Maine GOP should have waited

Mitt Romney (left) and Ron Paul (right) are in a tight race in Maine. Courtesy: IBTimes.com

If there are 35 laps left in the Indy 500 and two race cars are way ahead of the pack- one less than a second ahead of the other- do you announce the leader as the winner? If there are 35 laps left in a 500 lap race, that means that 83% of the race is over, right? What if CBS sports were to declare the winner right then? That’s what the Republican Party of Maine did last Sunday.

Maine’s statewide caucus spans just over a month. The first municipal caucuses began on January 29th and will continue until March 3rd, allowing for a beautifully decentralized nominating process. What is disheartening, though, is that the Maine GOP announced former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as the winner on Saturday with a lead of 194 votes over Texas Rep. Ron Paul. What they forgot to mention is that only 83% of the caucuses have taken place. In a contest that is the first indication of who will receive the largest portion of Maine’s 24 delegates, this announcement should be called premature, if not unbased. However, now the remaining caucuses will most likely favor Mitt Romney because of bias confirmation.

I can only hope that the Republicans in the upcoming Maine caucuses will vote their based on conscience and not cede automatic victory to Romney. Ron Paul is behind by less than three percent, a total of 194 votes that can easily be made up in the remaining caucuses.

As for the Maine GOP, what are they going to do if Paul does win? Would they lose a lot of their credibility? Maybe that’s what they deserve for jumping to premature conclusions. I can’t help but wonder where the logic is in this announcement and why they would make such a premature announcement in such a close race. Besides, thirty five laps is a long way to go.