Will SCOTUS decide Florida in Romney v. Obama, circa 2000?

Since reading “Romney Can’t Win Without Florida,” a post on the scholarly, non-partisan website TeabaggersOfAmerica.com, I can’t stop thinking about the Sunshine State.

Not the palm trees and manatees and Cubans, but the prospect that Florida voters very well may decide the 2012 election, just like they did in 2000.

Sort of.

I’ve been thinking about Florida so much that in those rare and short-lived moments when I’m not thinking about Florida I actually think about why I’m not thinking about Florida, as if to redirect my thinking back to thinking about it.

Because my moral compass doesn’t allow me to believe in things I don’t believe in, I knew immediately that I believed Teabaggers Of America’s prediction.

The New York Times and Real Clear Politics also played a role in this revelation. According to both sources, if President Obama carries Florida in 2012, Mitt Romney can’t win the presidency without winning Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina—all states Obama won in 2008.

If Obama loses Florida but wins Michigan, Nevada, and Ohio—where he’s up by 6.3, 5.3, and 4.8 percentage points over Romney, respectively—Obama can afford to lose Wisconsin, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Iowa—where he’s up 5.4, 3.2, 2.6, and 1.0 percentage points over Romney—and still win re-election.

On the other hand, if he loses Florida and Nevada, as well as Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, and Wisconsin but carries New Hampshire, Ohio, Michigan, and one district in Nebraska (as he did in 2008), then nobody wins. It’d be tied!

Whatever the outcome, Florida will be a helluva fight, and as polls predict, it could be close.

In a world full of theories, here’s an undisputed fact: Anybody can go on 270toWin.com or RealClearPolitics.com and create a personalized map projecting which candidate will win each state come November. (If you must depart now, I will understand if you don’t return for eight hours. Electoral cartography is, for many, a full-blown addiction.) Liberal mapmakers can give Utah to Obama, conservatives can give New York to Romney, and a blind orangutan high on bath salts can click the “All Republican” button and turn the entire country blood red.

As Confucius once said, “Shitting from a tree doesn’t make you a squirrel.” The same logic applies to partisan fools who think they’re Electoral College gods.

Predictions plucked from computer-generated models calculating historic voting trends, exit poll data, and voter turnout statistics will never turn Joe Six Pack into a teetotaler.

Likewise, when you’re predicting the outcome of an election three months from voting day, Electoral College projections are about as reliable as Bible drops, palm readings, or the arrangement of chakra stones.

The teacher’s pet in high school trigonometry class may have a greater appreciation for the mathematical formulas that go into predicting how theoretical voters will actually vote when it’s time to cast their ballots, but what ultimately decides the outcome of an election is what happens on the ground.

Voting drives, volunteers, organization, the location of rallies, the number of hecklers you place at your opponent’s campaign venues, and the amount of face-time you spend in each swing state all play vital roles in national elections.

A vast war chest matters, too, but in an election cycle that’s expected to amass more than two billion dollars in campaign contributions to fund a barrage of TV, radio, Internet, and newspaper advertisements, mailers, and 24/7 Robocalls, face-time with voters will matter more than ever.

That’s why it was so shocking to hear that just one (1, I, uno, oino, eins, ene, ien, siji, hiji, ichi) day after introducing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) as his running mate—the man who would invigorate the Republican base with his youth, intelligence and staggering good looks—Romney went on to campaign in the Sunshine State…alone.

As the current House budget committee chairman, Ryan engineered the Republican Party’s budget proposal to privatize Medicare, but a trusted Romney campaign advisor assures us that the decision to shield Ryan from Florida is in no way an attempt to dodge a politically disastrous encounter with the next generation of flesh-eating senior citizens scared shitless about losing their dignity.

“This has more to do with expanding our bandwidth,” the advisor said.

Then there’s the news that Romney cancelled part of his Florida trip, citing “exhaustion.”

Expanding bandwidth is tiring, apparently.

Maybe the Supreme Court won’t be necessary after all.