DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- The results of Tuesday’s primaries can be simply described: Santorum won – Gingrich lost – Romney forges ahead.
Santorum won the struggle for media momentum by winning both the Alabama and Mississippi primaries. Gingrich won neither of the two southern primaries, destroying his hopes of competing as a solid regional candidate.
Romney won in Hawaii and American Samoa and did well enough in Alabama and Mississippi to win more delegates on the day than Santorum. As a result, Romney maintains his lead which totals more delegates than his three rivals put together.
So, where does this leave the Republican Party? The war for the nomination continues. The probability is still that Romney will win enough delegate votes in the remaining primaries, plus the uncommitted super delegates attached to every state, who are actually Party establishment figures who by and large favor Romney, so that he will garner 1,144 delegates before the convention. If so Romney will march into Tampa nomination in hand.
Santorum has a very very slim mathematical chance of winning himself, but I judge it highly unlikely. However, he has a better chance of preventing Romney from getting to the magic number of 1144 and thus forcing a brokered convention.
Although Santorum can be expected to do well in Louisiana next week, is high in the polls in Illinois and will probably win big in Texas, the great bulk of the remaining states are far less conservative and their voters favor Romney at this time.
The best chance for Santorum would be to convince Gingrich to get out of the race and transfer as many of his delegates as he can to Santorum. (There is no certainty that delegates pledged to Gingrich as a result of primaries or caucuses will support the candidate he recommends if Gingrich pulls out.) At this point Gingrich appears to be succumbing to a combination of ego and dislike for Romney as he insists that he will not quit.
There has been talk of Santorum offering Gingrich the vice-presidential slot on the ticket in return for his withdrawal and endorsement. Both sides have denied this but denials at this stage of a political campaign mean nothing.
That said, Romney would be a fool to offer the number two position to a candidate almost as conservative as he is when his primary task if nominated will be to attract independent and moderate votes in the general election.
For Santorum the great advantage of a Gingrich withdrawal would not be the delegates he would gain, though that is important in what is basically a numbers game. The gain for Santorum would be reducing the coming contests to essentially a two-man race. Note that the combined total of the votes won by the conservative candidates in almost every primary and caucus has been greater than Romney’s total.
Had Santorum been Romney’s only rival, he would probably be leading the race at this point.
If Santorum can arrange to become Romney’s only opponent for the remainder of the races, the majority of which become winner-take-all contests after April first, he would stand a far better chance of denying Romney the 1,144 delegates he needs to win the nomination and force the issue into the convention.
As I pointed out in my last Guidepost, a brokered convention would force the GOP to devote the bulk of their time and energy from the end of June until the convention decision to maneuvering and deal-making. What they need to be doing instead is attacking Obama’s failed policies and contrasting their own remedies for the country’s ills with the Democrats’ catastrophes.
The last time there was a brokered GOP presidential convention, Thomas Dewey was nominated and he lost to Harry Truman. And even if a brokered convention proceeds smoothly to a consensus nominee, there will remain only a few days in August and the months of September and October to campaign against the Obama machine. This is not enough time to overpower an incumbent president with a solid base of ideological and bought support, especially as he has shown himself prepared to lie, distort statistics, claim credit for measures he did not take, enforce the law to his advantage and make decisions harmful to the country if he believes they will increase his chances of holding on to power.
Along with Alabama and Mississippi, Romney has lost in the conservative states of South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas and Georgia and he will probably lose in Louisiana and Texas. At this point Republican conservatives are taking a fresh look at Santorum and considering whether or not Romney really is inevitable.
Should renewed conservative hopes be dashed by a Romney nomination, there is a real risk that many of them will be so severely disappointed that they will stay home on election day. This would be a colossal error – almost a betrayal – as it would give the election to Barack Obama.
I cannot repeat too often that President Obama will be very hard to beat. There are not enough conservatives in the United States to do it.
I cannot repeat too often that President Obama will be very hard to beat. There are not enough conservatives in the United States to do it.
It will be the centrists – the moderates – who decide this election and the Republican candidate must be able to appeal to them. Romney can do this. Because of his unswerving stances on social issues I do not believe that Santorum can. And I am convinced that Gingrich cannot.
All Republicans of whatever persuasion want the reforms needed to ensure the salvation of our country. But we cannot hope for those unless we have a Republican in the White House and Republican control of the House and Senate. Before we can make things right we first have to win.
Romney may well win the nomination. I think it likely. If he does, for the country’s sake, for your own sake, remember that any Republican is better than any Democrat.
If we don’t save the country in November, we may never get another chance.