Despite Mitt Romney’s less-than-exceptional performance last night, neither Newt Gingrich nor Rick Santorum has a viable path to the nomination from here. At Frontloading HQ, Josh Putnam crunches the numbers and finds that while it’s not mathematically impossible for either candidate to get to the 1144 delegates needed to win, the chances are so low that it might as well be.
For Santorum, the possibility is more likely if Gingrich – who has been trailing in the race, but still siphoning off potential Santorum supporters – drops out. The Wall Street Journal describes the impact this had on the primaries last night:
Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich effectively split the southern states in Tuesday’s contest: The former Pennsylvania senator won in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota, and the former House speaker claimed the richest delegate prize in his home state of Georgia. Mr. Santorum also claimed North Dakota. Both men used the results to argue they were the conservative alternative to Mr. Romney. …
Mr. Gingrich has siphoned off just enough votes in key states to cost Mr. Santorum wins and delegates, [campaign strategist] Mr. Brabender said. In last week’s Michigan primary, Mr. Santorum lost to Mr. Romney by 3 percentage points.
Realizing the problem, Santorum’s campaign is now all but calling for Gingrich to drop out:
Senior campaign strategist John Brabender said the key for the campaign going forward will be creating an opportunity to challenge Mitt Romney one-on-one, though Brabender maintained the Santorum campaign would not directly call on Gingrich to drop out of the race.
Based on Gingrich’s speech last night – in which he enlightened us with a protracted, completely inaccurate history of the race so far – he seems to have no intention of dropping out anytime soon. As untenable as his path to victory is, he may just be delusional enough to think he can pull it off.
Team Mitt's strategy was to (a) lock up the endorsement of absolutely everybody who is anybody in the GOP leadership, (b) spend like a drunken sailor up through Super Tuesday, doing whatever is necessary to destroy everyone but Ron Paul, (c) then coast to the nomination while rebuilding his image as a warm & fuzzy guy. Ron Paul getting crazier and crazier would help with the latter. n nThe problem that Romney is going to encounter is that no resource is infinite — he can not spend multiples of what everyone else is spending indefinitely. Furthermore, his operation is far more expensive to maintain, he doesn't have the dedicated idealistic volunteers of Santorum, or the motivated volunteers of Gingrich. How much money does Romney have left — if he announced his victory in a fundraising email, it indicates that he is at least sending those out, probably for a reason. n nRemember too that Santorum was not on the ballot in one whole county and other parts of Ohio — if you only look at the precincts where he was, who won Ohio? (Remember that many who now support him had been supporting Michelle Bachmann last fall.) So Romney's past victories can't predict future ones because one can only spend like a drunken sailor for so long. n nAnd then the true wild card is Team Mitt doing something stupid — something on the lines of Eric Fehrnstrom's “CrazyKhazei.” fake Twitter account. Something like that breaking nationally, exploited by national candidates and not some unknown guy (Alan Khazei) whom Elizabeth Warren pushed out of her way to run against Scott Brown, could really REALY hurt Romney. And then I am not sure that Fehrnstrom has control over all the loose cannons he has working for him — and some of those folk did stuff in their College Republican days that would be quite problematic were they to do similar things now. n nWhere the other candidates have relied upon idealism, Romney has resorted to money. There are many benefits to this — but Romney's true Achilles Heel is his staff and them getting caught doing something stupid. Were this to happen, whoever is still in the race would likely be the nominee.
Santorum should drop out. He can't win in November and he's getting only the votes of the tiny part of the Republican Party that votes on social-religious issues only and those who don't like Romney who believe the media hype that he's the only alternative to Romney. There's a percent of the American population that hates Gingrich (like Bush, Palin, Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, etc.) that he would have to overcome in the fall, true — but Santorum cannot win in the fall (unless Obama goes completely insane somehow). Romney's the least offensive and could possibly be very convincing against Obama … but Santorum needs to go so we have a choice of potential winners.
Romney is every bit as offensive as Santorum, not to the same people, but every bit as offensive. n nSo if your criteria is nothing beyond not offending anyone, Romney gotta go too…