I see my last posting was on June 3.  Well, 20 days is a long time and there has been a notable amount of shaking up as the candidates, potential candidates, and non-candidates joustle for position in the Invisible Primary, three and a half years before the election.

#1:  Mitt Romney.  By default.  Wow.  This man has stayed right there at the top of this perch from the beginning.  When will he ever be pushed from his role as front-runner?
Mitt Romney has spent the past week making tedious and shrill statements excoriating Obama for not doing stuff to do stuff with the stuff doing in Iran.  It’s a lot of grand-standing for the public posture that every president since Nixon, with the exception of the last Bush, would hold, and every presidential nominee excepting McCain.

#2:  Sarah Palin.  This Mutual Aid pact with David Letterman played out to both Palin and Letterman’s benefit.  Palin gets the admiration of her legions of fans for thumping it to a Hollywood / New York celebrity.  Letterman gets to ensure that Conan O’Brien gains no traction.
Meanwhile, what’s going on in terms of actual Alaskan governance?  Alaskans can worry about that.
Hey!  She endorsed Rick Perry, Texan Segregationist!  What’s the significance of this move?  I don’t know.  Maybe about what…

#4:  Mike Huckabee … Huckabee’s endorsement of Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate nomination race  against the candidate that the RNC thinks might actually wins means. 
Incidentally, Mike Huckabee has also said some strong things against Obama’s measured reaction to the situation in Iran.  But when he says it, it sounds a little goofy.  The image of putting squirrels in popcorn machines doesn’t lend itself to Macho Talk.
Also notable is he appeared on an extended interview with Jon Stewart to talk Abortion.  Because nothing lends itself to comedy quite like the topic of Abortion.

#3:  Mark Sanford.  Big Enormous news.  Mark Sanford disappeared for a weekend.   He didn’t tell anyone where or what he was going or doing.  My first thought?  Went off to the woods.  Went hiking for a while.  Dropped out for a spell.  Big deal.
As it turned out, he … went off to the woods and went hiking.  I don’t know why my prediction was correct, and there are some who are still questioning the story.  If it makes you feel better, we can assume he went off on a tryst with a woman named Sally.  If that isn’t enough we can cut to the bottom of the page and believe the rather innocuous item that he went and had an affair with Charles Crist.  It doesn’t change the bothersome question of why I would care.  For the item of hypocrisy, it’s notable that he wandered off on Federally funded trailing — that’s as sensational as figuring out if he’s made any anti-gay comments and attaching it to a possible tryst with Charles Crist.
Anyway, everyone seems to be counting this out as the minute he lost his presidential footing.  But actually this should fit well with his constituency of “respectable” Ron Paul-ites.  He’s sent a signal that they’d love — that if elected president, Mark Sanford may just drop out of sight and not do anything for a two-year stretch.  That’s worth a vote for the anti-gummint people.

#5:  Tim Pawlenty.  Bowing down before the Religious Right.  And getting out of dodge before the going gets real tough.  And keeping Franken out of the Senate.  Is that enough for a presidential nomination?  Probably not.

#6:  Newt Gingrich.  Creeping toward his second apology — first time a back-track over Sotomayor, second time… well, never mind.  He’s not going to apologize to the Uighurs. 

#7:  Mitch Daniels.  Is he running?  He states categorically he’s not, and we’re beyond the age when a presidential candidate can pretend not to be running and then be nominated at the Convention, meaning if he wants to run he’ll have to say categorically so sometime in the next two years.  But that doesn’t stop the National Review from proclaiming his a real winner.  Because he’s so homely in that RV of his.

#8:  Bobby Jindal.  Has requested / ordered a “Bobby Jindal for President” group to cease and desist.  Wants to dampen the enthusiasm, I guess.  Now it’s time for his supporters to turn on him.

#9.  A tie.  The 178 House Republicans, 39 of the 40 Senate members, and the 17 Republican Governors not already listed.

#243.  John Ensign.  Yep.  That Ensign bottoms out at #243.  It’ll be interesting to see if he can recover from this set-back.

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