Maryland Primary

The Maryland primaries are scheduled for April 3rd.  The political ads have started on both television and radio, but thankfully we have not been inundated with them yet.  So far, I have only seen or heard ads from a couple of the SuperPACS out there.  I have heard radio advertising put out by Winning Our Future, touting the credentials of Newt Gingrich for President.  The other ad is from Restoring Our Future, the pro-Romney SuperPAC.  It is a negative attack ad against Rick Santorum.

This is one of the things that bugs me about Romney and his supporters.  It has been their method of operation this entire campaign.  Whenever there has been another candidate that has risen in the polls to challenge Romney's status as front runner to become the Republican nominee for President, he and his surrogates release a barrage of negative ads to tear down their opponent.  They do little in their ads to point towards anything positive about Romney and his qualifications.

Thus far, that strategy has worked for Romney.  By far, his campaign and his SuperPAC have far outspent the opposition during the primary season.  In the initial Iowa caucus, Newt Gingrich was ahead of Romney in the polls and they attacked Gingrich relentlessly.  When Gingrich won South Carolina and was rising again in the polls, the blasted him in Florida.  The vast majority of ads in that race were negative ads against Gingrich run by Romney's campaign and the SuperPAC.

Now, the recipient of the Romney attack machine is Rick Santorum.  There have been a number of states where Santorum had sizable leads in the polls leading up to the primary only to eventually lose the primary vote after being attacked and out spent by a sizable margin.  Looking back, it would not surprise me if it was a Romney supporter who ended releasing the information that eventually led to Herman Cain, who was on top of the polls when the news leaked, that leaked that information.

My intention is to support whoever ends up being the Republican nominee for President.  All of them have their flaws, but I like all of them better than Barack Obama.  My concern is that Romney's strategy, if this will be his strategy in the general election, will fail against Obama.  It is one thing to launch attacks and outspend campaigns that are strapped for cash.  It is quite another to try to outspend the well funded Obama campaign.

On another note, Maryland has early voting, which began today.  When the state first passed early voting, I was against the idea.  I felt like there was a set day for voting, and that should be it.  However, today I decided to take advantage of early voting to cast my vote for Rick Santorum.  I was torn between him and Gingrich.  Part of the reason that I decided to do it today is that I had about an hour to kill before my wife and I were to go to the Bowie Baysox fun fest and figured it would be better than feeling rushed to vote on April 3rd.  Still not sure I fully like the idea of early voting, but that could change.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney already outspending Rick Santorum 55 to 1 on Wisconsin TV (dailykos.com)
• Pro-Romney super PAC increases ad buys (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• Net Negative-Romney Banks On Attacks (thedailybeast.com)
• Santorum Looks Strong In Louisiana (myfoxphoenix.com)