Last night, the plurality of Florida Republican voters decided that Mitt Romney should be the nominee for the GOP.
While yesterday's election might be important to a candidate like Santorum, who has to decide whether he has the resources to remain competitive (his best showing was in Iowa), Florida's 50 delegates do not mean much in the grand scheme of things.
So far, only 5 percent of the 2,224 delegates have been allotted to candidates in this race. There still is a long way to go, and the campaign will probably only get worse.
As the remaining candidates struggle to take on the Romney machine, the attacks will get dirtier and more personal, although they have been pretty bad already.
For the remainder of this campaign, we would like to simply ask the candidates one thing: Why aren't you talking about the issues?
While the candidates try to prove that their opponents are really liberal wolves in conservative sheep's clothing, a lot of serious issues are being pushed aside for more mundane topics.
The whole fiasco with Gingrich's ex-wife was just plain silly and did not present any new information. And what does releasing the candidates' tax returns possibly tell us about how they will perform the duties of commander-in-chief?
Part of the blame should be placed on the national media, which focus almost entirely on the latest poll numbers or the latest attack ad.
This is not to say that negative campaigning should be prohibited or even discouraged. Negative campaigning brings a lot to elections, giving voters more information about candidates and occasionally mobilizing them to go to the polls.
However, the debates have become one negative ad soundbite after another. Rather than asking the candidates serious questions about the issues, the moderators have spent a substantial amount of time discussing the content of negative advertising and disparaging statements.
Again, part of this could be the fact that the issues were given serious consideration at the beginning of the race, some three or four years ago during the first debate. There have been 25 debates so far in this primary, yet nearly none of the previous debates spent much time talking about issues.
For instance, wouldn't it be interesting to find out what the candidates plan to do to reduce the debt? We have heard vague generalities about cutting spending and reducing the size of government, but we rarely hear specifics from any of the candidates about what they want to cut or when.
The country is going broke, and the media wants to focus on open marriages and tax returns. Perhaps we should give priority to things that matter.
