Posted on 03/10/2012 7:54:47 AM PST by TitansAFC
Rick Santorum won’t be winning any delegates in four of Illinois’ 18 congressional districts next month. But, at least in the 13th District, it won’t be because he didn’t try.
On Jan. 6, the state filing deadline, a Santorum volunteer had brought to the board of elections an envelope containing nominating petitions for a slate of three Santorum delegates in the 13th, the State Journal-Register reports.
But the petitions were never submitted. A volunteer inadvertently failed to take them out of the envelope, the Journal Register reports, and the envelope wound up in the trash.
Even if those petitions had been handed in, the Journal-Register story said, it’s possible they would have been challenged. The Santorum camp was only able to round up some 50 signatures for its slate of delegates in the district, well short of the 600 required.
All in all, the Santorum campaign’s organizational missteps mean that it is already at a deficit of at least 30 delegates in the races playing out over the next month – even before voters in those contests have cast their ballots.
In some states, such as Alabama, the Santorum campaign has tried, but apparently not hard enough....
.......Santorum is down 16 delegates in the District, four in Alabama and 10 in Illinois, where he failed to submit delegate slates in the 4th, 5th, 7th and 13th districts.......
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I believe the official campaign and Santorum supporters’ response to these problems will continue to be: “Na na na, I’m not listening, na na na!”
I love how the lib writer mocks the disorganized nature of the Santorum campaign.
Yet, today Rasmussen has Santorum beating the all powerful messiah-like Obama, 46-45. LOL!!
The Emperor has no clothes!
Santorum had next to no money early on. Gingrich didn’t even get at all in Missouri or Virginia. IN ‘76, Reagan couldn’t get on in NY and PA, even though he was better funded. Some of these states set very difficult barriers.
Is Santorum perfect? No. Neither are the other three. I consider Santorum the best of the lot, and am also fine with Gingrich. Until we get to April and winner take all states, I see no need for Newt or Rick to drop out, provided they can at least meet theminimum threshold. At this point, the goal is to keep Romney from getting enough delegates.
RCP averages, has Santorum behind Obama.
Yes, this is truly the only hope we have left of stopping Romney. To keep him from getting 1144, and having it go to a brokered convention.
EXACTLY.
Keeping Mitt 100 delegates or more below the 1144 threshold allows us to demand someone else besides Romney, even if it means an entirely new, compromise ticket.
Rules are set by the establishment
I agree, like Gingrich/Palin. Romney will likely team up with Santorum, to get the holy roller vote. (Offset his Mormon problem)
Rules are set by the establishment
Santorum just does not have what it takes to take him to Tampa. One, he's not a natural when giving speeches, In fact he is a bore. And Obama will slaughter him in the debates. Has Santorum won any of the GOP debates? The only one’s he was even noticed in, is the first two or three when he got snarky.
As much as most of us would like it, I don't see Newt breaking out either. Unless maybe his picks up former Santorum supporters, but with Santorum running second, that may happen too late to do Newt any good.
LOL! Just ask the Santo fanatics, accoding to them, he slaughtered Newt and Romney in most all of the debates.
We can hope that between santo and Newt, they can keep Romney away from that magic number.
Man, if that does happen, can you imagine how pissed Mitt will be? (In an LDS-acceptable way, of course!) Talk about “We was robbed!” - - he and Hillary could go out and get drunk together if he was a drinkin’ man...
A person does have to admit Romney’s ground game was flawless, none of these qualification mistakes. But that’s a lot easier when you’ve been campaigning for the past 4 years and have millions of $ to spend.
That won’t be enough and you know it. When the convention rolls around and Romney is 100 or so short, pressure will mount on the uncommitted Superdelegates to support him because of his lead in the popular vote and number of contests won, just like what happened with Obama/Hillary in 2008.
Here’s the current Watch List. Romney already has 24, Newt 3, Santorum 2, Paul 1. If Romney is still leading in the delegate count by convention time, you can bet the bulk will turn to him especially if he carried that state’s contest.
http://www.democraticconventionwatch.com/diary/4726/republican-superdelegate-endorsement-list
As for Santorum’s “Delegate” woes, these are blown out of proportion. First, it was probably best to save the $10,000 to stay off the DC ballot, as they’re probably aren’t anywhere near enough conservative Republicans who live in NW DC to qualify and even if he did, it’s WTA. This is a fact. If Huntsman were still in this thing, he’d probably finish 2nd to Romney as these are the most liberal GOP’ers in the country. Nothing was lost here.
As for IL, 3 of the CD’s are tied to Chicago, 1 of which I think is Mark Kirk’s old seat, which tells you all you need to know about the kind of Republicans there. Also, the other 2 CD’s are radical leftist districts, so could luck finding conservative Republicans there.
The 13th isn’t a great situation, but it isn’t the only district in mid/downstate that Santorum will play in. Plus, IL rewards CD’s in that the more Republican they vote, they get an extra delegate. So those 3 CD’s in Chicago, Santorum is losing out on 6 total delegates. The 13th, he’s losing out on 3. But he’s on the ballot in the other CD’s that have as many as 4 delegates allocates.
Even with this, IL has some strange rules on how 15-20 delegates are selected, which seems to be entirely exclusive of the popular vote and seems rather shady. On Green Papers web site, I still haven’t fully understood this remaining allocation, like they send a bunch of uncommitteds to the convention without any regard to the vote.
Oh, and as for AL, like it was mentioned before, that would only be a problem if Santorum had 60% of the popular vote. Since this is obviously not going to happen, he’s fine in AL with the 43 running delegates he has registered. Assuming he got 30% of the vote, he’s looking at getting 15 delegates. So no issue here. It’s looking to be a 16-16-15 kind of split in AL if current polling holds.
That’s true, from here on out, most of the states are divided into giving all the candidates something. With the exception that Santo has failed to get on the ballot in several states and a whole lot of districts, which will cut his share even further. (Because of his great organizational ability you know.)
I have to agree with your assessment.
Gingrich in the general election would be crucified by Obama. We already saw a prelim of that in IA and FL and in both cases, Gingrich lost badly. The IA and FL negatives ads would be like Saturday morning cartoons compared to the barrage coming in October by Team Obama.
A year ago, Santorum would have been nearly last on my list of preferences. But, of the remaining 4, he’s not Paul, not Gingrich and not Romney. [Those represent the best the GOP has to offer?]
If Romney wins his V.P. list will be VERY short.
#1 Will be Marco Rubio (Florida), who will come under TREMENDOUS pressure to take the nomination from the Establishment, despite his repeated statements that he is not interested.
#2 Will be Rob Portman (Ohio), a safe Romney loyalist who Team Mitt believes is the key to locking-up the grassroots doubters and getting an edge in Ohio.
#3 Will be Bob McDonnell (Virginia), another loyalist whom the GOP-E falsely believes is absolutely adored by the Tea Party for some reason.
#4 Will be Rick Santorum (Pennsylvania), a move of necessity if the time comes to avoid revolt. Besides, he might just owe the nomination to Rick when all is said and done.
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