Posts Tagged ‘Romney’

Tonight could be the end for Rick Santorum.  After an influential group of conservatives recently committed to raising a couple million bucks for the Santorum campaign and the SuperPac supporting Santorum, it is possible that he comes in third place in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries.

Most commentators (including yours truly) have written Gingrich off for dead.  But if Gingrich wins either or both of the primaries tonight, and Romney holds Santorum to third in both, the dynamics of the race will have shifted yet again.

In some ways, it’s window dressing.  The dance back and forth between Santorum and Gingrich is ultimately meaningless to the nomination: it’s going to Romney.

Rick Santorum has won the Kansas caucus (say that five times) and Romney has won the caucuses for Wyoming, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

This puts the delegate count at 454 for Romney, 217 for Santorum, 107 for Gingrich and 47 for Ron Paul.

Romney will prevail, but Santorum has a slight chance for victory in Alabama and Mississippi, thus the GOP continues the process.

Keep in mind, while it seems like this nomination process is taking forever, Clinton and Obama went into late June before it was settled in 2008.  The GOP has plenty of time.

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I find it interesting, and kind of amusing, that the Denver Bronco’s are making such a hard play for Peyton Manning, thus showing they are willing to throw Tebow overboard.  Yes, Manning is a great quarterback, but I’m guessing the fan loyalty to the Bronco’s will be less intense with Manning than it would be with Tebow.

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A recent web ad by American Future Fund calling on Obama’s SuperPac to give Bill Maher’s $1 million contribution is pretty edgy.  Too edgy to post directly on my blog – you’ll have to see it here.

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After a morning scare that the Valley of the Sun was out of Thin Mints, I hustled over to Wal-Mart and snatched up a few boxes (and the Do-si-dos).  I love the Girl Scout cookie drive.

Mitt Romney is, as country band “Big and Rich” would sing, “rollin’, rollin’, rollin.’” Mitt Romney continues to show broad strength in the GOP nomination contest with a big win in the Washington State caucuses.  He bested Ron Paul and Rick Santorum (who are only a couple hundred votes apart) by more than 10 points.

This gives Romney additional momentum going into “Super Tuesday” and the most important contest that day, Ohio.

Unless Santorum can pull off some solid wins next Tuesday, it’s going to be hard for him to justify continuing his campaign.  Gingrich has no business continuing forward, but since his head is in lunar mode, he still hasn’t recognized he has long overstayed his welcome.

For all intents and purposes, the general election is on – and it’s time for Republicans as a party to focus all of their energy on making Obama a one term President.

As expected, Romney coasted to a solid 47-26 win in Arizona, and topped Rick Santorum in Michigan 41-38, which puts him in the driver’s seat to lock up the nomination next week on Super Tuesday. At this point, Newt Gingrich (who came in third in Arizona and fourth in Michigan) should drop out, something that he really should have done weeks ago.

As I wrote back in January, Romney is well-positioned to secure the nomination. Last week, I wrote that Romney was going to win Arizona by double digits and also win Michigan.

Romney has proven his ability to win when it matters, and Santorum should join with Gingrich and drop out, conceding the nomination to Romney, so we can move on as a party.

Super Tuesday next week will solidify Romney’s status as the Republican nominee, and for either Gingrich or Santorum to stay in the race only wastes resources that could be used to beat President Obama in November.

Prediction: Romney will win Arizona by double digits and also win Michigan next Tuesday.  That will give him momentum going into Super Tuesday in which he will win more delegates than Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich and continue to lead the delegate count on his way to the Republican nomination.

Here is my problem with Rick Santorum, and it’s personal.  I took vacation time in 2004 to work on Pat Toomey’s Senate campaign against Sen. Arlen Specter.  Rick Santorum, to the surprise of many conservatives, endorsed and cut ads for Specter, as did President George W. Bush.  The argument at the time from the White House was that if Specter was the Republican nominee, Bush would be able to win Pennsylvania.  The counter argument was that if Specter was the nominee, the base Republican voters in Pennsylvania would be unmotivated to turnout and vote.

As a result of Santorum endorsing Specter, Specter won the primary in 2004 by one vote per precinct over Toomey and then Bush went on to lose Pennsylvania to Kerry in the General Election.

I can’t forget Santorum supporting Specter, who not only voted counter to Bush in the following years, but eventually switched to Democrat and was the deciding vote on Obama’s health care bill.

That’s unforgivable.

Mitt Romney enjoyed a big day on Saturday.  First he won the straw poll at CPAC – something that no one believed was possible.  Then, later Saturday, he won the Maine caucus, edging out Ron Paul, whom everyone thought was going to win the Maine caucus.  Paul even skipped CPAC to spend time in Maine, and yet lost both.

This puts Romney at more than 100 delegates and Ron Paul with fewer than 20.  Gingrich is under 30 delegates and Santorum has just more than 70.

This makes Arizona and Michigan important contests at the end of the month.  Santorum has predicted he will win Michigan, and he might. But if he doesn’t, Romney will be riding momentum into Super Tuesday with a sure win in Arizona.

One thing is for sure, Gingrich is done.  CPAC is not the establishment crowd – as evidenced by Ron Paul’s straw poll wins in 2010 and 2011 – but the self-proclaimed anti-establishment candidate, Newt Gingrich, only garnered 15% of the vote, for a distant 3^rd place finish.

The CPAC straw poll results are very interesting.  Romney winning CPAC challenges the narrative that Mitt Romney can’t get the support of the most conservative elements of the GOP.  CPAC is the most conservative of the base GOP, and handing Romney a solid straw poll victory will give Romney additional momentum.

While this primary contest seems to be dragging on forever, remember, it’s only Feb. 11.  Obama didn’t secure the nomination from Hillary Clinton until June of 2008.  There is still plenty of time for the GOP to resolve the contest and then focus on beating Obama.

Just to prove that politics is interesting, Rick Santorum has risen from the ashes and swept three primary/caucus contests yesterday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

From a delegate count standpoint, it is a pretty meaningless day – but now the supposed two-man race between Romney and Gingrich has shifted to Romney and Santorum.

As I wrote after the South Carolina primary, Romney shouldn’t panic.  With Michigan and Arizona coming up at the end of the month, Romney should be riding the momentum of two solid wins going into Super Tuesday.

The best news coming out of last night is the crushing defeats for Gingrich in Minnesota and Colorado (he wasn’t on the ballot in Missouri).  Gingrich is done.

Congratulations to Santorum.  He now gets a chance to prove whether he can translate wins into a real campaign.

Romney thumped Newt Gingrich in Nevada and rather than do an election night rally, Gingrich decided to do a press conference instead, which was obviously to convince the press that he really, really was going to stay in the race, really.

The more Gingrich says, “We will go to Tampa,” the more I think he is trying to convince himself.  He compared himself to Reagan in the 1976 GOP nomination, I’m not sure anyone sees it the same way, and that was the year Reagan lost.

Gingrich is a smart and visionary guy, but he is his own worst enemy.  It is also clear that he truly despises Mitt Romney, and that could create a real poisonous atmosphere as Gingrich gets more desperate to be relevant.  Going on about Romney being “substantially dishonest” is not going to make the unity effort any easier later on.

Remember this line from my blog back on January 19^th?

Seriously, how ironic is it that the guy everyone is trying to show as the alternative to the “weird Mormon guy” is the one who has actually tried to practice plural marriage?

Now we read that Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor hits the same theme last weekend at the Alfalfa Club Dinner as reported in the Washington Post.

But according to two accounts, O’Connor waded into the Republican presidential campaign with a joke about Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich that drew a lot of laughter.

According to ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser, who was at the Capital Hilton for the dinner, O’Connor said that of the two leading Republican candidates, “one is a practicing polygamist, and he’s not even the Mormon.”

Romney is a Mormon, and often points out that he and his wife, Ann, have been married for 42 years. Gingrich’s three marriages have been much discussed in the campaign. The Reliable Source column in The Washington Post had a similar account.

I guess imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so Justice O’Connor can continue to read my blog and steal my stuff anytime!

Conn Carroll at Washington Examiner has a very interesting piece based on this study by Gallup.  It shows that if the election were held now, and correlated with Obama’s approval/disapproval rating, the Republican candidate would get a whopping 323 Electoral College votes.

Oh, that it were that simple.  However, approval ratings this far out from Election Day are far from good indicators of what will happen after the President starts campaigning in earnest and Mitt Romney officially secures the nomination and becomes a punching bag of the left.

The good news – Obama’s folks can’t be very happy about where he stands with the American people – and it’s evident that his State of the Union hasn’t done much to give him a bump in the numbers.  Mr. President, they’re just not that into you.