Why Newt isn't listening to the media about quitting now

It's the big talk right now. Media outlets are desperately trying to cultivate the meme that Newt Gingrich "doesn't have a chance to win" and should drop out now.

First, you'll notice they don't ever say that Ron Paul should drop out or that Rick Santorum should quit. They have bought the argument that Mitt Romney's got the nomination sewed up.

Remember 8 years ago? Candidates like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and others actually paid attention to that clarion call by the media and dropped out of the race, leaving the GOP with John McCain as the last man standing. The media told us unabashedly that McCain was perfect to oppose Barack Obama, as he was a moderate.

Does the GOP really want a repeat?

First, let's analyse the claim that "there's no way Gingrich could win the nomination". I don't know whether it's deliberate or not, but you can't search Google and find a media outlet with an actual list of the states and delegates in the GOP race. So I had to mash together the data from two sites to get you the charts below.

Here's the remaining GOP primary races and the delegate count (not including "super-delegates"):

As you can see, there are a total of 1059 regular delegates that are up for grabs between now and June 26th.  So how are the candidates faring?  Here's my compilation of delegates, as calculated by the Associated Press:

GINGRICH

DELEGATES NOW:            103

NEEDS                                  1041

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ROMNEY

DELEGATES NOW:            396

NEEDS                                  748

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SANTORUM

DELEGATES NOW:            176

NEEDS                                  968

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PAUL

DELEGATES NOW:            45

NEEDS                                  1099

          

So, if you look at the numbers above, there is a theoretical possibility that NONE of the GOP candidates could get enough delegates to walk into the convention in Tampa Bay with enough delegates to cinch the nomination.

Mitt Romney would have to win nearly 300 delegates of the remaining 1059 in the contests-to-come. Santorum's only up on Gingrich by 73 delegates.

So the two candidates face the task of having to win 85% of the delegates that are up for grabs to get the nomination. But together they can be "spoilers" for Romney, denying him the 1144 delegates he needs to sew it all up.

And we hear so much about how a brokered convention would be terrible for the GOP. Really? Wouldn't the chance for the social conservatives, the moderates and the Ron Paul crowd all to have their say in a final nominee fix the divide that the party now has?

The mainstream pundits decry the awfulness of a primary campaign right now. IT'S ONLY MARCH. There's plenty of time to vet all four GOP candidates and then let their camps sort it out at the convention, which starts August 17th. And plenty of time for the eventual nominee to sort things out before the Democratic convention September 3rd in Charlotte, NC.

Ignore the pundits. If they were right, Iowa would have had Governors Bonnie Campbell and another term for Chet Culver. Let's play this out til the end. As long as Americans want to support the candidates, let's let the primary battle continue!

Sen. Grassley gives us a life lesson in the Twitter-verse

It's embarrassing.

Having someone figure out your Twitter password and then take over your account and spew tweets out to the world.

Just how embarassing? Ask Sen. Chuck Grassley. He has over 34,000 followers and Monday morning they were "treated" to about a half hour's worth of messages scolding the GOP senator from Iowa for his sponsorship of legislation that's not too friendly to internet privacy.

If we are to believe the tweets, the senator's password was "chuck123".  That is the easiest password to crack because (1) it has his name/personal information in it and (2) it has sequential numbers.  In my past life in tech support, I was treated to readings of individuals who try firstnames and numerical sequences starting with 1.

And there are programs out there where budding hackers can plug in the parameters and the software will keep trying permutations of them until it meets with success (known as "brute force hacking"). Using something like that wouldn't have taken even a high school student much time to hack.

In the senator's defense, he probably didn't even set up the password-it was probably done by a young staffer who thought it would be easy to remember.  (And that staffer's password is probably just as easily hackable-he or she just doesn't have 34,000 followers to worry about)

So our life lesson is:

1. NEVER set up a password containing your name, initials or your birthdate. All are easy to find.

2. CHANGE your password often.  Most business-grade software requires a password change every 90 days.

3. NEVER use the same password on multiple sites.  (If you have problems remembering passwords, programs like LastPass can encrypt them and remember them for you)

These are the basic rules to remember.  What to set as a password then? It should be something you'll remember, of course, but not too easy.  Try favorite websites, restaurants, movies...and mix up upper and lower case.  Those are harder to figure out.

One thing about apps like LastPass is they also have the ability to generate random passwords, store them and automatically fill them in for you.  That way you don't have Post-It notes or other slips of paper laying around with all your login information.

So thank you, Senator Grassley, you've probably made the Twitter-verse more secure.  At least on Capitol Hill!

George Stephanopoulos tries/fails to give birth to new Democratic campaign issue

Apparently, contraception trumps foreign policy, jobs, taxes and the economy in George Stephanopoulos' mind. He asked Mitt Romney if the US Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut should be overturned. Was this an attempt to give the Obama re-election campaign a soundbite for future TV ads?

George knew...but 3/4 of the free world didn't/didn't care that the Griswold case was decided back in 1965 when the court said that the state of Connecticut couldn't ban contraceptives. Even Stephanopoulos' question was prefaced with a statement that Rick Santorum believed that states have the rights to ban contraceptives(while being forced by Santorum to state that Santorum never said he believed states should ban it). Mitt Romney rightfully poo-pooed the question, and the audience booed Stephanopoulos when he tried to push the issue.

Some say this was just a bad question on Stephanopoulos' part in a pretty bad debate overall.  But I think there's more to it. George wouldn't say it, but pro-abortion groups are using the "they want to ban contraceptives" argument in their attempts to defeat "personhood" laws that are being debated in several states. 

They claim--without foundation--that defining a human life as being at conception would bar the use of contraceptives. It's a false claim. No bill would outlaw the use of contraceptives to prevent conception. Some talk about life beginning at fertilization, but again there's nothing that says putting a roadblock in the way of a sperm fertilizing an egg would be illegal.

But by getting Romney to talk about it will get the blogosphere going.  I should know. Immediately after I questioned the legitimacy of the contraception topic, I was attacked on Twitter. I didn't know birth control...I couldn't understand the issue. Unlike my accusers, though, I've read the bills and know that Romney was right. There's no effort by any state to ban contraceptives. And no organized effort to get the US Supreme Court to reverse the Griswold decision from 1965.

Stephanopoulos knows full well, though, that by bringing the question up, the Obama re-election campaign will be able to put in its ads "Romney wants states to ban contraceptives" using clips from the debate.

It's not an issue that most Americans, save a few in the pro-abortion fringe, care about. Yet he tried repeatedly to get an answer from Romney on the issue. Was he trying to hand the Obama campaign an issue to beat over Romney's head later? Did they ask him to include the question?  Given the audience's reaction, why did he continue to press such a non-pressing issue?  

He was Bill Clinton's message man in the past. Makes you wonder.