I was under the impression that, Ahnuld aside, the California GOP is actually pretty conservative (think Tom McClintock). The problem with CA is that the GOP is tiny compared to the preponderance of Dims and Dim influence from LA and SF? NY GOP is liberal, but what about the Illinois state party? IL gave us Henry Hyde and a host of good Reps, IIRC. Some RINOs, but not as many as we'd expect from a Northeastern State, right? What's important in these primaries is not the political leaning of the State as a whole, but of the State GOP organisation. Like in IA - the State as a whole is moderate(which is why it usually goes slightly Dim, and Bush on slightly won it in 2004), but the State GOP is heavily tilted towards the SoCon Right, hence Huckabee was handed a victory which, if the whole State were voting, he would not have come anywhere receiving.
Anywhere NEAR receiving, I mean.
BTW Mc clintoch came out in support of FDT.So rooty tooty wont get that endorsement
>>
The problem with CA is that the GOP is tiny compared to the preponderance of Dims and Dim influence from LA and SF?
>>
Completely legitimate point, as well as the others, but Pete Wilson was hardly conservative. Nor were the other primary winners running against Gray Davis.
But that aside, I am not thinking which direction the party leans in those states so much as what happens when ads portraying Guilliani as a staunch conservative hit the airwaves unopposed in the hugely expensive LA, NYC and Chicago media markets of those states.
He has to be stopped THERE. Only money will do it, and there is no time for the unfunded campaigns to find that money, get it collected, get the media buys reserved and deposits put down and, in a word, compete for the huge number of Super Tuesday delegate count on the line, most of which are not in the south. I still wince to realize NY is a state wide WTA state. That is going to be very hard even for a Romney to equal in delegate count.
It simply comes down to work. Being a hard worker is not defined by spending 2 weeks in a bus going across Iowa trying to replace media buys with visits to diners. It is defined as spending an entire year in airplanes sleeping in unfamiliar beds in hotels trying to talk to people who want to ignore you. It is putting into place the necessary funding and support network via that grinding schedule of months and months of hard work. Thompson hasn’t done that and that’s why he can’t fund Illinois, California and NY.
Even if Thompson won a glorious, overwhelming, crushing victory in South Carolina (which btw is only district wide WTA, not statewide), Nevada caucuses the same day and their delegate count is oddly MORE than SC’s. The reaction from the pros would be a yawn and a glance at the calendar to see that Miami’s media market is calling just 10 days later, as is Tampa’s and Jacksonville’s. Guilliani will already be there, pounding out the advertising.
I just don’t see a path around the need to stop Guilliani from amassing a huge delegate lead on Feb 5. Only money can do that and not money sent now — money raised 6 months ago.
California had their delegates halved for moving up. This was a major blow to Rudy’s strategy. The article I read today seems to think that the rural counties seemed to be leaning to Thompson. If this is true, he should do alright there.