It's Super Tuesday! Whatever.

by CA Pol Junkie

The media loves a horse race, so for them Super Tuesday is the day and Ohio is the place that decides if Mitt Romney really is inevitable or not, at least for the next week or so. The race for the GOP nomination has been confounding for pundits and hilarious for Democrats because of two strong but competing forces: Mitt Romney is the only candidate with a serious campaign but most Republican voters would rather eat their own liver than nominate him.

Romney's strengths in the primaries are with moderates, wealthy suburban Republicans and Mormons, which makes him especially strong in the northeast and mountain west. That gives him a few aces in the hole thanks to the various methods states use to allocate their delegates. Just like Romney won all of Florida's and Arizona's winner-take-all delegates, he will almost certainly win all the delegates from Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, California, and Utah. Those 8 contests get Romney 39% of what he needs to get a majority of the convention delegates. Meanwhile, Southern states generally allocate their delegates somewhat proportionally so Romney can win delegates even in his weakest region.

March will be an ugly month for Romney. There are a few states where he will do well, but there will also primaries in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Oklahoma where he won't look so pretty. Eleven other states are holding caucuses where the enthusiastic supporters of Rick Santorum and Ron Paul can skew the process. It just doesn't matter, though. As long as Romney can maintain approximately 25% support in those states where he is weak, that will be enough to give him at least 1,144 delegates at the convention to win the nomination. Even if he misses the mark, the GOP has 117 super delegates from the Republican National Committee who can put Romney over the top.

Go ahead and read Nate Silver's typically insightful and detailed Super Tuesday preview for fun, but the GOP and America are stuck with Mitt Romney as their nominee regardless. He won't wrap it up until June, when he wins all of California's 172 delegates, but it will happen. While it will be vomitous to see so much of Mitt Romney in the fall, for now we can pass the popcorn and watch the GOP embarrass itself in many more states across the country.