Based on everything I’m hearing from the Santorum people it seems he should be stepping aside in Georgia and let Newt win to ‘derail’ Romney. They all think Newt’s people should vote for their boy all over the place ostensibly to stop Romney. Let’s just have everybody vote their conscience.
The only magnanimous man in this race is Newt.
His campaign has ran very little in negative ads against any opponents if at all. The Super Pac that supports him ran negative ads against Romney in South Carolina and some in Florida, but in Florida, Romney hammered him with $20 million dollars in negative ads. That was crazy. Of the 3 candidates against Newt, all of them have run negative ads against him and Newt only responded in kind against Romney after they all hammered him with negative ads.
Newt runs a positive campaign. You can’t say the same about the rest of them.
Actually, that would be a bad thing. Georgia isn’t “winner-take-all”. It’s a combo statewide proportional and per-district split delegate. If Romney gets pushed below 20%, he gets no statewide delegates. If things ended up like this poll, it would be Gingrich 14, Santorum 10, Romney 7 (for 31 statewide).
If Santorum dropped out, Romney would get more delegates.
Further, unless Gingrich was getting 50% in a district, the 2nd place finisher gets 1 delegate, the winner 2. Better that the 2nd place finisher be Santorum.
If the key is to keep Romney from getting delegates, it is critical that Santorum stay in Georgia, and that nobody do anything to damage his changes there and propel Romney to a 2nd-place finish in the districts.