But in any event, I think that what happens before a GOP nominee is selected is extremely relevant to the general election campaign.

And I don't know that I would use exciting, but watching the human beings act like politicians in very entertaining.

For example, Bachmann claimed she isn't a politician, never has been, never will be during her consolation speech was funny stuff.  Apparently they way you hold a seat in Congress and run for President w/o being a pol is caring too much about the future, I think.

1. There is a "political junkie" aspect to my interest.

2. There is a "policy/substantive" concern to my interest.

3. There is a "Obama supporter" aspect to my interest.

It appears that you cannot, and that's fine, but don't assume those of us that can engage politics on multiple levels are shallow simply because you are.  I won't knock you for being unable to multi-task and you don't knock me for being able to do it.

The advent of color television prompted television news reporters to rely on color-coded electoral maps, though sources conflict as to the conventions they followed. According to one source, from 1976 to 2004, the broadcast networks, in an attempt to avoid favoritism in color coding, standardized on the convention of alternating every four years between blue and red the color used for the incumbent party.[7][8] According to another source, in 1976, John Chancellor, the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, asked his network's engineers to construct a large illuminated map of the USA. The map was placed in the network's election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that year, won a state, it would light up in red; if Gerald Ford, the Republican, carried a state, it would light up in blue. The feature proved to be so popular that four years later all three major television networks would use colors to designate the states won by the presidential candidates on Election Night, though not all using the same color scheme. NBC continued to use the color scheme employed in 1976 for several years. NBC newsman David Brinkley famously referred to the 1980 election map outcome as showing Ronald Reagan's 44-state landslide as resembling a "suburban swimming pool".[9] CBS, from 1984 on, used the opposite scheme: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC used yellow for one major party and blue for the other in 1976. However, in 1980 and 1984, ABC used red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. In 1980, when independent John B. Anderson ran a relatively high-profile campaign as an independent candidate, at least one network provisionally indicated that they would use yellow if he were to win a state.

By 1996, color schemes were relatively mixed, as CNN, CBS, ABC, and The New York Times referred to Democratic states with the color blue and Republican ones as red, while TIME and The Washington Post used an opposite scheme.[10][11][12]

In the days following the 2000 election, whose outcome was unclear for some time after election day, major media outlets began conforming to the same color scheme because the electoral map was continually in view, and conformity made for easy and instant viewer comprehension. On Election Night that year, there was no coordinated effort to code Democratic states blue and Republican states red; the association had gradually emerged. Partly as a result of this eventual and near-universal color-coding, the terms "red states" and "blue states" entered popular usage in the weeks following the 2000 presidential election. After the results were final, journalists stuck with the color scheme, as The Atlantic's December 2001 cover story by David Brooks entitled, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible", illustrated.[13] Thus, red and blue became fixed in the media and in many people's minds, despite the fact that no "official" color choices had been made by the parties

In a debate, he would have absolutely demolished Bush.
As it was, Kerry was kissing Bush's posterior.
And jeez louise, he was running with Edwards, a transparent phony if ever there were.

Dean had intelligence and integrity.

The media were gunning for him, and I will admit that he gave them the ammunition they sought by doing that god-awful imitation of a football coach pep-talk to the troops. As soon as I saw it, and I saw it live, I knew he was cooked. The media were going to play it over and over and over.

But Democrats should have and could have realized how truly insignificant that was in the scheme of things. But they didn't.

Romney will make the case that Obama tried big government and it didn't work.

Romney will play up his business experience and that he knows how to work with business to turn around the economy.  He will talk about how the stimulus failed, how bailouts didn't help etc...

That is the conservative argument and considering the country is nearing recession or at least flatlined after 4 years of Obama policies it will be a much more convincing argument.

The Bush stuff won't play.   Obama can only go negative because he can't rely on his record.  If Romney doesn't commit a gaffe then he wins narrowly.

If the economy starts to uptick then Obama can start running on his record and he probably wins.

The reason Romney will have a tough time is demographics, i.e., the Latino vote will hurt him in Colorado and Nevada, and maybe even in Arizona.  He has got to try to change that....Conservatives will hail Rubio as the savior.