I know much of this is true. Indeed, after the first ballot, all bets are OFF. The battle is occurring now in primary states with smaller caucuses to elect the delegates. For example, a die-hard Paulbot can go to a caucus, pledge to vote for Rotney on the first ballot, and then get “elected” by those present (5 people? 50 people? etc) as a Rotney delegate. If Rotney does not have that magic 1144, ALL bets are OFF!
That totals in the neighborhood of 1100 delegates available so far.
That means roughly 1200 delegates remain to be won by some candidate.
No matter whose count you use, there are plenty of remaining delegates for Santorum to win this. He needs 59%.
Romney needs 41.6% to win.
Less than that will give a brokered convention, unless Santorum wins them at the above-mentioned 59% rate.
Come on folks! You know that the only winner is Mitt regardless of your complaints. At some point you have to get behind anyone except Obama. If that is NOT your ideal, then you need to go away!
I really don’t like Romney as the candidate, but unfortunately, we have a process that seems to be problematic about who gets elected. We take what we have or we elect Obama! What are you going to do!
Go Rick!
There are many (like #5) who insist that we need to rally around Romney. I might agree if it were Gingrich in the lead, or Perry, or Cain, or Bachmann, or even Pawlenty, or Thune, or a wide variety of others...
...but not Romney.
For a social conservative, Romney is simply not an option. Politically, he is a part of the enemy. I will not vote for him.
So, I hold onto the slim hopes of a brokered convention producing a solid conservative candidate. If not, then there is the hopelessness (except for making a point) of a third party candidate, and preparing for Santorum 2016, or Pence 2016, or Perry 2016, or any good conservative 2016.
Given that all the MSM, and all the RHINOs, including Mitt, say Rick’s wrong. Read their lips?! Given their batting averages Rick’s case is looking stronger. Rick is saying the current gap is less than Texas (155 delegates) sized. Rick’s arguments aren’t unique to him. Newt made the case about winner take all not applying after Florida. Paul’s been rambling about winning extra delegates in caucus states all along. At a minimum Rick is currently undercounted because no delegates are being counted in places like MO where all would agree he did well. The “count” is being used like the the “electability” argument was used earlier in the race, to make conservatives give up.
An open convention and Palin!!! let’s keep this going and stay vocal...
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Palin-Our-Brokered-Convention-Selection/219407098154932
Rick, I’m never going to vote to make you the chief law enforcement officer of the USA, just for the sake of George Zimmerman.
A man of your clear lack of restraint deserves no such authoirty.
The GOP RINO establishment should hope that Rick Santorum wins the nomination and then loses in November—that will allow them to blame the Tea Party for Obama getting four more thus allowing them to retain the status quo.
For the sake of his fellow RINO elite, Mitt should quit now.
I hope that Rick Santorum wins the Wisconsin primary. Losing there would be an even bigger setback than losing in Illinois.
I did the math for Florida, assuming the same proportional rules as Georgia (remember, Florida doesn't have proportional rules). The Georgia rules, adjusted to the Florida 100 delegates, were 25 statewide delegates, split proportionately between candidates getting more than 20%, and then for each congressional delegation, 3 delegates, given to the winner if >50%, otherwise 2 to winner, 1 to 2nd place.
Then we cut them in half because of the early primary (although in any realistic re-working of the delegates, they would give them back their 100 delegates, they have every year).
Romney gets 15 our of the 25 statewide, won 7 districts with 50% for 21 delegates, and 15 other districts for 30 delegates; Gingrich would get 6 delegates for winning 3 districts, and 15 for the other 15 where he came in 2nd.
That gives Romney 69 to 31, which cut in half would be 34 to 16. Santorum gets zero, because he didn't come in 2nd anywhere.
The same thing would be true for Arizona, but I haven't ran the exact numbers.
April 3rd is just a few days away: Mitt will win DC and Maryland, both of which are winner-take-all, and will win something like half, maybe a bit more than half the delegates from Wisconsin, which awards some delegates by district and others in proportion to the statewide vote. This will put Mitt at about 650 delegates and Santorum at about 320. Let’s assume Santorum wins Wisconsin, so as to keep hope alive.
Then there’s a lull after which five northeast states vote. One of them is Pennsylvania, in which Santorum would normally have an advantage. Figure another 150 to 160 delegates for Romney, and 70 for Santorum.
I could go on.
All Mitt has to do is keep winning in the blue states, the blue Congressional Districts, getting his share of the delegates awarded in proportion to the vote even if this is less than 50 percent, and keep picking up the super-delegates. To stop this, Santorum has to beat Romney on Romney’s turf. He has not done it, and there’s no reason to think he will.
Contrariwise, Mitt has won only a handful of red states (mostly in the Rocky Mountain west where his Mormonism is an advantage), he has not done well in either the midwest or the south, nor in the rural areas. On the other hand, he is doing well enough to win the nomination.
Mitt will have a real challenge to unite the party, and might not be able to do so completely.
Personally, I think there’s a real chance he will name Newt to be his running mate. I wonder if they talked about this in their no longer secret meeting in New Orleans. Newt could be a very effective Vice President; and, being older, would not be presumed to be the nominee in 2020.
But not Rick Santorum. He’s kind of young. we’d be stuck with him forever. And, he’s kind of embarrassing himself at this point, talking about delegates instead of trying to win Maryland (which is winner take all) as well as Wisconsin (where winning doesn’t mean very much in terms of delegates).
Problem with getting to a brokered convention is that the rules are you can’t be on the first ballot if you haven’t won 5 states. And supposedly any delegates you’ve earned all get unbound if you’re not on the ballot. So only Romney and Santorum will be on the first ballot. With only 2 candidates, one of them HAS to win the majority of the delegates on that first vote. So unless Newt can win 3 more states, there are no other possible candidates that could win beyond Mitt and Rick at the convention.
That is UNLESS they literally need 1,144, not just the majority of voting delegates on the first vote, which could mean some delegates could abstain if they had their heart set on a candidate other than Rick and Mitt. Certainly the Paulbots would do this, unless Romney promised them a Paul as the V.P. He or Santorum could also of course promise Newt as the V.P. and get Newt delegates in their court on the first vote.
Even as anti-MSM as I am, I would have never thought to check this. Of course this is something they would happily lie about.
The RINO party mafia bosses are getting nervous. Look for more and more high profile endorsements to come soon. Do not submit!!!
He’s right. And this is precisely how Ron Paul is beating him under the radar. The AP counts are ridiculous and meaningless. They count delegates long before they’re ever awarded. They either don’t understand the system, or want to manipulate the majority of their readers who don’t.
With the throwing out of Obamacare, there is bound to be some impact on Romney for implementing Romneycare. If Romney is the nominee the Dems will say maybe it’s unconstitutional too in order to beat him.
“he has actually won more delegates than some media counts show. Those counts, Santorum says, are not taking into account Republican party rules, as well as the state-level meetings that actually determine how many delegates go to each candidate. “’
If I remember this correctly, (to corroborate the OP) I heard Rick Santorum say on Face the Nation that the RNC has a rule that all states that held their primaries BEFORE April 1 cannot be “Winner Take All” states, so it looks like Rick has many more delegates coming his way, including FL, of course.
BTW, Rick will be on Meet the Press on Sunday.