Delegate Math

The GOP seems to still have issues with Mitt Romney and conservatives continue splitting votes between Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, but despite the lackluster performance by Romney, the math remains in his favor for an uncontested convention. He's going to be the nominee despite the protestations by Santorum and others.

Here's how it breaks down.

There are 2,286 delegates at stake and it takes 1,144 to win the nomination. Thus far, Romney has won 455 and Santorum has won 199 to Gingrich's 117. Ron Paul has won 64. That means that 1557 delegates remain to be divided up. Even if Rick Santorum wins 60% of the remaining delegates, he'd fall short by 11 (11.2) to capture the nomination. He'd only manage 1,133.2 if he wins 60%. He hasn't done that well in the popular vote overall, and he would have to do so much better than he has to date that it's inconceivable.

The math is even worse for Gingrich. He'd have to win more than 66% of the delegates remaining.

Not going to happen. Neither has any chance based on prior performance, and with Southern states splitting votes between Gingrich and Santorum, all Romney has to do is stay the course and he wins by default.

Super Tuesday Scorecard

I see that the media outlets are busy saying that Mitt Romney didn't score the knockout blow yesterday - even though he won 5 races and was the leader in two others. Rick Santorum won three (and close behind to Romney in Ohio), while Newt Gingrich could only manage to win his nominal home state of Georgia (though not in Virginia, where he currently lives because he couldn't be bothered to get sufficient petitions to get on the ballot in time).

Because of the way the GOP is apportioning votes in most of these states, a win matters, but if you come in 2d you can still pick up delegates. That's allowed Santorum to hang around as much as he has, but the numbers work against everyone but Romney at this point. Romney has racked up 2-3 times as many delegates as everyone else, and the ability to overcome that advantage is narrowing. While there are a bunch of winner-take-all primaries in April, the chances that Gingrich or Santorum could sweep those are slim and none - and slim left town.

Gingrich continues soldiering on claiming that he's going to stay in the race until the convention, but even he's got to know that he's toast. Even his win in Georgia comes with caveats - he might come away with less than half the delegates (because of the proportional delegation rules in effect). No chance at all. Santorum may think he's got a chance, but the statistics run against him as well.

He didn't do badly, but he didn't score enough points to claim any advantage over Romney going into upcoming primaries. It leaves Romney with the advantages of money and delegates pledged thus far. And that's more than sufficient to stay frontrunner and push towards the nomination.

Small Thinking and Big Time Intrusion

Rick Santorum, the latest anointed Anyone But Romney candidate for the GOP nomination for president, has been parroting the small government line for years. His campaign rhetoric is all about reducing the size of government. The New York Times picked up on Santorum's stump speech, indicating that it's small thinking and for the government to out of the way. It's a good op-ed on Santorum's position, but it doesn't quite go far enough.

Santorum also goes to the extreme position of being all for government intrusion into personal lives - it should be ever more intrusive into a woman's health and decisions about her own life.

So, Santorum (and most of the rest of the GOP for that matter) is all for small government, except when it comes to contraceptive rights, the right to have an abortion, and other reproductive health choices. When that comes up, the government must impose highly invasive procedures that are unwarranted, costly, and extremely burdensome. It's anything but small-government ideology. It's the most invasive kind of government intrusion.

Contraception shouldn't be controversial in this day and age. It's safe, legal, and access shouldn't be an issue either. People can choose to use it or not, and insurance companies cover those medical costs. However, because religious groups are complaining, it's become fashionable to go after contraception - and the access to such health care.

The end result of these latest attacks on contraceptive rights is that women who want to practice birth control will find themselves with potentially fewer options and unwanted pregnancies, complications, and other issues that are far more troublesome from an ethical standpoint.

The Repercussions of Rick Santorum's Comments About CPAC Straw Polls

Conservative Republicans held their annual CPAC conference over the weekend, and it was a motley crew of assorted extremist statements, racists, and wackjobs rubbing shoulders with the presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.



The CPAC also held a straw poll, in which Mitt Romney won by a 38-31 margin over Santorum. Santorum's response to that is particularly enlightening and troubling all at once. Santorum claims that Romney bought the CPAC straw poll win by busing in voters.

“You have to talk to the Romney campaign on how many tickets they bought,” Santorum said on CNN’s “State of the Nation.” “We’ve heard all sorts of things.”

Santorum said it was within the rules for candidates to buy tickets for supporters and cart them in specifically to vote for their chosen candidate.

“We didn’t do that. We don’t do that. I don’t try to rig straw polls,” he said.

Santorum said his primary wins in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado last week were the true tests of who the GOP electorate wants.

“Our people turned out. We didn’t have to pay them to turn out. . . . They are enthusiastic about our campaign,” Santorum said on CNN.

Team Romney said their candidate won three separate contests on Saturday, besting Santorum 38 to 31 in the conservative CPAC straw poll; placing first in Maine’s caucuses with 39% to Ron Paul’s second-place finish of 36%, and topping CPAC’s national survey of conservative voters.

“Rick Santorum has a history of making statements that aren’t grounded in the truth,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement to the Daily News.

Santorum needs to say and do anything to maintain any kind of momentum. CPAC chose Romney, who has been perceived as being more moderate by the media, and that's a shot at Santorum and the other GOP pretenders that they've got a chance at the nomination.

Did Romney buy votes and/or bus in voters to participate in the straw poll and is this something that candidates regularly do? Well, according to Santorum if the conservatives who showed up voted for Mitt, they were bought.

There is really nothing to substantiate Santorum's comments other than wishful thinking, but it also speaks to just how one shouldn't count straw polls here or even in the races that Santorum won over the prior weekend. They are as much about organization skills as they are about genuine preferences.

If you take the CPAC poll at face value, then there appears to be nothing standing in the way of a Romney nomination. He's got both Santorum and Newt Gingrich beat among conservatives, and he does better among moderates and other demographic sectors than his opponents. It shores up his numbers among conservatives and it becomes a self-fulfilling result; by winning the CPAC straw poll, it convinces other conservatives that voting for Romney is acceptable and palatable despite the protestations to the contrary by Gingrich or Santorum. That, in turn, leads to those conservatives voting for Romney going forward.

However, if the CPAC straw poll was nothing more than a popularity contest, the results of which were determined by who was able to bus in more supporters, then it doesn't particularly address whether there's a real groundswell of support or whether it's a manufactured result in favor of Romney. Why anyone would bother to give the CPAC straw poll any credence if it can be manipulated in such a fashion; but the answer to that is that candidates see the utility of a poll that can be bent to their own will and needs.

Either way, Santorum's sounding like he's got sour grapes and is up against a candidate who does a better job of campaigning than he does.

The State of the Race

Just when you begin to think that things will settle down and Mitt Romney will move on towards the nomination handily, along comes the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and the nonbinding primary in Missouri to reveal just how fractured the GOP is right now.

Rick Santorum won all three races yesterday, and while the results were nonbinding, Santorum will use them as a repudiation of Romney's claims that he's the frontrunner.

The triple result amounted to a stinging denial of Mr. Romney’s candidacy from three states where Republicanism is defined by the evangelicals and Tea Party adherents he has struggled to court this year.

His disappointing night notwithstanding, Mr. Romney goes into the next round of primaries and caucuses much better financed than his opponents in what will be much more of a nationwide campaign, capped off by the 11 Super Tuesday competitions on March 6. But the enthusiasm in the race is no longer his alone; his front-runner’s label appears to have lost its shine.

Mr. Santorum’s victory in Missouri was symbolic. The vote will not affect the awarding of delegates, which will be decided at district and state conventions later this year. But more Republicans participated in the Missouri primary than in the Nevada caucuses. And his victory in Colorado was a genuine upset in a state that Mr. Romney easily carried in 2008.

Combined with the victory in Minnesota, it gave him an important lift that his campaign hoped would translate into an infusion of new donations and support from the conservative Republican voters — evangelicals and Tea Party adherents — who have told pollsters all year that they are searching for someone whom they view as a true conservative.

The victories were Mr. Santorum’s first since the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 — a victory awarded only after the fact. And he used them to reassert himself as the leading insurgent challenger to Mr. Romney, though he told cheering supporters at his headquarters in St. Charles, Mo., that he was setting his sights higher than that.

“I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Mr. Santorum said after thanking God for getting him through the “dog days” of the campaign and the illness of his daughter Bella. “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

Newt Gingrich was all but a footnote yesterday and appears that his shelf-life as the alternative to Romney is over. Once again, Gingrich was not on the ballot and will be setting his sights on Ohio during Super Tuesday next month. That's a long time to wait, and both Santorum and Romney will have added to their tallies in the meantime.

Mitt Romney Wins Decisively In Florida; Newt Gingrich Promises To Continue Campaign

Despite getting walloped by Mitt Romney in Florida by a decisive 46-32 margin (Ron Paul and Rick Santorum were barely evident and had already conceded the winner-take-all state and had moved on to Colorado and Nevada campaigning), Newt Gingrich is still hopeful that he can win the nomination.

Last night, he stood before a podium with "46 states" emblazoned on it all the while talking about how he's going to fight Romney straight through to the nomination across all 46 remaining states:



Problem for Newt is that there aren't 46 states left for him. He's only got 45.

Gingrich's campaign failed to get on the Virginia ballot, meaning he's going to be shut out there come Super Tuesday. While he thinks that he can make up for it by doing well in his former state of Georgia, that's a significant delegate swing in favor of Romney. In fact, it's a 100 point swing. That's nearly 10% of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

Add to that the fact that the seven states up for grabs in February aren't likely to support Gingrich over Romney. That includes Maine (24 delegates); Nevada (28 delegates); Colorado (36 delegates); Minnesota (40 delegates); Arizona (29 delegates); and Michigan (30 delegates).

It's conceivable that Romney takes above 75% of those delegates going into Super Tuesday (considering the possibility for proportional delegations). It would give Romney a commanding lead and one that would give him momentum and make it all but impossible for Gingrich to continue past Super Tuesday.

Rick Perry Drops Out Of 2012 Race; Endorses Newt Gingrich

It shouldn't be all that surprising that Rick Perry is dropping out of the race for President.

The announcement from Mr. Perry was expected to inject fresh momentum into Mr. Gingrich’s efforts to emerge as the leading alternative to Mitt Romney. It was unclear whether Mr. Perry would campaign with Mr. Gingrich in the final two days of the primary campaign here.

Mr. Perry will not participate in the debate here on Thursday evening, an aide said, and will make the announcement to supporters and contributors in South Carolina at an 11 a.m. news conference. He had been aggressively campaigning across the state, hoping that the first Southern primary would revive his candidacy.

It was the second time that Mr. Perry had signaled that he would leave the race. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago, Mr. Perry said that he was returning to Texas to reassess his campaign, but he decided to press ahead in South Carolina.

Mr. Perry was in the single digits in recent polls here, but his withdrawal from the race could affect the outcome of the primary by giving conservative voters one fewer alternative. He had been appealing heavily to South Carolina’s evangelical voters.

The decision by Mr. Perry, which was first reported by CNN, narrows the Republican field to four candidates.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is competing with Rick Santorum to emerge as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, has urged Mr. Perry and Mr. Santorum to drop out of the race to coalesce support among conservatives.

He repeatedly failed to make a positive impact on voters despite having a major warchest. Perry's campaign never could figure out a ground game and Perry's repeated gaffes, most notably failing in a debate to remember the three cabinet departments that he would eliminate as President showed that he wasn't ready for prime time.

Perry says that he'll endorse Newt Gingrich for president, which will not come as much of a surprise since the social conservatives are all scrambling to find which candidate remaining can challenge Mitt Romney for the nomination. I don't think that Perry's endorsement will count for much, as Gingrich is still lagging behind Romney significantly in polls in the next round of states.

The candidates remaining in the campaign trying to topple Mitt Romney besides Gingrich are Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Paul's support tops out at no more than 20% in any of the states where he's competitive, and Gingrich has pretty much signaled that he will stay in the race if only to smear Romney at every opportunity. Like Paul, Santorum's best showing was in Iowa and is expected to be nothing more than a footnote in upcoming primaries.

Thus, at this point, the idea of endorsements and shifting support among conservatives is all about jostling for the scraps and trying to force Romney to move even further to the right. That is a political maneuver that is fraught with danger particularly since candidates need to be able to tack to the center during the general election in the attempt to gain independents and moderates. If the GOP nominates a more conservative candidate (say Santorum or Gingrich), it would most assuredly result in an Obama landslide, precisely because the GOP extremist positions, on everything from global warming to creationism and religion in the classroom, is antithetical to what moderates and independents want in their candidates. It would marginalize the GOP in a way that hasn't been seen in generations. Paul's chances for a nomination are even lower, because his libertarian positions don't jibe with the GOP positions and appeal to an even smaller percentage of people - to say nothing of Paul's racist and anti Semitic past (those newsletters simply cannot be ignored).

Another Lagging GOP Candidate Drops Out

If you blinked, you might have noticed that Jon Huntsman was running for President. His GOP campaign never amounted to much, and it is now over. Huntsman simply couldn't get his message across to GOP voters who were far more conservative than Huntsman.

Huntsman will now throw his support to Mitt Romney, and GOP conservatives will continue looking for the anti-Romney to throw their support to stop the Romney steamroller from taking over. Neither Newt Gingrich nor Rick Santorum are lighting up the conservative votes and there isn't much excitement among voters generally. Everyone, including the candidates themselves, seem resigned to a Romney nomination and are simply going through the motions. However, Gingrich is looking to do all he can to smear Romney because of personal animus.

Rounding Up the Iowa Caucus Results

Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. I see that Santorum lost to Romney by all of eight votes. Not bad for a guy who was seen as too extreme for PA when he was booted by his constituents from the US Senate. Now, he's probably not extreme enough for the Iowa voters but will have his moment in the sun as the anyone but Romney candidate de jour. Meanwhile, Romney probably wasn't extreme enough for Iowa voters, who found themselves splitting their votes for everyone else, rather than giving a thumbs up for Romney who actually spent more money in 2012 than 2008 to lose votes over the 2008 numbers.

Still, all is not completely lost. Perry may have been battered into his senses and will likely drop out in the next few days. Bachmann, whose senses are extraterrestrial, wont have the good sense to drop out, even though her chances remain on the other side of nil (but will at least make for some entertainment value). Gingrich has vowed to stick around - and to stick it to Romney who he despises. That too will be for entertainment value, but Gingrich went from being a contender to also-ran in record time, if you don't count Herman Cain or Rick Perry.

And then there's the crazy uncle, Ron Paul, who will claim he got the youth vote and his 3d place showing will somehow be proof that he's got momentum. Alas, we've seen that from Paul before, and Iowa will be his high water mark (not counting VA, where only Romney and Paul are on the ballot).

The race is Romney's to lose, and he's done just enough to not lose so far. But he hasn't done enough to win either. There's little enthusiasm, and his negatives are starting to show in a big way. The extremists in the GOP are continuing to tout other candidates who are pushing the right wing extremist agenda envelope, and that works against Romney, who has struggled to stay consistent (I know, wild understatement there - he's flip flopping in the breeze) in the hopes of trying to peel off independents and moderates in the general election. But trying to appeal to moderates wont work when the GOP primaries is all about catering to the extremists in the party, and that works no where better than in places like Iowa.