My Two Cents: Is this a pick the biggest neocon douchenugget competition? End Two Cents.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Mitt Fucking Romney. The name is synonymous with dissatisfaction. Well, one would think anyway. The consensus from most conservative people is that they didn’t want this guy to be their candidate. They tried so hard to prop up all the other GOP weaklings but Mr. Romney was just slightly stronger it seems and because of that, is the last man standing for the establishment righties to vote for. I mean, they aren’t going to vote for Ron Paul, that much has been established and since they’re going to vote for “Anyone but Obama” (which doesn’t include Paul), I guess it should be no surprise that Captain Haircut swept three more states on the road to the nomination.

Romney racked up victories in West Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina. North Carolina wasn’t a surprise as the people there also voted to ban gay marriage. Surprisingly though, their intolerant right-wing idiocy didn’t push Santorum to the front of the pack, even though he is completely out of the race. I know that sounds crazy but look at West Virginia. Santorum actually came in second place in that state ahead of Ron Paul! Santorum who isn’t even in the race and who has endorsed Romney beat Ron Paul who is still in this thing! It’s not a showing of how weak Paul may seem to be, it is a showing of how insane the inbred people of West Virginia are. I mean, didn’t those ‘Wrong Turn’ movies take place there? You know what I’m talking about, those cheap ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ knockoffs that saw incest-loving mutant hillbillies hunting and eating tourists who accidentally turned off of the main road and into their neck of the woods. Sounds like Santorum cultists for sure.

With Ron Paul in second albeit last place, Santorum’s performance was pointless and the backwoods beasts who voted for him are retarded for even bothering to show up to their precincts. Maybe all the precincts were barbecue joints and the customers got confused and thought they were filling out comment cards. It really is hard to say when we are dealing with people who have the brains of ravenous rabies-afflicted canines. The people who casted votes for Gingrich might be even slightly more insane. Whatever, I’m tired of bashing these people and frankly, I don’t want them to eat me alive. Luckily, Florida is a long way away and these West Virginia mutants can’t operate a GPS system and would probably just use maps to make clothes.

At least Dr. Paul is racking up a shitload of delegates and even though he won’t be staring down Obama in an upcoming debate, he has still proven to be a force of fucking nature in this race regardless of media blackouts, blatant bias and establishment shenanigans. These fuckers can try and fix an election but they can’t fix the brains of the vigilant self-educated masses who are growing in numbers year after year. As I stated previously, it looks like the Paul campaign’s questionable delegate hunting tactics have worked to some degree, especially now that former Senator Ass Juice and former Speaker of the House Newt Giggles have dropped like flies drunk on Off! Bug Spray.

The clock is counting down and the Republican National Convention is just around the corner. When Tampa comes, shit could get really interesting in this race. Hopefully by then, the Santorum mutants have gone back to eating lost teenagers and the Gingrich supporters have gone back to living in holes. I guess it just bothers me that people are stupid enough to put a check next to a name on a ballot when that candidate is a quitter. Well, losers typically flock to other losers and when your grey matter is made up of the sort of stuff a typical right-wing establishment neo-conservative has between their ears, you are going to make really stupid decisions while contributing to the downfall of this country.

Truth be told, I know this is coming off as somewhat irate and that I am resorting to name-calling but fuck you people. I’m not going to hide behind some political correct bullshit in an effort to save face and have a sane and rational discussion with you people when everything about you is insane and irrational. Stop being such parasites and stop living your fucking fear turtle life in a goddamned shell afraid of every boogeyman your worthless heroes throw at you. It’s time to stop looking at everyone that doesn’t jive with your bullshit philosophy as an enemy. That goes for other nations, the other side of the political coin and other Americans who aren’t privy to your psychotic idiocy. Now you may be thinking that I am being hypocritical in my words and that I am coming at you like you are my enemy or better yet that you are the enemy of anyone who is a libertarian, a constitutionalist or a free-thinker. I’m not, I’m just sick of the games and being labeled crazy when you are the assholes who are stuck in your ways – ways that have been proven to fail again and again. None of you want to try anything new or examine history, you just want to keep your side of the assembly line moving in an effort to beat out the other side. Whether that’s for bragging rights or just because you want to win just for the sake of winning, doesn’t fucking matter to me! Both sides of the assembly line are in a rush and are in turn making really shitty products while pointing fingers back and forth. It’s time to shut this inefficient factory down and move the business elsewhere. Rant over.

And congratulations Mr. Romney. You really took it to those weak contenders.

Despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, Mitt Romney does not have the Republican nomination locked up.  In fact, he is rapidly losing delegates that almost everyone assumed that he already had in the bag.  To understand why this is happening, you have to understand the delegate selection process.  Each state has different rules for selecting delegates to the Republican national convention, and in many states the “voting” done by the public does not determine the allocation of delegates to particular candidates at all.  And the truth is that delegates are the only thing that really matters in this race.  In state after state, the Ron Paul campaign is focusing on the delegate selection process with laser-like precision, and it is paying off big time.  At this point, there is still a legitimate chance that Ron Paul will be able to win enough delegates to deny Mitt Romney the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican national convention in Tampa.  If Romney does not have the 1,144 delegates that he needs on the first ballot, then it becomes a brokered convention and anything becomes possible at that point.

Sadly, most Americans have no idea how this process really works.

For example, originally we were all told that Mitt Romney won Iowa.

Then, later on we were told that a mistake was made and that Rick Santorum actually won Iowa.

Well, it turns out that Ron Paul actually won 20 out of the 28 delegates in Iowa.  That is because the process of actually selecting the delegates occurred long after the voting by the public was over.

So what happens if the Ron Paul campaign is able to produce similar results in state after state?

The Ron Paul campaign is very organized, very motivated and they understand the rules of the game.  As a recentPolitico article detailed, there are huge amounts of unbound delegates out there that are still up for grabs….

There are roughly 30 states and territories where delegates aren’t bound to a particular candidate. The majority of the other states, according to a number of party officials, call for delegates to be bound for a first round of balloting but not the ensuing rounds.

“The dirty little secret is: At the end of the day, these guys and gals can vote any way they want,” said a Republican who has attended national conventions for decades. “Each state has different (laws) on pledged delegates.”

In many states, the “official” results of voting done by the public mean next to nothing.  The talking heads on television often tell us how many delegates are “projected” to go to a particular candidate, but as we have seen in Iowa and in so many other states, those “projections” are basically meaningless.

A recent Salon article discussed how the delegate selection process really works and how the Ron Paul campaign is using these rules to shake up the game….

In many caucus states, the “official” results that most people saw this winter were from nonbinding straw polls conducted in conjunction with precinct-level caucuses. But when it comes to choosing national convention delegates, the real action is at district caucuses and state conventions. In the past, this distinction hasn’t mattered much, but for the Paul forces – who lack the numbers to win statewide primaries but have the devotion to pack any room, anywhere, at any time – it has offered an inviting loophole. When turnout is small and no one is looking, the Paul folks can win, and that’s what’s been happening in a number of states.

To Paul die-hards, this will all culminate in a surprise for the ages in Tampa, with the political world suddenly realizing that Romney actually doesn’t have the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination, thereby allowing Paul to extract major concessions or even steal the nomination for himself.

So could Ron Paul really deny Mitt Romney the Republican nomination?

At this point, nobody really seems to know what the real delegate count is.

Websites such as The Real 2012 Delegate Count are more accurate than most sources in the mainstream media, but even that site has been underestimating the true number of Ron Paul delegates.

Right now, Mitt Romney is not anywhere close to having the number of delegates that he needs for the nomination and Ron Paul just keeps picking up more delegates with each passing week.

For example, a Washington Post article that was posted on Sunday reported that Ron Paul just achieved a stunning delegate victory in Nevada….

Despite former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucuses, Texas Rep. Ron Paul has won a majority of the state’s delegates to the party’s national convention later this year in Tampa, Florida.

Thanks to organized Paul supporters, who have been working to increase their candidate’s support at state conventions around the country, 22 of the 25 Nevada delegates up for grabs will be Paul supporters. (Another three are automatic delegates.)

That was a state that Romney supposedly “won”.

It looks like Romney has a real problem.

In state after state, Ron Paul is gobbling up delegates.  The following are quotes from a recent Huffington Post article about what the Ron Paul campaign has been able to achieve in the past few weeks….

-”Sure enough, Paul has already won 20 out of the 24 delegates allocated in Minnesota, by winning a majority of the congressional district contests.”

-”In Louisiana, Paulites “dominated” the congressional district caucuses this past Saturday, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Paul’s supporters carried four of the state’s congressional districts, and are guaranteed at least 17 of 46 delegates in the Bayou State, with the potential to pick up more at the state convention on June 2.”

-”The other state that Benton likely has his eye on is Colorado, where the Denver Post reported in mid-April that Paul supporters and Santorum backers combined forces to win a “stunning upset” at the state convention, guaranteeing that about half of the state’s 33 delegates will be for Paul in August.”

And look what just happened in Maine according to USA Today….

In votes leading to the close of the two-day Maine convention, Paul supporters were elected to 21 of the 24 delegate spots from Maine to the GOP national convention in Tampa, Fla.

So Ron Paul is definitely accumulating a huge pile of his own delegates, but even many so-called “pledged delegates” for Romney could end up playing a huge role for Ron Paul.

In some states, Ron Paul supporters have been getting elected into delegate slots that are supposed to go to Romney.  This is highly unusual, and it could really shake things up at the national convention.  As a Salon articlerecently explained there will be quite a few Ron Paul supporters that will actually be going to Tampa “disguised” as Romney delegates….

Besides the pledged delegates he’s won so far and the extras he’s collecting through caucuses and state conventions, Paul will also have some supporters disguised as Romney delegates. To understand how this works, just consider his campaign’s mischief in Massachusetts, where Romney won 72 percent of the primary vote – and with it, a monopoly on the state’s pledged convention delegates. But to determine who would fill those pledged delegate slots, the state GOP held caucuses recently, and the Paul crowd came out in force, gobbling up 16 of the 19 available positions. In how many other states will this happen, or has it already happened?

But those delegates are required to vote for Romney, right?

Not so fast.

The Ron Paul campaign could actually ask those “disguised” Romney delegates to abstain during the first round of voting in Tampa.  If Romney did not win on the first ballot, those delegates would then become unbound and would be able to support Ron Paul.

In fact, Ronald Reagan considered using this tactic against Gerald Ford in 1976.  The following is from a 1976 article entitled “Reagan Forces May ‘Steal’ Ford Votes”….

“In secret strategy sessions, Reagan aides have toyed with the idea of asking delegates to abstain as long as their state laws require them to honor the primary verdicts.  This would prevent the President from riding up an early-ballot victory.  Then, in subsequent ballots, they could legally switch to Reagan.

Delegates have abstained from voting before.  Back in 2008, at least 14 delegates abstained from voting at the Republican national convention.

So what would happen if the Ron Paul campaign was able to get 100 or 150 “Romney delegates” to abstain from voting during the first ballot in Tampa?

That is a very intriguing question.

And remember, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich also have significant numbers of delegates pledged to each of them.

So Ron Paul does not need to accumulate 1,144 delegates himself to deny Mitt Romney the nomination on the first ballot.  He just needs to keep Romney from getting to 1,144.

The race for the Republican nomination is not over.

You can find a state by state breakdown of delegate voting rules right here.

It is not too late to get involved.

If nobody gets to 1,144 on the first ballot in Tampa, it becomes a “brokered convention” and anyone can become the nominee – even someone that is not running right now.

So if you are not satisfied with Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee, don’t lose hope yet.

The game is still being played.

It would be a challenge, but if his supporters get energized enough, it certainly is possible that Ron Paul could still win enough delegates to deny Mitt Romney the Republican nomination on the first ballot in Tampa.

And if that happens, anything is possible.

CONTINUED at the American Dream.

An Exclusive interview, Alex Jones speaks with Sen. Rand Paul on NDAA, TSA undercover on Houston busses, Obama’s overall neglect of the Constitution, his possible impeachment and much more. This is a must see video.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has warned the government it will not support an IMF loan unless the terms are changed or it moves aside and allows a new administration to oversee how the funds are spent, its candidate for president said on Sunday.

The government has been negotiating a $3.2 billion loan with theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it avert a balance of payments crisis caused by the political and economic turmoil of the last year, and an IMF technical team is now in Cairo.

The IMF has said that before it agrees to a loan, the government must first sell the plan to the country’s political groupings, especially the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which won nearly half the seats in the new parliament.

“We told them (the government), you have two choices. Either postpone this issue of borrowing and come up with any other way of dealing with it without our approval, or speed up the formation of a government,” Khairat al-Shater said in an interview.

He said he realised the country’s finances were precarious and a severe crunch could come by early to mid-May as the end of the fiscal year approached, but that this was the government’s problem to resolve. Egypt’s fiscal year runs to June 30.

“It is not logical that I approve a loan that the transitional government would take for two or three months, then demand that I, as a permanent government, repay,” he told Reuters.

CONTINUEd at Yahoo News.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I’ve been putting off writing this all morning, as I’ve been sucked into the Internet’s new infant beast Pinterest. Damn that website for wasting half of my day! One thing I learned from it very quickly is that it is really easy for anyone to follow you and re-pin your posts. I guess that is good for those wanting exposure and needing to feel some sort of artificial love from strangers stalking them. Actually, it reminds me of about 80 percent of my ex-girlfriends. Anyway, moving on!

My predictions for last night’s shit show was two-thirds correct. I said that Romney would win Maryland and DC while bitch-tears Santorum would take Wisconsin. Well, I was wrong about Wisconsin as Mitt Romney swept all three primaries – sticking it to Rick Santorum hard and pretty much solidifying the fact that Mr. Santorum will soon be out of the race and shipped back to his own personal hell. Well, at least I was right about Ron Paul getting second place in DC. That doesn’t even matter though, as the winner takes all of the delegates there and Romney won the thing with a whopping 71 percent!

So the delegate count after these three contests is as follows: Mitt Romney now has a staggering 654 delegates compared to Santorum’s 270, Gingrich’s 137 and Paul’s 71. Romney is well over the halfway mark in earning the magic number of delegates required to win the Republican nomination. So is this whole thing coming to an end finally?

Hell no it’s not! Rick Santorum just won’t go away and he will continue to bitch, whine and throw temper tantrums until the Republican Party finally sends him packing in disgrace. Honestly, that won’t matter anyway because in four years they’ll have him back and probably make him the nominee going into a race where we will be slaughtered by whomever the Democratic candidate might be in 2016. Gingrich has cut a lot of his staff and believes that somehow a miracle will happen in a few months at the Republican National Convention which will propel him all the way up to the top where he’ll be the nominee. I could make a case against these guys for not bowing out gracefully and accepting their fate but then I’d also have to point that finger at Ron Paul, who is also staying in this race even though he’s currently dead last and yet to win a single state (even though Maine was stolen from him). Paul’s case is somewhat different however, as his presence in the race is about his message: the message of liberty.

Unlike the other losing candidates in this race, Dr. Paul is winning. Sure, he’s not winning the nomination per se but he is winning over the hearts and minds of millions of people and even if devious tricks, demonic sorcery and voter fraud prevent him from making as big of an impact in the delegates department as other candidates, his message hasn’t been stripped from the minds of those who support him and the principles he represents. Because of that, he won’t and can’t leave the race until the GOP makes their final decision. However, Santorum and Gingrich can fuck off for all I care and we’d all be in a better place if they did. Now I am not saying that Romney is any better than those two but what’s done is done and he is going to run away with this thing regardless of how any of us feel about it or whatever tricks the other candidates may try to pull.

I just wish this race would hurry up and be over. The Republicans just need to prop Romney up as their choice and send him off to get beat by Obama. I can’t believe that we have to wait until November for all of this to be over. I wish I had some words of hope to throw in the tail end of this article but I don’t. I’m going to go grab a cigar and some whiskey now, as I have better things to do than overanalyze the crap out of this race. I’ve spent the last several months trying to make sense out of madness and I’m over it. Plus, I have a fucking migraine.

Egyptian military judges dropped convictions against Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Khairat el-Shater, clearing the nominee of the nation’s dominant political party to run in the election, the group’s lawyer said.

“We have taken administrative, legal and judicial measures before the military judiciary and based on this, all convictions have been dropped,” Abdel Monem Abdel Maqsoud said in a phone interview in Cairo yesterday. “All legal obstacles have been removed, and el-Shater now has the right to fully exercise all his political rights,” he said.

The Brotherhood said March 31 that el-Shater was its candidate for the presidential election that begins May 23 and May 24, making him one of the favorites to win and potentially increasing tensions between the once-banned group and the generals who currently rule the nation. He received 58 out of 110 votes at a meeting of the Brotherhood’s consultative council, according to Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera. The narrow majority suggested rifts within the organization.

Abdel Maqsoud said the necessary legal steps were taken “over the last days.” El-Shater, 62, will submit his candidacy application this week, Abdel Maqsoud said. “The Brotherhood wouldn’t have named him if there were still obstacles.”

El-Shater spent years in and out of the jails of former PresidentHosni Mubarak. In the most recent conviction, he was sentenced in 2008 by a military court to seven years in prison amid a crackdown on the Brotherhood by the then government. He was released in March 2011, less than a month after Mubarak’s ouster.

CONTINUED at Bloomberg.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

We are on the verge of two more states casting their votes in the 2012 Republican primary to decide the nominee that will represent the GOP in an effort to wrestle the Oval Office away from Barack Obama. With Super Tuesday just around the corner, this long drawn out race has finally reached critical mass. In less than a week, this whole race could be over – based off of the results of those ten states. However, Arizona and Michigan will have their say first and based off of the outcome of last week’s Arizona debate, some things may have changed going into this leg of the marathon.

To start, Rick Santorum did so awful in the Arizona debate that a lot of his steam should be about nil. Then again, this sad nerd keeps finding a way to stay in this damn thing. I think he’s an opportunist that is simply capitalizing off of the misfortune of other candidates but I don’t think that he has mastered the art of opportunism and will ultimately crash and burn in a very nasty way. It is bound to happen but it is just taking a very long time. When the moment does come though, it will be glorious and the wait will be worth it. He has been a big government Bible-thumping thorn in the side of liberty for far too long and it is time to send the sweater-vested jackass back home to preach to all the other lost souls that somehow think that it is their sole purpose in life to save us all from an eternal damnation that they perceive as much worse than their self-inflicted mortal damnation on this large blue rock. Some people are just afraid to live life and find it necessary to make us all suffer with them. Rick Santorum is most assuredly one of these miserable people.

Not to keep focusing on this theocratic nutjob but it is worth mentioning that Santorum is now under Secret Service protection. Not only is that a waste of taxpayers’ money but it just feeds into this dork dick’s ego – making him believe that he is somehow greater than the sum of his hypocritical parts. I guess this is the peak in his fifteen minutes of fame and the fact that he feels that he must be protected from glitterbombings is absolutely hysterical. While this madman drums up fear about every nation that isn’t fueled by the blood of King James, as he wants to bomb the shit out of every non-American, he finds himself hiding behind a troupe of ‘Matrix’ villains just to save himself from gay America’s weapons of mass fabulousness. He’s so quick to drop napalm on faceless women and children thousands of miles away yet so scared of getting a little glitter in his eye. Santorum is about as manly as Boy George riding a unicorn while eating a cupcake nodding his head to Lady Gaga blaring in his pink earbuds.

Newt Gingrich is suffering and the only saving grace for him, at this point, would be for Santorum’s campaign to fully implode. With Ricky Baby robocalling Democrats in Detroit, things are just looking worse and worse for the guy and much better for Gingrich. Now remember, Newt has been down and out before. Hell, he started in this race by losing key members of his campaign staff while facing enormous debt. He’s rallied back, been to the top and teetered around throughout this whole thing. One could simply look at Newt and say that this thing is over but they’ve said it several times and he keeps on finding a way to rise up. Unlike Santorum, Newt’s not just in the right place at the right time, he’s a professional at this game and may just have one more solid hand to play before the lights go out.

Mitt Romney should perform very well in both Michigan and Arizona. Michigan is his home state and in the Arizona debate last week, people loved the guy. Hell, they were cheering him before he could even get out half of his answers. If Romney doesn’t perform strong in either state, then there is something seriously wrong with the guy and it only gives more fuel to the three men on his heels. Realistically, all things considered, both of these states should be a cakewalk for Ol’ Mittens and if that’s the case, he is going to be way up on the delegate count. Sure, he and Santorum have won just about the same amount of states but keep in mind that Missouri, which Santorum won, was just a beauty pageant as they have yet to hand out delegates and plan to hold a separate caucus for delegates next month. Missouri is ass backwards and makes no sense, which is why a bumbling idiot bastard like Santorum controlled that demented state.

Looking at Dr. Ron Paul, who was potentially screwed in Maine and other states, one has to wonder if these two states will come and go without a victory. Paul is the only candidate left that hasn’t won a single state. While this is disheartening for a true supporter of liberty, he has done incredibly well in finishing second place and amassing delegates throughout the race. Paul’s chances in both these states are good and it would be nice to see him walk away with a win but I just don’t see it happening in either Michigan or Arizona.

At Michigan State he had a record turnout of over 4,000 supporters at an event while Santorum played to a small room and Romney tried to charm an empty football stadium. Unfortunately, this is always the case and yet it never translates to a significant amount of votes that should propel Ron Paul to the top of the heap. If support and passion were true indicators to success in elections, Ron Paul would be decimating the uninspiring competition. Sadly, the maniacal monsters will find a way to scheme their way through this round and leave the only honest man in the Republican primary out in the cold.

Ron Paul outperformed everyone at the last debate and had the crowd cheering. Along with Romney, he took it to Santorum and made him look like the thin-skinned meatheaded bitch that he is. In fact, Santorum’s people claim that Paul and Romney are in cahoots against him. This is a ridiculous claim of course and it doesn’t do anything to stop the momentum Paul seemingly gained from the debate. In fact, it makes Santorum look even more ridiculous and propels Paul to the top with Romney. I feel that Arizona will be Romney’s to win but theoretically Paul should topple both Santorum and Gingrich. Michigan however, is a toss up.

In just a short amount of time, we will all know how this round has played out.

At the Libertarian Party of Florida state convention held this past weekend, former GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson didn’t just win the straw poll; with 42 of the 60 votes cast, he wiped the floor.

If Johnson can replicate that success in other states, he’ll have little trouble getting the nomination at the national Libertarian Party convention in May. Compared to fellow former Republican Bob Barr, who was tied for the nomination through five rounds of ballots at the 2008 national convention, getting the backing of the LP is going to be a cakewalk for Johnson.

But what about the rest of America? Johnson is hoping to poll high enough to appear with President Barack Obama and the GOP nominee in a televised debate, and pull 5 percent in the general election. The former two-term governor of New Mexico, an experienced coalition-builder, is having a hard time coralling people who lean libertarian, but aren’t quite.

Take, for instance, his appeals to marijuana voters.

Johnson’s decision to campaign on legalizing marijuana was based on principle: He’s used it, he thinks it’s safer than booze, and he hates the drug war. It was also based on some hypothetical math: “100 million Americans have admitted to using marijuana,” Johnson told me two weeks before the Florida straw poll. “If they all gave me a dollar, that’s a hundred million bucks.”

In theory, it was a swell plan. In practice, Johnson has “done so many events with marijuana. So many marijuana events. Basically, nothing comes out of it other than for an enthusiasm for what I say. No money comes out of it.”

That’s not to say that marijuana policy reform advocates are broke, or cheap. Progressive Insurance founder Peter B. Lewis has donated half a million dollars this election cycle to Prop. 66, which would reform California’s onerous three-strikes law, and another $159,000 to the Drug Policy Alliance Network Committee. (Lewis’s deep pockets also made the Marijuana Policy Project what it is today.)

But what weed money there is, isn’t flowing to Johnson. So he’s going back to the basics: Cutting the size of government. But even that can prove difficult. In a 2012 election in which Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is promising to cut spending by $1 trillion, Johnson is still searching for a way to earn media attention.

“‘How do you differ from Ron Paul? Ron Paul’s proposing a $1 trillion reduction!’ people say. Well, I’m proposing a $1.4 trillion reduction.” Johnson seldom puts it that way, though. Instead he calls it a 43 percent cut in government spending.

Over dinner, I asked Johnson how to make that message…sexier.

CONTINUED at Reason. Written by Mike Riggs.

*Written by Tho Bishop.

Romney’s inevitable nomination is slipping through his well-manicured fingers. While the media has been telling us for months that no one has a shot against Prince Willard’s well funded political machine, it is clear that the voters are less impressed. After defeats in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, Missouri (even though Missouri really doesn’t count delegates until later), Minnesota and Colorado, and a victory in Maine that required some Chicago-style shenanigans to edge out Ron Paul, Romney is now fighting off Rick Santorum for the lead in national polls.

This article, however, isn’t about the Santorum surge; nor is it an analysis on why Mitt is having difficulty connecting with Republican voters (the latter being the key factor to the former.) Instead let’s discuss the potential consequences of an intensely contested primary battle ending with Romney falling short of the 1,144 delegate threshold.

Let’s talk about a brokered convention.

Since the last brokered convention was the infamous Democratic Convention of 1968, many Americans may not be familiar with the concept or what could emerge from such an event.

During the first ballot at the Republican convention, the state elected delegates are required to vote for whomever they are pledged (though, as Paul’s campaign understands, caucus delegates enjoy a bit more leeway). After that though? All bets are off.

Now it is possible that Romney, after losing the nomination by a few votes, could simply convert some Gingrich or Santorum pledged delegates and then seal the deal. That, however, depends upon genuine interest in Romney being the nominee. If we can take away anything from his primary difficulties, it is that Romney has done little to excite the Republican base.

What about Santorum or Gingrich? If Gingrich wasn’t so personally disliked, he would potentially lock up the nomination outright. Santorum on the other hand, terrifies many outside of a specific demographic of Republican voters.

This is why it is important to point out that a brokered convention does not limit delegates to choose between those currently seeking the GOP nomination. In 1968, for example, the Democratic nomination went to Hubert Humphrey, the serving VP who did not participate in a single primary.

So who in the broader GOP could benefit?

People are quick to respond with Chris Christie. Consider, however, that the governor not only refused multiple attempts to jump into the primary contest, but has played bulldog for Romney throughout most of the campaign. This will immediately make it difficult to win over Newt backers and, combined with some of his social views, won’t endear him to Santorum delegates.

Mitch Daniels? Another executive who opted against entering the race months ago, Daniels has so far been hesitant to subject his family to the hardships of national political exposure. While people, to say nothing of politicians, always have the ability to change their mind, I think it is unlikely in this Hoosier’s case.

Though I don’t fully understand the bizarre obsession many establishment Republicans have with Jeb Bush, I do think they are right to look south towards Florida. The candidate best situated to emerge from a brokered convention is Senator Marco Rubio.

Though some may bristle at nominating a young, inexperienced senator with a razor thin record of accomplishment, demographic-conscious Republican strategists dream of the GOP electing the first Latino President. He could also be unique in creating an energized, united front amongst the three establishment candidates. Remember that Rubio worked with Newt on his book 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future, shares Santorum’s Catholic faith and defended Romney during the Florida primary. Rubio would be rewarded for staying out of the endorsement game.

If he harbors any Presidential aspirations, Rubio will never find a better opportunity to act on them. He would be going against an unpopular administration and have the enviable position of being spared the long, exhausting process of primary politics. To those who would question whether Rubio, who showed no interest in running for the nomination before, would suddenly take the nomination, look at the calendar. A traditional primary run would have sacrificed the opportunity to do anything in the Senate and forced Rubio back into the electoral game roughly four months after a difficult and expensive senatorial contest. An August nomination spares him almost two years before diving back into campaigning.

The scenario above is still very unlikely – but unlikely describes the GOP nomination process to date. One thing that can’t be questioned, however, is the appeal Rubio has with a large section of Republicans, both in the establishment and the grassroots. At a time where friction has never been higher between these two classes, I believe Rubio can unite and inspire quite like no other GOP figure can.

That potential should not be overlooked.