What's in Store for Me in 2012, Part 3: The Other Stuff

Okay, it's the final stretch of 2012 resolutions and forecasts.  Feel free to skip by this post if you're only here for the beagle haiku.  Mostly I'm writing it all down here so that I can go back at the end of the year to see how I did.  I usually come up with a list along these lines in my head at the beginning of each year.  It'll be interesting to see at year's end whether writing it down has made me more successful in getting some of this stuff done.

Village of Wolverine Lake - I realized that I didn't mention the village  in my "2012: Politics" post. That was just because I don't expect much to change in 2012. I intend to continue to do my best to be a good village president.  I'm sure we'll do a 2012 goals session this year, hopefully in our January work session, so perhaps I'll have more to pass along on that front then.

Diet and exercise - I haven't yet written the blog post I meant to about it, but as some of you know, I lopped sugar out of my diet last year after reading the Gary Taubes article Is Sugar Toxic? in the New York Times in April and taking a look at my own expanding waistline.

From just eliminating sugar I dropped about twenty or twenty-five pounds in about six months, though I packed a bit of that back on over the holidays. During the time I lost the weight I didn't hit the gym much, cut my portion sizes, or cut down the beer consumption -- all of which would have helped.  In truth, once I'd done it for a couple of weeks I found it easier than anything else I've ever tried as a diet.

Since a bit of physical reform is always a good way to start the new year, I'm back on the straight and narrow -- this time including the gym, portion-size, and beer parts of that equation.  That'll hold at least until we go down to Florida in late February, at which point I'll have to figure out how fruity tropical drinks figure into the equation.  After that, it'll be more of the sugar ban, and we'll see about the other stuff. I know I'll feel better and live longer if I shed some weight. So, I'll just keep plugging away at it until I'm at a reasonable long-term weight.

Travel - We have a really cool two-week vacation in the Florida Keys coming up in late February.  Monique and her sisters rented a house in Marathon, and we're going down there with her folks and the full French crew. I'll also be traveling out to San Diego in April for the American Society for Indexing conference, where I'll be hosting a "Publisher's Roundtable" panel discussion.  Hopefully I can manage to spend a few days beyond that outside the confines of the conference hotel. And 2012 is a "Christmas in Glens Falls" year, so we'll be back in Glens Falls at the end of the year, whatever else happens.

That's about all that's planned right now.  I hope we'll manage a couple more things, but I fear that vacation time will be in short supply this year between the Florida Keys and the days I'll need to burn on various village and 2012 election things.  One of my biggest regrets at the end of each year is that I haven't visited enough family and friends because I would love to spend more time with them all.  I'd like to squeeze a couple more visits into the schedule, but I'm not entirely optimistic.

Work - I'm going to try to improve my focus at work this year.  For the last year or two I've noticed that I'm more easily (or more frequently) distracted.  I think this has kept me from following through with genuine depth in some cases where more focus was demanded.  And a few things fell off my to-do lists that shouldn't have.  E-Mail tends to be my number one distraction, so step #1 is to occasionally turn off Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer when I'm working on things.  Fewer distractions = more effective work.  Or at least that's my theory.

Writing - As I mentioned in the previous post, I plan to submit a few poems for publication this year.  Once upon a time I used to publish poems here and there.  But for much of the last twenty years I've written little fragments of poems, but have done very little polishing or completing of them because they didn't have anywhere to go.  I just wrote stuff down because things would get in my head, and writing them down was the best way to set them free so that I could move along with my day.

Having this blog gave me a place to post those sorts of things, which encouraged me to finish up a few of the better fragments and post them here.  But that doesn't mean that they're quite as polished or finished as they could be. Submitting a few for publication would force me to put in that extra little bit of elbow grease to call a poem truly finished. I think I'd enjoy doing that again.

I doubt I'll see much or any genuine publication, but when I give up on publishing a particular poem I promise to put it up here with a list of the magazines that found it unworthy.

This initiative is at least in part Mary Campbell-Droze's fault.  As part of her work on LitFinder she occasionally comes across truly terrible poetry that somehow made it to publication. Then she sends some of those along in e-mails from the "Poetry Coroner."  Whenever I see one of those missives I think, "Wow, that poem's even worse than the stuff I write!"  It's an encouraging thought.

MGB - Last January's resolution to look into buying a fun toy one day rather quickly became the FUN MG in our garage. There's no lack of maintenance that needs doing when you have a 36-year-old British sports car, but I think a few projects will likely rise to the top of the list, mostly safety related:

1) Tires - he current low-profile wheels and tires result in a bit of tire rub when I hit bumps, especially when two people are in the car.  I'll need to sort that out before I get a cut tire.  It might be a matter of buying narrower wheel spacers that move the tires in a bit. (A spacer is a disk that connects the MGB's wheel hubs to the low-profile rims.)  Or I might swap back to the set of bolt-on wire wheels that came with the car.  It'll all take a bit of thought and investigation, hopefully before the MGB's back on the road this Spring.

2) Seat belts - The previous owner put in lap belts when he restored the interior. The car originally came with three-point shoulder belts, and putting a set back in seems like a good safety move to me.

3) Antisway bar - An antisway bar is a bar that transfers pressure from the inside corner of the car to the outside corner when a car goes around curves. That keeps the body from rolling towards the outside of the curve. It turns out that the cheap-o's at British Leyland didn't put a front antisway bar in the 1975 and 1976 models of the MGB because they thought it would be an easy and unnoticed cost-cutting measure.

The FUN MG still handles pretty well, but every now and then I can feel it pushing a bit when I go around a curve at speed. I think an antisway bar would improve that, and the basic underpinnings of the car are still designed to have one installed.  This would be my first real alteration to the car, so I'll want to think it through to be sure it's what I want to do and that I understand fully how it works with the suspension.  I'm sure I'll learn a lot if I proceed, which should be both fun and interesting.

Home improvement - Installing the living room floor in 2011 was a big step foward, but there's still no shortage of stuff that needs fixin', replacin', or improvin'. I plan to start with one my leftover from 2011, installing the two new toilets we bought last year.  If that goes well and I'm feeling my plumbing oats, I might just put in a new faucet in the kitchen.  And if that works out without a flood ... it might finally be time to put in a dishwasher.

Plumbing aside, there are a few other items that need doing sooner instead of later. The kitchen ceiling is a disaster, thank to our leaky skylight.  Now that I've fixed the skylight, I need to fix the ceiling. The lakeside porch continues to slowly crumble in place. Last year's temporary garage-door fix seems unlikely to be a long-term solution. Everything needs painting. The picket fence is in disrepair. The ... well, heck. This list could go on forever. As always, I'll try to pick a couple items off the list, fix 'em, and move on.

I have no illusions about home perfection. Mostly I'm just hoping to keep one step ahead of entropy.

That's about it.  And all that is more than enough. It's a bit funny that my job and the village got so little attention on this list, since I spend the bulk of my waking hours on those two things every week.  I guess what I'm mostly trying to do here is to figure out how to be reasonably productive with what time and energy I have leftover beyond that. It'll be interesting to look back at the end of the year to see how much -- if any -- of the stuff I outlined in these three posts gets done.

We shall see.

What's in Store for Me in 2012, Part 2: The Patio Boat Blog

I'm sure some of you have noticed several political posts in a row and are thinking, "Where the heck is the beagle haiku that I have come to expect from the ol' Patio Boat?!"  Worry not, this place isn't morphing into a full-time political blog.  But you are likely to see a heftier dose of politics this year than in previous years.

When I started up the Patio Boat blog my only real intention was to put up a little place where I could update friends and family on what's happening in my life, and maybe have a little place where I could post up a bit of poetry on occasion.  It's not a one-theme blog, nor is it intended to be a commercial blog.  (But could it kill y'all to just occasionally click on an ad, huh? I've got an old British sports car to maintain.)

That first year I made a real effort to post on a near-daily basis. That was a good way to get into the blogging habit, but I found that I was also posting up stuff that would serve better as a Facebook update or even a tweet on Twitter.

If you want to read that sort of stuff, you can always friend me on Facebook, where you will be subjected to fairly regular status updates, the vast majority of which consist of telling you what I'm eating for lunch in my cube.  You can also follow me on Twitter at @Patioboater. I tweet a genuine original thought once or twice a week, and usually retweet several things a week, usually cool weather and astronomy photos, links to interesting blog posts, and earth-shattering Weird Al Yankovic news.  I try to keep a pretty high threshold on deciding what to retweet, so if I do retweet something, the odds are pretty good that it's something that I found to be genuinely cool, interesting, or funny.

Last year I decided to write an average one genuinely good blog post per week.  Critics may say there weren't any genuinely good ones, but I think that sort of schedule benefited the blog. So, that's what I'll aim for again this year.  In terms of blog content you will indeed be seeing more posts around politics this year than in previous years. When I started up the blog I declared politics  to be one of the out-of-bounds topics because ... well, I'm a politician (albeit a minor-league one) and because I hate blogs that club you over the head with whatever agenda a politician is trying to push.

So, you're still not going to see those sorts of posts from me here.  I'm sure I will occasionally discuss the presidential election, but am more likely to discuss the mechanics of the election more than anything else, as was the case with my last few posts on the topic.  I might also occasionally touch on policy points as the year goes on, but when I do so I will try to make sure that whatever I post is supported by citations.  Polite opposing opinions are always welcome, but I will certainly ask you to have your facts in order and supported by reasonably reliable sources. I have grown increasingly annoyed by a national political discussion that has spiraled far, far away from actual facts, and I'm not going to put up with it here. (So, there!)

What I really intend to concentrate on here are the mechanics of politics, especially the electoral process. As I mentioned in the previous post, I've taken an interest in trying to figure out how we can improve our current system in Michigan.  There are a lot of differing proposals and options out there. I'd like to take a closer look at some of them.  I find that it helps me to do so logically by writing about them, and as coincidence would have it I have a handy place to post just that sort of stuff.  So you'll see some of that here as the year goes on.

On the beagle haiku front, as of today we occupy three of the top four slots on Google when you search on the phrase "beagle haiku".  But we've been bumped out of the #1 slot.  It's time to do something about this disgrace!

So, what I'll do is promise to write and post more beagle haiku.  What I'd like you all to do is to post the link below somewhere, anywhere. It takes you to a results list of all the Patio Boat posts that were tagged with "Beagle haiku":

http://patioboat.blogspot.com/search/label/Beagle%20haiku

C'mon, America! We can do this! Let's reclaim the #1 spot!

Also on the haiku front, I am making a public offer to double Mary Campbell-Droze's fee as our Indianapolis Colts haiku correspondent.  Hopefully, that will keep her and her contributions in the fold for another year, including an NFL draft special that will consist entirely of seventeen syllables dedicated to Andrew Luck.

On the non-haiku poetry front, you might see less of that this year, though I confess there wasn't a whole lot of poetry-writing last year, either.  It's been about twenty years since I put any effort into having any of my poems published, but I decided that it might benefit my writing to brush a few of my efforts up to that level of scrutiny.  So, that means that a few poems are likely to go out for a few rejection slips before they appear here.  On the bright side, once I give up on getting a poem in a genuine physical magazine, you'll get to see it with a list of the magazines that found it unfit for publication.  That should be fun.

And what else? Eh, the usual stuff.  Look for a few posts on the MGB, the lake, home improvements, occasional photoblogging, or whatever strikes my fancy.  After all, it's still just the ol' Patio Boat.

What's in Store for Me in 2012, Part 1: Politics

Howdy all (this, of course is the definition of "all" that means "the half-dozen or so family members and friends who stop by occasionally, mostly in hopes of a new beagle haiku.")

Now that I have a bit clearer idea of what I'll be doing with myself in 2012, I thought it might be a good to lay out a few of those things on the ol' Patio Boat blog. We'll start this post on my plans for the 2012 campaign. Later this week I'll have a couple more posts, one on what to look for on the blog itself this year, and finally a slumgullion of a post on the other stuff -- from MGBs to beagle haiku -- that seems likely to come across my radar in 2012.

But first, Campaign 2012:

So, let's start with what I'm not doing in 2012. As my Facebook friends might already know, I am not running for the Michigan State House this year. It feels a little weird to loudly proclaim what I'm not doing, but quite a few people whose opinions I respect -- from both parties -- had asked me if I'd consider it.  So I took a good look at what it would take to run a state house campaign, then thought about my own personal goals for the next couple of years.

Put it all together and it all added up to me not running for anything in 2012.

So what am I planning to do with my political self in 2012?  Probably two things will take up most of my time:

1) I'll be working on Andy Meisner's re-election campaign for Oakland County Treasurer. I'll try not to digress into campaign speechifyin', but as you all know, I'm a big believe that local governments have the most direct impact on people's lives. This is a great example of that. Four years ago Andy foresaw both the looming foreclosure crisis, and the opportunity for a good county treasurer to minimize the impact on the rsidents of Oakland County. He campaigned on "Preventing foreclosures and protecting property values" in 2008. Four years later I'm proud to say that he's been successful in doing just that.  This is a local official who's had an enormous positive impact for folks who most needed help. And in doing so he's benefited all of us who live in Oakland County by helping to maintain our neighborhoods during an enormously difficult time. I'm very much looking forward to helping him continue to do that for another four years.

2) I'll be taking a closer look at how our state government in Michigan functions these days, and what can be done to make it work better. I already had some thoughts on this before I took a look at a state rep campaign. I think that investigation confirmed some of those thoughts, while also giving me quite a bit more to chew on. It's not all bad, but it could and should be much better.

I don't like to complain about things unless I have a better and practical alternative to offer.  So, I'm going to try to spend some time in 2012 looking a bit more closely at Lansing, thinking about what we can do to have a state government that is more effective and more responsive to all of us in Michigan. I'm not sure what'll come out of that, but I'll be sure to let you all know what I come up with.

Buddy Roemer Lives!

My apologies to Buddy Roemer, who is apparently still running for President on a platform of campaign finance reform, despite not having made the cut to appear on stage for a single one of the sixteen GOP debates to date.

Um, sorry for saying that you'd dropped out of the race months ago, Buddy. I shoulda just said that you'd dropped out of sight months ago.

I suspect there are interesting things to be found both in his message and in how totally ineffective he's been in getting that message out.  That's a real challenge, isn't it? How do you get a message out about reforming the current campaign finance system when those proposed reforms mean that you might not have any resources with which to get that message out effectively.

I reckon I'll have more thoughts to share on that topic down the road.

Santorum's Michigan Problem

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday's long message on the Republican presidential primary, this time focusing on what I meant about the problem the Santorum campaign faces in building a national campaign after Iowa and New Hampshire.  The news reports of the presidential primary will often focus on where the candidates stand in the polls. But to actually win an election you need to have an organization in place that will get your message out to voters and make sure that your voters show up to support you on election day.

This article from mlive.com has the absolutely perfect summary of what I was talking about:

Rick Santorum's Michigan campaign limited to a Facebook Page managed by Grandville man

The title says it all, but the article also has some interesting information on how the Republican delegates from Michigan will be allocated. Michigan has a fairly easy qualification threshold for candidates that I won't go into here, so presumably Santorum will be on the Michigan ballot.  Even appearing on the ballot has been challenge for Santorum and other candidates in some states, most notably Virginia where he, Gingrich, and Perry failed to collect the 10,000 valid signatures required to appear on that state's ballot.

But once on the ballot, how does Santorum compete for delegates here? Part of the answer lies in how the Michigan GOP will allocate its delegates. Michigan's Republican Presidential primary has 59 delegates up for grabs. Seventeen of them are awarded proportionately based on how the candidates fare in the statewide vote count. The remaining 42 of are allocated three apiece across the state's 14 congressional districts, where (I believe) all three are awarded to the winner of each district.

This may seem an unduly convoluted system to a lot of folks, but it's actually a pretty good system for ensuring that campaigns truly reach out across the state to engage with congressional districts, and don't just fly in, drop a bunch of TV ads on folks, and fly out. It's really a system that gives candidates with organizational savvy and party support a chance to compete effectively against deep-pocket media campaigns.  It also does a good job of setting up the in-state organization that candidates will need to compete in the general election.

So, to compete most effectively for Michigan's 59 delegates you need to run a good statewide campaign, but you also need to put together some organizational competence in each of the 14 congressional districts.  As you campaign you would then focus your local efforts on the districts in which you have a chance to win.  To do this well you really need a solid statewide organization, as well as organizational support from the local politicians in each district.

What does Rick Santorum have at the moment? One guy with a Facebook page.

What does Mitt Romney have at the moment? Well, his father was a former two-term governor of Michigan, so that's a pretty good start.  Plus, whatever work he's already done for this year's primary aside, he also had the a pretty solid organization in Michigan in 2008 where he won the state and beat McCain 39% to 30% and more importantly received 24 delegates compared to 5 delegates for McCain and one for Mike Huckabee. (Michigan was stripped of nearly half of its delegation in 2008 for holding an early primary.)

It's safe to say that Romney has a fair-sized headstart over Santorum in Michigan.

This year the campaign calendar around this event looks like this:

Feb. 4 - Maine, Nevada
Feb. 7 - Colorado, Minnesota
Feb. 28 - Arizona, Michigan
March 3 - Washington
March 6 - Super Tuesday (13 states)

So, Santorum has a two-week window to focus on Arizona and Michgan.  However, Super Tuesday comes just one week after Arizona and Michigan, and that's the day that will probably do the most to decide the eventual Republican nominee.  And on Super Tuesday Santorum faces his Michigan problem, times thirteen.

So what does the Santorum candidacy do? A lot of his strategic advantage over Romney is his potential to win working-class votes in Rust Belt states like Michigan.  But Michigan looks to me like an awfully steep hill to climb between now and Feb. 28.  The other state on that day is Arizona, where Romney can call on a solid Mormon base, his recent endorsement from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and a nice tan that should play well in the TV ads in the Sun Belt.  Hardly an enticing prospect, either.

My guess is that if Santorum does manage to secure the Anybody-But-Romney vote after South Carolina, he may run a token media campaign in Arizona and Michigan if the polls look like he can peel off some delegates.  But he'll really be putting all his effort into the Super Tuesday states.

Michigan may never see more of Rick Santorum in the 2012 primary than that Facebook page run by a guy in Granville.

Thoughts on the Republican Presidential Primary, Now That Iowa Is in the Books

[Here's another one of the entries I plan to write this year in some depth about various aspects of the 2012 campaign.  In these posts I plan to mostly discuss the mechanics and strategies of campaigning, but to not spend a lot of time on the issues themself.  In general I'll try to keep partisan sniping to a minimum, but just to be clear to anybody new to the Patio Boat, I'm a Democrat and will undoubtedly be spending both time and money in support of Barack Obama's re-election this year.

One additional caveat.  I read Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog pretty regularly and respect a lot of his insights into polling and elections in general.  I didn't link to anything in particular from that blog below, but I'm sure that I've relied on it as a source for both statistics and insight. If you don't read Nate's blog, but you have the intestinal fortitude to make it to the end of this post, you should probably read the FiveThirtyEight blog yourself.

And with those caveats provided, on to the post itself...]

The Iowa caucuses are an interesting phenomenon. The Iowa Democratic Party originally moved their caucuses forward to January back in 1972 to give their ancient mimeograph machine time to print up enough copies of the rules and platform proposals before their state convention. This turned out to give them the spotlight and a very large say in the nomination process. In 1976 the Republicans moved their caucus forward to the same date, and every four years since then the nation's presidential aspirants have descended like a flock of bloviating locusts to espouse the wonders of ethanol subsidies and the corn dogs at the Iowa State Fair.

Although Iowa isn't particularly representative of most of the nation, both it and its fellow small-state early bird New Hampshire serve a fairly useful purpose for the rest of us by providing a credibility check.  It's the electoral equivalent of a sign that says "You shall not enter this ride unless you are taller than this."

These two states strain out both the small fry who never should've tried (Thaddeus McCotter, Buddy Roemer) and the bigger fish who enter with a splash but lack the ability to connect with voters outside their home ponds (Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachman, maybe Rick Perry.)  Because of their smallish scale and the long run-up to their contests, they provide a candidate with limited resources (Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman) a chance to catch on over time by meeting with voters and appealing directly to them.  A good result in Iowa or New Hampshire can lead to the sort of deep-pocket campaign contributions that let a candidate compete in heavily populated states such as Florida, New York, and California -- where small-scale retail politics are swamped by the cost of media buys and the need for professional campaign organizations.

The best thing about Iowa is that after more than a year of positioning and polling, real votes that matter are cast.  It's like the first game of the NFL season. There's been a lot of preparation.  Training camp and pre-season were interesting to the football junkies. But as soon as the first game is in the books, all that preceded it is forgotten.

There were only twenty-five delegates at stake yesterday, but last night's Iowa results brought a lot of shape to this year's Republican Presidential primary, while also raising some new and interesting questions.  Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum finished in a virtual tie, while Ron Paul finished only a few percentage points behind them. The results were close enough that under Iowa's rules the three of them probably each gained seven delegates to this year's Republican National convention.  That's a genuine tie, despite the difference in finishing order, since the point of this exercise is to gain a majority of the delegates to the convention, so that you can secure the nomination.

(Delegate allocation is probably worth a post of its own one day, and is a really interesting piece of tactical campaigning. Much of Barack Obama's 2008 victory over Hilary Clinton resulted from his campaign's focus on securing delegates, while Clinton tried to establish momentum and an air of inevitability by running up vote totals. That point may yet come into play for the GOP this year, since Mitt Romney is certainly playing the "inevitable candidate" card.)

Here's my two cents on how each of the candidates fared yesterday, and what it means for their campaigns:

Candidate (Votes, Pct%, Delegate Estimate) 

1. Mitt Romney  (30,015, 24.6%, seven delegates) —  Mitt did what he needed to do here: cross the Iowa threshold as a credible candidate.  He's still the probable nominee for a lot of reasons, including his experience and contacts from the 2008 campaign, as well as his personal deep pockets. You don't need to be incredibly wealthy to run for President, and wealth alone can't buy you a victory.  But it's kind of like major-league baseball, where deep pockets let the New York Yankees paper over mistakes that would sink a team with fewer resources. Next for Romney  it's "on to New Hampshire!" where the former Massachusetts governer has what amounts to a hometown advantage and a big lead in that state's polls.

What's been more interesting is that Romney's campaign —  which has been slick and well-managed, in accordance with the Romney brand —  is the "Anybody-But-Romney" phenomenon that has propelled each of the other candidates ahead of him in the polls. It seems as if a majority of Republican voters really and truly don't want Romney to be their nominee.  The problem for the GOP is that each Anybody-But-Romney candidate has in turn been examined closely and found wanting by their electorate.  This may make pundits impatient, but I think it's been a very beneficial process for the Republican Party and will help them in the general election. Romney is a known commodity after the 2008 campaign, and his presidential campaign experience and resources have shown in his 2012 effort.  But taking the lead in the Anybody-But-Romney race has exposed each of the other candidates to some of the scrutiny and criticism that he or she would face in the general election.  None of the non-Romney candidates have faced that before, and if the Republican party chooses somebody other than Romney, they will have a stronger candidate for it.

Romney's problem now is that his poll numbers seem to have a ceiling around 30%.  If a single genuine Anybody-But-Romney candidate emerges sooner instead of later, Romney could be in genuine trouble. Ironically, although Romney's best campaign pose is the aura of the inevitability of the frontrunner, he genuinely needs multiple candidates to split the vote long enough for him to rack up an insurmountable delegate count.  It's a weird problem.

Current Michigan Governor Rick Snyder faced a similar issue in his 2010 primary as the de facto moderate among a group of candidates who all ran far to the right. That worked well for Snyder as the other candidates split the conservative vote and allowed Snyder to win.  I don't, however, think the same effect will work for Romney in a series of primaries that are designed to whittle down the field.  If Romney quickly finds himself alone with Ron Paul and only one other candidate, he could be in unexpected trouble.

1A. Rick Santorum  (30,007, 24.5%, seven delegates) —  Santorum lost the final count by just eight votes, but that hardly mattered. What really mattered was that his late surge as the final Anybody-But-Romney candidate pushed him from the back of the pack into realms of credibility that he never had before this week. His virtual tie for first place in Iowa has made him a viable 2012 candidate for the Republican nomination.  Santorum took Iowa seriously by campaigning personally in every county in Iowa.  All future Iowa caucus campaigns should study his playbook.  He also seems to have genuinely benefited as a candidate from a year of hardcore retail campaigning. Practice helps, and his post-caucus speech was a huge improvement over what I saw of him a year ago when he first announced his candidacy. One other important note here: although Romney finished a few votes ahead, the Iowa caucus process allows same-day caucus registration among independents or people in other parties. Exit polls showed that Santorum did better among actual Republicans than either Romney or Ron Paul.

Aside from momentum, improved oratory, and popularity among actual Republicans, Rick Santorum has another genuine advantage at this point: the apparent blessing of his one-time boss, media mogul Rupert Murdoch.  If Murdoch does now put the Fox News machinery behind Santorum, that could make up for all sorts of lack of resources and organization in the states that follow New Hampshire.

Santorum's other advantage at this point is that he truly does seem to be the Anybody-But-Romney.  Whereas Romney strikes everybody as willing to say whatever he thinks will gain him votes, Santorum seems to genuinely believe what he says. That's a very attractive quality for voters, though it may prove to be a double-edged sword if the electorate decides that he genuinely means it when, for example, he says that states should be able to outlaw contraception, a position that has already caused a stir in the blogosphere.

However, being the most socially conservative in a GOP primary isn't a problem for Santorum. It's undoubtedly to his advantage.  But Santorum has some tactical problems that he'll need to overcome quickly if he's going to become the nominee. Problem number one is that he doesn't yet have the resources and organization to compete effectively in the large states. That may change in the wake of Iowa —  especially if he can follow this up this result with a strong performance in New Hampshire, where he has also spent a good deal of time on retail campaigning.  Santorum's second problem is that this is his first time in the Anybody-But-Romney shark tank. He will now face the scrutiny and negative campaigning that comes in that role. A pass from Fox News would help him greatly to survive this scrutiny during the primary, but it might not be doing the GOP any favors in the general election to nominate a candidate who would otherwise have failed the Anybody-But-Romney staying power threshold.

When reporters in 2016 talk about the surprises that come out of the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum will be near the top of the list. By then we'll know whether he capitalized on these results, or turned out to be another just another Hawkeye State flash in the pan.

3. Ron Paul (26,219, 21.4%, seven delegates) —  It's hard to see how a candidate wins the Republican nomination when his support seems to come from a coalition of libertarians, independents, and college students. But Ron Paul has completely captured that coalition, and if Mitt Romney has a low ceiling, Ron Paul seems to have a high basement due to his widespread support among that group.  Romney supporters should probably hope that Paul keeps campaigning all the way through to the convention because Paul's support seems likely to go in the Anybody-But-Romney column if he does pack it in.  On the other hand the Ron Paul crowd might just opt out altogether if presented with a Romney/Santorum choice.

If Paul does make it all the way to the convention, he'll likely have a decently sized delegation because he seems certain to pick up delegates in states that apportion their delegates instead of awarding them all in a "winner takes all" primary.  More importantly, the eventual nominee will almost certainly have to accomodate him in some way to make sure he stays in the GOP camp.  Paul departed the GOP and ran as the Libertarian candidate in 1988. He was the third in total votes that year, though he only gained 0.5% of the total.  He'd be a much, much bigger obstacle to a GOP general-election victory in 2012 if he bolted the party again.

One of the really interesting things to watch in coming months will be how Ron Paul fares in the future contests, how long he stays in the race, and what he does once it's over and he's not the nominee.

4. Newt Gingrich (16,251, 13.3%, possibly one delegate) — Just a few weeks ago Gingrich had the Anybody-But-Romney tiger by the tail.  Today he's trying to recover from a slip to fourth place in Iowa, and an equal decline in national polling.

It might've been possible for Gingrich to recover from this finish in Iowa -- John McCain got about 13% in Iowa in 2008 -- but instead Gingrich's post-caucus concession speech will go down in the classics of primary defeat with Howard Dean's Iowa scream. That moment resonated not just because of what it was, but because it seemed to embody the problems of a fading campaign.  So it was last night with Gingrich, who blamed his defeat on negative campaigning by Romney without seeming to understand his own role in providing the grist for the Romney machine's mill.  At times defiant, angry, and pedantic, Gingrich quickly moved from quasi-endorsing Rick Santorum to lecturing Ron Paul about foreign policy to seemingly preparing to deliver a platter of cold revenge to Mitt Romney in future primaries.

As I said in a Tweet after watching it: "Bitter Newt is more entertaining than Pompous Newt."

This is another place where the shape of the 2012 GOP primary is going to be interesting.  If Gingrich decides to stay in the campaign to savage Romney, he risks continuing to split the Anybody-But-Romney vote and actually helping Romney by serving as a spoiler. I doubt Gingrich sees it that way, though.

5. Rick Perry  (12,604, 10.3%, no delegates) —  All that hoopla, money, and endorsements when he entered, but today Rick Perry was back home in Texas "reassessing his campaign."  It sounds as if he'll stay in at least until South Carolina. He's probably hoping for a Santorum implosion, after which he can regain the mantle of the Anybody-But-Romney candidate.  That's not a bad strategy for him at this point.  Perry seems to be campaigning better than he did after his disastrous entry into the race, and his campaign still has more money and national infrastructure than any of the other non-Romney candidates.

If Santorum can't cut it in the spotlight, Perry might have a resurgence.  It makes sense for him to stick around for a few more states, even if he really can't win the nomination this year. The GOP traditionally turns to the 2nd-place finisher from the previous election as their next nominee. If Perry can right the ship and show good form down the stretch, he might have a chance to take another crack at it in 2016. He's almost certainly never going to get another shot at it in the future if he departs the race with just a 5th-place finish in Iowa to show for all the money he spent.

(BTW, I thus far managed to avoid discussing Rick Santorum's Google problem, but I should mention that when you enter "Rick Perry" into Google, the first couple of results on Google's suggested-headings list are not advantageous to a GOP candidate.  Weird Internet problems for 21st century campaigns are another one of those topics that's probably worth a post later this year.)

6. Michele Bachmann  (6,073, 5.0%, no delegates) — The winner of last year's 2011 Iowa Straw Poll is now one-and-done in the contests that matter, since she announced today that she's leaving the race. Her semi-concession speech last night was a pretty loopy moment in a pretty loopy campaign.  She said that "The process has worked and Iowa has clearly spoken" ... then proclaimed that it was on to New Hampshire.  Huh?!

But I think we can give her a pass on the final bit of intellectual incoherence in her often incoherent campaign.  It must've all looked so good last year when she was the first of the candidates to ride the Anybody-But-Romney bubble that I can understand wanting to sleep on it one last night before folding her tent.

This was a pretty good case of the Iowa voters spending a good long stretch with a candidate and deciding that what we had here was not a presidential nominee.  Well done, Iowa.

7. Jon Huntsman  (745, 0.6%, no delegates) —  What I like here is that the AP story about Bachmann pulling out of the race said this about her finish: "Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said Wednesday she's ending her bid for the Republicans presidential nomination after her last-place finish in Iowa's leadoff precinct caucuses."  If Bachmann finished "last" with 5.0%, what does that say about Huntsman's 0.6%?

One of the saddest images last night came from a caucus site where the volunteers were counting votes by stacking each candidate's ballots on a piece of paper for that candidate.  Little stacks of red ballots for Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, etc, stood there in neat piles.  But there was nothing at all on the sheet laid out for Jon Huntsman. You don't need to win Iowa to win the nomination, but what does it say when nobody in a precinct will vote for you, even if you didn't compete seriously in that state?

Frankly, I've decided that I don't understand Jon Huntsman's campaign strategy at all if he genuinely wants to be the nominee. He chose not to compete in Iowa because it skews so conservative.  But Iowans don't like to be ignored, so only 745 of them chose to ignore the snub to vote for him. That averages out to fewer than eight voters in each of Iowa's 99 counties. So, after taking a pass on Iowa and receiving the drubbing that resulted, he's hoping to do well enough in New Hampshire to go into South Carolina, Florida, Michigan, etc., with enough momentum to win the nomination.  But does he genuinely expect to gain momentum in South Carolina, which may skew even more conservative and evangelical than Iowa?  You can't win the nomination by only winning Utah.

I can only conclude that Huntsman just hoped that Mitt Romney would depart the race early for reasons unknown, even though that seems a sucker bet given Romney's deep pockets and 2008 experience. Without Romney in the way, Huntsman might've had a chance to gather much of the establishment support that has gone instead to Romney. Huntsman's problem now is that after taking a pass on Iowa, he's about to take a Granite State drubbing. And as far as I can tell, I don't think that Huntsman has ever made a compelling case for why a voter should vote for him instead of for Romney.  I strongly expect that on the morning after the New Hampshire primary we can look for a source within the Huntsman campaign to tell CNN that Huntsman has returned to Utah to "reassess his campaign."

8. No Preference (135, 0.1%, no delegates) —  Really? These candidates have campaigned in Iowa for as much as two years, but 135 of you bundled up to brave the January weather, sit in a caucus meeting, then say that you have developed absolutely zero preference among them?

In truth, this is a pretty low number for a "None of the Above" option. I think that's driven by the genuine divide you can see between Romney voters and the Anybody-But-Romney voters.

9. Other (117, 0.1%, no delegates) —  I saw a tweet last night that said that six of these votes were for "The Lizard People".  I can't believe the lamestream media has thus far excluded The Lizard People from the GOP debates. I demand that we see them on stage in Saturday's debate, so that the American people can decide for themselves!

P.S. Yes, this means that Jon Huntsman only finished 739 votes ahead of The Lizard People.

10. Herman Cain  (58, 0.1%, no delegates)  —  Ladies and gentlemen, the Herman Cain book tour and late-night pizza run has departed the public stage. Few people thought he'd really be the nominee, but I don't think anybody anticipated the salacious details of his implosion. Gary Hart, you now have a new first mate on the S.S. Monkey Business's eternal tour of the Isles of Libido.

11. Buddy Roemer  (31, 0.0%, no delegates) — The former Louisiana governor dropped out long ago, but his name apparently remained on the ballots. He tweeted at one point last night that he had nearly enough voters to form a bowling league. As it turns out, his 31 votes were more than three times as many as the difference between Romney and Santorum. I can't help but wonder what those 31 people think about that this morning.

[Update, Sunday, Jan. 8: My apologies to Buddy Roemer, who is apparently still running for President on a platform of campaign finance reform, despite not having made the cut to appear on stage for a single one of the sixteen GOP debates to date.

Um, sorry for saying that you'd dropped out of the race months ago, Buddy. I shoulda just said that you'd dropped out of sight months ago.

I suspect there are interesting things to be found both in his message and in how totally ineffective he's been in getting that message out.  That's a real challenge, isn't it? How do you get a message out about reforming the current campaign finance system when those proposed reforms mean that you might not have any resources with which to get that message out effectively.]

So, that's the field. Here's my guess at what the campaign will hinge on over the next few months. There are some interesting possibilities:

1) Can Rick Santorum capitalize on his Iowa finish to accumulate the money, resources, and endorsements that will let him compete with Romney in states where Romney has a long-established presence?

2) How long does Newt Gingrich stay in the race? If he does go full-scale negative on Romney, does it stick?

3) If Santorum fades, can Perry find a second wind from the Anybody-But-Romney vote? It seems improbable, but it's not out of the question.

4) Will Ron Paul campaign all the way through to the convention? His enthusiastic support could be a significant asset for the eventual GOP nominee.  If he bolts the party again, it could spell disaster in the general election.

You'll note that none of those "interesting" items involve Mitt Romney himself.  I fully expect the Romney-Bot 2012 to continue on to the end in just the same way it has campaigned for the last two years.  I don't, however, know if Romney's advantages in money, endorsements, and organization will overcome the fact that a majority of Republican voters just don't seem to want to vote for him.  My guess is that the answers to the four items I list above have more to do with the final outcome than anything Romney is likely to do.

We shall see.

Colts Haiku, the 2011 Week 17 Finale (Plus a Wallace Stevens-esque bonus!)

In which our intrepid Indianapolis Colts haiku correspondent shows that she still had plenty more ways to describe the awfulness of this season, despite the fact that the Colts have (mercifully) run out of games:

Et tu, Irsay?

Oh, boo hoo! Last one
Not wearing a bloody to-
ga's a rotten egg!

--Mary Campbell-Droze


Mary has also taken the opportunity to address the future of the Colts, now that they have secured the #1 draft pick with their successful "Suck for Luck" campaign. This time she needed considerably more than 17 syllables, plus the assistance of one of the Patio Boat's other favorite poets:

The Emperor of Passing Offense
(With Apologies to Wallace Stevens)

Call the holder of big huge stats,
The messed-up-neck one, and bid him tip
His hat and bow with prized but humble words.
Let the benches offer up the best
As they have used to bear, and let new Luck
Send footballs past next season's tacklers.
Let this be finale supreme.
The only emperor is the emperor named Manning.

Take from the Petroleum Palace
Lacking a 5th MVP, that QB
On which we'd pinned two Super Bowls once
And dread that we'd no more save face.
If his honored feats conclude, Canton
Will show how many games he won.
Let new Luck address the dream.
The only emperor is the emperor named Manning.