Do you... do you think speaking their names is what summons them into this world?

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL AND HE SHALL APPEAR.

And I haven't baked cookies in a couple months; it probably wouldn't end well if no one has any cookies to offer.

Do you... do you think speaking their names is what summons them into this world? search engine results.

FTFY.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL AND HE SHALL APPEAR.

It's been over a week since I last mentioned how awesome you guys are.

Well, the Bomb blew the competition away, and (told ya) the Choir Boy gets his credit. Not that this will do him any good; his only hope was to assemble the Holy Smoke Evangelical Choir under his direction and wave his baton at all the other candidates. (Yes, I did that deliberately.) It will take a couple more rounds to push his numbers down enough to give up the ghost. He says he's staying because "the longer the race lasts, the better it is for conservatives." Because we all know just how much the Nut and the Bot are candy-ass liberals, right?

The Bot seems to have completed an overnight diagnostic cycle, and rebooted this morning to announce that he's perfectly capable and willing to release his 2010 tax returns, thank you very much, and an estimate of his 2011 taxes. I think I see the problem here; the Bot locked up because he doesn't have the processor speed and memory installed to calculate just how rich he is, how little he pays in taxes, and how little he works to earn any of that money. He doesn't really have a clue what's in all that paperwork; he just knows that minions tell him it won't be ready 'till April, and since that's good enough for the annoying bureaucrats at the IRS that he'd like to fire, shouldn't it be good enough for everyone else?

I think it took the Bot this long just to assimilate that people care that he's rich. Because, as Charlie Pierce keeps saying, F the Debt. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.

Now, here's the big question. South Carolina was tailor-made for the Bomb. Florida, not so much. 99.9% of Republicans in SC are white and are happy to vote for the man with the dog whistle. In Florida you have people of different hues. Also too? They're from all over the place. Can the Bomb keep the momentum going? Even with sugar daddies, the Bomb can only hope to at best spend an even amount of cash as the Bot.

Oh, excuse me. The noncoordinating SuperPACs can only hope to match each other. Because they have nothing at all to do with the candidates they work so very hard to air automagically appropriate ads for.

While Florida may not be a make or break, it's certainly going to be interesting.  It's another winner-take-all contest, with 50 delegates up for the prize.  The latest RealClearPolitics average has the race looking this way:

Romney   36.7   
Gingrich   33.3   
Santorum 10.8   
Paul         8.5

Which means it's still way too close to give this to either one.  There's a good possibility that Gingirch's latest day in the sun combined with the proximity to his home state of Georgia combined with "Not Mitt" gives him a significant boost.  If he wins then I see this race as Obama/Clinton Mark II and we'll have a shooting match past Super Tuesday.   

And Florida is in.  I wouldn't entirely categorize as a total landslide, but since Florida is winner take all, Mitt gets all the marbles.

Romney   771,842   46%   50
Gingrich   531,294   32%    0
Santorum 222,248   13%    0
Paul        116,776    7%     0

Paul's going down in flames which probably means it's only a few weeks before he jumps and goes for the Libertarian nomination.  Santorum is also going down pretty hard, the "win" in Iowa nearly useless.   We've got Nevada on the 4th, Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri on the 7th.

Here's the big board.

Rommney     84
Gingrich       27
Paul            10
Santorum      8
Perry           0
Huntsman     0
Bachmann     0

I don't know if I'd equate the "Winner Take All" rules of party primaries with the two party system.

If I think you're equating the Electoral College with the primary system, then they're really separate things, though that does make more sense with the point you're trying to make with eroding support for any third party as the last time a third party took a state in the Electoral College was 1968. 

The winner take all in primaries does keep fringe candidates from gaining traction, however.  Paul's delegates have come from the states where they were proportional so far, which kept him in the running so far. 
The problem with third parties in America, I'd say, is more the lack of broad appeal.  Most of the American third parties, whether due to general limited access or just because, are generally parties formed around a specific niche appeal.  The Libertarians come to mind.  There are some that try to be broad such as the New Whig party, but they're so minor right now you couldn't even get 10% of American voters to even know they exist much less tell you what they're about.

I'd think that if we could get a third party that has a lot of people behind it and has a broad appeal, we could see some shakeup.  At the height of its power, if the Tea Party had split off, you could probably argue they'd have had the potential like Wallace's American Independent Party in '68.   Though granted, even then the AIP was a niche party, largely a "paleoconservative" party that gained traction in the south due to its segregationist planks.

Looks like Nevada's smitten with Romney.
I can understand Gingrich sticking in the race for a while yet, but Santorum?
Really? Just, let it go, man, because it's gone.

My theory is that most pundits are waiting for Super Tuesday to make a real decision.

...They're waiting for dollar-ninety-nine McBLTs?

Looks like Gingrich has been newtered.

And Santorum has surged from behind!

And Santorum has surged from behind!

Please tell me you had the Dan Savage definition in mind when you wrote this.