Roy Maynard: Early Returns

I want credit for having a solid 100 percent rating on my political predictions for this election cycle.

I have been 100 percent wrong.

Since last spring, I have been consistently making several points:

I had good reasons for each of those predictions.

First, I was looking at money. Here's what the Washington Post reported on April 2, 2007:

"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) raised $26 million in the first quarter of the year, almost three times as much as any politician has previously raised at this point in a presidential election, officials with her campaign announced yesterday."

Three times as much.

Giuliani was raising similar sums - much of it in Texas.

"Giuliani had raised $3.69 million in Texas as of July 30, the most of any presidential candidate," the AP's Kelly Shannon reported in September. "Democratic front-runner Hill-ary Rodham Clinton was second with $2 million. Among Giu-liani's Republican rivals, Sen. John McCain has raised $1.79 million from Texas donors and Mitt Romney has raised $1.76 million."

But as important as money is, it's not everything. This election cycle has reminded me of this truth.

There's the Cinderella story of Mike Huckabee - who continues to make solid showings in primaries, despite being broke, Southern and evangelical. And there's the, well, the Ugly Stepsister story of Mitt Romney, who is obscenely wealthy and not afraid to inject his own money into his campaign. But he still can't get much love.

Both of those examples show it's not all about money. Money helps, of course, because there are planes to charter (or at least buses to fuel) and balloons to buy and staff members to feed.

Yet money can't buy love. Just ask John Edwards.

I was similarly wrong about Texas not being a player this time around.

I wasn't the only one. In December, Gov. Rick Perry lamented that Texas would be just an ATM machine for the presidential candidates. They would come for our money, but they wouldn't need our votes and our delegates.

But after the dust settled in Florida, we're still without a clear winner or even an undisputed front-runner in either party. I honestly don't think that's going to change on Tuesday - so-called Super Tuesday - when 22 states vote. I believe candidates in both parties will split the states.

And that leaves two key states, Ohio and Texas, with unexpected voices on March 4.

Which brings me to my last prediction, which I now predict will be wrong. Iraq is now almost a non-issue, at least with the American public. The candidates aren't arguing Iraq strategy; depending on their party, they're down to arguing who was the most (least) for (against) it, and when.

Now it looks as if the economy is going to become a dominant - if not the dominant - issue.

And there's no predicting which party has the edge on that; pro-business Republicans might be held responsible for the current malaise, and a revitalized strategy of "it's the economy, stupid," could propel a Democrat into the White House, as it did for Bill Clinton in 1992.

At the same time, Americans could start putting real numbers to the "policy initiatives" being batted around casually in the Democratic debates recently - health care, new assistance programs, and rollbacks of the infamous "Bush tax cuts."

So I will make one more prediction. I predict that I will owe a lot of people coffee when this is all over.

Roy Maynard
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