One of my faults in terms of my career and financial success my whole life has been an unwillingness/incapacity to "play the game." The Regular Son, somewhat unfortunately, somewhat fortunately, shares this failing. The compensating gains for me have been a great marriage, a great set of kids, more time with my family, less time doing bullshit, more time to do the things I want to do (such as they are), etc. Life is tradeoffs.
I'm thinking about "playing the game" in the context of the Presidential election because I noticed something funny over the weekend. Mitt Romney won the Puerto Rico primary. Now Puerto Ricans are American citizens, just as American as you are or I am. But, regardless of the fact of citizenship for individual Puerto Ricans, it remains a fact that Puerto Rico is not a state and has no electoral college votes. Puerto Rico literally does not matter at all in terms of winning the Presidency. Yet Romney's 22 delegates from Puerto Rico will have just as important a role in picking the Republican Presidential candidate as, say, delegates from Ohio, a must-win, swing state.
So I went back and looked at the results to date. Romney has won a total of 56 delegates in sweeping the following non-states: American Samoa, Guam, the American Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Marianas. That's over 10% of his total delegates and roughly 20% of his current lead over Rick Santorum.
Romney's organization and intelligence in going after delegates in these non-states is admirable. Santorum's unwillingness to play the game of amassing delegates is also admirable, though in a different way. But it is very weird that, if the convention becomes close, delegates from Guam or Samoa or some other non-state could push Romney over the top.
And the reason Romney WON Puerto Rico is because he wouldn't demand that English be the national language, where as, Santorum push the issue that they would have to have be English first in order to make statehood. Another way Romney is playing the game.
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