The South Carolina Primary

Well things are looking up for President Obama after today's South Carolina primary. A week ago Mitt Romney had won Iowa, New Hampshire, and was expected to easily win South Carolina which would give him a perfect record so far. But we recently discovered that Rick Santorum actually won Iowa and today Newt Gingrich took South Carolina, but don't read this as though things are just looking bad for Mitt Romney. No, this makes things look bad for all of the republican candidates.

If Mitt had actually managed to make it three for three today, or more accurately 2 for three, he would have been seen as the presumptive nominee and could have turned all of his attention toward attacking Barrack Obama. As it stands now he has to continue to worry about the other republican candidates who will be tearing him down every chance they get. The four remaining candidates all seem to think they still have a dog in this hunt at the moment and so they will continue to tear at each other allowing voters to find more and more reasons to dislike all of them while President Obama gets to stay out of the fray and avoid getting dirty. But all of the mud slinging the republican presidential candidates will be doing doesn't just cost them opinion points with the voters, it also costs a lot of money. At this point it is hard to see how any of these candidates will manage to have any money left in their coffers, or in their super pac's coffers, by the time the general election campaign starts up. So they will have to raise more money, but since 4 of them will be competing for every dollar between now and the republican convention it is easy to see how their contributors might start having a bit of donor fatigue. None of this looks good for the republican candidates, especially when President Obama has been an amazingly effective fundraiser and already has a campaign bank account it would be difficult for any of the republican candidates to match in the best of circumstances.

So keep it up Newt and Rick and Ron and Mitt, we are learning more about each of you every day and we will be much better informed voters by the time November comes around. I just wish one of you could be categorized as either unlikable, crazy, or both, then we might have a more interesting general election to watch on TV.