Romney Rampage and Santorum Sweep - GOP Primary Update From Six States and CPAC

We had seven GOP contests since the last time I posted on the GOP nominee race and we had a debate this week (I don’t think it had much impact on the upcoming races, to be honest), so here’s an updated scorecard and some of my views. 

Mitt Romney won in Florida and Nevada, while Rick Santorum won in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri.  Romney then got some bit of momentum back by winning Maine and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll.  Let’s take a quick look at each result. 

I bunch these together because, in general, I wouldn’t read too much into any single result due to the structures (a caucus or a straw poll aren’t as significant as a primary), composition (the open versus closed question), delegate awards (some of these contests yielded zero delegates), and/or the size of the samples (the CPAC straw poll was only about 3,000 people, for example).

Arizona and Michigan are next up before we get to “Super Tuesday” on March 6.  I don’t plan to revisit the GOP race until then, barring a major event or a tie-in to another topic.  And on we go.

Romney won Florida with 46%.  Gingrich took second place at 32%, while Santorum was third place with 13% and Paul took fourth place with 7%. 

In Nevada, Romney won with 50%.  Gingrich was second at 21%.  Paul took third with 19%.  Santorum took last at 10%. 

Missouri went for Santorum at 55%, followed by Romney’s 25% and Paul’s 12%.  Gingrich failed to make the ballot in Missouri. 

Santorum took Minnesota with 45%.  Paul came in second with 27%, followed by Romney at 17% and Gingrich at 11%.

Colorado followed.  Santorum won it with 40%, while Romney had 35%.  Gingrich and Paul brought up the rear with 13% and 12%, respectively. 

And then, we had Maine.  Romney took first with 39%, followed by Paul’s 36%.  Santorum was third at 18% and Gingrich brought up the rear with 6%.

Last comes the CPAC straw poll Romney won this with 38% and Santorum took second with 31%.  Gingrich took third at 15% and Paul took fourth at 12%. 

After Florida and Nevada, I thought Romney had regained control of the race and reestablished himself as the man to beat.  I was not so quick to declare Romney as the inevitable winner because there’s still a lot to the race and there are scenarios under which Romney could be denied the nomination (as detailed previously and below).  Also, I’ve been looking at the poll results not as Romney-Gingrich-Paul-Santorum, but Romney-Paul-anti-Romney (Gingrich and Santorum).  We see why in Florida, for example.  Romney had 46% and still won, but anti-Romney had 45%.

The Santorum sweep validates my concerns.  Clearly, I was off in declaring Florida as Santorum’s last stand because Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota really were, and he sure delivered.  I’ve leaned towards Gingrich over Santorum as being the one of the two because Gingrich had performed better.  That’s no longer the case. 

Missouri shows two of the biggest points that I’ve been consistently making.  If this remains a four-person race, Romney is the guy to beat and there is only room for either Gingrich or Santorum in this race, but not both.  Missouri demonstrated what can happen if the race goes down to three.  Romney lost decisively and this is the nightmare scenario I’ve rightly been concerned about for him.  The anti-Romney crowd was united behind Santorum, even if not by choice due to Gingrich’s failure to make the ballot.  As I’ve been saying all along, the best hope for the anti-Romney crowd is to coalesce around one candidate (either Gingrich or Santorum because Paul is his own category). 

Colorado was particularly surprising to me.  It should have been an easy win for Romney, and this should be a concern.  Santorum alone had a close win over Romney, but the combined anti-Romney vote (Santorum plus Gingrich) decisively beat the Romney vote.  Minnesota is even worse news for Romney because it was Paul, not Romney, who took second place there.

Tuesday night could not have possibly gone better for Santorum with three solid wins.  Yes, you can say that Santorum only won so big in Missouri because it was a three-person race, but that doesn’t account for his strength in Minnesota and Colorado.  Now, he has to keep the momentum.  He was clearly unable to do so in Maine, but did well enough in the CPAC poll to show that he still has some momentum.

Paul has to be happy with his performance, mainly because of Minnesota and Maine (his performances elsewhere were more or less on par with what he’s consistently done this year).  Paul is still a key factor in the race.

I don’t know whether Tuesday night was worse for Romney or Gingrich, but it’s hard to argue that it was anything but a terrible night for both of them.  Yes, Romney finished higher across the board than Gingrich, so, in that more absolute sense, Romney did better than Gingrich.  However, I think expectations were higher for Romney given his recent victories in Florida and Nevada.  Obviously, both of them need to regroup.

Gingrich had a third place and a fourth place finish on Tuesday.  Remember, he failed to get on the Missouri ballot, which is an utterly unacceptable organizational failure.  To be fair, this isn’t the only candidate who’s failed to get on a ballot in a given state, but he was the only one that Tuesday.  Failure to compete in Missouri doesn’t diminish Gingrich’s weakness in Minnesota and Colorado.  Following those up with a distant fourth in Maine and a near third at CPAC do not bode well, either. 

Clearly, Romney’s momentum out of Florida and Nevada was stunted due to the Tuesday disaster.  Make no mistake about it, that night couldn’t have gone much worse for Romney.  A close second in a state he probably should have won, a distant second, and a distant third are a terrible night for him.  He was able to regain some momentum with wins in Maine and at CPAC. 

Here’s one last parting thought that I’ll expand upon in the future if it becomes more likely.  The longer the nominee battle goes on, the more possible a new scenario becomes.  A plausible gridlock scenario is emerging.  We could see at the least a contested convention where none of these four has a majority of delegates going into the convention.  If we have a contested convention, we could also have a brokered convention in which a candidate aside from these four enters the fray. Obviously, we have a long time to go and much can change, but I just want to toss this out there.

The bottom line is there is still a lot of race to go.  The keys to watch are whether anti-Romney consolidates to one candidate between Gingrich or Santorum and whether a deal is struck to get Paul on board with anti-Romney.  As you can see by the results here, this Romney/Paul/anti-Romney line of thinking isn’t entirely unreasonable for now.  It’s also possible that we’ll see at least a contested convention, if not a brokered convention.

Gay Rights Victories in Washington State and California Plus Defeat in New Jersey

We have two more victories for the gay rights movement and one defeat.  First, Washington state recently approved a law allowing gay marriage, becoming the seventh state to allow it (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, and Washington DC already allow it).  The law won’t take effect until 7 June.  There will certainly be challenges to Washington state’s action.  I suspect that, if anything, these measures will merely delay and ultimately fail to stop the legalization of gay marriage in Washington state.

Also, Proposition 8 was struck down by the 9^th Circuit Court.  This upholds a lower court ruling.  Prop 8 is a ban on gay marriage passed by California voters.  In this most recent ruling, the court was careful to confine its ruling only to California and not to extrapolate it further (which makes sense given the scope of Prop 8).  Confining the ruling to California is important because this court has jurisdiction over multiple states. 

This is not a surprise to me.  It was struck down on the grounds that it violates the 14^th Amendment rights of gay people in California.  This is essentially the same exact rationale I’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past, so I won’t restate it.

Going forward, gay marriage will not yet be allowed in California, as Prop 8 supporters have been given time to formulate their next move.  Most likely, their next move will be to appeal to the entire 9^th Circuit Court (11 members, versus the three members who ruled 2-1 here).   Unquestionably, the ruling is a victory for the gay rights movement.  It’s about as total of a victory as could be expected, but the legalities are not over.

Despite the good news, there was still a defeat in New Jersey.  The state legislature passed a bill this week, but the governor, Chris Christie, vetoed it based on his belief that popular vote should decide the matter instead of the legislative process.  Note that a 2/3 majority in both houses of the New Jersey legislature could overturn the veto.  The bill passed the Senate 24-16 mostly on party lines (two Democrats votes against it and two Republicans voted for it) and 42-33 in the Assembly.  Both houses are short of the 2/3 requirement for a veto and I suspect this is how it will remain.  I view this as a minor setback and Christie delaying the inevitable in New Jersey, but still a defeat nevertheless.

On a side note, I suspect Christie has presidential ambitions, and not vetoing the bill would hurt future efforts to rise through the GOP.  In order to become president, you have to first become your party’s nominee.  This is all a whole other topic, of course, so I won’t delve further here.

There are other battlegrounds, too.  Maryland is shaping up to follow the lead of Washington and New Jersey with legislative debate.  Longer term, there could be a proposal on the ballot in Maine this year to allow gay marriage, along with proposals in North Carolina and Minnesota to ban gay marriage. 

As I’ve discussed previously, the biggest battle is on the federal level regarding DOMA.  The Obama administration is no longer defending DOMA, but merely refusing to defend the law doesn’t eliminate it as a threat because the refusal to defend DOMA can easily be reversed in the future.  Only a full repeal of DOMA works here.  Unconstitutional as it may be, don’t expect anything to happen on this front in an election year, but be aware of its importance.

In general, I’ve been content to leave aside the question of what is the most appropriate avenue for getting gay marriage legalized.  Even in this post, we’ve seen court rulings, the legislative process, and popular referendum discussed at the state level, along with DOMA on the federal level (the Supreme Court may even end up involved).  The issue is a whole post in itself and is now in my backlog.

Considering how many states have yet to legalize gay marriage, it’s kind of surprising that a pair of decisive wins (and potentially more) come so close together if we were to consider these events in a vacuum. Maybe it’s not so shocking if we consider them together because the Prop 8 ruling would have given the Washington state legislature and governor the necessary political push to pass a measure legalizing gay marriage.  Either way, these are two huge victories and one minor setback in a much longer struggle. 

Busy Times in Science and Technology

We had Groundhog’s Day this week and, depending on which groundhog you choose, we’ll either get an early spring or six more weeks of winter.  There was also a Bill Murray movie a while back with the same name in which his character was essentially forced to relive the same day until he got it right.  No doubt, you’ve heard quite a lot about both this week.  You’ve also probably already heard a lot about politics, the economy, and the Super Bowl. 

So, here’s a little change of pace.  There’s been a lot of big news in science and technology recently.  Let’s hit them briefly.  As usual, I’ve listed all the links at the end. 

In the world of physics, there have been two huge potential discoveries.  They both relate to the most basic fundamental underpinnings of physics.  One of them may rewrite the relationship between matter and anti-matter while the other appears to challenge the belief that nothing can move faster than light (both topics are out of my realm in the world of physics, but interesting nevertheless).  Though these are huge events in the world of physics, their practical applications in the next couple years are likely limited.  The lack of short-term practical application doesn’t mean these are unimportant because, as we’ve seen repeatedly in the world of physics, it sometimes takes a while after a theory is outlined before it can be refined and put to practical use. 

In recent years, the need has been identified for more flexible body armor.  Present body armor is often heavy, bulky, and generally an impediment to mobility.  Two technologies are emerging. 

Liquid body armor has been in development for several years now (I’ve been following it since 2004), so that’s not news in itself.  However, what is news is how scientists are attempting to apply similar principles to helmets.  It’s a bit different because in the body armor case, it’s using a shear-thickening fluid to essentially have an on/off switch for the armor (the wearer gets a choice - a motor is turned on or sped up to circulate the fluid when protection is needed because the fluid thickens as it moves, but that motor is turned off or slowed down when flexibility is needed) whereas the helmet technology appears to be using relatively stationary fluid technology to distribute the impact across the skull versus localizing it, but the basic concept is still to use fluids to protect against injury or death.  Applying stationary fluids to protect the head is very interesting because our skull and the accompanying brain fluid are set up very similarly to protect the brain.

Also, research continues on spider silk, which is several times stronger than Kevlar by weight.  This would probably be the better technology overall on a technical basis, as it’s a clear improvement over the existing in performance (protection and movement) and it is inherently more reliable than the fluid armor because spider silk armor wouldn’t have the motor and leakage failure modes to consider.  The problem is manufacturing.  There’s just no good way to make spider silk through natural, synthetic, or hybrid means (yet).

On the offensive side, we now have smart bullets.  It’s probably more appropriate to call it a small guided missile than a smart bullet.  The projectile has an optical sensor that tracks a laser dot “painting” the target.  An on-board guidance system determines the necessary adjustments and these are made using electromagnetically-driven fins.  Because of the fins, the projectile has to be fired from a gun with a smooth barrel (projectiles without fins, like regular bullets or balls, rely on spin to set their path because it changes the pressure differences across the projectile; grooves or rifling in gun barrels spin bullets so that they fly straight whereas golfers can adjust their swing to change the impact to make a ball hook or slice – whether that is intentional or not is another matter entirely).  These projectiles travel a bit slower than regular bullets, but the range is over a mile and on-par with modern sniper rifles.  

The US military also announced two bigger offensive technology stories, namely hypersonic weapon testing and the receipt of giant bunker-busting bombs.  There are a lot of key differences between hypersonic and subsonic flight that make this a huge achievement, but let’s leave that aside.  The non-military applications for hypersonic flight are obvious, but the bunker-buster bomb applications are probably limited outside of the military, though I could see the technology possibly being useful in mining applications.  These are expansions and upgrades on existing work and very significant milestones in and of themselves. 

Lots of big happenings in technology this week, and it’s a fun change of pace to write about something different.

Links:

http://news.yahoo.com/physics-atom-smashers-antimatter-surprise-232412931.html

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/18/was-einstein-wrong-faster-than-light-speeds-reconfirmed-by-new-neutrino-test/

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/building-better-helmet-022045269.html

http://news.discovery.com/tech/body-armor-spider-silk-121015.html

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/01/smart-bullet-may-have-your-name-on-it/?intcmp=trending

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/17/us-army-tests-secret-hypersonic-weapon/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/16/massive-bunker-busting-bomb-goes-operational/