News from the Votemaster

Romney's the One

It's official now: by winning the Texas primary yesterday, Mitt Romney now has more than the 1144 delegates he needs to be nominated for President at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL, starting Aug. 27. The general election campaign starts (again) today. But actually it has been in full force for weeks.

What ought to be Romney's moment in the sun was overshadowed by Donald Trump, who held a fundraiser for Romney yesterday. The headline on the lead story in the Washington Post today reads: "Romney clinches nomination, attacks Obama on Solyndra, but Trump steals the spotlight" and the photo shows Trump's personal plane--a Boeing 757--with Trump's name emblazoned in large capitals on it. Trump continues to insist that Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be President. He had a dust up with CNN's Wolf Blitzer yesterday when Blitzer asked him how come Obama's birth announcement was published in two Hawaii newspapers a few days after his birth there. Trump said that many foreigners did that but when pressed, couldn't substantiate this.

What is really shocking about this whole story is not that Trump is nutty (out of 310 million people, there are bound to be a few with loose screws), but that nobody in the media ever points out that it doesn't matter where Obama was born. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was indisputably an American-born citizen, and under U.S. law, all children of American-born citizens are automatically natural-born citizens. There are about 6 million Americans who live overseas, and American women have babies overseas every day and all of them are American citizens from birth. Somehow this fairly easy-to-check aspect of U.S. law doesn't seem to register on the media.

Naturally, Obama called on Romney to repudiate Trump, who conservative columnist George Will, no fan of Obama, called a "bloviating ignoramus." But Romney simply issued a vague statement saying he doesn't necessarily agree with everything all his supporters say. He could have put the matter to rest once and for all by stating there is no doubt that Obama is a natural-born citizen, but this would have alienated part of his base which still believes that Obama is a foreigner and is ineligible to be President. And of course, Romney didn't bring up the subject of his own father, George Romney, who ran for President in 1968 even though he never denied being born in Mexico. Nor did he talk about John McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone. In both of these cases the candidates were natural-born citizens because they had at least one American parent, as did Obama.

Runoff Required in Texas Senatorial Primary

The Texas Republican senatorial primary held yesterday to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was indecisive. Establishment favorite, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst got 45% of the vote and tea party candidate Ted Cruz got 34%. Minor candidates received the rest of the votes. There will be a runoff on July 31. For partisan control of the Senate, it doesn't matter how much money is wasted (expectation: a lot) and blood is spilled (expectation: enough to supply the Red Cross for a year) on the runoff campaign. Whoever wins the runoff will be the next senator from Texas as Texans haven't sent a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. The Democrats don't even have a candidate yet. They will also have a runoff on July 31, but it is between a couple of unknown fourth-tier candidates as no serious Democrat (such as former Houston mayor Bill White) thought it was worth even trying.

Today's Polls

We have two polls of the presidential race today: California and Michigan. Obama is leading by a huge margin in California, a very blue state, so probably neither candidate will appear in the state except for the occasional fundraiser in Hollywood (Obama) or Silicon Valley (both candidates).

Michigan is a different story. It is the state Romney was born in and where he went to school. Nevertheless, he is behind Obama here 53% to 39%. Romney could say that Massachusetts is his home state (it is where his primary house is), but the situation there is een worse: Romney trails Obama 56% to 35% there. No doubt at some point Obama is going to say "In both of Romney's home states, where they know him best, they don't like him very much."

The two states are very different, however, Massachusetts is fundamentally a blue state and does not vote for Republicans for President. Nothing personal there. But Romney's problem in Michigan is self inflicted. At the time the auto companies were on the verge of bankruptcy, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times entitled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." The thousands of Michigan auto workers who would have lost their jobs had Obama not bailed the companies out are not likely to forget who was on which side come November. There is nothing Romney can do to repair the damage. And to a smaller extent, what holds for Michigan also holds for Ohio, where many companies supply parts to the auto industry.

Presidential Polls

State	Obama	Romney		Start	End	Pollster
California	56%	37%		May 17	May 21	LA Times
Michigan	53%	39%		May 24	May 27	PPP

Relaunch of This Site Yesterday

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---The Votemaster