A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida shows Rick Perry leading Mitt Romney 31% to 22%. Meanwhile, a new Suffolk University/7NEWS poll in New Hampshire shows Mitt Romney leading with 41%, followed by Ron Paul at 14%, Jon Huntsman at 10% and Rick Perry at 8%.
So Perry or Bachmann or Palin will win Iowa. Romney will win New Hampshire. Huntsman will drop out, as will Gingrich, Santorum, Cain, Johnson, and McCotter. The big 5 will continue to South Carolina, where either Perry or Palin will win. Romney will win Nevada. And then it comes down to Florida.
Eric Kleefeld reminds us what the Republican Party used to stand for, in 1860 and 1864:
[These] platforms inherited the Whig tradition of what were known at the time as “internal improvements” — government investment in infrastructure. For example, the platforms called for government to aid in the large project of constructing a transcontinental railroad, to improve rivers and harbors, and to have “a vigorous and just system of taxation” in order to ensure the payment of the national debt. The 1864 platform also declared: “Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”