Everything Newt's camp has been putting out is predicated on this one idea...that Romney and/or Santorum will "slip up" and give Newt an opening. That's how bad the math is for them right now.
there are primaries on April 3rd in the District of Columbia (winner take all without Santorum on the ballot); Maryland (a favorable state); and Wisconsin (Callista Gingrich's home state).
They're also counting on the "Callista factor."
Senator Santorum faces a 'must win' in Pennsylvania (whose delegates remain unbound regardless of outcome)
And we just saw an article saying Pennsylvania has the delegate slate stacked with their party insiders who are favoring Romney. Ron Paul's actually had a plan to hijack delegates from the party bosses since before the primary started and that was as far-fetched an idea as this.
So here is the bottom-line reality: this nomination will not be decided until the fourth quarter - and that is not until June.
At the current trajectory, that is probably when Romney will hit 1,144. Interestingly, even if all the states were winner-take-all, he just the same wouldn't have hit it until the last 5 states or so. That's how weak a candidate he is. The weakest in 35 years at least.
I'd like to hear a better strategy than Newt is offering (Romney/Santorum collapse on their own + Callista coattails). The only strategy that delegate counting analysis has sown might work is Newt dropping out and/or getting all his voters to vote for Santorum instead. That way, Santorum can block maybe 100-250 delegates from Romney that Romney would otherwise get, thanks to the many winner-take-all rules in upcoming states that account for 2/3rds of the remaining delegates. And that would make the difference to throwing the nomination to the convention.
Newt’s voters aren’t going to go to Santorum, who is exactly like Romney but more vocally a social conservative. Romney and Santorum are both Establishment guys, that is, absolutely fine with things the way they are and differing from Obama only in a few touches. Like Obama, they are both looking to transform the US into the ultimate socialist nanny-welfare state, with the only difference being that it will have their (Mormon or Evangelical-Catholic) slogans at the top.
The only candidate who is offering any ideas for change is Gingrich, and he should stay in until the very end.
Sadly, though, I think the voters are saying they actually like Obama’s Socialist Republic of the United States of America and they just want a different face on it. So it depends on whether they want the dollar-stuffed Mormon vulture capitalist and failed governor of the most leftist state in the US, or the self-serving Preacher Man who as a Senator endorsed the most radical pro-abortion leftist in the Senate (who eventually got honest and became a Dem) and who was voted out by an astounding number of his own constituents.