Monday will see primaries in five states to select the Republican Party's candidate for president; the choice appears to have been settled after Rick Santorum withdrew from the field. There is Mitt Romney, who has picked up nearly 600 delegates thus far, compared to fewer than 150 for Newt Gingrich and around 50 for Ron Paul (Santorum was reaching 300 before he pulled out, perhaps in the hope of becoming the vice-presidential candidate). A total of 1,144 votes are needed to win, and there are 231 delegates at stake in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island on Monday. There is no reason to expect a miracle that will turn things upside down for Romney. In previous primaries, his victories have all come after massive advertising campaigns in the final days changed the expected results. Then, people moved away from the Republican candidate and returned to supporting the Democrats. The polls say that 56 percent of Republicans themselves oppose Romney, but the leaders of the party have found him the best of a bad lot of competitors, and have stood with him. He has also been supported by the super PACs, something that has allowed him to spend four times as much on television advertising as Santorum. Barack Obama has enough financial backing, and an extra benefit; he is not obliged to spend much on the primaries, and is saving it for the general election itself. The Republican National Committee has begun to focus on swing states, but is far from matching Obama's presence in these states. Obama has 18 campaign offices in Florida and seven in Nevada, 12 in Ohio and 13 in Pennsylvania. Every poll I have read till now puts Obama ahead of Romney in the autumn by at least 12 percentage points, and perhaps even 14 or more. One poll this week had Obama clearly ahead of Romney in states that should be considered swing states. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two candidates is with women (who outnumber male voters), who support Obama in high percentages. He is ahead here by 18 points, and among women under 30 he has the support of about 60 percent, compared to 30 for Romney. The strangest thing about the figures above is that 60 percent of women do not know that Romney opposes contraceptive pills, even though this is a reason for even more opposition to him (Santorum, who is Catholic, also opposes contraceptive pills). I do not know how any candidate for the presidency can hope to win with such a high percentage of women against him. When Romney tried to gain their support, he said that 92 percent of those who have lost their jobs under Obama have been women, although PoliticiFact.com, The Washington Post and NBC published the actual figures. The website reported that Romney began his calculations in January 2009, when this should be blamed on George Bush, since Obama's term began during the final third of the month. If Romney has erred day after day in his dealing with domestic issues, then his foreign policy, which is more important for an Arab commentator like me than contraceptive pills in the US, exposes his flagrant and scandalous ignorance. The man represents the neoconservatives, who have destroyed the US as the world's greatest economic and military power, as its influence is now declining. An open microphone picked up Obama's telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will be more flexible in his second term with respect to the missile shield program, while Romney found it an opportunity to say that Russia is "Public Enemy Number One" of the US. Vice President Joe Biden responded by saying that Romney has yet to leave behind the Cold War, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Romney's ideas "old-fashioned." When I began to gather information about this topic two weeks ago, to get ready for Monday's primaries, my only objective was the elections. However, I found that half of the material pointed to Iran and Romney's policy on Iran, and his coordinated efforts with his old friend, Benjamin Netanhayu. But I dealt with this topic a few days ago, and might return to it, since Netanyahu has used it to get rid of the Palestinian issue. [email protected]
