There’s not much comfort to be had when the entire party establishment, most of the conservative media, and the biggest Wall Street money around is backing Romney. Probably the only way Romney can be beaten is if the conservative side presents a united front. Santorum doesn’t have an argument for staying IN the race. He’s had enough chances now in enough different kinds of states and he’s shown that if he isn’t able to handshake every voter in a state, he can’t place above 3rd. If he stays in, he hands the nomination to Mitt. If he gets out, Newt has a solid chance. Not a guarantee, but Newt probably has NO chance if Santorum stays in, considering how favorable all of the “winner-take-all” states are to Mitt.
I don’t think all of Newt’s ads have been good. As I understand it they’ve disavowed that one. Since it was a low-profile ad, he won’t suffer much for it. Romney’s lies were out in front and spoken by him.
Newt’s campaign definitely needs work. Last weekend I e-mailed their web sites and told them not to back off the Bain stuff, because my analysis of the exit polls in SC showed that the Bain ad campaign was a major factor in Newt’s decisive victory there. The FL ad campaign painting Mitt as a moderate seems to have backfired, since Mitt decisively won the moderate and liberal Republican vote, and there appears to be far more of them in FL than I would have guessed.
The first step to beating back Mitt’s lies is to respond to them, which they seem unwilling to do over the air waves in actual ads. I e-mailed their web sites today to say they need to come up with a “biography” of Newt, maybe like that 15-minute Bain mini-movie. He’s got a great history as a Republican leader and clearly people don’t know about it since Romney’s lies were swallowed by so many.
That is a hypothesis, but it has no facts to support it. Multiple polls show that Santorum in Florida took more votes from Romney than Gingrich, so he actually helped -- not that it mattered, even if every Santorum voter voted Gingrich Gingrich would still have lost.
I've explained elsewhere how it could well be that Newt can't get above a certain support level, so he'll never win, but his presence makes it impossible for people to consider Santorum as the alternative.
Then two polls came out, in Missouri and Ohio, that illustrated the point. In Missouri, the poll was (from memory) Gingrich 26, Santorum 24, Romney 20. But Gingrich-Romney was only +1 (Romney got 5% closer with Santorum out), while Santorum-Romney was +13 for Santorum. So while Gingrich is nominally in the lead, it's only because Santorum is there. Remove Santorum, it's a toss-up. Remove Gingrich, and Santorum runs away with it. In Ohio, similar results. Gingrich-26, Romney-25, Santorum-22(?). In Ohio, if Santorum quits, Gingrich is ahead by +3, so he benefits marginally by Santorum dropping out, but is still within the margin of error. But if Gingrich, in the lead, drops out, Santorum beats Romney by +8, and easy win. So there is two cases, yes just polls, but which illustrate how if the 1st-place guy quits, the 3rd-place guy beats the 2nd-place guy by much more than the 1st-place guy does if the 3rd-place guy drops out. I'm not telling Gingrich people not to support Gingrich, or telling Gingrich to drop out. I'm saying there is no evidence that Santorum dropping out will help Gingrich, and a lot of polling data to suggest both that it would HURT Gingrich, and that Gingrich can't beat Romney. Then there are the national polls which show that while Santorum is within single digits of Obama, Gingrich loses to Obama by 14 points. Again, it's a poll, not fact, but polls are all we have to argue that Gingrich is the "best candidate". I just don't see Gingrich proving himself the best candidate. In the past month, he's made at least 3 left-wing attacks, yes against Romney, which we like, but from the left, not the right. He has been criticized TWICE by the Club for Growth. He had to pull an ad after being criticized by Marco Rubio. He's been attacked harshly and unfairly, but whether fair or not, it has hurt him, his negatives are high, his support is weakened. Can he recover? I hope so, or I hope he falls flat and Santorum can pick up the pieces.
I think that Gingrich and Romney know the true effect of Santorum on the race.
Romney wants him in, and Gingrich want him out.