Delegate Count Revised

It seems that this delegate count I posted is based on some pretty creative math from the Romney camp.

Comments

Don't worry about it. Seems like all delegate counts will be judged irrelevant except by dumb lackeys of the system, looks like this race is shaping up so that whenever a certain segment of the blogophere doesn't like the results of a primary, they are going to raise the Diebold issue.

Posted by artappraiser | January 10, 2008 10:52 AM

matt,

listen up...
romney, and therefore, by extension, his campaign, is chronically dishonest.
anything...anything...that comes out of his camp should be scrutinized heavily and carefully.
in fact, the presumption should be that any statement is false until proven true.
romney has worked hard to merit that kind of attention.
how many times does romney - and/or his campaign - have to lie before the media understands those basic fact sbout him?

Posted by frankie d | January 10, 2008 10:56 AM

Pretend like _________ (fill in the blank) did not happen. The new Republican party mantra.

Posted by Jose Padilla | January 10, 2008 11:00 AM

Romney isn't lying! CNN reports the same numbers: Romney 30, Huckabee 21.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#R

Posted by Mark | January 10, 2008 11:02 AM

Whatever, Romney still has a bigger cock.

Posted by Negro Please | January 10, 2008 11:03 AM

Sorry, but Tapper got it wrong. He claims that Romney's people didn't count Iowa but if that were true, how would McCain have MORE delegates by Romney's count than by Tapper's. It doesn't mean Romney's count is right but...

Posted by MN | January 10, 2008 11:11 AM

oh come on...

I hate Romney as much as the next guy, but look at CNN's delegate count:

Romney: 30
Huck: 21
McCain: 10
etc...

Take away the "unpledged RNC" counts and you get:

Romney: 24
Huck: 18
McCain: 10

Meanwhile...here's what they have for the Dems:

Clinton: 183
Obama: 78
Edwards: 52

It's pretty disingenuous to attack Romney based on these varied delegate counts which lack any absolute truth at this point. It seems like he is at least partially correct to be using the counts he is...

Posted by chris | January 10, 2008 11:12 AM

Matt,

Man we're almost due for episode 2 of The Wire's Final season.

Where is your Wire commentary? No review?

You must succumb to the powers of David Simon.

Embrace all things David Simon.

When you think of Obama see in your mind a picture of David Simon. I mean Obama picked the wire as his favorite show, so it's no like you'd so far off topic...

Posted by smacfarl | January 10, 2008 11:27 AM

Well, I'm no expert on these details of whether or not Romney's claimed delegate count actually has a leg to stand on. But this whole dispute raises a broader point.

When a candidate or politician has been caught lying or deceiving on an extraordinary large number of occasions, he (reasonably) acquires a reputation for just being a "liar." Hence, it's perfectly fair to just assume he's lying about anything that seems the case, even if this is (on occasion) mistaken. After all, there's probably a vast number of other times that he lied about something, and no one happened to catch him.

It's like if someone is arrested and convicted for a string of 37 different violent rapes in the Chicago area. It's perfectly possibly he's actually innocent of 3 of them, but then he's also probably guilty of another 23 that weren't reported or caught, so it all tends to even out.

That's why it's a very dangerous thing for a politician to become widely known as a "chronic liar."

Posted by RKU | January 10, 2008 12:58 PM