Michigan Primary Results
Mitt Romney won the Michigan Republican primary yesterday by a margin of 41.1% to 37.9%, the remainder going to the rest of the overpopulated field – Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman and others were on the ballot. Romney and Santorum each gained 11 delegates.
This Huffpo article has an interactive map showing results by county.
The spread in the results is interesting. Along the west coast of the Lower Peninsula is Michigan’s bible belt. Santorum carried most of those counties by Margins of 10 to 20%. Kent county, which contains the city of Grand Rapids, it the exception. Santorum won that county by only 42.4% to 40.3%. This illustrates the other part of the Michigan dynamic. Romney did better in urban areas, while Santorum did better in places where cows or deer outnumber the people. Santorum won many more counties, but lost the total vote count.
This population effect shows up in the victory margins of the counties that Romney won. In the 5 by 2 band of counties that Romney won in the southern part of the state, Romney’s take generally decreases while Santorum’s generally increases as you move west. Then, when you reach the bible belt, it flips to Santorum. Along the Ohio border is a band of sparsely populated counties that Santorum swept. Monroe, Lenawee and Branch counties have towns of significant size in them, and in those counties Romney did better by a couple of percentage points.
Ron Paul got between 10 and 12% of the vote almost everywhere. This illustrates something about the modern Republican party. It is an unholy alliance of far-right Christian fundamentalists, pro-business (pseudo-fiscal) conservatives and libertarians – and the cracks are starting to show. If nothing else, the endless campaign of Republican debates has cast these differences into bold relief.
Logically, the fundamentalists and libertarians should hold each other in contempt. The libertarians and the pro-business faction can agree on many things, but not isolationism and the gold standard. To the business crowd, the fundamentalists are prey.
For decades, the Republicans have drawn the religious right into their fold with emotional hot button issues that have very little actual relevance, like abortion and gay marriage. The recent campaign against birth control has been an over-reach that is finally causing a back-lash.
In my dreams, the Republican party tears itself apart, and becomes a marginalized political minority. The Michigan results give me hope that this dream might become reality.
H/T to my lovely wife.
Cross posted at Retirement Blues.
Abortion has little relevance? To whom?
Timing is everything, today Michigan is blanketed by snow, ice and snowy-ice, turnout patterns might have been much different (cow country rednecks tend to travel better in bad weather than urban congested-highway sissies).
Jazz,
Your dream would be a nightmere by any measure. One party rule would be a disaster with no checks on the Dems power. Your dream leads to tyranny.
The Reps need to go back to their roots in fiscal prudence and war-avoidance and throw the anti-science/fundamentalist crowd to the wayside. Just like the left needs to throw the looney left to the curb also.
If the Reps disintegrated today a new party would imerge tommarrow to fill the political vacuum – just like it always has.
Islam will change
Rusty –
Abortion is a personal decision, made under difficult circumstances. It’s actual relevence is to an individual and her doctor, not to socity at large, and not to the political process. Demonizing abortion has hot-button appeal to a certain segment of the population.
The issue has been extorted by republicans to capture the votes of the religious right, who would be very happy to impose Christian Sharia on the U.S. Santorum’s words, and the furr over contraception make it very clear that this is their goal.
Or do you think contraceptoin is a valid political issue, too?
JzB
Buff –
I’m not hoping for one party rule. I’m hoping for a political process that has participants who believe in science, engage in honest debate, are genuinely interested in the well-being of he American people, and which focuses on issues of real importance to society.
The Republicans fail each of these tests. I would hope that a new party would emerge.
Over the last 40 years, the Republicans have abandoned conservatism and become regressive reactionaries with no valid political philosophy. Their pandering to the religious right has dragged the discourse far off center. Political dialog for many years now has been between the right and the far right.
If there is valid conservatism in U.S. politics today, it exists in the Democratic party.
In my dream, the new party arises from the left. There is lots of room there.
Cheers!
JzB
Re: the weather – we got a real picture of the Republican electorate yeaterday. Today, that might not have happened.
JzB
Jazz:
Just watching the Repub primaries unfold and observing the results leads me to believe, they are imploding with all of the money from the super pacs, etc. duking it out amongst each other. There probably has not been a sound conservative since Goldwater and today’s crop of Republicans are pretenders to the ideology. It does not look like a good year for the Republican Party and the presidency.
As the lone Dem in Livingston County who served on a Township Board as appointed, I can attest to the Republican culture exisiting there. It is a strange place. Michigan always seemed to go Dem with few exceptions.
That’s an amusing, if not totally predictable, take on the Republican primary season. But, I think the newfound hope you have for your political dreams is going to be dashed. Consider the GOP’s competition. It’s a coalition of just as fragile special interest groups. Replace libertarians with boilerplate progressives, pro-business capitalists with Green Party environmentalists and the religious right with Democratic Leadership Council-ites and you have an unholy alliance whose cracks are starting to show. It is just as likely that this implosion will lead to your dream of a “New Left” party as the self-immolation of the GOP.
I would not be so quick to write off Independents or third parties (Green, Libertarian, etc.). Together, they represent fully 1/3rd of the electorate and are not all cranks and extremists, despite how the corporate media likes to portray them. The problem is, the current one dollar-one vote party machine driven system marginalizes anyone without a D or an R beside his name.
I would also not be so quick to embrace the Democrats, who have proven themselves to be nearly as corrupt, power hungry and unconcerned about the public’s interests as Republicans for a very long time. They are basically “Republican lite” on most economic, foreign policy and Constitutional issues, with a dash of (mostly empty) populist rhetoric and “liberal” stances on divisive culture war issues to keep the base appeased. They are every bit as owned by the 0.1% and just as unwilling to commit to genuine political reform as the Republicans.
I don’t know what anyone sees here, or in anything else Ive written, that suggests an embrace of the Democrats. I will agree that the differences between the parties are more in degree than they are in kind. But i also contend that tose differences are real and meaningful.
And what alternative is there? To just stay home? I know people that are going for that option, but I just can’t do it.
JzB
Exactly. And who keeps on electing these people anyway? Who are the teabaggers at Koch Brother rallies carrying protest signs that say “Get your government hands off my Medicare!” Who do farmers that could not stay in business themselves without massive government corn/ethanol/sugar subsidies loudly complain about the evils of “welfare” and “socialism”. We have seen a collossal redistribtion of wealth via the tax code from poor to rich over the past 30+ years, but the answer according to your average middle American is… more tax cuts for the rich and less regulation on banks and big business. In fact even *bringing up* the subject of wealth inequality is “class warfare” and liberal “code” for spreading Commuism (cue the black helicopters and FEMA camps).
We have seen the enemy and he is us. We get the “leaders” we deserve because most voting Americans are right-wing idiots.
Actually, LJ, I would be just fine with that.
Cheers!
JzB
Another key result in MI is Governor Romney’s strong preference by the over $100K set. He won big with those voters while losing lower income voters decisively.
I guess if the economy keeps creating more $100K+ jobs it might give Mitt a better shot at the nomination. Has Greenspan been notified?
Staying home or settling for someone who does not deserve your support should not be your only options. You could also ignoring the corporate media, becoming involved in third parties and progressive movements (Occupy, Coffee Party, etc.). You could lend your support to those pressing for genuine reforms –100% publicly financed elections, a Constitutional amendment to end corporate “personhood”, using antitrust laws to break-up the big banks, etc. Just generally standing up and challenging corporate propagandists (like here) improves the level of discourse just a tiny bit.
Bumpjazzer: I see you are good at analysis. These figures bode well for the re-election of President Obama. I do not know about your dream of the end of the Republican Party as being realisitic, or significant. Dreams say a lot about how we view our lives, and the future. I dream that one day both the Dems and the Reps will stop in their efforts to replace our Deomocratic system with the new one, called a “Corporatacracy”. Both parties are sold out to the lobby sytem. I think the better focus for all citizens, regardless of political party loalties, is to recognize the threat to our country’s exisstence by this reverance of the Corporate campaign money supply. (Super-Pacs… the new neighbor next door ) We are Americans, our business philosophical principles have always been based on free trade. Yet no country, other than ours, seems so ready to define that as being a patriotic duty. We have always protected our citizens and our way of life….that is the number one duty of our Representatives. Our political leadership’s ( forgive the compliment …I am being kind calling them leaders ) purpose should be to foster the growth of business in America and protect our American way of life. The common buzz word for both parties is that America needs to become competitive in the new ” World Ecconomy”. This is nothing more than their excuse to cash in and run with the lobby money, regardless of the future disaster they are leaving for our childrent and grand children. Bumper… your dreams need to change… please “wake up” to the problem, and it is not the Republicans….it is the Congresstutes on all sides of the aisle. Let us see the analysis on how the US compares to other countries in terms of protecting their own economic foundations and jobs base. I think you will find few countries, if any, take our “Laize Faire” attitude, in the name of the “World Economy”. The American Politician’s call for our becoming more competative rings hollow. It is nothing more than a reflection of how corrupted our system has become. God help us all! I want to wish you sweet dreams but I think you are ignoring the nightmare that is coming if these guys do not stop being Internationalists and remember they are Americans. JS
Well some of us actually imagine a day when Americans understand themselves as part of a community of nations.
Today it’s the part that consumes most of the world’s resources while prosecuting the most destructively useless wars. But that might change someday too.
Mr Smith –
You make a lot of good ponts. But I am not ignoring either the economy nor the threat of trans-national corporatism. Three years ago, I wrote this, and resurected it today.
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2012/02/still-more-on-republicans.html
In this political swamp, the old labels of “liberal” and “conservative” don’t mean much, and, in fact, can be horribly mis-leading, relative to political parties. Under cover of darkness, the Repugnicants have sailed off any political map that is recognizable to thinking Americans, into the region of authoritarian despotism, with a rich-take-all, international-corporatist mentality that has at its end-game either European medieval feudalism or South American banana-republic-style dictatorship.
Since their allegiance is to multi-national corporations, not the citizens of the U.S. (remember, we the people?) they are traitors. Clearly, they don’t believe in democracy (which requires a strong middle class) separation of church and state, the bill of rights, or any of the Constitutionally guaranteed liberties. They are bad at government, because they do not believe in governance. If you don’t believe me, just ask Grover Norquist.
I agree that the Dems, in general, are not good. But they are nowere near this bad.
JzB
CLICHE WARNING! jzb-Be careful what you wish for. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Etc.
Bumps: Your last sentence illustrates to me the real danger of your views. Both are evil and are going to bring our county to it’s end….they will just do it differently, and maybe one will get us there quicker. The need is not to protect a particular party but rather to think of ways to pass new laws that limit the scope and power of the lobby system. This party analyis you use reminds me of the guy in a drifting boat, with two oher guys, and they both have guns, and the food and water supply is fast diminishing. One threatens to shoot you if you don’t jump out of the boat and the other threatens to shoot holes in the boat if you don’t jump out. Picking one guy as better because the other is worse really does not mean a lot….in both cases you are going to leave the boat. JS
Just heard on NPR story re: upcoming primaries
“Obama is the great unifier… He has unified Republicans….”-Haley Barbour, former MI Gov and RNC chair.
You people are priceless. No really, don’t change a thing. Hilarious!
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/29/147666405/former-gop-chairs-weigh-in-on-upcoming-primaries
JS –
Again, where have i protected a particular party?
And what alternative is there in 2012. In November the general election will be between Obama ans some Republican – almost certainly Romney. What do you think I should be doing between now and then?
JzB
LJ –
There is no meaningful political left in the country. What I wish for is someting to counter rampant right-wingery. I’m very willing to take that risk.
JzB