Super Tuesday Showdown...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Long, long months of insane jockeying and crazy politicking has brought the ragged Republican Party to this moment: Super Tuesday, March 6th, the day residents of 10 states cast their votes and spread the 437 delegates candidates hope they get on their way to the party's 2012 presidential nomination.

It'll be people living in the states shown in red in the map shown above. The battlegrounds stretch across the country, from Massachusetts to North Dakota, from Georgia to Alaska. The main prize is delegate-rich Ohio.

Candidates need 1,144 delegates to claim the nomination. At present, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads the pack, with ex-Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick santorum second and also-rans Newt Gingrich, the party's official adulterer, and fake Libertarian Ron Paul rounding out the final four. The latter two are given no chance of winning the nomination, and pundits are saying Santorum needs to win big on Tuesday to have a chance at continuing the fight. Romney, battered and bruised of late, nonetheless is seen as the eventual nominee.

Observers have painted this contest as one of the dirtiest in recent times. Romney is considered a world-class flip-flopper on major issues such as health care and immigration. Santorum's vigorous morality campaign has grabbed a portion of the republican Party's extremist Right Wing, but is seen as poison for any national fight. Gingrich is banking on a big win in Georgia, but is now generally considered an annoyance. Paul has not won a primary and has largely been branded as a Romney foil; that is, he is the one candidate who has not blasted the former governor during any of the recent debates.

What the campaigning has done, however, is completely soil all of the Republicans in one form or another. Chasing moral issues in the face of a bad national economy is seen as bad news in the eyes and ears of voters, who want to hear ideas on curbing unemployment and the rising federal budget deficit. Republicans have mysteriously steered away from those rocks, focusing instead on opposing every tiny move made by the Obama Administration, on such things as contraception, in general, and contraception in the religious world.

Tuesday, nonetheless, may finally yield an opponent for popular President Barack Obama. It'll be one of these guys shouldering the frayed Republican flag, perhaps carrying it at a falling angle after the party's nomination wars.

The results may - or may not - be dramatic...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:...Thanks to a series of re-districting legal battles, the Texas Primary, included in the yellow states on our map, is now scheduled for May 29th...]