I. M. O. Rmoney Got His Ass Kicked in Michigan.....

[rsmith6621]

it certainly wasn't a vote that you would have expected for the hometown boy.

[Bozita]

1. Saved by the trees...

[emulatorloo]

2. Agreed. Not reassuring to the upper echelon Republicans

Which is fine by me.

[onenote]

3. Disagree. In terms of actual votes (not delegates) he did better than expected.

Folks have short memories. Four years ago, Romney and McCain were the leading repub contenders in the Michigan primary. Romney won, but only with 38 percent of the vote and around 338,000 votes total. And he hadn't insulted the crap out of auto industry yet. Yesterday he managed to get a higher percentage (41 percent) and 70,000 more votes than in 2008. Sure, that's not a great showing for a "hometown" boy, and its true he did better in 2008 in terms of winning delegates (20 v 14), but given how he did four years earlier, I don't see how anyone could say his performance was worse than could have been expected.

[WI_DEM]

4. He won by 9-points last time compared to 3-points this time.

It wasn't any 'short memory'--his winning margin only a third of what it was last time and he got fewer delegates. This against a candidate (Santorum) who is could be argued was weaker than McCain, who was the eventual nominee. No, for a home state and the resources he put in it a three point margin was pathetic.

[onenote]

5. Not a relevant comparison

The 2012 Michigan Primary was a two man race. Paul didn't make any effort to participate and Gingrich for all intents and purposes stayed out. In comparison, the 2008 Michigan Primary was held a month earlier -- in mid-January -- and Huckabee, Paul and even Fred Thompson were all still active candidates. Its impossible to predict exactly how the votes would have fallen if Huckabee and Thompson had not been in the picture, but its fair to say that the margin between Romney and whomever finished second (assuming that Romney still would have won without those other candidates in the race) would have been closer. The fact that he could only get 38 percent of the voters in his "home" state to support him in 2008 suggests that anyone who expected him to have some great hometown advantage in Michigan in 2012 was not paying attention to history.

Let me be clear. I'm not trying to suggest in any way that Romney did particularly well in Michigan yesterday. He did poorly. It just that his doing poorly wasn't much of a surprise since he also did poorly in 2008 (and given that he had pissed all over Detroit in the interim it actually amazes me that he didn't get a smaller percentage of the vote and a smaller number of actual votes this time around).

[DesertRat]

6. Agreed. All that $$ and he splits 30 delegates with Santorum

[DCBob]

7. Technically, yes.. politically, no.

A win is win. Willard is back on track. There is no more talk of finding a "white knight"... at least for now. However, Super Tuesday looms. If he gets blown out, then he's back in hot soup.

[Myrina]

8. Does Michigan use Diebold?

Jus' askin' ...

[Major Hogwash]

9. Except for the fact that Santorum had a 20+ point lead just 2 weeks ago, . . .

. . I would say you're right.

Considering that Romney was not for the auto bailout, I don't see how he even managed to get the votes he did receive.

Even Joe Scarbrow said this morning that it is over.
If Santorum had pulled off the upset, it would have shaken up the party.
But, as it is, Romney will just continue to roll on, and roll over, his lightweight challengers.

No one wants to really challenge Romney anymore. He won't win in November, but they don't seem to care about that fact.
There's no way the people of this country are going to turn over the keys of the economy back to the Republicans this fall.
Especially not to an asshat like Romney that wasn't even for saving jobs by supporting the auto bailout.