GOP race opening even wider

With Mitt Romney beating McCain in the Michigan primary, the GOP race becomes more unpredictable than ever. So far 4 States have voted and 3 candidates have won these contests, and the national front-runner former mayor of N.Y. Rudy Giuliani has not even come in at a honourable place in Iowa, New Hampshire, Wyoming or Michigan. He is betting on winning the Florida primary on the 29th of January, this would give him momentum for Super Tuesday and let him run a national campaign rather than a local one. 

Read or listen to NPR's report.

If you are still having trouble remembering the candidates and their stances, Laura Pasqualetto sent me a very good presentation of the candidates. I have posted it on the google group. Check it out and download it. 

So the next significant contest  for the GOP is South Carolina on Saturday. The candidate that has won S.C. has always gone on to win the GOP nomination since 1980.

 Will it be the case this year? How much momentum will the winner get? 

In South Carolina there are 3 types of Republican voters : 

1. evangelical voters : probably most attracted by Mike Huckabee or Fred Thompson
2. military personel and veterans : probably inclined to vote for McCain ( who was a prisonner of war -POW- for four years in Vietnam and who is very knowledgeable in defence matters)
3. fiscal conservatives : they could either go for Romney or McCain

Find out more and watch a N.Y. Times video. 

On the Democratic side the S.C. primary (January 26) is going to be just as important : the race is extremely tight with all three main candidates having a chance of winning : 

1. John Edwards was born in S.C. and was a Senator representing a neighbouring State : N.C.
2. Hillary Clinton's support is very strong among African-American women in particular and she is counting on their votes
3. Barack Obama is also courting the Black vote in S.C. and might be able to get it now that he appears electable. 

Race and gender issues are the subtext of the fight between Clinton and Obama, even more so after the statement made a couple days ago by Clinton who declared that Lyndon B. Johnson was at least as important in getting the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 through as was Martin Luther King. She has now qualified her comment but the harm was done. Visit her website and see how she is paying hommage to MLK.

Maybe this whole thing was completely blown out of proportion by the media: that's what Jon Stewart, from The Daily Show argues.