Push to Get Santorum Out Shows Romney’s Weakness

Conservative HQ ^ | 04-05-12 | CHQ Staff

[Lazlo in PA]

The Romney campaign’s phony delegate counts and establishment Republican calls for Rick Santorum to end his campaign, and allow Mitt Romney to claim the Republican presidential nomination without a majority of the delegates, expose the fatal weakness of the case for the Romney nomination.

Romney is far from having a commanding lead in delegates, and Romney is not “over half way there” as his camp and their establishment GOP allies claim. If the Republican National Committee rules are correctly applied, and the delegates elected by local caucuses in states the mainstream media has stopped following are allocated, Romney has more like 482 delegates, compared to Rick Santorum’s 331.

Romney’s desperate attempt to push Santorum out before the primary campaign moves back south to Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas masks the fear that if Texas changes to winner-take-all, as it appears poised to do, Romney’s lead would be wiped-out in one loss.

Romney has yet to win in the South or in the rural areas of key Midwestern states – his wins in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio were all powered by negative campaigns in urban media markets where he outspent Santorum 10 to 1. This is a tactic he won’t be able to repeat in the general election against the well-funded Obama machine.

Conservatives also note that a large chunk of Romney’s claimed delegates come from states, such as Maryland and his adopted home of Massachusetts, that he is unlikely to win in November and which have relatively little influence on the Republican electorate or activist convention delegates.

Romney is desperate to push Santorum out because he understands that if the nomination goes to the Convention floor he might hold those delegates after the first ballot, but his support from more conservative delegations, such as Virginia, would quickly melt away to a more conservative alternative, such as Santorum.

The Romney camp is making a grave error in trying to push Santorum out because they are confirming to grassroots conservative Republicans that Romney and his Washington establishment supporters really don’t care what they think.

As of now, 40 percent of the states have yet to vote. Rather than go forward to make the positive case for his nomination, Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment are desperately seeking to deny almost half of the Republican primary voters a voice in choosing their nominee. Such a tactic might very well garner Romney the nomination, but it will leave an enthusiasm gap that could all but doom the Republicans in November.

[American Constitutionalist]

Rick Santorum is holding a news conference at 2:00 PM on CNN

[Springman]

To bad he couldn’t hang on, now we’ll get the flipper and four more years of Barry.