Gingrich: I Can Support Santorum, Talk of Shared Ticket to Stop Romney

6 posted on Sun Apr 01 2012 23:17:19 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by GeronL: “That would be interesting. But a lot of Newt-backing Freepers burned that bridge a long time ago.”

I think Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum get along much better than too many of their supporters.

That is **ESPECIALLY** true on the social issues. I cannot imagine that Gingrich, with his emphasis on the role of Christianity in the development of historic Judeo-Christian culture in the Western World, would say some of the things being said by some of his backers here on Free Republic. (And no, I'm not talking about the pro-Gingrich people on this ping; I mean others whose voices have been more loud than logical.)

Time is getting very short to stop Romney. I believe the District of Columbia race on Tuesday is the last one in which Gingrich is on the ballot but Santorum is not, and there's no state left (as far as I know) where Gingrich holds a polling advantage over Santorum.

The goal needs to be stopping Romney. I've been saying for months now that while I support Santorum, I could live with Gingrich, and since it's been consistently shown that Gingrich and Santorum both have a minority of supporters who will vote for Romney if their candidate pulls out, until Tuesday, it makes sense for Gingrich and Santorum to stay in the race.

After Tuesday, especially if Gingrich can convince some of his key prior endorsers such as Herman Cain and Rick Perry to concur, it may be time for a united “anti-Romney” ticket of four and possibly five prior Republican candidates to all declare that they oppose Romney and call on conservatives nationwide to back a unified conservative ticket.

At this last date, that probably requires a pre-announcement of a vice-presidential choice between Gingrich and Santorum, and pre-announcement of cabinet positions for Perry, Cain, and (possibly) Michele Bachmann.

Is that possible? I think it is.

Cain has nothing to lose for backing an anti-Romney ticket. Gingrich and Bachmann have pretty much burned their bridges with the Republican establishment so it won't hurt them any more than their prior actions already have done. Perry's focus has traditionally been on Texas rather than Washington and I don't claim to understand Texas politics, but from what I read about Perry's fights with the Bush family, I can't see him having a major problem with being on the opposite side of a GHW Bush endorsement of Romney.

Is this a pipe dream? I don't know.

I do know that if something is not done very soon to create a “game change,” Romney is going to be the nominee, and then we as Republicans have a massive mess on our hands.

Let's do whatever we can to stop that now with the little time we have left.

I’ve been posting here since at least a week before the Illinois primary that one of them needed to drop out and start campaigning with the other one if they had any chance to defeat Romney. That is due to the winner-take-all rules in Illinois and many upcoming Romney-favorable states. Combining their votes would defeat Romney in some states and districts where Romney would otherwise win. It would also allow them to get over 50% in some states where Romney would already lose, which would shut Romney out of any delegates at all due to the 50% threshold rule.

The sum total of Rick and Newt could’ve been greater than its parts. The polls in this primary have often shown that people like aspects of each candidate, but also find flaws in all of them. They wish they could combine all the candidates into one. Newt and Rick could have pulled that off by joining forces. They would counterbalance each other’s flaws and look like a better ticket to many people up against Romney.

However, if Romney wins Wisconsin then it’s almost definitely too late now. This would have probably had to happen before Illinois where Romney also won big. There are too many Romney-favorable states coming up now which he is going to win no matter what.

Neither Newt nor most of his supporters realized quickly enough that winner-take-all rules make a huge difference and that Newt being on a Santorum ticket is better than both of them losing to Romney.

...............[WI campaign director Robert]”Lorge said that in conference calls with the national team there has been discussion about the possibility of consolidating Santorum and Gingrich delegates at the Republican National Convention in order to overcome Romney’s delegate math.

“I imagine there’s going to be a lot of negotiation and compromising between the pro-Newt Gingrich and the pro-Rick Santorum delegates,” he said. “You may have a Newt Gingrich-Rick Santorum ticket. You may have a Rick Santorum-Newt Gingrich ticket. Nobody knows how that ticket’s going to work out. But I imagine it’ll end up being something like that.”

Pointing to Gingrich’s accomplishments in the House, Lorge believes delegates will see that his candidate is the only one with the experience necessary to be the White House.

“America is a republic,” Lorge said. “We’re not a democracy. We don’t believe in mob rule. We hire people by electing them to represent us. We’re a representative democracy, that’s what we talk about. Our Founding Fathers were very wise in not having a straight, pure democracy. We have a republic for a reason so that wiser decisions, calm decisions can be made in the best interest of the nation as a whole and that is what Newt Gingrich is all about.”

The amount of chaos and strategy that would be involved in the open convention scenario is so mentally demanding that it’s hard to imagine any other candidate but Newt Gingrich believing it is possible. And perhaps the reckless challenge of it all is giving the candidate a new skip in his step.”......

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/03/30/gingrich-camp-talks-shared-ticket-santorum

The article’s wrong when it suggests Romney needs to win “almost every” primary to get 1,144 delegates.

I gamed out the remaining list based on giving him his obvious WTA wins, 1/3rd of southern state proportional delegates, and 1/2 to 2/3rds of other proportional states based on how similar past states have voted. He gets well over 1,200 delegates.

Almost all the upcoming winner-take-all states (full state or by district) are favorable to Romney, not either of our guys, even those by-district states tend to become HUGE overall wins even if the winner only gets in the 40%s of votes. The only district-based states favorable to non-Romneys are PA and WV. Even blowouts there could only reduce his final delegate count but not enough to get him below 1,144.

It’s basically too late to stop Romney from winning, unless Rick and Newt pull off this magic behind-the-scenes maneuvering of getting delegates to switch their vote.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/republican_delegate_count.html

Sorry, my end all be all goal is NOT to stop Romney. Oh - don’t get me wrong - I don’t like him and I don’t want him as the nominee - but my goal was to get the brain and the accomplishments of Newt in the debates - into the election - into the national discussion - as the ONLY candidate we’ve had running in 28 years who could actually change minds of voters.

Rick just doesn’t strike me as capable of changing a single liberal or moderate into a conservative. He doesn’t strike me as capable of ginning up a big turn out. Doesn’t strike me as being revolutionary once in office. Sorry, I just don’t see it.

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