Sorry for not having posted for the last week and a half or so. Basic laziness is what happened there…
So…I’ve decided that about a month before the first primary is as good a time as any to really start ramping up coverage for next year’s election. Since I’ve posted last (and definitely since I last posted an election blog post), the Republican tables seemed to have turned. Although Mr. 9/11 himself still seems to be topping the polls, the talk everywhere seems to have changed, particularly since the CNN/YouTube Republican debate.
Although Rudy still is getting a lot of view about whether he’s actually a Republican (seems to be one about as much as Mike Bloomberg is, which could explain a lot), the big talk for the last week or so is between the religious front runners: Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was getting some talk before the debate, too, since he was and is doing well in Iowa, a key primary state.
So, after the debate, the battle seems to be amongst who is more Christian. Both know that they need to appeal to Christians if they want to be voted, particularly in the South and West. Unfortunately for Romney, I think that Huckabee has a monopoly in a lot of places if it ends up being down to Romney and Huckabee.
Romney’s been quoted as saying that religion shouldn’t matter, but the fact is, it does. We saw this in 2004, where it was part of getting President Bush re-elected. There will be a lot of people who won’t vote for Romney due to the mere fact that he’s a Mormon, even if the idea that he follows something a little different making him ineligible to the majority is absurd to me. To a lot of people, though, it will matter. They’ll find a certain point of view important, and vote on that. I’m not going to say today whether I think that’s right, except that people will vote according to their priorities.
On the real political front, though, we know that Huckabee is doing well in Iowa, but where else? I need to look it up some more, but I think he still has an uphill battle in the political arena, as much as I think Romney has one in the religious one. Romney’s speech on Thursday may help allay some fears, but who knows. It could only make things worse for him. Only time will tell…