Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Bennett Bashed
Posted By Josh Loftin on March 24, 2010, 10:33 AM
Sen. Bob Bennett trampled by elephants. Future uncertain.---
First, let me make clear that determining "results" from caucuses is pretty near impossible. There are simply too many unknowns, from super delegates to undecided delegates to delegates who flat-out lied to get elected. Also, a lot can happen in the two months between now and convention.
So, I will not try to predict a winner. But I will predict a convention loser: Bob Bennett. If the buzz in the blogosphere and the Twitter responses I got after asking how the caucuses went, the sentiment is that there was a lot of anger at Bennett, and those who did support Bennett were unpopular.
Of course, these are anecdotal from (primarily) anti-Bennett people, and only a couple dozen out of 1,200 delegates (or so). And is often the case, if Bennett can somehow get out of convention, the generally more silent moderates could very easily send him back.
Also based on buzz, I would say that Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater both had strong support. A match up between the two of them in a primary would be interesting because they both are pushing for support from the arch-conservatives. From what I can find, there is a little bit of excitement from the Cherilyn Eagar camp, and pretty much nothing for any other candidate. (A funny aside is that people on Twitter were reporting getting robo-calls this morning from Merrill Cook, urging them to go to caucus.)
And not to forget the Democrats, who also reported higher turn-outs. One caucus-goer in a Salt Lake City district said that the attendees were all frustrated with Rep. Jim Matheson's health care vote—but nobody was really openly supporting any other candidates. My guess is that there will be some noise made against Matheson at convention but he will sail with 80 percent of the delegates.
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