Posted on 03/08/2012 5:47:11 PM PST by VinL
Rick Santorum may have won more primaries but the Republican National Committee's current delegate count shows former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has more bound delegates than Mr. Santorum in the race for the party's presidential nomination.
Frontrunner Mitt Romney has earned 339 delegates to the August nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., or more than the rest of the field combined, according to a chart the RNC sent to its members on Thursday.
Mr. Gingrich is second with 107 delegates, topping Mr. Santorum's 95 delegates and the 22 delegates pledged to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
Winning the nomination will take 1,144 delegates.
Press reports have put Mr. Santorum in second place based on projections about how delegates will be allocated in some of the caucus states where voters have cast their ballots, but where the actual delegates won't be decided until later, at county, district and state conventions.
Delegates have yet to be fully awarded in Iowa, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, Maine and Washington. Mr. Santorum won the first four of those contests, while Mr. Romney won the other two.
Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich are battling to be the conservative alternative to Mr. Romney in the race, and Mr. Santorum says his victories in seven primaries and caucuses gives him a leg up.
Mr. Gingrich, meanwhile, has won just two primaries — Georgia and South Carolina. But both those states bind nearly all their delegates to support the Primary winner.
Meanwhile Mr. Santorum has notched close wins in places such as Oklahoma, where he collected 14 delegates for his victory. But the Sooner State awards its delegates proportionately and so Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich earned 13 delegates each, making Mr. Santorum's victory gains him almost no ground on his rivals.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
It’s about whatever measure makes it look like Gingrich is still competitive.
As soon as Gingrich starts winning states, that will be the important thing, whether he gets delegates or not.
Romney has had success ONLY in the Mormon and the mind-numbed, robot like knee jerk liberal dominated NE.
Newt needs to stay the course. He should take Alabama and Mississippi and likely Louisiana and then reap the benefits of having Gov. Rick Perry deliver a win in Texas for him. I like Newt’s strategy and the fact he doesn’t boast about it too much.
Sen. Santimonius and Gov. Mittens seem so amateurish beside Newt Gingerich.
Ron Paul can’t win the nomination, but he will have some influence at the convention on fiscal matters if nothing else.
That's right, a flunky, independently, and contradicting Rick's orders, demanded that Newt quit. He will be fired by Santorum.
No, I doubt the RNC paid attention. Seems not many Republicans voted, does it?
The elitists at RNC is made up of Globalists. They do not care about Constitutional rights or what the electorate wants, only about money and power. Romney is their choice because he will not change how Washington operates. Santorum wants back into the power center and will be happy to be VP (after reading some of his speeches, he truly doesn’t seem to have a clue concerning solutions to the nation’s problems).
The only person who the Republican power center and the Democratic Party are fearful is Newt Gingrich. THAT person is who we should all be behind.
I wasn’t aware there was a new provision in the nominating rules that allows candidates to clinch the nomination by winning a certain number of states.
Did you know that Rick personally lobbied Newt’s co-chair in Tennessee in order to get the guy to defect from Newt’s campaign ?
Can you conceivably imagine Newt ever doing the same?
Oh, yeah, when you make a forced loan to Uncle Sam and he doesn’t pay any interest on it, that’s terminal fascism.
Thank you for that humor.
Still, the scenario is not at all unreasonable. The system is designed to make it very easy for a landslide/consensus candidate. It's also designed to make it very, very difficult to be that candidate.
And, built in to the design is the concept of representative persuasion. Not unlike the Korean Parliament.
Yes, YOU CAN woo the other guys' girlfriend and yes, YOU CAN get your ass kicked.
Is this a great country or what?
Charles, pls see my post #29.
Yes, that’s pretty funny, Although Gingrich did take 2nd in Nevada, because that was while he was still plummeting but hadn’t hit bottom yet. He didn’t get any delegates there.
Santorum got 4 delegates in Vermont, but while he came in 2nd in Massachussetts, he just missed taking delegates from Romney — because Gingrich got just enough votes to pull Santorum below the cut-off.
Somebody wrote in today’s WSJ that the primaries have been a vetting process, learning more each day about each candidate. Well, it’s been quite a learning experience each day as far as Rick Santorum.
What!
No worries- I see from that post, you’re going viral.
If Gingrich was really focused on shorting ROmney delegates, he would have told some of his supporters in the Alaska Caucus to vote for Santorum, so Santorum could beat Romney and take more of the delegates.
And if he REALLY was focused on shorting Romney delegates, he would have backed off on attacking Santorum in Georgia with robocalls, beause if Santorum had gotten just 4000 more votes, it would have cost Romney 4-5 delegates.
That doesn’t even count all the other states where Gingrich votes kept Santorum from beating Romney and taking delegates — just the two that were the most obvious.
Gingrich isn’t trying to stop Romney, he’s trying to win. That’s what candidates do.
What makes you think Gingrich voters would go to Santorum?
I believe most of them would go to Paul or Romney. This because EVERYONE knows Gingrich supporters generally want a candidate that isn't holier than they are. And, certainly, if they valued good Christian principles they would be with Santorum.
Hell, over 2/3 of the GOP electorate who cast ballots in the election so far were under the influence of the devil, surely.
What other explanation could there be?
It is absolutely true for some of the states. And it’s not true for a few states. And that’s why there are different counts.
But to pretend Santorum will get zero delegates from the caucuses is absurd.
For example, here are the rules for North Dakota: “The National Convention delegates from North Dakota are elected at the State Convention in such a way so that they best reflect the presidential preference of the Caucus participants.”
They aren’t “awarded” yet, but they will be, and they will reflect the votes taken on Super Tuesday, and Santorum will get those votes.
In other cases, arguing about unbound delegates is rediculous because, to the degree they aren’t bound, the problem is they will vote for Romney, not that somehow if Santorum dropped out Gingrich would get them.
In other states, the votes taken aren’t binding, but the same people who voted also voted for state delegates, and those delegates have been polled, and they will vote for the delegates going to the convention, and will vote for the candidates they support.
To pretend that the Iowa delegates are still unknown is another absurd argument. It would be like you saying you were going to vote for Gingrich, and me arguing that we can’t count that vote until you actuall cast it — like anybody here has any doubt what you are going to do.
There are cases where a candidate could ask his state delegates to vote for another candidate’s RNC delegate. And theoretically the delegates could just decide to switch allegiance, like Gingrich’s one delegate in Tennessee who jumped to Santorum and still got elected as a Gingrich delegate.
BTW, the RNC is still counting that as a Gingrich delegate — because nobody thinks the guy is going to switch his delegate vote to Santorum, even though he now supports Santorum, because unlike apparently people here at FR think, most of these delegate people are honorable people who will vote the way they are expected, even though they are not duty-bound to do so.
Polls. They ask that question from time to time. In general, they find that slightly more than half the Santorum voters would go to Romney, while most Gingrich supporters would switch to Santorum.
Remember, I’m not arguing that anybody should drop out. That’s the person who created this thread.
I have pointed out however that in Alaska, Gingrich could have asked some of his caucus supporters to vote for SAntorum, in order to put Santorum above Romney and take delegates.
Huckabee actually did this in West Virginia in 2008, so it’s not some pie-in-the-sky voter thing like most of what people here talk about.
He may get none of the delegates and he may get all...or something in between.
The point is that he has none of them now and no claim on them.
His chance is exactly equal to the other three candidates.
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