Republican Presidential Stakes

I wish I had found this a couple of weeks earlier instead of its final stages, but Ken Rudin, who writes the Political Junkie blog for NPR, set up an interesting scheme, based on the NCAA basketball playoffs, to allow readers to vote for the next Republican presidential nominee. Two (instead of four) brackets and thirty-two (instead of 64-65) entries were established with some realistic, and some not so realistic, GOP names. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an indication whether Rudin wanted respondents to vote for the man or the woman they expect to win (as motivates most of the participants in the actual basketball pool) or the individual they hope will win (as, given human nature, is likely to dominate here and given the large number of votes for Ron Paul, probably did).

I find Rudin's picks more realistic than those of the readers, but I would not have gone for Ryan over Bush or Palin, nor for Paul over Barbour (or anyone) or Sanford over Thune. (I'll leave the Haley Barbour post for another time.) I assume (though we all know what "assume" makes out of you and me) that this fellow Rudin, being of sound mind, will predict Romney over Huckabee. Take what I predict from someone who thought the 2008 nominees would be Romney and Clinton or, as Glenn Beck would say, "if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."