Who are you voting for (or whom have you voted for) in the GOP primary?

I think I'll hold off for a bit longer :/

80% of the people who will probably vote in today's Republican primary have pretty much made up their minds.  About 25% break for Hoekstra, 22% each for Cox and Snyder, and 11% for Bouchard.  (The margin of error was +/- 3%.)  That leaves about 20% undecided as of four days ago; I suspect that may have tightened over the weekend.

Pete Hoekstra has, by all accounts, an effective stranglehold on the West Michigan portion of the primary (think 2nd, 3rd, and 6th congressional districts).  And while Snyder may have an effective ground game in Northern, Central, and Upper Michigan, that hasn't canceled out the ground games of Hoekstra and Cox (or Bouchard, for that matter).  Southeast Michigan (the area between the I-69 corridor and Lake Erie) will decide the gubernatorial primary.

Cox, Snyder, and Bouchard all have a strong home-field presence in Southeast Michigan; that shouldn't surprise anyone.  This is why Hoekstra has invested significant campaign resources into this area of the state.  And it also should be fairly obvious that Southeast Michigan is where the gubernatorial primary will likely be decided.

Mark my words, if either Cox, Snyder, or Bouchard dominate Southeast Michigan today, then it's all over.  However, as long as either Bouchard or Hoekstra (and ideally both) put in a credible showing here, then neither Cox nor Snyder will dominate.  If that scenario holds, and Pete doesn't choke in his own backyard, then he should win the nomination.  Go ahead, write that down.

So why am I being criticized for wrapping two essays around the well-documented falsehoods and misbehavior of a candidate for office?  (I assume you have a credible answer for that.)  Nevermind that the candidate in question is our sitting Attorney General, why hasn't he been called out on these pages?

Civility to one's opponent is normally limited to the extent to which that civility is earned.  I'll grant that common decency dictates that we don't go foul in our label-hanging, even with socialist-democrats, but we are label-hangers here.  Two adages apply, one involves pigs and the other ducks; the point being that all the window dressing in the world doesn't change the window itself.

Rick Snyder's been called plenty of names here, every last one of them well and properly earned; and it's a safe inference that 58% of the likely voters today would agree with those labels.  However, I find it odd that when I use labels that a not-identical 58% of likely voters would agree apply to Mike Cox, the kvetching starts almost immediately.  And, by the way, I'm keeping those labels clean; others are not necessarily so inclined.

Unlike the trolls on this site, I have no problem laying out my opinion, the reasons for it, and the research that backs it up.  I don't go by a screenname, being quite comfortable using the one my parents gave me.  You and I disagree on this issue, and that's fine; realistically that would make a grand total of twice (total) where we've come down on different sides of a controversy.

Primaries, like the rest of the electoral process, are adversarial for a reason.  If you want to take the field for MSU against U-M, then you first have to convince the coaching staff that you're worthy or wearing the green-and-white.  That means competing against others vying to wear the same uniform, and neither of you are looking to not make the cut.  Mike, Mike, Tom, Pete, and Rick are all looking to quarterback the Republican team to victory this year; but it's up to us, the voters, to decide who'll make the cut and who won't.