2012 Presidential Primary, March 15th

It's been hard for me to write updates on the 2012 Republican primary. Honestly, the entire process has made me sick to my stomach.

In a year where all the issues are falling on the side of conservatism, two of the four remaining candidates are spending the majority of their time smearing the other two instead of doing their due diligence in convincing me (and others) to vote for them.

Mitt Romney is the biggest offender, and Ron Paul is a close second. It was estimated in Florida that 95% of Romney's ads were negative attack ads against Gingrich instead of telling voters why they should vote for him. He did the same thing in 2008 against people like Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Huckabee.

And these millions spent on attacks and smears have prompted the need to respond, and not always in the best way, either. So instead of the issues, we talk about what might or might not be the truth about personal attacks, instead of where each man stands on the issues and how he's going to defeat Barack Obama, the socialist.

And this, more than anything, perhaps even more than his standing next to Ted Kennedy calling his "collaborator" on 'RomneyCare', is what makes it impossible for me to vote for Romney in this primary. And while I'm acutely aware that Obama needs to be defeated and will have to hold my nose and vote for him in the general election if he's the nominee, many, many people will refuse to do so because he has alienated so many people with his smugness and attitude. That number of alienated and pissed off people may exceed even the appalling number of 2008 when McCain was the coronated nominee by the elites in their own minds. Because unfortunately there are still many people who are not engaged and are uninformed, and don't realize the imminent danger of letting Obama be re-elected. And all those people see in Romney are a rich guy with good hair that thinks he's entitled to the nomination because he's "next in line".