Good Morning CW-
Looks like the Rick supporters are declaring war on Newt and are hellbent to contest the Southern states ...after Newt held back and didn’t compete in the Midwest.
Foolish move on their part that will end up getting Romney nominated ...plus they are driving away people, like myself, who had been open to considering Rick if Newt should drop out. Dumb move on their part.
That seems to be the pattern, sadly.
You can’t win the Presidency while skipping large parts of the country. It’s hilarious how some Gingrich supporters actually try to argue that GIngrich’s inability to compete in the midwest was actually a strategy to help Rick Santorum beat Romney.
Gingrich himself bragged about how those states were meaningless to him, mocking Santorum for even trying to win them.
Now Gingrich is skipping Kansas. He’s going to compete for 2 more states, giving him a total of 8 states he will have tried to win so far (Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi).
If only 3500 Gingrich supporters had instead voted for Santorum, Romney would have only gotten 14 delegates instead of 20. That was supposed to be the important thing, keeping Romney from getting delegates.
Gingrich ran robocalls attacking Santorum. If those Robocalls caused only 3500 voters to switch from Santorum to Romney or Gingrich or Paul, they gave Romney 6 delegates in the process.
If you are going to give up on Santorum because he actually wants voters in Alabama and Mississippi to vote for him, then you were never going to support him, because that is what is expected of serious candidates for office — that they will compete for every primary.
Given that Santorum was in first place in the polls in Alabama last week, and Newt was in 3rd, you can’t even argue that Santorum is doing so badly that he HAS to quit Alabama to clear the way for the leader. That argument would instead suggest Gingrich should stay home. I’m not saying he should, but it’s absurd to argue that the leader in the polls should cede a state to the 3rd-place polling candidate because somehow it would “help” beat Romney.
What would have helped beat Romney is if 3500 Gingrich supporters in Georgia voted for Santorum, and if 12,000 Gingrich supporters voted for Santorum in Ohio, and if 500 Gingrich supporters in the Alaska Caucus voted for Santorum. A switch of only 16,000 voters would have cost Romney 6 Georgia delegates and two state victories.
Oddly, some Gingrich supporter yesterday instead argued that Santorum should have given up over 32,000 votes in Georgia so that Gingrich could get above 50% in all the districts, denying Romney 8 delegates.