I will get to the motive later, but here are the facts behind a curious yet obvious media bias in favor of Mitt Romney:
-Going into Super Tuesday, Romney and Huckabee were nearly equal in delegate count, yet the media constantly set it up as a 2-way race between McCain and Romney, referring to Huckabee as a 'factor' or a 'spoiler'.
-Romney has spent more on TV ads than all other GOP candidates combined. $8 million more. Combined. (That includes Giuliani, Thompson, Paul, McCain, Huckabee, etc.). He's spent $87.6 million on his campaign, outspending Huckabee more than 10 to 1, yet for all of that, heading into Super Tuesday he had 77 delegates to McCain's 93 and Huckabee's 40. That is an absolutely scandalous ROI (return on investment) - but the media never mentions the disparity. Is the presidency for sale?
-For Romney's entire political career, including as governor of Massachusetts, he was pro-choice and pro civil unions - two positions absolutely anathema to religious right voters in the last election - yet now he is cast as the "conservative" alternative to McCain. This is the most puzzling thing to me. How on earth can Romney be the conservative alternative? I guess if the media (and Romney press aides) repeat something enough, it becomes true.
-Tonight, it looks like Romney will carry Massachusetts, his home state where he governed, and Utah (thanks to the Mormon vote). These impressive wins go alongside his narrow victory in Michigan where his father George was a beloved governor. Congratulations.
-Huckabee, on a shoestring, is kicking Romney's goldbrickin' @$$ and racking up delegates. Yet the media still refers to him as a 'factor' instead of a legitimate candidate.
So why? I think the underlying bias is a class thing. Huckabee is a populist pastor from Arkansas, a graduate of Quachita Baptist University. Romney is a Wall Street elite educated at Stanford and Harvard, born into a wealthy family, and racking up billions more while CEO of "Bain Capital" (a firm which specialized in leveraged buyouts as opposed to actually producing something of value).
All that aside, I predicted back in May in this very blog that the nominees would be Romney and Clinton, and I might as well stick by that as long as elitist northeastern media and Rush Limbaugh (not strange bedfellows but elements of the establishment) are inexplicably carrying Romney.
(I also predicted that Rudy would be drummed out VERY early and would then mount an independent run - however, he skipped most of the early contests, thereby lasting way longer than he should have, saving his instant crash for Florida, by which time his national support had also eroded and the viability of a third-party run for him had vanished - however I still think there is potential for a strong independent candidacy - perhaps Bloomberg).