Free Republic

....Newt Gingrich is not getting out of the race any time soon. Here’s why: Gingrich firmly believes that staying in the race is the best way to prevent Mitt Romney from clinching the nomination before the convention in August. And he actually may have a point.... Gingrich knows that it is virtually impossible for him, or Santorum for that matter, to beat Romney on delegates, but he makes the case — and it is not far-fetched — that unless Romney starts winning delegates at a faster pace he won’t clinch nomination by end the end of the primaries.... “My expectation...

Supposedly Team Paul is engaged in "initial discussions" with Santorum and Gingrich too, but c'mon. Newt's chances at the nomination are only slightly higher than Paul's are and Santorum's hawkish social conservatism makes him a total nonstarter for libertarians. Just today, Reason editor Matt Welch published a column shivering at the thought that Team Sweater Vest might be back for another try in 2016. Romney’s the only game in town for the rEVOLution, just as he’s been since the debates started. (According to Time, one of Romney’s allies joked that Paul is their “deputy campaign manager.”)This is the right time...

Despite his losses in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Mitt Romney appears to have expanded his delegate lead on Tuesday. The most recent projections from AP show Rick Santorum took 31 delegates from Alabama and Mississippi, while Newt Gingrich took 24 delegates and Romney got 23 But this morning, Romney was projected to win all nine delegates from American Samoa’s caucuses, and he also won the Hawaii caucuses by a large margin. AP projections show Romney beat Santorum 18 delegates to four in those jurisdictions. So, as of this morning, Romney has won 41 delegates from Tuesday’s contests, compared to...

More than half of Republicans nationwide (53%) say that all members of the current field of GOP presidential candidates should stay in the race until one clinches the nomination. About one-fifth (21%) say that Newt Gingrich should drop out, leaving Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to compete for the nomination, while another fifth (20%) say all candidates but Romney should drop out, allowing Romney to focus on the general election campaign..... Some Santorum supporters have argued that Gingrich should drop out, saying that Santorum alone would have a better chance of consolidating the conservative GOP vote that has thus far...

5 PM ET: NETWORK EXITS SHOW ALABAMA TIGHT; ROMNEY TAKES MISSISSIPPI... DEVELOPING DRUDGE POLLS HAVE CORRECTLY PREDICTED EVERY RACE

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now ...

Birmingham, AL - Monday, March 12, 2012 The Alabama Republican Party hosts a presidential candidate forum with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham. AL Candidates Forum: Live at 6:30pm (ET) on C-SPAN. The Alabama Republican Primary is Tuesday, March 13. Fifty Republican delegates are at stake.

Santorum Blasts Gingrich Over 'Romneycare' Chris Welch Springfield, Missouri (CNN) – It's a common aspect of Republican Rick Santorum's stump: attacking Mitt Romney for creating - and then "recommending" - "Romneycare" to President Barack Obama. But Saturday, fresh off his projected win in the Kansas caucuses, Santorum added that GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich is "honestly not a whole lot better." "For 20 years when I was pushing medical savings accounts, he was pushing a federal mandate for health insurance," Santorum said. "And when 'Romneycare' passed, he sent out a glowing statement talking about how this wonderful bill had just...

So much for conservatives uniting ahead of Alabama and Mississippi. Newt Gingrich's team just came out with what I believe is its first sharp hit against Rick Santorum of the campaign, a video montage of the former Pennsylvania senator talking earmarks, endorsing Mitt Romney in the 2008 presidential race and taking "one for the team," as he memorably put it in the final GOP debate in Arizona last month. If the lines of attack seem familiar, it's because Team Romney - the campaign Gingrich has said he wants to thwart - has been using them against Santorum for weeks. It's...

Newt Gingrich has turned his sights on Rick Santorum in a new robocall going out to Oklahoma and Tennessee voters, bashing the former Pennsylvania senator as having “cozied up to the labor union bosses.” The ad will reach 150,000 voters in each of the states, according to ABC News. “On the campaign trail, Rick Santorum talks a good game about his blue-collar roots, and about being for the average family,” a female narrator says. “But here’s the record Rick Santorum doesn’t want you to know about: As a senator from Pennsylvania, Santorum cozied up to the labor union bosses, and...