Posted on 03/07/2012 7:50:03 PM PST by georgiagirl_pam
R- 404 S- 161 G- 105 P- 61
OMG, this is a nightmare. PLEASE GOD, TELL ME HOW I AM WRONG!
Go to the RCP delegate count page. I am using their numbers, they may be off a little but not much. Print it off. Add up the number of total delegates left (bound and unbound, winner take all and proportional.) You will get 1475. It takes 1144 to win. So right now:
Romney needs 740 Santorum needs 983 Gingrich needs 1039 Paul needs 1414
That means:
Romney needs to win 50% of the delegates left to clinch.
Santorum needs to win (get this!!) 66.66% of the delegates left to clinch
Gingrich needs to win 70% of the delegates left to clinch.
Now, go through the list, be intellectually honest with yourself, and pull out the delegates that you know Romney will win, no matter who and how many candidates are still in or out.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
The case could, and would, be made that Romney wasn’t a strong enough candidate to win the nomination. If you can’t get your base behind you, how can you expect to win in the general?
I agree.
The herd has to pile on Romney, take every thing they can from him individually and hope that collectively they make a death of a thousand cuts, then we see what happens at the convention, and anything that isn’t “Romney” is an improvement, and who knows, something even better than that could come of it.
Anticipating the result of a convention fight, is kind of like polling the general election at this point, nobody knows what would really happen, let’s stop Romney, and then see what comes of it.
There was a poll showing Santorum pushing Romney for the lead in California about two weeks back. As for NY, NJ, or MD, Rick can do much better there than Newt has proven to be the case.
Right, if he has 1144 or more delegates, he is in. If no one has the magic number then the delegates cast their first vote (what they are bound to) and then they are released. Mitt still may win it BUT at least we have a shot that way.
Thank you, now I understand. Education is a wonderful thing.
It is like a knife fight, every little bit helps, defeat Romney in the primary first, then we will deal with the next step.
Well, ending with Mitt isn’t ending well either. I just don’t see any other way to even have a chance at someone other than him.
We have a ton of people who didn’t want to put themselves through 12 months of this. If the convention decides, a lot more people could jump forward.
Susan Martinez, Jim Demint, Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, John Kasich, etc.
The joy of a brokered convention is that literally anything could happen.
And then the media only has 3 months to attack the nominee.
Tonight on BOR, Rove said that he thought there was a good chance that Rick would win NY, and win slightly in CA. I about feel out of my chair.....
Great start to the conversation. Bed now, I look forward to reading your posts tomorrow.
If money counts for anything in winning an election, then this protracted battle helps one candidate: Obama
Newt can still do it if he wins Texas and others as explained here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2856117/posts
Add together the popular votes total so far of Santorum + Gingrich. It’s around 4 million v. 3.2 million for Romney.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/republican_vote_count.html
This disparity will continue (if not increase) as the primaries continue, as Romney get just a smidgen of votes in states such as Alabama and Mississippi, and “wins” proportional-representation states with just 30%-45% of the vote. If you do the math, it looks like if both Gingrich and Santorum stay in the race, they’ll garner in the neighborhood of 60% of the popular vote (plus the clear majority of the delegates).
Now imagine at the convention what’s left of the Republican establishment trying to force-feed Romney on the the party, after 60% or more of the primary & caucus participants voted against him (and that’s not even counting those who voted for Ron Paul.) I don’t think they will be able to do it. Particularly when the obvious political move would be for the leading conservative candidate to announce, at the convention, the other as his Vice Presidential pick.
Doesn’t matter.
Even Jeb is better than Mitt.
The point is to deny Mitt the 1144 delegates needed, and then defeat him with another nominee at the convention, whether it be Gingrich, Santorum, Jeb, Palin, or someone else, so long as the nominee meets the “acceptable” threshold.
If all we get is an “acceptable” ticket, it is still miles ahead of the GOP-E Liberal they are trying to cram down our throats right now. I’ll take an acceptable candidate over Mitt and declare victory with a great deal of glee!
We CAN do this, we absolutely CAN!
P.S. The supposed delegate count still does not include Missouri (Rick), and does not have all of the delegates Newt will get (more in GA, for example). It also assumes Florida gets to defy all GOP rules and award all 50 delegates to Romney, which the current and former head of the GOP say Florida cannot do.
The REAL delegate count INCLUDING all of these things has Newt and Rick combining for more delegates than Mitt.
A brokered convention would see a new candidate—someone other than Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum—enter the remaining primaries or parachute in during the convention (if no existing candidate has secured a majority of delegates). In backroom deals, either based partly on the strength of his late primary performances or only on the discretion of party leaders, he would become the nominee.
A contested convention, on the other hand, would see no dark horse enter but none of the existing candidates arrive in Tampa with a 1,144 majority of delegates. Lots of wheeling and dealing would ensue, and after several ballots a nominee would emerge from the four current candidates.
http://martingop.org/2012/02/23/gop-brokered-convention/
Yeah, it’s not looking good. I just did some quick estimates, giving Romney all or most of the delegates from KS, HI, MO, IL, WI, MD, DC, NY, CT, RI, DE, OR, CA, NJ, and UT, and most of the delagates from Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, etc. If he takes only those, he’ll easily get over 1100. I think the only chance is to try and make the proportional primaries in those states split their votes as much as possible AND Gingrich and Santorum will need to pool their delegates at the end of the day, one way or another.
If Paul gives his delegates to Romney, as I think he will, it’s probably over no matter what.
He doesn’t even need to get the superdelegates. If he can get to 1083, even if Paul doesn’t get even one more delegate, he’ll get Paul to drop out before the convention and direct his 61 delegates to vote Romney.
If the largest group of voters have chosen to support Romney, are you saying that we should subvert their votes in order to get one of our lesser candidates nominated?
Is it possible that a fairly large portion of the Romney supporters would be moderates or independents and that they may not vote for our nominee?
I believe it would be better to let the voters decide on their nominee and quit trying to kink the system with hairbrained ideas that likely will backfire on you.
I do not think either Romney or Gingrich would trade their delegates at a brokered convention for a VP slot but Santorum would. Should Romney come up a bit short on delegates when the convention rolls around I would not rule out the prospect of a Romney/Santorum ticket with Santorum bartering delegates for the slot. Santorum is young and as VP he knows he would be in a better position for another swing at the grand prize down the road.
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