Category: Rick Santorum

Santorum Surge Returns: Wins Missouri, Minnesota; UPDATE: Wins Colorado UPDATE: NY Times ‘Unexpectedly!’

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They’re still counting votes in Colorado at this hour — 1 a.m. Eastern, 11 p.m. Mountain — and Rick Santorum is barely leading Mitt Romney with about half of the caucus vote counted there.

Santorum won both the Missouri primary and the Minnesota caucuses, and you have to wonder if Newt Gingrich’s angry rant Saturday after losing in Nevada hasn’t shifted the GOP battlefield.

UPDATE: Readers will excuse my long delay in blogging the results tonight, as I was working on my annual CPAC preview feature for The American Spectator. But as I was writing, I had the TV on Fox News, where the commentators kept repeating that (a) the Missouri primary is just a “beauty pageant”; and (b) the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado are “non-binding.” In other words, they were trying to suggest that the vote didn’t matter.

The Iowa GOP caucuses were also “non-binding,” but Fox News commentators didn’t say a word about that on caucus night, did they?

UPDATE II: With the Associated Press reporting just 67% of precincts in Colorado, and Santorum leading Romney 39%-35%, the chairman of the Colorado GOP just called into Fox News to say that he has results from 99% of precincts, and Santorum has definitely won there.

UPDATE III: The results from Missouri:

Rick Santorum ………..138,957 — 55.2%
Mitt Romney ………….. 63,826 — 25.3%
Ron Paul ………………… 30,641 — 12.2%

Newt Gingrich didn’t make the Missouri ballot. It is true that no delegates were bound by Tuesday’s vote. However, unlike Karl Rove, I’d say Santorum beating Romney by 30 points might be kinda important.

UPDATE IV: The results from Minnesota:

Rick Santorum ……….20,932 — 44.9%
Ron Paul ………………..12,627 — 27.1%
Mitt Romney …………..7,890 –16.9%
Newt Gingrich ………. 4,993 — 10.7%

Once more, Karl Rove is correct to say that the caucus vote in Minnesota is “non-binding.” But when Santorum got 45% while Romney and Gingrich got 27% combined? Might be kinda important.

UPDATE V: The results from Colorado:

Rick Santorum ……….. 26,580 — 40.2%
Mitt Romney …………. 23,097 — 34.9%
Newt Gingrich …………. 8,457 — 12.8%
Ron Paul …………………. 7,782 — 11.8%

Yeah, Karl Rove, I know: “non-binding.” But Rick Santorum just scored a hat trick — 3-for-3 — in three crucial swing states, and got more votes in one night than Romney got in Iowa and New Hampshire combined.

Might be kinda important.

UPDATE VI: Let me put some numbers on that last point. In Iowa, Romney got less than 30,000 votes. In New Hampshire, Romney got less than 100,00 votes. Tonight in Missouri alone, Rick Santorum got more votes than Romney got in Iowa and New Hampshire combined, and in all, Santorum got nearly 180,000 votes Tuesday.

Might be kinda important.

UPDATE VII: O, ye of little zero faith! Now with the benefit of hindsight, let’s re-read Allahpundit’s preview of Tuesday’s vote:

No delegates at stake tonight, but this is probably Santorum’s last chance to breeze past Newt as the race’s designated Not Romney. . . . If he wins both easily, then he gets a bunch of positive media coverage this week and maybe a few more big-name conservative endorsements, which in turn could mean enough movement in the polls to put him on at least an equal footing with Gingrich. Once that happens, the pressure will shift to Newt to explain why he should stay in and divide the conservative vote on the strength of having won one state while Santorum should drop out after having won three.

Excuse me, Allah: This surprising hat-trick — you kinda low-rated Santorum in Colorado, didn’t ya, buddy? — actually makes it four states in which Santorum has beaten Romney.

And as to the bizarre self-perpetuating media meme that “no delegates” were at stake Tuesday: This was legally true in Missouri, but given Santorum’s 2-to-1 margin in the “beauty pageant” vote, does anyone really think someone other than Santorum will get the lion’s share of the delegates at next month’s Missouri caucuses?

As for the presidential preference votes at Tuesday’s precinct caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado, yes — those votes were “non-binding,” officially. But if a precinct caucus votes 45-27 for Santorum over Romney (i.e., the typical Minnesota precinct), do we suppose that this caucus will then send a slate of Romney delegates to the next phase of the state party nominating process who will vote for somebody else besides Santorum? Or should we, as I suggest we should, assume that the delegates chosen at the precinct level will eventually vote at the state level to send delegates to the national convention in roughly the same proportion as the preference expressed in the precinct votes?

Like I said, the Iowa caucus vote on Jan. 3 was also “non-binding” in the same sense as the Minnesota and Colorado precinct caucus votes, but almost nobody mentioned that at the time. However, it seems that somebody’s campaign — and I’m thinking it might be somebody whose name sounds like “Ritt Momney” — was very diligent in spreading the message about these “non-binding” votes that Rick Santorum won Tuesday.

UPDATE VIII: In politics, as in economics, the New York Times is always caught by surprise:

His candidacy all but dismissed just days ago, Rick Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri on Tuesday, an unexpected trifecta that raised fresh questions about Mitt Romney’s ability to corral conservative support. . .
His performance added another twist to an unruly nominating contest that has seen Republican voters veering among candidates and refusing to coalesce behind anyone. It came after Mr. Romney scored back-to-back victories in Florida and Nevada that had led to predictions that he was finally on a straight march to the nomination.

By whom was Santorum’s candidacy “all but dismissed”? Why, by all the smart guys at the New York Times, that’s who!

Kind of interesting that Romney’s top surrogate in Minnesota was the state’s former governor, Tim Pawlenty, and yet Romney placed third in Minnesota, with 17 percent. Thanks, Tim!

Tuesday’s trifecta was not “unexpected” by a certain Colorado resident:

What did I tell ya? Santorum’s got game. . . . Nothing is inevitable in politics.

Attagirl, Michelle. And she makes an important point: This would be a good time to go give Rick Santorum some money: $20, $50, $100 — whatever you can afford, give it now. Super Tuesday’s coming soon, and the Romney attack machine is going to pour on millions of dollars in attack ads to try to destroy the Comeback Kid they thought they buried weeks ago.

UPDATE IX: Linked by Fire Andrea Mitchell — thanks! Guess Tuesday’s vote doesn’t bode well for “Sweet Meteor of Death,” eh?

One of my friends from Team Santorum pointed out on Twitter that a tropical storm just hit Vanuatu. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

UPDATE X: My libertarian friend in Missouri, Tom Knapp, seems to grasp the Fear and Loathing element in this campaign. And the truly bizarre thing is, I’ll be hanging out with Rick Santorum this weekend at CPAC. Because the going just got weird . . .

UPDATE XI: Evil Blogger Lady: “This reminds me of that moment of recognition by Michael Corleone in Godfather II that the rebels in Cuba could actually win…” Because no discussion of 21st-century politics is complete until somebody makes a Godfather reference.

It’s 3:30 a.m. Good-night, everybody.

Your Choices: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum or ‘Sweet Meteor of Death’

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This looks to be a big day for Rick Santorum, which probably explains why last night Erick Erickson began apocalyptic doomsaying:

Influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson said he would endorse the “sweet meteor of death” over any of the current GOP candidates, but would back the party’s eventual nominee in the general election against President Obama. . . .
Erickson has been highly critical of all the remaining candidates, saying the only reason Romney was seen as the eventual nominee was because “the other candidates, right now, are a pretty pathetic lot.”

Here’s a partial transcript from Erickson’s Monday WSB radio program:

It’s time for a moment of candor, I believe. I’m going to give my endorsement for President of the United States tonight. . . . Of the candidates running for President of the United States, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, on the Republican side — oh, I guess I’ll throw in Ron Paul there, as well — my choice for President of the United States is the Sweet Meteor of Death. Yes, that’s right, the Sweet Meteor of Death. Now, naturally, you could presume that, being a conservative, that of course I would choose something like a great fireball coming from the sky, annihilating us all, because women and minorities are hardest hit. . . . I’ve decided, a pox on all their houses. They’re all terrible. I doubt any of them can beat Barack Obama, unless the economy goes back down, which it may very well, in which case they don’t need my endorsement — they’ll have the economy.

(Hat-tip: Hot Air.) I had written a very long rebuttal to Erickson, but then thought better of it. Why bother? Dan Riehl calls Erickson’s rant “basically a concession to Romney and simply another incidence of his being one of the first to quit the battle.” And permit me to quote from Erickson’s Wikipedia biography:

The analysis from one of Erickson’s “Morning Briefing” emails, just after the November 2009 election, was posted on the website of Human Events, referred to on the website of The American Spectator, and by Rush Limbaugh, and “fueled discussion later that morning at two influential weekly meetings of [Washington,] D.C. conservatives”, according to an article in the Washington Post. The Post added, “The ability of a single e-mail to shape a message illustrates the power of the conservative network.” The article described Erickson as one of the American conservative movement’s “key national players”.

Hmmm. Erickson’s analysis was “referred to on the website of the American Spectator,” and thence became an example of “the power of the conservative network.” How do such things happen?

The value of Neutral Objective Journalism is sometimes overlooked, and I would assert that Doug Hoffman’s victory in New York was the irreversible turning point in the Florida Senate campaign. But there were hundreds, even thousands of people who deserved credit for those victories, and it was Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Hoffman that crushed the spine of Dede Scozzafava’s campaign.

Don’t know how that happened, either.

When was the last time Erick said anything nice about Sarah Palin?

A Political Math Problem

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“The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the campaign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insufficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia — one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom.”
— Joshua Green, “The Front-Runner’s Fall,” The Atlantic, September 2008

“In a meeting room at the Palazzo hotel [in Las Vegas] over the past week, Newt Gingrich mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention in August.
“The crux of the former House speaker’s new plan is math: a complex analysis of each state’s delegates, how they’re awarded and how many, reasonably, Gingrich can expect to win.”
— Amy Gardner, “Newt Gingrich campaign offers detailed plan to carry on,” Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2002

As soon as I read the article about Newt Gingrich’s weeklong Vegas strategy sessions, my mind clicked back to Josh Green’s fascinating article about Hillary Clinton’s doomstruck 2008 campaign. How had such an overwhelming front-runner, with so many built-in advantages over her rivals, managed to fumble away the nomination? Green’s article describes the basic error in about 170 words, summarizing the strategic assumptions contained in a March 2007 campaign memo written by Clinton adviser Harold Ickes:

Ickes believed that Iowa and New Hampshire could determine Clinton’s fate, and that the February 5 Super Tuesday primaries would determine the nominee. No mention was made of the delegates or the later-caucus states that actually figured so decisively.
Ickes seemed attuned to the asymmetric risk that accompanies overwhelming front-runner status: the collapse of momentum that would accompany an unexpected loss. He posited that Edwards and Obama could sustain losing Iowa and New Hampshire but worried that Clinton could not; he urged that she spend “substantial” time in Iowa; and he recommended a contingency plan that would haunt the campaign when his own budget team didn’t fulfill it. Noting the difficulty of raising more than $75 million before Iowa, Ickes stressed the need to maintain a $25 million reserve, presumably as insurance against a setback. The campaign wound up raising more than $100 million—but, according to The New York Times, by the time Iowa was lost, $106 million had been spent. The $25 million reserve had vanished, and the campaign was effectively insolvent.

This was a stunning revelation: The Clinton campaign burned through more than $100 million before it ever got to New Hampshire, didn’t think in terms of delegate counts, and did not bother to plan beyond the Super Tuesday primaries.

There are obvious parallels to the Gingrich campaign, on a smaller scale. Consider the matter of money: Gingrich spent more than $10 million before the end of 2011, entering 2012 with about $2 million cash on hand. By comparison, Mitt Romney spent about $36 million by the end of last year, entering 2012 with about $20 million cash on hand.

Yet the winner of the Iowa caucuses was neither Romney nor Gingrich, but rather Rick Santorum, who spent less than $2 million and had less than $300,000 cash on hand to begin 2012.

And it was not until last week — after the Florida primary — that Gingrich’s campaign staff sat down and calculated the remaining campaign schedule in terms of delegate counts.

There are obvious differences between the Democratic race in 2008 and the Republican campaign in 2012, of course: Going into 2008, the Democrats were fired up, having taken back Congress in 2006, and eager to recapture the White House they’d narrowly lost in 2000. John Edwards, John Kerry’s 2004 running mate, was a contender who’d spent four years building his campaign, especially in Iowa. And none of the GOP 2012 candidates, not even Romney, have the kind of fund-raising resources that enabled Hillary to raise $100 million in 2007.

Another glaring difference: The three-candidate race between Clinton, Edwards and Barack Obama that defined the early campaign for Democrats in 2007-08 was fairly stable. In 2011-2012, the “flavor of the month” cycles in the GOP campaign saw five major candidates flame out before the third contest of the race, the Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina. Here is a helpful chart:

Candidate ……. Money Raised (12/31/11) … Quit
Tim Pawlenty ………….. $5.1 million …………….. Aug. 14
Herman Cain ………… $16.8 million ……………… Dec. 3
Michelle Bachmann … $9.2 million ……………… Jan. 4
Jon Huntsman ……….. $5.9 million …………….. Jan. 16
Rick Perry ……………… $19.8 million ……………. Jan. 19

(Source: Center for Responsive Politics)

Between them, these five candidates raised a total of $56.8 million, a sum greater than Romney’s $56.4 million, yet two — Pawlenty and Cain — quit before any votes were cast, and three more quit in a 15-day span between the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary. Both Cain and Perry have given Gingrich their endorsements, but he would surely rather have the $36.6 million that their campaigns raised (and mostly spent) in 2011.

It is remarkable that Santorum’s low-budget campaign out-performed all five of the candidates who quit before South Carolina, each of whom raised at least twice his 2011 total. It is furthermore remarkable that Gingrich, despite his vast fundraising advantage over Santorum, is trailing Santorum in polls of both Colorado and Minnesota, which hold caucuses Tuesday.

And yet, as Amy Gardner points out in her Washington Post article, the Gingrich campaign’s need for more money is now so desperate that the candidate’s time is being spent on fundraising efforts: “Gingrich . . . barely appeared in public during nearly a full week in Las Vegas to concentrate on raising money.”

More alarming than that, however, is the revelation that after just five contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada — Gingrich is already at such a disadvantage in terms of delegate count that even by his own estimate, he cannot hope to regain the lead before the Texas primary scheduled for April 3: “Our commitment is to find a series of victories which, by the end of the Texas primary, will leave us at parity with Governor Romney. And by that point forward, we’ll see if we can’t actually win the nomination.”

“We’ll see”?

Newt is dialing-for-dollars, trying to raise money to continue his campaign on the basis of “we’ll see”? And in point of fact, a pending lawsuit over re-districting means that the Texas primary is likely to be delayed well past the scheduled April 3 date.

The Gingrich campaign is faced with a math problem involving not merely delegate counts, but also time and money. An apparently high “burn rate” of funds means that Gingrich must raise large sums merely to keep his campaign going, and he must keep going for at least two months if he hopes to catch up with Romney, a hope contingent on his successes in the meantime.

The math problem is even tougher for Santorum — who got the bad news today that he failed to qualify for the ballot in Indiana’s May primary — but Santorum’s low-budget underdog campaign has a far lower “burn rate” compared to Gingrich, and can more plausibly maintain a “we’ll see” approach. Between now and Super Tuesday on March 6, the calendar looks like this:

Feb. 7
Colorado (caucus) ……………………. 36 delegates
Minnesota (caucus) ………………….. 40 delegates
Missouri (non-binding primary) … 0 delegates

Feb. 11
Maine (caucus) …………………………. 24 delegates

Feb. 22 — Arizona Debate (CNN)

Feb. 28
Arizona (primary) ……………………… 29 delegates
Michigan (primary) …………………… 30 delegates

March 1 — Georgia Debate (CNN)

March 3
Washington (caucus) …………………. 43 delegates

So there will be 202 delegates awarded before Super Tuesday, 100 of which will be awarded before the next debate on Feb. 22. It is possible that the debates could dramatically alter the race, shifting the momentum against Romney. But unless that happens, it’s difficult to see Gingrich winning any of those states, so that Romney’s advantage is likely to increase between now and Super Tuesday, when the primaries in Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma represent likely or possibly wins. Yet other states on the Super Tuesday calendar, including Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia, look to be big wins for Romney, and it’s entirely possible that Romney will win more of the total 437 delegates at stake on March 6, increasing his margin still further.

By the morning of March 7, then, Gingrich could very well be in a worse position than he is now. And while unexpected developments in the next 30 days could shift the momentum against Romney, as of today, Gingrich is facing a very difficult political math problem.

Ed Morrissey, Phyllis Schlafly, Michelle Malkin, David Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo: Gosh, Everybody’s for Santorum Now!

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Show of hands: Who remembers the “Earthquake in Vanuatu” on Dec. 1? Who remembers “Santorum Express Sunday” on Dec. 4? Who remembers when I had to scrape around to find articles from Iowa newspapers to put together Santorum campaign updates, back when a CNN/Time poll showed Santorum in sixth place in Iowa, at 5%?

OK, so having endured those lean, lonely and seemingly hopeless weeks of early December, I am not even slightly daunted now, and am in fact greatly encouraged to see that more and more conservatives are climbing aboard the Santorum Express. The latest is Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

Why Santorum?  In my estimation, Santorum is the last consistent conservative standing, and the only one both promoting the conservative agenda and campaigning as a conservative in the race.  . . .
Santorum has demonstrated a level of personal integrity in this race that outshines the rest of the field.  Santorum has campaigned with blue-collar Reagan Democrats in mind, pushing for an economic plan that would revitalize manufacturing and small business.  He could easily have tipped over into class-warfare populism while Gingrich and Romney bashed each other over their work at Bain and Freddie Mac in order to ingratiate himself with that sector by playing on latent envy.  Instead, he defended capitalism and both of his competitors on the campaign trail more effectively than either could defend themselves.  In contrast, Romney keeps demonstrating a lack of fluency in conservative politics and philosophy, while Gingrich has conducted a personal, angry campaign that threatens to reinforce every negative stereotype about conservatives, both at times putting themselves and their ambitions above the party they seek to lead.

Every time a blogger endorses Rick Santorum, an angel gets his wings, and Ed has now added his name to a growing list of worthies in support of the Consistent Conservative. While I was in Florida last week, I missed David Limbaugh’s endorsement:

I don’t believe that the science of electability is as certain as those promoting it would have us believe. . . .
I reject the conventional wisdom that Rick Santorum could not win the general election, because I believe he represents the best contrast to Obama and is the least vulnerable to attack, among other reasons.
I will support whoever emerges as the Republican nominee, but I do not apologize for supporting Rick Santorum.

Michelle Malkin endorsed Santorum a week ago, Phyllis Schlafly says she’ll vote for Santorum in Tuesday’s Missouri primary, and Santorum also got the endorsement of former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo. During his years in Congress, Tancredo was the “gold standard” for immigration enforcement, and his endorsement of Santorum makes perfect sense when you look at the Numbers USA immigration report card on current presidential hopefuls. (Newt Gingrich? D.)

On “Fox News Sunday,” Santorum said: “I think we’re  going to do very well here in Minnesota. I think we’re going to do very well in  Colorado, and we’ve got a one-on-one match up against Mitt Romney in Missouri, while there’s no delegates, it is a key state, it is a primary. And we think we can do exceptionally well in the state of Missouri.”

Despite placing third in Florida and fourth in Nevada, Santorum actually had a very good week and his campaign is now more hopeful than ever. In a press release summarizing the week’s developments, Santorum campaign communications director Hogan Gidley said, “Time brings clarity, and this week proved that former speaker Gingrich was simply not up to the task of being the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum has a long, tried-and-true track record of unapologetically standing up for the conservative principles that make America great. He’s the full spectrum conservative who’s never wavered on our core principles. It is Rick Santorum who conservatives can rally around as their standard bearer, and poll-after-poll is now showing that the two-man race is now between Santorum and Romney.”

Gidley cited polls showing Santorum leading in Minnesota and ahead of Gingrich in Colorado:

Minnesota:
Santorum: 29%
Romney: 27%
Gingrich: 22%

Colorado:
Romney: 40%
Santorum: 26%
Gingrich: 18%

Meanwhile, a national poll by Rasmussen Reports showed Santorum the only GOP contender leading Barack Obama.

Santorum will speak Friday morning at CPAC, and his supporters are hoping to get a big boost as the campaign moves forward, with the next debate (Feb. 22 in Arizona) still two weeks away. Finally, while this isn’t quite an angel-wings endorsement, Dan Blatt of Gay Patriot offers some words of respect for Santorum:

Maybe Santorum is doing well because he comes across as a nice guy. He enjoyed that reputation when he served on Capitol Hill.  Although, to be sure, the Senator has said some strange things about gays, he has treated the one member of his staff who has been publicly “outed” as gay with dignity. Indeed, his one-time spokesman Robert Traynham said “was open with Santorum about his sexual orientation” and that he had “never heard Santorum voice an anti-gay or bigoted comment” in the ten years he had worked for him.

Many people disagree with Santorum on issues, but still respect his sincerity and consistency and, like a lot of other Republicans, Dan was disgusted by Newt’s Nevada meltdown.

So we await further developments and who knows? By this time next week, the headlines may be all about the latest Santorum Surge. There was another earthquake in Vanuatu last week. I’m just sayin’ . . .

PREVIOUSLY:


Mitt Romney Wins Nevada Caucuses; Gingrich Blames Mormons for His Loss

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The questions now become very serious: “Can he be stopped? And if so, by whom?” But first, the news:

Mitt Romney won Nevada’s GOP caucuses by a wide margin Saturday, a victory that was long expected and helps further his campaign’s argument that he is the inevitable nominee.
Romney held a big lead in early voting results, and The Associated Press and TV networks projected him to win when the last caucus locations closed.

Results of the caucuses were ridiculously slow. As of 2:30 a.m. ET, only 45% of precincts had reported and the results were:

Romney ……………. 43%
Gingrich …………… 26%
Paul …………………. 18%
Santorum …………. 13%

We will have to wait and see what the final numbers are, but at this stage it appears once again — as in Florida — that the combined votes of Gingrich and Santorum are not equal to Romney’s total. And this undermines Gingrich’s oft-repeated claim that his problem is that Santorum won’t quit and “coalesce” with him.

Instead, it could be argued that the problem is so many conservatives were persuaded to put all their eggs into Newt’s flawed basket. Ginger Gibson of Politico reported Friday on the hapless “mess” of Gingrich’s campaign in Nevada. This was an embarrassment for a candidate whose “super PAC” has received millions of dollars from Vegas kingpin Sheldon Adelson. It wasn’t merely that Gingrich lost, but that he ran such a conspicuously shoddy campaign in Adelson’s home state. But Newt seems immune to shame:

Following a second lopsided defeat to Mitt Romney in a week, Newt Gingrich on Saturday night again pledged to go on the Republican nomination fight all the way to the Republican convention this summer in Tampa.
“I will be a candidate for president of the United States,” Gingrich told reporters at a Las Vegas hotel following projections from CBS News and others that Romney would handily win the caucuses. “And we will continue to campaign all the way to Tampa.” . . .
In anticipation of a Romney victory in Nevada, Gingrich scheduled a press conference rather than the traditional election night rally. Gingrich spent much of the news conference attacking Romney, and in particular blasted him over comments the former Massachusetts governor made earlier this week when he said he was “not concerned about the very poor.”

The Lonely Conservative:

Newt Gingrich gave an angry speech. He even brought up Mormons. At this point, I’m all for anyone but Newt. The guy is nuts.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post:

Newt Gingrich predicted during a press conference following Saturday’s Nevada caucuses that he would emerge as the GOP front-runner again by the Texas primary.
Gingrich’s remarks about regaining his front-runner status by Texas — which he repeated — capped a bizarre press conference held Saturday in Las Vegas. . . .
Gingrich seemed to dismiss his performance in Nevada’s caucuses, noting Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-Texas) emphasis on caucus states and Romney’s inherent advantages in the state.
“It is a very heavily Mormon state,” Gingrich said, referring to Romney’s religion.

Gingrich is neither helping himself nor hurting Romney with these attacks, and Romney is ignoring Newt the nuisance: “In three campaign appearances Friday, Romney did not even mention Newt Gingrich.” Meanwhile, campaigning in Colorado, Rick Santorum ratcheted up his attacks on both Romney and Gingrich:

“We are not going to win this election if either of these two guys is nominated,” Santorum declared. “Let me assure you. We will not win.”
Santorum claims neither candidate can compete with President Obama, saying both are simply too flawed and will be “destroyed” and “picked apart” by the Democratic incumbent. . . .
“On Tuesday I think we are going to do well in Missouri,” [Santorum later told Fox News]. “It’s going to be interesting because it’s a head-to-head between Governor Romney and myself. Speaker Gingrich is not on the ballot. We will see the idea that one conservative can go up against Mitt Romney head-to-head and win.”

That kind of rhetorical escalation in a GOP primary is unfortunate, even if what Santorum says is true — and who doubts that he is expressing his own sincere belief? Every candidate believes he is best qualified to defeat Obama, or else he wouldn’t be running. There are surely Republicans out there who believe that the GOP lost its best chance to beat Obama when Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry dropped out. But public doomsaying by candidates during the primary campaign is best avoided.

UPDATE: Also best avoided, “a highly delicate campaign by Mr. Romney and his top Jewish financial supporters to dissuade Mr. Adelson from adding to the $10 million that he and his wife have given to a pro-Gingrich ‘super PAC,’ Winning Our Future, that has been tearing into Mr. Romney through television advertising.” (Hat-tip: William Jacobson.)

This kind of thing — one candidate’s “top Jewish financial supporters” putting pressure on a rival’s top Jewish financial supporter — could lead to some very ugly accusations. Just imagine what Ron Paul’s people must be saying after reading a story like that. Or course, they were saying that stuff before reading the story, but still . . .

Gingrich, Romney, Trump Monopolize Media; Santorum Keeps Campaigning

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“[Obama] made the claim that his policies of taxing the rich is authorized by the Bible. That he is doing what is biblically called for by taxing the rich, by having the government tax the rich. Now, I’ve read the Bible, and I must have missed that passage. . . . This is an administration that attacks religion, and then tries to cloak itself in religion in order to take your money.”
— Rick Santorum, Thursday in Fallon, Nevada

“Sincerity is the important thing on TV. A presidential candidate should at least seem to believe what he’s saying — even if it’s all stone crazy.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

If you’ve been watching Fox News lately, you are perhaps aware that the “fair and balanced” network has jumped onto the same bandwagon as most of the rest of the major media: The GOP presidential campaign is now a two-man race between the frontrunners, Mitt and Newt.

This was evidently the narrative the media wanted back in December, before Rick Santorum shocked the world with his astonishing surge to victory in Iowa — a result that was immediately dismissed as a fluke by the media, so that they could get back to telling you about the two-man frontrunner race they had decided on weeks earlier.

That Fox is part of this media bandwagon is a fact I note in passing, while pointing out what was obvious to me long ago: Newt can’t beat Mitt.

It can’t happen and won’t happen, and those conservatives who believe they can make it happen are engaged in a type of behavior that Ace of Spades has called “wishcasting” — the idea that you can do anything you want to do, if only you wish and hope and believe in it enough.

There are many reasons why the seemingly possible dream of a Newt nomination is actually less practically feasible than the admittedly long-shot chance of an unexpected comeback by Rick Santorum. Most of these reasons have to do with Newt’s biography and character: His personal flaws and failings, which are well known even to his supporters, but which he (and they) suppose will be ignored by undecided voters who are less ideological than themselves because, doggone it, he has such great ideas!

You see a bit of this admiration for Newt’s ideas in Karl Rove’s campaign critique, where he faults Romney for relying too heavily on the “successful businesman” biographical narrative. But the problem for Newt is that, beyond his career as a leader of conservative Republicans, his biographical narrative is a major net negative. Even if Republican primary voters could overlook everything else, Gingrich’s two divorces are the kind of “baggage” that he can’t possibly carry to the White House.

Now, maybe you’ve got a divorce or two under your own belt and wish to believe that the American people would be willing to overlook this element of Gingrich’s biographical narrative — but this belief is only possible if you assume that most people share your own vehement opposition to Obama and would be willing to ignore the messy details of Newt’s narrative.

Please see R. Emmett Tyrrell’s column last week on that subject. Furthermore, let’s quote Tyrrell’s column this week:

Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich did in the last days of the Florida primary precisely what I predicted he would do. He hurled wild charges at Mitt Romney that suggested Newt was losing his grip. He charged Romney with lying and falling into the hands of George Soros and Goldman Sachs, and he did this while seeking the Republican presidential nomination!
Newt quoted Soros as saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” Citing Goldman Sachs’ profiting from the bailout, he linked the Wall Street firm to anti-Gingrich ads, filling in the dots: “Those ads,” he averred, “are your money recycled to attack me.” On Sunday, he suggested that Rick Santorum drop out of the race and support him. Santorum had left the campaign trail to be with his desperately ill daughter. That is the kind of grace we have come to expect from Gingrich, who, by the way, supplied no evidence of Goldman Sachs’ or of Soros’s aiding Romney.

The astute reader will perhaps perceive that the esteemed editor of The American Spectator relied on his shoe-leather man’s reporting from Newt’s Fort Myers “Fear and Loathing” rally, a service I was more than happy to provide, and which in turn involves a debt to the good readers who hit the tip jar for the Florida trip. Continue reading Gingrich, Romney, Trump Monopolize Media; Santorum Keeps Campaigning →

BREAKING NEWS: MITT ROMNEY WINS FLORIDA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

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TAMPA, Fla.
Polls just closed in the western panhandle of Florida, and there is no need for suspense regarding the result. It has been pretty much a universal certainty for the past week that Romney was going to win this thing pretty easily, and the only question is the final margin of victory.

In fact, I’m writing this post in Naples at 4 o’clock in the afternoon — four hours before the polls close — because I’ve got a three-hour drive to reach the Mitt Romney RINO-tastic™ Florida Primary Victory Celebration at the Tampa Convention Center, and wasn’t sure if traffic might delay my arrival, preventing me from being the first to report this URGENT BREAKING NEWS.

Anyway, it is not true that the only people who support Mitt are sold-out gutless RINOs. “Sunshine State Sarah” explains why she voted for Romney. You Newt people can go unload all your hate on Sarah. Here’s a headline:

Newt Gingrich Robocall: Mitt Romney Forced
Holocaust Survivors To Eat Non-Kosher Food

Desperate much? And here’s another headline:

Santorum says Gingrich should stop
pressuring GOP rivals to drop out

Ditto that. Newt should drop out and endorse Santorum. Otherwise, he should stop blaming his failures on other people.

UPDATE: Now on the scene at the Press Filing Center at the Tampa Convention Center, where the TVs are on CNN, which called the election for Romney as soon as the polls closed in the Panhandle, by which time nearly 60% of the precincts were already reporting:

Romney …….. 47%
Gingrich …….. 31%
Santorum ….. 13%
Paul ………….. 7%

That 16-point gap is likely to narrow as the Panhandle precincts report.

UPDATE II: Mitt sends out his wife, Ann, to give thanks to their supporters and to introduce Mitt.

UPDATE III: Very much a general-election speech from Mitt, taking aim at Obama, promising an America “where hope is a new job and a paycheck, not a word on a fading bumper sticker.”

Romney also said: “A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us and we will win. When we gather back here seven months from now here in Tampa for our convention, we will be a united party with a winning ticket.”

It is reported that Gingrich won’t even spend the night in Florida, and won’t do the morning talk shows tomorrow, but will fly tonight to Nevada, where the caucuses are Saturday. Lots of Mormons in Nevada.

UPDATE IV: A couple of photos:

TV satellite trucks parked under the palm trees outside the convention center.

Inside the press filing center.

UPDATE V: At Newt’s speech, they’re holding up signs that say, “46 States to Go.” Just ran in to top Romney advisor Eric Ferhnstrom, who said, “He’s not even on the ballot in 46 more states.”

Ferhnstrom said they expect Ron Paul to be Romney’s chief opponent in the Nevada caucuses, and said Missouri (which holds a non-binding primary on Tuesday) will be a two-man race between Romney and Santorum, because Gingrich isn’t on the ballot there.

In case you’re wondering, the next debate is Feb. 22 in Arizona.

UPDATE VI: Citing polls showing Rick Santorum leading Romney in Missouri and Ohio, the Santorum campaign says in a press release: “Santorum is a stronger long term threat to Romney than Gingrich because he has less baggage and is simply much better liked.”