meganhannay.com

There are a bunch of folks who are trying to take Obama’s job. And they’re all hanging out in Iowa tonight.

I only know this because I bought a car over the weekend and have replaced my “Words With Friends” filled BART rides with NPR and the highway. And this “primary” was basically all they talked about on NPR today.

So there are a bunch of guys (and one woman) who have spent the last few weeks and a few million dollars to earn Iowans’ love and affection in. If you’re a registered Republican in one of the other 49 states, you might want to venture on over to Wikipedia or something a bit more legit than my blog. If you’re not a registered Republican, you don’t have any real decision making to do until November 6th anyways, so you might as well rely on my super awesome Dictionary of the Republican Primary for all your Republican Primary facts.

Ahem.

Megan’s Dictionary of the Republican Primary Season

Mitt Romney (currently unemployed, former Governor of MA) – Mitt is the front runner in this primary race. Republicans see him as moderate enough to actually beat Obama, mostly because of the fact that he’s flip flopped on every issue in the book. Since no one knows what Romney really thinks about, like, anything, no one really hates the guy. Basically, if you despise Obama so much that you’d rather have Raggedy Ann in office, this is the candidate you want to hope for.

Rick Santorum (Senator from PA) – Rick is the champion among the conservative evangelical Christians (hey Dad!). If you’re pro-life and anti-welfare, you’re probably a fan of Rick. He seems to be doing well in the Iowa caucus, but he also made time to kiss babies in every county in the state (unlike most states, Iowa has a “caucus” [not to be confused with Caucas] instead of a primary even though it’s basically the same thing). Unless Rick can visit every county in the United States before November, most NPR analysts don’t see much in the future of his campaign.

Newt Gingrich (currently unemployed, former Representative from Georgia) – He used to be a pretty key player in the Republican party. I know this because I grew up in a Republican household (see paragraph above), and he’s the only candidate whose name rings a bell. He used to be the Speaker of the House or something, but he had to step down because everyone got mad at him about the whole “impeaching Clinton” thing. Newt was still a pretty big front runner in Iowa before some of Mitt’s Super PACS spent millions of dollars on commercials to bash him.

Super PACS – Candidates are always trying to restrict where other candidates are getting money from. Some huge debate along these lines occurred in July of 2010, and then there was a Supreme Court Ruling, and as a result, it’s now legal for groups of organizations, companies, rando people, whatever, to band together in a Super PAC and spend as much money as they want on ads for the candidate of their choosing. (Individuals can only donate up to 30K directly to a campaign, so this allows super rich folks to spend a lot more for the guy or gal they want.)

The crazy part is – Super PACS don’t have to coordinate or seek approval of the candidate to run their ads, and therefore, they can run crazy smear campaigns on opposing candidates without having their candidate look like an asshole. He can be all like “What? I have no idea who is making these crazy ads that are bashing my opponent! I don’t KNOW how they got the psd of my logo!”

Super Sneaky!

Ron Paul (Representative from Texas) – My libertarian friends love Ron Paul.  Like – they want to marry him and have his little outspoken babies. He’s the only primary candidate who’s got much clout with the “Gen-Y” audience, which is funny considering that he’s the oldest candidate and the fact that he’s not as socially liberal as many other libertarians. His supporters like that he speaks honestly and adamantly (and unlike Mitt, he seems not to have flip-flopped very much). If you’re not much of a fan of Democrats or Republicans, and aren’t afraid of supporting a polarizing candidate, Ron might be the guy for you.

Also, it’s a running joke with Ron Paul fans that he’s been a bit ignored by the media. Put last stories and such. I’m not so sure about that one.

Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman - That candidates who have about the same chance of winning as my cat.

Tampa, Florida – This is the hot-spot (literally and otherwise) every Republican who’s anyone in the Republican party will travel to this August for the “official”nomination of the 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate. There are supposed to be all these technical goings-on, kind of like the Electoral College where different representatives from different states nominate their candidate and this and that, but everybody really knows who the candidate is long before the primary. So it’s basically like the Republican Pep Rally. After more than a year of bashing, all the loser candidates will crowd around the winner and shake their fists in support and say nice things to the press with teethy smiles.

The really suck part is, Burning Man 2012 happens at about the same time. How do you decide??