Open Thread

Obama leads Romney by a pretty substantial margin in Ohio, 49% to 42%, according to a new Public Policy Poll out today. What is most impressive about this poll is not Obama's lead, but it is the fact that only 28% of Ohioans have a favorable opinion of Mitt Romney, and 56% have a negative, unfavorable opinion of him. That is unelectable. Those are toxic numbers. Or at least, when Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich had those numbers, we called them toxic.

With 94% of the vote counted in Florida, there have been roughly 1,583,000 votes cast. In the 2008 Republican primary in Florida, roughly 1,950,000 votes were cast. There's probably about 100,000 votes left to count tonight, but we can already see that despite a growing population, approximately 300,000 fewer Republicans voted tonight than four years ago.

It is a slow news day and I am again slammed at work. Tonight, Mitt Romney will win the Florida primary and be the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Newt Gingrich takes issue with those, including myself, that say that. "You mean those who said I was dead in June? Those who said I was dead in December? They are about as accurate as they were the last two times they were wrong." - Newt Gingrich, quoted by ABC News. He said the race would go on for "six or eight months" and then added: "unless Romney drops out earlier."

So Mitt Romney is pulling away in Florida. It looks like he will win the state by double digits, if not by 20 points. What does this mean for the Republican Primary race going forward? I suspect the race will continue for some time, and continue to be acrimonious, but the outcome is no longer in doubt: Mitt Romney will be the nominee. There are two question remaining: 1) Will Donald Trump jump in the race as an Independent if it appears Mitt Romney can't beat Obama? and 2) What will Palin and Gingrich do? Given her comments over the weekend on her Facebook page, it appears she hates Romney with a passion, as does Gingrich. Do they cause trouble at the convention? Do they team up with Trump? Do they go third party themselves? Well, here are some polls to occupy us for the time being. They are all pretty boring now.

Two major polls from NBC and ABC show the same thing: Mitt Romney's favorability has dropped dramatically over the course of the Republican primary. In one poll, among independents, 51% don't view him favorably while just 23% do. That is mind-blowingly bad. Sarah Palin bad. Dan Quayle bad. Jack the Ripper bad. So in the end, it doesn't matter who is the nominee of the Republican Party anymore. Whether it is Romney or Gingrich, both are going to lose, and probably lose big, to President Obama.

Two polls yesterday indicated two things: 1) that the Democrats are heading for a takeover in the House, and 2) Romney now has toxic favorability numbers that make him, and Gingrich, unelectable in the general. Meanwhile, President Obama has a 53% favorability rating.

From the files of "What Could Go Wrong:" Romney's new debate coach is Brett O'Donnell, who had been working as a strategist for Michele Bachmann. Gingrich has raised $2 million since South Carolina. Which was only this past weekend, but for some reason feels like a lifetime ago now.

The radical Christian right is dying: Put simply, the Christian Right is getting old. According to the largest and most recent study we have of American religion and politics, by…