I’m writing this as the results are coming in from the Florida Republican Primary. It’s been a tough few weeks for the candidates, and it points to more months of negative campaigning, Super Pacs, and unlimited bloodletting.

Coming out of the South Carolina primary it appeared that the Gingrich campaign had some momentum, and this was of great concern to the Republican establishment. The Romney campaign came out with strong negative ads and won Florida.

I’ve update the table and you can see there is no more agreement than before.

The race is still on. Nevada is next.

Four years ago I tried to keep track of the delegate count for the Republican and Democratic primaries and it gave me a headache. That headache has already returned and I’m taking a new strategy. My headache was caused by the fact that several news organizations keep a delegate count, but none of them agree. This year I’ve decided to take a different track. I’m setting up a page to keep track of the counts of a few different organizations. We’ll see how it happens. You can access this page here.

Tonight the voters in Iowa meet to begin the process of choosing a candidate for president. The Democratic nominee is a given, and most of the news is in the Republican caucus. Starting tonight I’m planning to keep track of the delegates that each candidate wins. Four years ago I found this to be a headache as no two outlets had the same number. Nevertheless I’ll try again.

As a strong Democrat I have to confess fascination in watching the Republican race. With the exception of Mitt Romney who started moderately and has stayed there, there has been a series of what I call the Republican Vomit Comet experiences. It’s clear to me that Mitt is the Republican equivalent of 2004’s John Kerry: nobody is thrilled about him, but they need to find somebody to beat the incumbent. As Republican voters look to someone else to nominate, they find someone, shoot him (or her in the case of Michelle Bachmann) to the top of the polls, find out it’s just not going to work and drop him back to single digits.

It began with Sarah Palin who flirted with running, but elected to pass. Since then we’ve seen the same arc with Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, most recently, Newt Gingrich.

As I see it now, the Republican nominee is going to be Mitt Romney, or perhaps the dark horse, Rick Santorum.

If it turns out to be Rick, you heard it here first.

By the way, my Dad is out of the hospital! Thank you all for your prayers.