Yee Fuckin' Haw! The Republican Primaries in Mississippi and Alabama

The clusterfuck that is the Republican nomination for President continues tonight in two of America's most conservative states or as Sarah Palin likes to say, where "real America" resides.

By Real America, we mean two of the dumbest motherfucking states. Mississippi, the dumbest state, and Alabama, the fourth dumbest state, will be voting tonight. Coincidently, Mississippi is tied for the most conservative state and Alabama is the fifth most conservative state. This seemingly raises the question whether there is a positive correlation between states with low IQ and high levels of conservatism or put another way, are states with a larger population more likely to have a higher IQ? Using the data above, I have plotted the results below.

It turns out there's a somewhat significant (r=.318) positive correlation between the percent of liberals in a state and the average IQ. New England states tend to do the best on IQ tests whereas Deep South states do the poorest on IQ exams. Should we look into this very much? Probably not, since geography and average income are more likely to be casual factors in IQ exams, but for tonight, let's just stipulate that we're dealing two extremely unintelligent states that just so happen to be highly conservative.

Interesting enough, these idiotic states also have backwards laws when it comes to beer. Mississippi doesn't allow beers to be produced over 5% abw (~6.2% abv) and in fact, doesn't even classify beer as an alcoholic beverage. Huh? Alabama doesn't allow beer to be sold in containers greater than 16 oz. This means you can't buy many of the most popular craft beers and Belgian imports, which typically come in 22 oz or 750mL bottles. I guess I'll skip Alabama and Mississippi on any upcoming beer tours (especially since over 1/3 of Alabama's counties are dry!)

Now that we know we're dealing with some real dumb Americans that don't know to write beer laws, let's look at the state of the race and tonight's primaries. Willard 'Magic Underpants' Romney is the current front runner having won 14 states and amassing 455 delegates. Rick 'Anal Mess' Santorum has carried seven states and now has 199 delegates. Newt 'Stay Puft Marshmallow Man' Gingrich has won South Carolina and Georgia and has 117 delegates. Ron Paul hasn't won shit and still somehow has 64 delegates. (Delegate counts were reported from RealClearPolitics and may vary source to source.) Both of tonight's primaries are essentially must-wins for Gingrich, whose only support has come from the Deep South. If he can't continue this pattern in Alabama and Mississippi and he can't win anywhere else, the Marshmallow Man would be expected to drop out of the race, were it not for his gigantic ego. A win in either states for Magic Underpants would be huge, as he has failed to win in the south so far outside of Florida. Neither of tonight's contests tonight are must-wins for Anal Mess, but if he could pick up a win or two, it could further fuel the argument that people are coalescing against Willard.

It turns out that polling in the Deep South is notoriously inaccurate. Nate Silver of 538 has Newt a slight favorite in Alabama and Mitt a slight favorite in Mississippi. For all intents and purposes, both of these states are pure tossups between Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum. It would boggle my mind if Romney would win either of these states, especially as a Mormon, but our Missouri correspondent, Justin Nielsen, has personally met some hardcore Romney supporters in Alabama. My guess is tonight will be a sweep for Newt Gingrich. Maybe southerners will look past Willard's love of government mandated health care and only see his love for grits, but I don't think so.

I almost forgot that Hawaii is also holding their caucus tonight, but Romney is expected to easily win there.


6:00 PM MDT: The polls are now closed in Mississippi and Alabama, and both races are too close to call. Interestingly enough, the betting market, Intrade, has Santorum a slight favorite in Alabama and Romney the favorite in Mississippi. I started with the liberal MSNBC's coverage, but they won't stop bitching about how many southerners believe that Obama is a Muslim. Polls also show that Republicans in the South (actually everywhere!) believe that Obama has raised taxes. This is actually incorrect and is just another instance of these dumb fuckers either making shit up or believing the bullshit that is out there.


6:14 PM MDT: Santorum is leading CNN's exit poll in Alabama. We have a first here at the Festung Europa Political Desk tonight. We have a rabid, radical fan of the blog joining us as our guest tonight. I guess it's somewhat of a Brady Bunch evening! (Ed. note: Sunshine Day!) Our first beer that we'll be tasting is Spezial Rauchbier Lager. This is a smoked lager from the very famous beer town of Bamberg, Germany. Schlenkerla is the more famous Rauchbier brewery in Bamberg, but Spezial makes some special beers as well. In a random turn of events, the distributor, Shelton Brothers, recently brought Spezial back to Colorado for the first time in four years.

Spezial Rauchbier pours a touch hazy, a dark, red brown appearance with a cream colored head, and it has a delicious smoked ham/meaty, light maple, rich caramel malty, smoky aroma. There's a rich caramel, fairly toasty malty, lightly ashy, meaty smoky flavor with a dry, smoky finish. Overall, it's an excellent brew, though not quite the equal of a Schlenkerla. Highly recommended for $7 per 0.5 L bottle!

The coverage is devolving into a lot of boring bullshit since nothing is really happening.

7:53 PM MDT: MSNBC has just called Alabama for Santorum with 26% of the vote reporting. Mississippi has a larger percent reporting, but it's quite close right now with Santorum holding a narrow lead.


8:30 PM MDT: We've been waiting on Mississippi's final results for over two and a half hours now, and now there's over 90% of the vote reporting, but the networks still won't call the race. Motherfuckers. Let's taste another beer. As many of our weekly readers know, I am a huge fan of Templeton Rye, especially during boring ass nights like tonight. So now we're tasting Boulevard Rye-on-Rye, a rye ale aged in Templeton rye whiskey barrels.

Boulevard Rye-on-Rye pours a bit hazy, reddish brown appearance with a small brown head with some alcohol lacing. It has a bit spicy, fairly grainy rye malty, sweet rye whiskey aroma. Rye-on-Rye has a rich, spicy, caramel, toasty, rye malty, fairly grainy, woody, rich rye whiskey, light vanilla flavor with a tangy, spicy, a touch sharp whiskey finish. This fucker was quite tasty. I tasted the 2010 vintage this evening, but the 2012 vintage was just released, so you may be able to procure it at a store near you!

9:03 PM MDT: MSNBC just called Mississippi for Santorum. It's time for Gingrich to get out of this fucking race. He needed to win both tonight and he came up empty. Great victory for Anal Mess!

1:12 AM MDT: Sorry for the lack of political coverage for the last four hours...I've been getting blasted. Check out my latest ratings for more details.

Aaron Nielsen