April 3rd is just a few days away: Mitt will win DC and Maryland, both of which are winner-take-all, and will win something like half, maybe a bit more than half the delegates from Wisconsin, which awards some delegates by district and others in proportion to the statewide vote. This will put Mitt at about 650 delegates and Santorum at about 320. Let’s assume Santorum wins Wisconsin, so as to keep hope alive.
Then there’s a lull after which five northeast states vote. One of them is Pennsylvania, in which Santorum would normally have an advantage. Figure another 150 to 160 delegates for Romney, and 70 for Santorum.
I could go on.
All Mitt has to do is keep winning in the blue states, the blue Congressional Districts, getting his share of the delegates awarded in proportion to the vote even if this is less than 50 percent, and keep picking up the super-delegates. To stop this, Santorum has to beat Romney on Romney’s turf. He has not done it, and there’s no reason to think he will.
Contrariwise, Mitt has won only a handful of red states (mostly in the Rocky Mountain west where his Mormonism is an advantage), he has not done well in either the midwest or the south, nor in the rural areas. On the other hand, he is doing well enough to win the nomination.
Mitt will have a real challenge to unite the party, and might not be able to do so completely.
Personally, I think there’s a real chance he will name Newt to be his running mate. I wonder if they talked about this in their no longer secret meeting in New Orleans. Newt could be a very effective Vice President; and, being older, would not be presumed to be the nominee in 2020.
But not Rick Santorum. He’s kind of young. we’d be stuck with him forever. And, he’s kind of embarrassing himself at this point, talking about delegates instead of trying to win Maryland (which is winner take all) as well as Wisconsin (where winning doesn’t mean very much in terms of delegates).
A Mitt-Newt ticket would be interesting. Santorum can wait...he would be the “next in line”, but I DEFINITELY want Santorum in the Administration if he is going to be President one day. If not, then he should go write books and keep up with his social issues because they are good regardless of what the media says.
Santorum should have tried to compete in MD, as it is a closed primary. Maybe he could get old Agnew admirers if any are left, but maybe not. He is from the neighboring states, but I guess ol’ Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulksi discouraged him from trying out there.