True Political Analysis

After watching CNN's Florida Primary coverage last night, I came to understand what makes true political analysis.

First, you must stretch out the simple result (Romney won because he has the most money, the support of party elites and a sizeable proportion of the Republican electorate thinks he is the best person to challenge Obama) over the course of 4-5 hours.

Next, you need the best gosh-darned news team on television that apparently must be comprised of

1. Four political operatives (two Democrats and two Republicans) at the same desk, and whose only job is to spin every piece of information to favor his or her party and to discredit the other party. Giving voice to hacks from both parties is apparently the best way to provided high quality information to the public. It is, after all, fair and balanced.

2. Two partisan pundits on site to further provide partisan spin, because partisan spin at a party in Miami is different than partisan spin in the studio in Atlanta

3. Two "hard news journalists"  to provide to truly objective analysis of the victor's party and the White House response.

4. Two real "analysts" (who based on my observations last night have never read a word of political science literature on elections) to tell us what this means in the larger picture, and to well sound like real analysts.

And most importantly you must have

a. A 70" touchscreen monitor that you call the "magic wall," because that apparently sounds more interesting than a 70" touchscreen monitor with very cool mapping software.
b. A cube. Yes, that's right. A huge glass cube in the middle of the news room in which a producer with rolled up shirt sleeves (because that means you are working hard) is controlling things and pulling it all together, and finally
c. A quarantine room in which the network's statisticians are locked away analyzing exit polls until they can "make the call" (after a 30 second countdown) of an outcome that has honestly been known since.... well...months ago.

All the while, everyone involved must use the word pivot as often as possible to indicate that Romney will now begin his shift toward the general election, when in fact his focus as the front runner and the inevitable nominee has always been on the general election.