AUGUSTA, Maine — With Iowa’s caucuses just over and New Hampshire’s primary days away, presidential politics to be played out this year are revving up in Maine, where Republicans will hold caucuses over several days next month.
Plans are nearly final for Maine’s presidential preference caucuses, and all of the attention is going to the Republicans, who have several candidates vying for the nomination. Maine’s is among the nation’s earliest GOP caucus dates, with town and city committees being encouraged to gather between Feb. 4 and 11.
Party officials say that way, they can announce on Feb. 11 who has won. The timing will also give Maine full glare of the nation’s spotlight by being the only state that day to trumpet which candidate has won. The nonbinding votes are the first step toward electing 24 Maine delegates to the Republican National Convention.
The only states to get center stage before Maine are Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada. That puts Maine’s nearly a month ahead of the 10-state Super Tuesday contests March 6.
Going into Maine’s GOP caucuses, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are said to have the strongest organizations.
But some of Maine’s top party officials, including Gov. Paul LePage, hadn’t made up their minds by this week who they would vote for. LePage said he’d been contacted by nearly every major candidate.
State Rep. Paul Davis of Sangerville, who was on the Romney campaign’s Maine steering committee four years ago, also hadn’t made up his mind this time around.
“Everyone’s called and asked me for support and I just turned them down,” said Davis. “If I had to choose right now, it would be between Romney and (former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick) Santorum,” said Davis.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, was Maine Republicans’ top choice four years ago, as they bypassed eventual nominee John McCain despite his endorsement by U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Romney won with 52 percent of the GOP members’ vote in what was essentially a popularity contest.
This year’s votes, likewise, will be nonbinding for delegates who will be elected to attend the state party convention, where delegates to the GOP national convention will be chosen. Four years ago, 18 national delegates were allotted to the state, but the number will be 24 this year, former GOP state chairman Mark Ellis said Sunday.
This year, fellow New Englander Romney has won endorsements of prominent Maine Republicans including state Attorney General William Schneider, state Senate Majority Leader Jon Courtney of Springvale and Sen. Richard Rosen of Bucksport.
Ron Paul supporters have rejuvenated a campaign organization in Maine that was considered efficient four years ago, party activists say. But Paul can’t depend on a solid bloc of support from the tea party faction that’s active in Maine, says a leader, Andrew Ian Dodge, who’s challenging Snowe for the GOP Senate nomination.
“The tea party is as split in Maine as they are in any other state,” with some members supporting Newt Gingrich and others who had backed Michele Bachmann before she dropped out, said Dodge.
On the Democratic side, caucuses will be Feb. 26, party officials said. With President Barack Obama the only party candidate and presumptive nominee, much of the business will focus on electing delegates to the June state party convention.
The majority of these Republican candidates are disgusting. They want to have the laws of the land conform to biblical standards – sharia by another name. But I guess it’s only scary if the laws are based on other religions. They talk about a “war against religion” and what is really impressive about this rhetoric is how it makes fighting for freedom of religion (and the freedom from being forced into a belief system) and equality seem really evil and un-American. The only way we can be a free nation, one where we’re free to believe as we choose (as the founding fathers intended), is to NOT codify religious beliefs into law. Personally, I think you should be free to believe whatever idiotic thing you want, like that people only become gay because they were molested. Go ahead and believe that if you don’t believe Christ and other points of “morality” and faith, you will burn in hell. But in a free country, any restrictions on freedom must be based on reason and evidence.
Watching these debates really gets me worked up, but I just have to take a step back and look at them objectively. There is no way in hell any of these candidates can win the presidency.
…”But in a free country, any restrictions on freedom must be based on reason and evidence.”…
*****************************************************************************************
Tell that to the Marine facing his last moment of life defending your freedom.
Is asking you to limit your own freedom with your own personal responsibility asking too much from you? Can you respect the fact that a self- acknowledged imperfect American might freely choose a religion (a Christian option included) to guide his or her personal freedom?
Believe (or disbelieve) what you will but historically and factually the founders acknowleged Divine Providence even as they crafted the very documents which protect your freedom.
Tell that to the Marine? I would. If you’re going to restrict the freedom that millions have fought for, you better have a good reason for it — a real one, one that is real to all of us, not just the religion that you choose practice and seek to enforce on the rest of us.
I OBVIOUSLY can respect the freedom to choose a religion. I said that very clearly. What I can’t respect is those people not being satisfied in having a religious for themselves, but instead seeking to force others to adhere to their personal beliefs. That’s wrong and that’s un-American. Your suggestion that we’re a Christian nation is a lie. You need to look no further than the 1st Amendment to know that.
Freedom of religion and freedom from state enforced religion. It’s pretty simple.
It’s clear that reading comprehension is not your forte. Word selection reveals lots about an author’s philosophy.
Resort to an unfounded personal attack when your points have no merit?
I believe in freedom of religion and for that freedom to exist, the government cannot get involved and sanction one person’s religious beliefs over another’s. Plain and simple. These candidates can’t grasp that or the voters they’re pandering to can’t grasp that.
Do you also believe in the concept of self-governance?
“They want to have the laws of the land conform to biblical standards – sharia by another name”.I dont know too many Christians that want to stone you because of your sexual preference. Or be beaten because you were alone in public
My point isn’t the laws themselves, but that they’re based solely in religion when we are a secular nation. I was highlighting the irony of the people that scream about the coming of sharia law, but engage in similar behavior of putting their religious beliefs into legislation in order to deny others freedoms they enjoy. We can’t be a free nation when our laws don’t allow for a freedom of religion.
Comparing Sharia law which explicitly allows Muslim men to rape and murder their wives to the Biblical commandment shows you are either very ignorant or sociopathic in your thinking You make no argument, valid or otherwise – you are simply trying to fight with anyone who believes other then you. Hate speech comes in all forms – you can even be an Atheist to hate people for their beliefs. Hitler hated the Jews. You hate Christians. I don’t hate Muslims, Atheists, or Pagans – but Islam clearly teaches the subjection of all non believers – a close minded religion that governs by the sword.
Did you read my comment at all or are you here to just flip out? The point is we can’t have freedom of religion when one religion forces its religion on others like these Republicans are seeking to do. Who said I hate Christians? There was nothing hateful in my comment. I’m actually a Catholic. It just goes to show that you’re the “ignorant” one. Don’t make assumptions.
All I spoke about was freedom of religion. You’re going on crazy tangents. Religion should NEVER be the basis to remove or deny rights from others — especially in the USA.
People like you successfully removed the Ten Commandments from classrooms, helped removed the death penalty from murder, and are working hard to destroy the historical record of a nation based upon biblical standards established by our founding fathers. I hope you are proud at what America has become in fifty years.
Before you scream obscenities to prove a point, perhaps you should read up on our Founders and what they actually SAID. Read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, your local library has a copy. Their faith and their respect for the Creator of the Universe, the God of the Bible is clearly evident through every literary work written by them in the 1700 and 1800’s.
“Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their
only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the
precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience,
to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and
charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward
Almighty God … What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.”
John Adams
My whole comment is about the Constitution. There can’t be a freedom of religion if one religion is trying to impose its beliefs on all others. Doing so is completely un-American.
You wanna play the quote game though? Let’s go.
“The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.” John Adams
“The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?” John Adams
“. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.” John Adams
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.” John Adams
Anybody But Obama 2012!
Rodney Dangerfield for President!
I’d like to make a suggestion for an appropriate song to be played at these caucuses. How about the ever popular “Send In The Clowns” sung by the great Judy Collins? These lyrics are spot on for the occasion.Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.
Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.
Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
Santorum2012
Romney supports both government mandated healthcare & ban on guns
Romney helped businesses to move their operations overseas
Romney helped create the name Taxachusetts
Santorum, Ron Paul’s libertarian foreign policy takes the other extreme that would endanger our troops
They wouldn’t be endangered, they would be home. They give Ron Paul more donations than all the other candidates combined.
… except Obama
The current crop of GOP Candidate’s foreign policy examples range from Perry’s ‘Let’s go back and kick butt Texas nonsense to Ron Paul’s ‘Retreat from the world and hide in the closet’ isolationism. Paul’s policy alone shows that he is more than ready to run up the white flag and abandon the U.S.’s leadership role we play. By extending Paul’s policy, one had better start looking at what’s going to happen when the Mexican drug cartel’s feel free to literally swarm over the Texas border with no fear of being stopped. Perry’s policy is not much better, given that he’s hopscotching all over the country and just letting Texas sink into a sea of crap. If this is an example of the current GOP’s field of foreign policy expertiese then we had all better start learning new language’s. And as far as Romney goes, well, one only has to look as far as the old Dexter and Hathaway plant’s to see where he’s going in terms or foreign and economic policy.
The difference between Gingrich and Romney is that Gingrich is wrong on every issue, while with Romney, if you wait long enough, he will always be both right and wrong and every possible position in between on every issue.
“Romney revealed that polling from Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan’s former pollster whom Romney had hired for the ’94 campaign, showed it would be impossible for a pro-life candidate to win statewide office in Massachusetts. In light of that, Romney decided to run as a pro-choice candidate, pledging to support Roe v. Wade”
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/york-romney-briefed-church-abortion-stance/282721
As one prominent Republican has noted “Mitt is a perfectly lubricated weather vane.”
He changes “beliefs” and positons with the political winds.
“LePage said he’d been contacted by nearly every major candidate.”
I wonder how many of them are asking that he NOT endorse them. :)