With five primaries and caucuses done, with party favourite Mitt Romney leading, and with the next four contests before Super Tuesday favouring him, the 2012 race for the Republican nomination is beginning to slip quietly away from the top of the news agenda.
Columns / Guy Rundle
Dispatches from around the globe by Crikey‘s commentator-at-large Guy Rundle.
Mitt in a canter, thank god for enthusiastic amateur night
Well, that was quick. Polls closed in Florida at 8pm (noon AEST), and CNN declared victory for Mitt Romney at 8.30pm.
Emergency Republican scenario includes another Bush
So it’s on. And if Gingrich wins he’ll take all Florida’s delegates, 50 in total, which will put him way ahead in the delegate count.
Pinch of piss in Sth Carolina as Santorum sells lunch pail nostalgia
There is something about Rick Santorum that gets under my skin, and it has nothing to do with his positions on sexuality.
Romney fails to impress in New Hampshire
Republican Mitt Romney tried to be casual, relaxed and engaging in New Hampshire. It didn’t work. Crikey’s Guy Rundle begins his US roadshow in the bellwether state to report on this week’s crucial primary.
Refugee debate dominated by compromise, not core promises
The anti-mandatory detention campaign, which came from the Left, has a simple demand — that the country live up to its freely taken-on treaty obligations. Why have commentators like Robert Manne lost sight of that?
How violence in Europe takes a hard-Right turn
How will the Liberal Right deal with the increasingly violent and racist trajectory of the hard-Right? Not well, one suspects on the evidence.
The email that could bring about James Murdoch’s downfall
James Murdoch has misled a UK Parliamentary committee, either deliberately or by being so indifferent to the truth-value of his testimony that he has been deceitful by negligence. That’s the only conclusion one can draw from the startling new revelations of a 2008 email.
Rundle: for Cameron, Brussells sprouts a sort of zen veto
The EU could have given the UK kittens, bl-wjobs and Belgium for free, and Cameron, on returning, would have still been portrayed as “the man who sold out to Europe”.
An unusual twist in the NotW phone-hacking tale
The Leveson inquiry into the UK print media has taken an unusual turn.
Cameron’s bulldog image in danger of losing its balls
The problem for Cameron is that he’s dealing with a triple crisis — party, country and Europe — while his enemies have only one aim, to make the Tories over as a euro sceptic outfit.
The Drum, gay marriage and knowing your history
How did the cultural left win the war on marriage equality, asks Kevin Donnelly at The Drum? His answer? Radical leftists completed what he claims Antonio Gramsci called “the long march through the institutions”, to control the heights of debate.
Janet Albrechtsen on Margaret Thatcher and The Iron Lady
This week, Planet Janet is angry at the new Margaret Thatcher’s film The Iron Lady in which Meryl Streep plays the Tory supremo in her prime. Planet thinks it’s a lefty trick.
Rundle: Europe re-engineered on the run, but don’t mention the war
It is extraordinary, unprecedented, the European project that everyone was so solemn about being re-engineered on the run like, well, like the dodgy banks that put us in this mess in the first place.
Julian Assange given a legal lifeline, Supreme Court to hear his appeal
WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange won a small battle against the push to extradite him to Sweden, with the High Court allowing him the opportunity to petition the Supreme Court to hear his appeal.
A scared UK public sector take to the streets
Today was the day it all came home to people in the UK. The whole public service was out on strike, across the nation.
McMullan testimony a toxic mix of nihilism, self-righteousness and victimhood
Paul McMullan’s appearance before the Leveson inquiry was stomach turning testimony, but it was the best insight yet into what went so badly wrong at the heart of News International culture.
Europe farce and furious on the downhill slope
In the past two weeks the possibility of a eurozone default, collapse and disarray, has gone from formally possible, to actually possible, to a real and imminent danger.
Sienna Miller stars with winning Leveson performance
Down to the Royal Courts of Justice again, those bizarre fairytale towers in the middle of the Strand, their gravitas all gone the moment you learn they were created in the 19th century, the modern state wrapping itself in ancient stone.
Europe’s stuck, nothing changes in Italy, and the Pope must die
So Europe remains stuck in a common currency whose structural flaws it cannot resolve — and certainly cannot resolve without major reform in Italy, where the breathing space offered by the appointment of Mario Monti has been resisted.
Bffo and Molotovs, but real anarchists are in Brussels
Amid the drifting tear gas at the entrance to Syntagma Square, the black bloc are doing their best, with the petty weapon of the Molotov.
Italy’s Monti appointment a concession to bewilderment
The very fact that Monti and Papademos can step so easily into their appointed roles is clear evidence that the European political crisis began long before they got the call.
Irresistible force, immovable object — EU’s big bang theory
For the first time since the European debt crisis began last year, the prospect of a break-up of the euro became a very real and present possibility today.
New PM in Italy, but not yet; new PM in Greece, but not yet …
Europe remains — wait for it wait for it — yes, in crisis today, with the announcement that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi will resign — but not yet, and announcements that Greece will soon announce a new prime minister and Cabinet — but not yet.
Even Izzy Dye can run Greece as long as there’s a vote
Greece, the eurozone, the EU and the G20 were in crisis yesterday, as Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou lost the support of his deputy PM, five members of his cabinet, and several Pasok MPs, leaving the entire country, and the continent, in a state of disarray.
