Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Super Fat Tuesday



Well here in New Orleans it's not Super Tuesday, and all those elections are not even a blip on the screen. It's what you see above. Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras, ya know. Our primary will be Saturday, and I'll be a poll worker. It's likely to be a minuscule turnout, as the primary is unlikely to make much of a difference. Louisiana is one of those states who get to sit and watch every four years as other states decide who the nominees will be.

Democrats and independents can vote in the Democratic race, but the Republican race is Republicans only. The interesting twist is that in addition to the primary, the Republican party held a series of caucuses also about a month ago and didn't tell anybody. Even the paper just noticed it today. Those caucuses selected delegates who are not bound to vote for the candidate they promised to vote for, and the final delegate count may or may not be bound by the results of the Saturday primary. Those clever little Republicans, they're so cute when they get this way.

Too clever by half. The paper says the La. Republican party did this in a rather desperate bid to get a piece of the action before Super Tuesday. But their pitiful inability to publicize the caucuses to either the public or the candidates made it a wasted effort. Of course, if the candidates slug it out to the point of a brokered Republican Convention, all those uncommitted Louisiana delegates could find themselves very popular.

And how am I spending my Mardi Gras? At home, nursing a cold. Boo. [Photo is from 2002.]

1 comment:

AmericanGoy said...

Ohhh this is a cool blog. Will check in time to time.

As democrats, we should not point fingers at the republicans and their delegate selection. The democrats have the superdelegates, which make up 40% of the 2K+ "magic number" needed to win the presidential nomination of the party.

These people are party insiders, cronies and the like.

So its a case of pot calling kettle black...