With Rick Santorum besting him in Alabama and Mississippi tonight, Newt Gingrich lost even a regional claim for strength in the nominating process. You might have expected him to bow out. But he remains defiant.
“When the primaries are over, and it’s clear no one person has won,” Gingrich said, convention delegates would ask themselves, “who would do the best job?”
Gingrich added a swipe at Romney, who was left in third place in both states. “If you’re the front-runner, and you keep coming in third,” Gingrich said, “you’re not much of a front-runner.”
It’s true. Mitt Romney came in third tonight in the two big contests. With wins in Hawai’i and American Samoa later tonight, he may wind up with the most delegates, but he still showed that the southern base of the Republican Party has little use for him. He’s still the frontrunner but, as Gingrich says, he’s not much of a frontrunner. That being said, Romney is going to have enough delegates to win the nomination outright unless either Santorum or Gingrich start beating him by wide margins in the near future.
I think it is getting to the point that it may be too late for Gingrich to help Santorum by dropping out. Can Santorun win a one-on-one race against Romney in Illinois and Wisconsin? I think that might be possible. But can he win in the winner-take-all states of California, New Jersey, and Utah?
If Santorum can’t win in New Jersey or California, he’ll need to amass a significant delegate lead before those elections or Romney will win the nomination on the first ballot. And I don’t think Santorum can pull that off.
I think the nomination is close to decided, but Santorum can prevent Romney from winning it if he wins the majority of the upcoming contests (especially in Illinois and Texas) and wins California’s winner-take-all contest in June.
That’s a pretty tall order.
California is something of a wild card. It’s winner take all by congressional district, so it’s really like 50 primaries going on simultaneously. In such a diverse state, even if Romney gets a substantial majority, Santorum will pick up some of the districts. On the other hand, even if Santorum winds up winning the popular vote there, Romney could walk away with a victory in delegates, since, if current trends continue, Romney will do better in urban areas, which will have a smaller percentage of Republican voters, but still count as much toward the delegate total as the solid red districts.
politics being one of those places. Big tent, kos, booman all know politics better than i do. but i have to ask, as I asked driftglass, “what are you hoping to win?” Obama is an abysmal authoritarian, a protector of malefactors of wealth, a war criminal. What are you hoping to win?
I don’t get it.
So what do want to happen in November? The country to explode in a hundred pieces? Hit by a rogue planet named “Melancholia”? I don’t get it either?
I can be as critical of Obama as anyone, but he really is a quantum improvement on Bush and on the current GOP contenders for the Presidency. When he tried to close Guantanamo, his own party didn’t even have his back. What do you expect any President to be able to achieve with such a weak support base? What Booman, et al, are trying to achieve is to make a more progressive politics possible – even for a “realist” pragmatic President.
I love it when people throw around extreame epiphets like “War criminal.” All you are doing is devaluing the word for rapidly deminishing shock value.
TLDR He isn’t.
It’s surprising that Santorum has even gotten this far. I didn’t think he would be the strongest 2nd place GOP finisher since Reagan.
I understood the Bachmann surge. I think she’s actually the best representative of the base. The Trump surge just made me laugh. I understood the Perry surge. I thought he’d win. I kinda understood the Cain surge, Conservatives’ New Black Friend. I was surprised by the Gingrich surge, but at least he’s got a political background, been around forever, and I could see how his combination of bile and faux-sophistication would appeal.
I never thought I’d see a Santorum surge. I thought, ‘that’s the one guy who won’t even get a pity surge.’ Rick Santorum. I just can’t believe it.
The Santorum Surge is quite facinating. The gop burned through every single Not Romney candidate before getting ti him, and even then it was a half hearted surge the coincided with the surge of Ron Paul. And then Paul faded but Gingritgh surged once again after going through a surge/fade cycle.
Anyway we will know Rmoney has won when he starts going negative on Obama like he has been wanting to for the past 2 months.
He hasn’t been negative yet? Great, something additional to look forward to in the fall.
He’ll start going negative on completely new shit, stuff we haven’t even thought about yet.
“Obama Sells Loose Nukes to North Korea” and “Obama Denies Hip Replacement Surgery To All Americans.”
Forget the delegate count for a moment. If Gingrich drops out relatively soon (like within the next week or two), and then Santorum starts winning most of the races the rest of the way, he can bring a strong argument to the convention: “Romney only has a plurality in delegates because Newt and I split conservatives in the early primaries. Once Newt was gone and it turned into a moderate vs. conservative, I was the clear preference of the majority.” That might keep enough superdelegates from getting behind Romney to deny him a first-ballot majority.
Santorum isn’t winning Utah, but he’s gotta win at least one (and probably more) of California, New York, New Jersey, and Texas. I don’t think he’ll be favored in any of them, even after tonight. But maybe if he surprises in Illinois, that changes the narrative in time for the big prizes.
I don’t think the argument would fly. First, how much of Gingrich’s support would really move to Santorum? I don’t think many can be convinced that it would be as much as 80% much less 100%.
I agree though with Illinois up next, a popular vote win for Santorum there would change the momentum significantly enough to get voters and funders rethinking “the inevitable”. Unfortunately for Santorum however, his organization blew the delegate slating and he can’t claim any delegates in 4 congressional districts including one he would expect to win handily (the 13th).
Come to think of it I also wonder if Santorum would lose some support if people decide he can’t put an organization together that is strong enough to win. After all they botched Ohio, Illinois and other states…
The only interpretation. Adelson is a Romney supporter and Newt has been only a stalking horse to drive down Santorum’s delegate count in proportional delegate states.
Newt is in it as long as Adelson puts upp the money.
Adelson’s been hit by a billion dollar gaming lawsuit in Macao and John Harwood reported last night that he had been told by an Adelson insider that Adelson has written his last check.
It seems to me that these results are significant as they confirm Santorum as the leading and only non-Mitt left. But he needs a game change to have any chance of actually winning the nomination. Probably his best shot is to offer Gingrich the VP slot NOW in return for a joint anti-Mitt campaign. That would be so dramatic it might just be enough to change the narrative and overwhelm Romney even in relatively moderate states. It’s a long shot, but the only one left in his locker. Would Gingrich agree? Has he anywhere else to go?
the evangelicals are clear- they don’t want NO PARTS of the Mormon
What’re they going to do in the general, though?
How much does it matter that Romney’s losing states that any Republican will win in November? He won’t have base enthusiasm, but he doesn’t need small donors, thanks to Citizen’s United. And actually, the raging and racist anti-Obama extremism will compensate for most of his general election shortcomings, don’t you think?
Think Progress has kind of a startling take on the results when you look at the voting instead of the delegate count. We’re reminded that while Romney now has 53% of the delegates, he’s only won 38% of the vote. Hard to see how that would bode well for him come November.
The disparity shines a spotlight on the essentially corrupt process the GOP has chosen for its nomination process — a decision I see Michael Steele is still happily defending.