RICK SANTORUM: I Admit It, I Can’t Win

Michael Brendan Dougherty
Business Insider
March 12, 2012

Rick Santorum’s campaign has admitted–to itself at least– that it can’t win the Republican nomination outright.

Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed has obtained an internal memo to be circulated around the Santorum campaign today with the following line: Majority Needed for Romney, Not for Santorum

Mitt Romney must have a majority on the first ballot in order to win the nomination because he will perform worse on subsequent ballots as grassroots conservative delegates decide to back the more conservative candidate. Subsequently, Santorum only needs to be relatively close on the initial ballot in order to win on a later ballot as Romney’s support erodes.

Translation: our only hope is to deny Romney the win, and hope that convention delegates gradually come around to us.

We’ve been saying this ever since Super Tuesday, but at least there is some sign that the Santorum campaign is grappling with this reality.

There are a couple problems with this strategy for Santorum.

1) Ron Paul is already pursuing something like it, counting on state conventions and other internal GOP events to grant him more delegates than his share of the popular vote allows. And Paul’s campaign is more organized than Santorum and has been pushing this strategy for months longer.

2) It assumes that political forces, like the rest of the Republican party, will just allow Santorum to destroy the presumptive nominee on the tiniest hope that after breaking the Republican convention into pieces Santorum can reassemble it himself.

3) It also assumes that Santorum is going to continue scoring embarrassing victories against Romney. But polls show Romney is already starting to close the gap in Alabama and Mississippi.

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