I agree with your take on it.
Even losing, Santorum did damage to Romney. He did take a number of delegates in Michigan that weren’t that much lower than Romney’s.
As for voting for Romney, just remember that in 2016 the party will run another dumb ass Leftist.
At some point, we have to do something.
My take on all this, is that it is time for a grass roots effort to replace the Republican party.
As part of that effort we need to get on the ballot in 50 states. We also need to make sure that no current sitting Republican office holder should be allowed to be a part of the new party.
To that end...
Good points. Here’s my take:
Virtually all Democrats, and a plurality of Republicans, believe that “the system” can/should go on. The Romney vote (which, it goes without saying, will remain smaller than the Obama vote) is made up of people who think the reason for the impending failure of “the system” is that Obama is incompetent/inexperienced/too focused on race and that a better manager could turn things around so that taxes stay low, spending can continue to rise, and that all the free sh*t keeps coming.
A majority of Republicans believe that “the system” is going to fail unless changed. But this majority is not united behind a single candidate, and, even if they were, the Romney anti-change bloc and the Obama solid Democrat mass would beat that candidate in the general election.
It is not possible, for good solid principled reasons, for the party to unite behind Santorum or Paul or (probably) Newt. And the Romney vote, probably 25-35% of the GOP, will go to Obama if any of them are the nominee.
I have been predicting a four-way race, like 1860, for two years. I just read yesterday that Huntsman and David Boren are cooking up the modern version of the Bell-Everett ticket, so all that’s missing is a major party that is so divided that it cannot choose a single nominee, like the Democrats of 1860.
Between Gingrich/Palin and Romney, it’s hard to see who is Douglas and who is Breckinridge. But the outcome is very likely to be the same as 1860, two Republicans this time, a “moderate” candidate, and the radical transformer Obama.
The winner will have less than 40% of the popular vote, and the losing faction will not be able to live peacefully with the result.