With day one complete, we're now halfway through the first round of the 2013 Daily Kos Republican March to Madness tournament. 30,000 votes have been cast so far and 16 wingnuts have advanced to the second round. Here's a look at where things stand (click to enlarge):
(Click to enlarge)
As far as I'm concerned, the biggest upset is Reince Priebus defeating George W. Bush, but I suppose that's testimony to the value of just keeping your mouth shut and painting nude self-portraits to send to your sister. (Shudder!)
Joe Arpaio was the perfect #12 seed, knocking off #5 Ken Cucinelli who was clearly seeded too highly by the selection committee (what idiots). Michelle Malkin also nearly pulled off an upset, but Glenn Beck's wingnut savvy came through for him in the end. Oh, and speaking of the idiot selection committee: Three #9 seeds defeated the higher ranked #8 seed.
Looking ahead to the second round, there are some intriguing matchups: Ted Cruz vs. Jim DeMint, Glenn Beck vs. Bill O'Reilly, and Dick Cheney vs. Grover Norquist. Rick Santorum also faces what might be his toughest opponent on the road to the Final Four in Virginia Foxx. For tournament competitors, the crazier the better, and we've got ourselves a truckload of batshit insanity as we march towards crowning the craziest of them all.
Before moving to the second round, however, we've still got to finish the first. So today starting at 11:30 AM PT we'll kick off another four rounds of matchups to finish off the remaining 16 first round matchups. We'll do them in batches of four, separated by two hours, and as with yesterday, you can vote until 5:30 AM PT on Saturday.
One improvement over yesterday that's worth noting: we're going to set up a group just for the tournament voting so you'll be able to vote (and track results) without needing to go to an individual diary for each matchup.