So the front runner ABR candidate should drop out to let the last place ABR candidate TRY to beat Mittens? Sounds kind of kookie to me. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
If the front-runner proves to have a solid ceiling that is too low to beat Romney, what do YOU suggest?
It could well be that Gingrich cannot get the support of more than 40% of the electorate. If those 40% are all willing to support ANYBODY to beat Romney, while the Santorum supporters just can’t support Newt, then if Gingrich drops out, Santorum gets more votes than Gingrich would have.
I don’t think this would really work, because everybody loves their own candidate and hates the other candidates, but that is how the math WOULD work.
And in fact, it does happen many times, where the person say who gets the “most votes” in the first round at a convention can’t win the convention, because as others drop out, none of their support goes to the “front-runner”.
Newt won South Carolina. If he can’t carry that momentum into Florida and beat Romney, why do you think he can beat Romney elsewhere?
Remember that support for Gingrich is based not on “we all love Gingrich”, but rather “he’s polling the best”. It’s circular — if we all decided he couldn’t win, Gingrich would NOT poll best.
Or, we could keep supporting him as he loses state after state, until it is too late for anybody, and then we can all wonder what could have been.
Santorum would have been the next person to get the “wave” of voters — except the wave, the swarm, panicked because votes were taken, and decided that Gingrich was their last stop. Before that it was Bachman, then Perry, then Cain.
Hopefully Gingrich can get back to the positive message that got him the lead, and he can win Florida.