Two things to bring up.
The first, in personal news – I found out that (despite the previous rejection letter caused by a paperwork error) I have been accepted into George Mason University! I’ll be moving to Fairfax, Virginia, sometime this summer. The down side is that I did not get any financial assistance, so I’ll need to find some way to pay for it. Between cost of living and tuition, I have estimated that I’ll need (assuming I can get a roommate) about $45,000/year… and it’ll take 4 or 5 years to go through the whole PhD program. Now, after two or three years, I’ll be ABD and can (theoretically) get a job teaching, and do my dissertation from a distance. And my tuition will drop after I establish residency in Virginia, which means I could get away with about $38,000/year after the first year.
But I’m definitely going to need some heavy funding assistance. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get in loans.
The second, in National News. Things do not look good for Ron Paul. Paul’s only shot, really, was a brokered convention where delegates are all unbound after the first round. Santorum was drawing votes from Romney that would help this. But with Frothy gone, Romney’s chances of getting enough delegates in the first round has increased. Some think that many of Santorum’s followers will go to Paul, and a few have… but the two were so diametrically opposed that I don’t think this’ll give us a surge of support.
Right now, Gingrich is ironically Paul’s best hope, and it is much slimmer than Gingrich himself. In short, I’d lay money at this point on a Romney victory in the Republican primary. Followed by an Obama victory in the national election, because I seriously doubt Romney can beat Obama.
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