Blogger Kay B Day, of Covering Florida, gives us her predictions for which of the Presidential hopefuls will be celebrating after the primaries in her state today.
The Florida primaries will be discussed on Sky.Com News tonight at 7.30pm. Click here for more details. Click here to read why this has been Florida's first 'virtual election'.
Most Floridians agree this is the most interesting primary we’ve experienced.
For one thing, both major political parties in the United States are beyond miffed at The Sunshine State. Our legislature voted to move our primary ahead. Net result: no Democratic delegates will be seated and only half the Republican delegates will be seated.
As if that isn’t enough, our two top candidates, if national polls and performances in Iowa, New Hampshire, Carolina and other early primary states can be believed, are Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain. Close on the heels of those two are Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor Mike Huckabee, effectively the second tier of front runners. Making plenty of noise in the Florida political foliage is Ron Paul who has re-defined grassroots organizing and raised historical sums of money courtesy of the Internet.
Some might say it’s about time the Republican Party discovered the Internet, Democratic Party strategists having used the medium effectively since its infancy.
Three months ago, I’d have put money on Giuliani. But his presence here feels diluted. I’ve talked personally to many people about the GOP candidates, and Giuliani just doesn’t bring a rise out of people the way McCain and Romney do.
To a jaded political observer, this primary unfolds like a Greek comedy with strategists and pundits serving as the chorus—all great fun despite the Democratic candidates who’ve shunned the state except for Sen. Hillary Clinton. She’s done a couple private fundraisers but has adhered to the party dogma—stay away from Florida public venues.
My gut feeling is Florida is in her palm, pardon the pun, but then again, it’s smart to acknowledge the sheer power and charisma of Barack Obama. Either way, the day will come when the Dem winner will have to explain voter disenfranchisement to constituents in the fourth largest state in the nation.
Meanwhile, Romney and McCain are hurling the liberal label at one another. McCain, long viewed as a liberal by many party faithful, is touting his abilities to defend the country, tossing in government reform and border security, although that last is a sensitive area because McCain supported amnesty for undocumented immigrants as a solution to the problem we currently have—inability to identify exactly who is in the country.
Romney, in a move that has proved to be timely, grabbed the economy issue and ran with it, pushing it ahead of everything else in his speeches, telling us he already knows how the economy works and pointing to his success with the beleaguered finances of the Olympics to prove it.
His aims of lower taxes and increased American competitiveness appeal to small businesses and those solidly in the middle class. Romney’s inclination has been rewarded of late in a darkly ironic way as dire commentary about everything from the fall of the American dollar to unemployment seizes headlines.
What GOP candidate will thank Florida voters tomorrow?
Intuition tells me McCain will be giving a victory speech, in no small part because Florida’s ever-popular governor Charlie Crist and 10 newspapers have endorsed the senator.
But experience tells me Romney, with the blessing of Bill Buckley’s conservative icon National Review, may have a surprise up his sleeve and his Mormonism, fretted over by some evangelicals, should prove no barrier in Florida. Here, where conservative approaches are favored on federal spending and taxes, social tolerance and spiritual flexibility also reign supreme.
Oh dear did I miss it Mr Mayor? Never mind, I sure Her Majesty The ["Queen"] wont mind that ["Another One Bites The Dust"].
Posted by: Khalid 31 Jan 2008 16:23:55