Another Sign That Romney Will Win GOP Nomination

On the heels of the ongoing exposure of Ron Paul's racist and anti Semitic newsletters and vile connections to white supremacists, we're now seeing just how badly run the campaigns of Mitt Romney's opposition truly is.

Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have both missed the deadline to get on the Virginia ballot. How insanely stupid is that? That's massive levels of fail all rolled up into a ball.

For Gingrich, the stupid/fail is compounded by the fact that this is the state in which he currently resides.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has failed to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 Republican primary, a development that complicates his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination.

“After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary,” the Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday on its Twitter website.

That shows just how weak Newt's ground game truly is. He can't even manage to gain the necessary 10,000 signatures needed to get on the Virginia ballot. It's something we saw from Herman Cain as well. Despite how well they polled at various points, the ground game indicated just how incompetent and lacking the campaign operations were.

Rick Perry's in no different position. Not only are his polling figures in the dumps, but he couldn't get the necessary number of signatures either. That's despite all the campaign fundraising and warchest he had put together.

All this inures to Mitt Romney's benefit. Despite all of Mitt's own problems and flip flopping on a wide range of issues, to say nothing of the fact that he's more moderate than the conservatives that rule the roost in the primaries, he's at least managed his campaign better in that he's secured positions on the ballots, rather than letter major states pass him by.

One should know one thing - no ground game = no nomination. Yet, far too many candidates have shown that they don't understand that essential fact.

On the Wall Street Protests and Herman Cain's Misguided Critique

More tents have sprouted up at Zuccotti Park overnight and their donations have apparently increased significantly in the past 24-48 hours (to around $435k from $300k raised in the first 30 odd days since they started). The rain is expected to be quite heavy today and that's not exactly prime camping weather under the best of circumstances - it's got to be miserable for those who are staying there.

That leads me to the next point. Republican candidate for president and current frontrunner, Herman Cain mentioned yesterday during the debates that he thought that the protesters had the wrong target in mind for protests. When asked about the OWS movement, Cain thought that they should be protesting the White House for $1 trillion in failed stimulus and other failed economic policies, but he ignores that the economic troubles began before the stimulus package was envisioned, and before the TARP plan.

It began when Wall Street businesses engaged in highly speculative and risky repackaging of securities and no one had a clue as to their value, particularly when the real estate bubble collapsed.

That's not on the White House exclusively. That's on government (including Congress) failure of oversight to reign in the risks - and some of the blame falls on those who engaged in those transactions. That includes the so called masters of the universe on Wall Street who had no problem with these transactions and the credit ratings agencies who kept up the facade that all was well with these repackaged transactions until it was obvious to anyone with a pulse that they were worth less than junk bond status.

Protesting Wall Street may not accomplish anything other than raising awareness of the inequities inherent in the existing economic system, but that's still significant. Change has to come through voting in candidates who are committed to improving the system, not a wholesale dismantling of the system we have and floating economic policies that are a joke on its face (like Cain's 9/9/9 plan).

There is need for serious reform of the business oversight on Wall Street to avoid future meltdowns such as occurred during 2007-2009. That requires tackling both political and business issues. Neither is exclusive of the other because of the incessant flow of money into politics from the very businesses that are regulated by government.