should bring in more blue collar voters. A plus again for the social conservatives.

Hard to say who will win the state.

Easier to address who will have trouble:
RON PAUL: the libertarian won't win because of --as the New York Times pointed out on January 4, the day after the Iowa caucuses-- the high military enrollments and the military base(s) in the state. He hasn't had any peaking period. His controversial newsletters and emails shouldn't be a problem in this very conservative state. He only peaked at 12 percent in December.
RICK PERRY: will be seen as a goof because of his debate and memory goofs/flubs (which caused him to sink from his S.C. polled high of 50 percent at the end of August --and this was in a selection of a field narrowed to Perry, Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachmann, so a poll excluding Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich). The last time he polled 10 percent or more was in October.

The contest is between MITT ROMNEY, NEWT GINGRICH AND RICK SANTORUM.
ROMNEY: He peaked in the polls at 27 percent on September 20. Plenty of flip-flops, expect an onslaught of Gingrich TV ads bringing up Romney's liberal or moderate positions on guns, abortions, and maybe gay and lesbian civil unions.

So the race is really between Gingrich and Santorum. The question is whether the former House Speaker's bitter, vengeful vendetta tone against Romney will backfire. Look also to who polls third (Gingrich or Santorum) in New Hampshire.
In SC expect Gingrich and Santorum to have 55 percent easily to split between the two of them.
(How long will the new charges against Santorum as a tax and spend beltway insider stick? They're dubious criticisms when you consider the interest group ratings of him and Newt. google: the no-partisan Project Vote Smart. The two Washington veterans have VERY similar records. But Gingrich has more heterodox positions that might hurt him, such as his perceived leniency on illegal immigrant families and his positive comments about Massachusetts' "RomneyCare" health program.)

Poll sources: http://www.politico.com/2012-election/presidential-polls/south-carolina/south-carolina-gop-primary/ (drawing from different polls, albeit latest poll was December 20, 2011 amidst the Newt Gingrich surge (and before the Romney machine ad money barrage vs. Gingrich))

Challenging Conventional (Traditional) Wisdom on NH & Primaries

Time was professors and pundits intoned that the New Hampshire primary (January 10 in 2012) mattered do deeply because the victors turned out to be the major political parties' presidential nominees.

However, in recent years, that axiom is showing not to true. South Carolina (held on January 21 in 2012) is the better bellwether state.

In 1996, conservative political commentator Patrick ("Pat") Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary. In 2000 Arizona Senator John McCain won that primary.
The Democratic primary victors have differed from the eventual nominee in more contests: in 1984, Sen. Gary Hart won; in 1994 Sen. Paul Tsongas won; in 2008 Sen. Hilary Clinton won.

SOUTH CAROLINA THE BETTER BELLWETHER (FOR REPUBLICANS)
By contrast, in South Carolina the Republican primary race winners at least since 1980 have all eventually become the nominees.
For Democrats, however, South Carolina primary or caucus results have not matched the eventual nominess: in 1988 the South Carolina Democrats held a caucus and chose Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 2004 the primary winner was Sen. John Edwards.

(One practical resource: http://uselectionatlas.org/WIKI/index.php/1976_Primaries)