If there’s one thing I learned from Santorum backers, it’s that we need both candidates in the race in case one of them collapses for good.
They were swearing to this, and I will take them at their word.
Go Newt!!!
From a Gingrich Team Insider:
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/evans-gingrich-wins-nomination/2012/02/13/id/429318
Evans: How Gingrich Wins the GOP Nomination
Whether you are for Newt or not, it is an interesting read.
“If there’s one thing I learned from Santorum backers, it’s that we need both candidates in the race in case one of them collapses for good.”
I agree. Romney’s slime machine has a lot of money. But it will be taxed handling both Santorum and Gingrich. Eventually, one will become the conservative choice. But we need to wait and see how Santorum will stand up to 65 negative ads by Romney, most containing lies and distortions, for every one ad Santorum can run. It’s pretty easy to run up the negatives on an underfunded candidate like Santorum. Romney’s philosophy seems to be, “I may have high negatives; but I’m going to make sure that if you don’t nominate me, no one else can beat Obama either. So you’d better nominate me.”
Ironically, the only candidate Romney won’t slime is Obama. Of course, you could run truthful negative ads about Obama all year long and never run out of material starting with Bill Ayers, stop at the disaster Zero has engineered in the middle east and the gross spending, and ending with Obama’s explicit hostility to Christians. Romney won’t do that either.
The R establishment is desperate to avoid an election that is about issues. Romney is the guy for that. Were it about issues, then there would be pressure on them to deliver.
As I said long ago with Rick Perry — when it’s time for a candidate to drop out, it won’t matter, because they will be polling in single digits anyway. That’s how they know.
In the meantime, we aren’t doing winner-take-all yet, and Gingrich is staying out of Michigan, like Santorum did in Florida. Hopefully, with better results — a Romney loss in Michigan would be a big deal, more important than his loss in South Carolina (where he was expected to have a hard time).
After that, it’s gloves off for Super Tuesday, and then we’ll see which candidate the voters have decided is the “conservative alternative”.
The one disaster would be if 3rd parties start running attack ads against Santorum in Michigan, and end up helping Romney win that state. But I wouldn’t expect any conservatives to do that.