Santorum put all his eggs in one basket and tried to knock out Romney. If you are going to shoot the King, kill the king. I think this benefits Gingrich as he secured major delegates next week in Georgia, Tennessee, and Oklahoma.
Can you enlighten me to how Newt already secured delegates in contests that haven't happened yet? BTW, Newt is at 10% in TN. Behind even Paul. Santorum is at 33%, Romney 17% and Paul 12%. How is Newt going to turn that around in 6 days?
I hope you are right about Newt. Go Newt!
I believe “secured” is the wrong word to use for something that is going to happen in the future.
At the moment, Gingrich looks to pick up a good number of the Georgia delegates. He was trailing pretty far behind Santorum and Romney in Tennessee, but there is a week left. I haven’t seen the Oklahoma polling numbers.
There weren’t many delegates in Michigan, and it looks like Santorum got half of them. The question is whether 5000 voters is more important than the number of delegates.
If this makes Santorum look unelectable, it could damage him where he is now leading — Tennessee and Ohio, and maybe other places; it could also knock him out of 2nd place in Georgia, costing him delegates there.
If on the other hand he gets a good night’s sleep, and is seen not as a loser but as competitor that came within a few thousand votes of knocking off Romney in his “home” state, that could embolden support in the states he is currently winning, which would mean he’d have a fair number of delegates after Super Tuesday.
By “not competing”, Gingrich probably saves himself some grief. On the other hand, he won 1 state, got crushed in the next two states he fought for, and then dropped out for 5 state contests in a row. For better or worse, on the news he is treated as an afterthought. If that means he surprises people, it’s great. If that means people will forget about him except in a couple of southern states, he’ll be done.
This was probably the worst situation for beating Romney. Santorum didn’t “win”, so Romney is counted as a “winner”. But Santorum didn’t get crushed, so it doesn’t really help Gingrich.
Agree. Possibly Oh as well. Santorum thought he saw a weakness in mittens and went all in. Alas he come up a wee bit short. He may not recover.
OH on Super Tuesday will tell.