Why do we on the Republican side always seem to get saddled with the "interesting" candidates?
Back in December the polling for the Democrat field looked like this:

Hillary Clinton (35%)
Barack Obama (29%)
John Edwards (17%)
Bill Richardson (10%)
Dennis Kucinich (3%)
Joe Biden (2%)
Chris Dodd (1%)
Mike Gravel (0%)
None of these (1%)
No opinion (3%)

Here we are just two days before Super Tuesday with Republican goings-on illustrated by a recent poll in Texas (the only recent poll I have seen), which shows the following for the Republicans (The previous poll numbers are shown in parentheses.):

Mitt Romney 30% (11%)
John McCain 29% (24%)
Mike Huckabee 20% (26%)
Ron Paul 8% (4%)
Alan Keyes 3% (0%)
Undecided 10% (8%)

While the Democrats have now reduced their field to Clinton and Obama, on the Republican side Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Alan Keyes are all set to play spoiler, leaving one of the two least conservative candidates of the field with a “clear flight path to the nomination” as described by Michael Barone. Incidentally, the title of his article, “Republicans Unite; Democrats Divide,” is somewhat ironic, given the love-fest which was the Democrat Debate on Thursday night. As Clinton and Obama prepared to leave the stage, he was caught on camera whispering sweet nothings into her ear, with her smiling like a little schoolgirl. It was so cute...

In 1992 it was H. Ross Perot who kept George H. W. Bush from getting a second term, giving the White House to Bill Clinton. Now it is Huckabee, Paul, and Keyes, who can’t seem to bring themselves to leave the stage.

This is so very painful to watch.

Mike B.