There’s A Reason They Call It “Super” Tuesday

For months the national media spotlight has shined upon relatively small states that do not reflect the depth and breadth of America but which have been able to maneuver themselves into political relevance because of “history” and “tradition”. Iowa, which showed us they can’t even do an accurate count of their own caucus and had to “declare” a winner despite the results from eight precincts having gone “missing” never to be recovered, went first in the GOP nomination process.

Three weeks AFTER the “all important” Iowa Caucuses, which turned out about 120,000 voters – approximately the votes needed to win most congressional races, the Iowa GOP brain trust finally awarded the “win” to Rick Santorum, who they had initially declared the narrow loser to Mitt Romney. I always wondered where the folks that brought us the “hanging chad” debacle in Florida would turn up…apparently they all moved to Iowa.

Next up was New Hampshire, where a guy with a boot on his head named Vermin Supreme was on the ballot for the third straight presidential primary. The Occupy Wall Street crowd provided the most energetic grassroots activity in what may be the most homogeneous state in the country with about a 99% white population. Yes, I said homogeneous, and yes a lot of the folks in New Hampshire do marry each other. Yet it was NOT an issue in the New Hampshire primary. Romney won…big, with 39% of the vote but only 97,532 actual votes. Most people yawned — because he had a house in the state and used to be Governor of the state next door. And because successful Congressional candidates in most states get more votes than that.

South Carolina was next in the “one state a week” sweepstakes and Newt Gingrich grabbed the momentum by “newt-slapping” John King “up-side the head” as we say in the South.  Unfortunately for Newt, his huge margin of victory in South Carolina caused Mitt Romney to head directly to his political ATM and dump about $20 million in negative television commercials on Newt’s head, which probably gave Newt a clear understanding of how John King must have felt. Thanks to that 5-1 cash advantage Romney carried Florida over Gingrich by double digits. Mercifully, the month-long January “political demolition derby” was over.

Now the remaining four, at least as of today, look towards the next big battleground that looms a month away: Super Tuesday.

Until Super Tuesday, the presidential nomination process lurches from state to state, with a few dual-state races in February that become the more normal presidential campaign travel itinerary that causes candidates to miscount the number of states and mistake which state they are actually in. The luxury of living in one state and campaigning in all 99 counties (repeatedly) is a thing of the past. Suddenly, you have to be everywhere — at the same time.

On March 6 the remaining four, or three, candidates who have survived the brutal gauntlet thus far will have to face battles in ten different states on the same day: Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont and Oklahoma will all have primary elections; while Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota will have caucuses. It is a REAL national campaign on one day…more like what the nominee will face in November than anything that has come before. Sadly, most of those who started in the sausage grinder of the presidential sweepstakes never make it to this final exam…having flunked out long ago. Nevertheless, the winner of all or most of these battles on Super Tuesday will almost certainly be the GOP nominee, and for a change the results may actually matter. So pick a candidate, get involved, get motivated and maybe even write a check. ‘Cause THIS is the main event!