Category: Rick Santorum

Campaign Cash Shows Unsustainable ‘Burn Rate’ for Romney and Gingrich

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Why is Rick Santorum surging in national polls and leading in key primary states? A big part of the explanation is that, during the long months when he campaigned relentlessly despite low poll numbers and a lack of major media attention, Santorum’s operation developed a resourcefulness that his rivals don’t have.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the low-budget Santorum campaign — which kept going throughout 2011 on a mere $2.2 million — was required to find ways to build a successful grassroots organization without the big money other Republican candidates were collecting.

Now that he is starting to look like a winner, serious money is coming in. My estimate is that the Santorum campaign got more than $5 million in the week following his Feb. 7 “trifecta” wins in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. The thrifty habits of the Santorum operation enable them to extract maximum value from their contributions, and an ABC News report about the GOP campaign finance report for January highlights Santorum’s advantage:

Rick Santorum for President
Raised: $4.51 million
Spent: $3.32 million
Cash on hand Jan. 1: $279k
Cash on hand Jan. 31: $1.47 million
Debts/obligations: $0

Romney for President Inc.
Raised: $6.54 million
Spent: $18.78 million
Cash on hand Jan. 1: $19.92 million
Cash on hand Jan. 31: $7.68 million
Debts/obligations: $0

Newt 2012
Raised: $5.59 million
Spent: $5.91 million
Cash on hand Jan. 1: $2.11 million
Cash on hand Jan. 31: $1.79 million
Debts/obligations: $1.73 million

In January, Gingrich spent everything he raised, and more, and finished the month with debts nearly equal to his cash-on-hand figure. Newt’s campaign was essentially broke after the Florida primary Jan. 31.

Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign had a negative “burn rate” — they spent more than they took in — to the tune of $12 million. And as Allahpundit noted in an item I linked in the headlines, for Romney to report a mere $7.7 cash-on-hand total as of Jan. 31 is very bad news for Team Mitt.

Ask your seventh-grader to do this math problem: If your spending exceeds your income by a margin of $12 million a month, how many days will $7.7 million last?

If the only way Romney wins primaries is when he can bury his opponents in an overwhelming avalanche of attack ads, his ability to win primaries may be nearly exhausted.

Of course, the pro-Romney “super PAC” entered February with a fat $16.3 million in the bank, but even his super PAC had a negative “burn rate,” spending more than twice as much in January ($13.9 million) as they collected in contributions ($6.6 million).

What does this mean? Right now, the Romney campaign is trying to hold on in his home state of Michigan with another one of its customary attack-ad blitzes against Rick Santorum, but Team Mitt can’t spend the kind of money now that they spent against Gingrich in December and January. Yet even if Romney can manage to win Michigan, his campaign may be headed toward a serious financial crunch before the “Super Tuesday” primaries in March.

Thus, when you look at the campaign cash numbers, the chatter about Romney’s “electability” is much less plausible, Sheldon Adelson’s big bets on Gingrich look like wasted money, and the fact that Santorum is gaining new “super-PAC” donors may be far more significant than it appears. Despite everything, Romney may yet prevail, but as we enter February’s final week — on the eve of Wednesday’s debate in Arizona — he certainly is no longer “inevitable.”


Poll Proves Mitt’s Mud Gun Works?

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The report that Mitt Romney has cut Rick Santorum’s lead from 15 points to 4 points in Michigan goes to show what can be accomplished with a multimillion-dollar attack-ad campaign, especially when those attacks are assisted by Mitt’s friends in the liberal media.

However, as Santorum himself has often pointed out during his speeches, Romney won’t have either of those advantages — a bigger campaign fund or a more friendly media — when it comes time to face Barack Obama.

Let’s hope Republican primary voters in Michigan and elsewhere have the intelligence to understand which of these two candidates is the GOP’s best chance in November. Because Mitt ain’t it.

Professor Jacobson, Maybe We Should Both Start Blogging About Sports …

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. . . or movies or food or something besides politics, because right now we are diametrically opposite and neutralizing each other:

Should the race come down to Santorum or Romney, I’d have to think about it, as shocking as that may sound given my criticisms of Romney. That’s not so much a vote of confidence in Romney, as it is an uneasiness with Santorum.

Your opposition to Santorum is somewhat less staunch than my opposition to Gingrich. I said bluntly several weeks ago that, if the fight for the nomination comes down to Newt vs. Mitt, I’m for Mitt.

Newt Gingrich simply has too much baggage, and to nominate the twice-divorced Gingrich would be to throw away the “family values” argument altogether. (See Jeffrey Bell on the importance of social issues to the GOP.) But weren’t you paying attention, Professor, to what a godawful mess of a campaign Newt ran in Nevada? Don’t you find it troubling that Gingrich hasn’t been able to get better results despite his enormous fundraising advantage ($12.6 million to $2.2 million through Dec. 31) over Santorum? (Maybe it’s that Tiffany’s bill, eh?)

Whatever my problems with Romney, and they are legion, he has at least stuck with his first wife and run a competent campaign.

Anyway, your blog’s hostility toward Santorum is effectively canceling out my blog’s hostility toward Gingrich, so maybe we should both find something else to blog about — celebrity gossip, perhaps — until this damned primary campaign is over.

Insta-RINO?

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Has Glenn Reynolds joined the “Roll Over for Romney” movement?

Back in 2008, the social-cons were all-in for Romney, to the point where Hugh Hewitt’s take became a running tagline (“You know who this is good for? Mitt Romney!”) that’s still used by by bloggers from time to time. Now, not so much. So what changed about Romney since 2008 to make him un-conservative?

Hugh Hewitt, “social conservative”? He’s a Nixonian. But I was under the impression that the real reason Hugh was pro-Romney was because he was hustling a Romney book.

I was part of the ABM (Anybody But McCain) Movement in 2008 and, like a lot of us ABMers, I was at first a Fredhead until that fizzled, then jumped aboard the Romney bandwagon as the last, best hope for stopping Cousin Crapweasel. Then Mitt quit at CPAC 2008, virtually guaranteeing Maverick’s nomination, at which point I swore a vow to vote Libertarian rather than to vote for That Backstabbing Son of a Bitch Who Got the Republican Nomination. (There is a reason, after all, that this blog is called The Other McCain.)

My opposition to Romney this year is less vehement than my implacable opposition to John McCain four years ago. Some of my friends are Romney supporters. But I hate this “It’s His Turn” stuff that the GOP Establishment keeps trying to run — endlessly replaying the Dole 1996 campaign — and I would rather have a candidate chosen by actual Republican voters in competitive primaries than to have one “anointed” in advance by the Establishment.

Also, there is an archipelago of volcanic islands in the South Pacific in desperate need of my diplomatic expertise . . .

RICK SANTORUM for PRESIDENT
The Only Candidate Who Cares About Vanuatu,
Crucial Linch-Pin of the South Pacific™

‘They Have Begun to Consider the Implications of a Santorum Victory’

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Do you remember the scene in the original Rocky, when one of Apollo Creed’s handlers points out that this luckless no-name Philly palooka is a southpaw? Left-handed boxers are unusual enough that Creed’s man was a little worried, and then he watched that TV news spot of Rocky Balboa practicing his body work by pounding on beef carcasses in a freezer.

And breaking ribs . . .

That scene came to mind today when I picked up the Saturday Washington Post and read a story at the bottom of the front page:

Obama’s Chicago-based reelection team has begun digging into Santorum’s background, diverting opposition researchers who thus far had been focused on Romney. They also blasted an e-mail to supporters in Pennsylvania, asking them to submit their most damning recollections of Santorum, a former senator from the state.
Though campaign officials still view Romney as the likely nominee, they have begun to consider the implications of a Santorum victory. They view him as a weaker general election opponent, but one who has shown an ability to connect with the population that is most disillusioned with Obama: white, blue-collar voters. . . .

Read the rest. We would be getting way ahead of the game to speculate too much of how this Italian kid might fare against The Champ. But there are a few folks in The Champ’s corner who seem worried that The Champ has some vulnerabilities that this luckless palooka could be uniquely positioned to exploit. Bitter gun-and-Bible clingers, anyone?

Look at what Santorum did to Romney in Ohio: Stole away one of his key endorsements in a crucial Super Tuesday state. A week ago, Santorum was in fourth-place in the Michigan polls, but now he’s beating Romney in Romney’s home state. And suddenly Mitt just lost the co-chair of his Arizona campaign (because nobody cares about “moral issues,” you see).

They used to say Romney was “inevitable,” but now Mitt’s starting to look more and more like . . . well, dead meat.

Hey, Champ: Watch your ribs.

 

‘News’ From the Liberal Media Meme Factory: Women Hate Rick Santorum

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You may have already seen this Rick Santorum campaign ad, but I ask you to take 30 seconds to click and play the video again. Try to watch it while asking yourself, “Will women vote for this guy?”

Sure! Why the heck not? Maybe he’s not movie-star handsome like Mitt Romney, but you can’t say that Rick Santorum is a bad-looking guy.

He is the youngest of the four remaining candidates in the GOP field, and looks even younger than his 53 years. He’s energetic and vigorous, he has an attractive young family — seven kids! — and the ad shows him as quite an ideal father: He smiles at his wife, he hugs his daughters, he plays football with his sons. What’s not to like?

Permit me to testify here that this is a rare instance where the advertising image remarkably reflects the reality. Having followed Santorum around on the campaign trail since August, I have often observed the close-knit nature of the Santorum family. His wife and children have been an integral part of his campaign from the start, and there were times — during those long months when he was stumping around Iowa, at rock bottom in the polls — that there would have been no Santorum campaign without the hard work his family put into it.

Knowing this, and having seen with my own eyes how Santorum’s appeal as a family man has been a crucial element of his success, I shake my head in astonishment that any Republican might be deceived by the propaganda published by Politico:

Rick Santorum: Will women vote for him?
. . . Gender issues have taken center stage in recent days as Santorum has made incendiary comments suggesting women not be allowed to serve in combat roles in the military (he later said he was concerned men would want to protect them). Santorum has also stood by his opposition to contraception, reiterating his position that it shouldn’t be covered by the national health-care law because it is “inexpensive.” While the ex-senator doesn’t favor outlawing birth control, he is personally opposed to it. . . .
“He constantly says things that are offensive to women,” said Kim Gandy, former president of the National Organization for Women. “Regardless of whether Republican women like some of his policies, I think they’re going to be so turned off by his judgmental stand on the independence and essential rights of women that they won’t be able to vote for him.” . . .

Are you buying this? If so, please click this link to purchase a certain bridge in Brooklyn. Slightly used, but what a bargain!

Our liberal friends very much want to believe — and more importantly, they want Republican primary voters to believe — that Rick Santorum’s social conservatism is an insuperable handicap, and that if the GOP nominates Santorum, the party will be doomed to defeat in November because of the “gender gap.” But is this belief really true?

Isn’t it possible that the very qualities that have taken Rick Santorum from the bottom to the top of the Republican primary field might also be enough to win over independent voters (including women voters) in the general election? Are women voters really so keenly attuned to the kind of “gender issues” that Kim Gandy cares about? And will their devotion to these issues be so fanatical that these women will overlook everything admirable about Rick Santorum?

You can answer those questions for yourself, dear reader. But the very fact that liberals so clearly want us to believe this meme — Women Hate Rick Santorum! — is reason enough to make me suspect that it’s just another damned liberal lie.

Of course, maybe you believe it. If so, be sure to click the donate button below and I’ll send you that bridge right away. Remember, I’m a professional journalist: Trust me!





‘Top GOP Senator’ Freaks the Hell Out Over Mitt Romney’s Michigan Meltdown

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Who is this “prominent Republican senator” who thinks Rick Santorum would “lose 35 states” if he got the nomination? Who is this vicious backstabbing crapweasel who wants to DRAFT JEB BUSH?

Lindsey Graham? John Cornyn? Mitch McConnell?

Inquiring minds want to know.

We Forgive You, Foster Friess

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Ali Akbar, Foster Friess and Robert Stacy McCain at CPAC 2012

The joke about aspirin as a contraceptive — just hold it between your knees, ladies — was probably first told by Phyllis Diller on “The Tonight Show” back when Jack Paar was still hosting. Those of us old enough to remember it were surprised when it became “controversial” this week.

How does a decades-old gag become “controversial”? When it is re-told by a GOP billionaire who supports Rick Santorum for president.

Welcome to the Age of Political Correctness: Foster Friess has felt the need to apologize for telling that old joke.

Should conservatives denounce, disavow and “distance” ourselves from Mr. Friess? Not at all. We are quite proud to be associated with such a courageous and patriotic Christian gentleman. In fact, we have created a Special Patriotic Tribute to Foster Friess, and hope that everyone will click the link to see it. IYKWIMAITYD.