Still anyone's race, the GOP Presidential Primaries are gearing up into a long-term slugfest — that is, if everyone believes the media driven hype.
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is placing third all of a sudden, a meaningful trend that GOP voters are still shopping, when in the fact the hunting is now coming down to which constituency will move in the greatest number to cast their votes.
Religious conservatives, understandable wary of a Ron Paul Presidency, are reported to be pressuring either Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum to step down and cast their support to the other.
Either way the evangelicals press their luck, social conservatism is not the driving force behind this election cycle. Fiscal conservatism is ruling the headlines, from multi-trillion dollar national debt to deficits that grow and grow in the face of enlarged entitlements and diminishing federal revenues.
The United States needs less government altogether, not more moral government, a cross oxymoronic contradiction, played out for eight long and deleterious years during the unrestrained reign of George W. Bush.
Newt Gingrich is sliding down, down, down, like the slimy political chameleon that he is. The Mainstream Media has fostered this incessant hype from one candidate to another for the past six months, all but decimating the legitimacy of debate and determination of qualified candidates across the board.
Sometime after the dust has settled and a Republican has taken office January 20, 2013, political journalists across the ideological spectrum will have to research the massive influence of the manic, minute by minute reporting of liberal outlets looking for any scrap of non-news to stir up strife from one front-runner to another. How has this invasive, miminalizing madness contributed to the voters' grasp of candidates and their candor on pressing issues? And do we really need six months of reporting at length on these people? The results in one week will be so divergent from the reporting that hammered the airwaves, more and more will wonder — why bother following any trends until the last two weeks before voting?
Next time, the GOP and the Democratic parties must agree to fewer debates, more conflict, and real charge between candidates. All of this multi-layered posturing has done very little to inform prospective voters of the true merits of qualified candidates.