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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe GOP’s Panic Over Rick Santorum
For more than six months, worried conservative chieftains talked up the need to unite behind a single rightist candidate in order to block the potential victory of the mushy moderate from Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. Now, on the eve of crucial primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and with Super Tuesday looming just one week later, some of those same leaders speak privately of the need to unite behind that same, once-dreaded Romney in order to avert an even more dire disaster: the nomination of Rick Santorum.
These shifting calculations by activists and elected officials stem in part from new polling information that turns long-cherished conventional wisdom on its head. Since the beginning of the campaign, experts assumed that the plethora of conservative contenders (remember Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann?) served to divide right-wing sentiment, making Romney triumphs far more likely, even with a purported ceiling to Mitts support of 30 percent.
According to this logic, Romneys chances for the nomination depended on keeping multiple opponents in the race to split the conservative votes against him. But suddenly, new numbers suggest that the remaining spoiler candidates (Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul) actually take votes away from Romney, and serve mostly to make a Santorum success more plausible.
More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/24/gop-fears-burial-beneath-obama-landslide-against-rick-santorum.html?obref=obinsite
DearAbby
(12,461 posts)Monday night, ahead of the Michigan primary, the Rick Santorum campaign unleashed a last-ditch robo-call reminding voters of Mitt Romneys staunch opposition to the auto-industry bailout. This, argues Romney, was a dirty trick to lure Michigans Democrats to the Santorum side.
Its outrageous to see Rick Santorum team up with the Obama people and go out after union labor in Detroit and get them to vote against me, Romney said Tuesday, insisting that we dont want Democrats deciding who our nominee is going to be.
The Santorum call said, Romney supported the bailouts for his Wall Street billionaire buddies but opposed the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and were not going to let Romney get away with it.
Romney may denounce Santorum's lastest effort to get Democrats involved in the Republican primary, but it has not been forgotten that Romney himself voted in the 1992 Democratic party in an effort to nominate his opposing party's weakest candidate to go up against incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/election.html
Renew Deal
(81,871 posts)He has his own wing of the party following him.
DearAbby
(12,461 posts)National Republican leaders are voicing increasing dismay over the course of the partys presidential primary, which has fallen into such a negative grind that they warn could cost them the White House.
At the core of their concern is the atmosphere of daily vituperation among the top candidates. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are now engaged in a seemingly constant knife fight, interrupted by only the sparest of positive, policy-oriented debate.
Worst of all, there is no clear end in sight for what has become, in the eyes of many Republicans, a joyless and prolonged nomination fight. Even Romney victories in Michigan and Arizona, the two states voting Tuesday, have little chance of forcing his aggrieved opponents out of the race. With a vast personal fortune at his disposal, theres no prospect of Romney being shunted aside by his foes.
Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor and Republican Governors Association chairman, warned in a CBS interview Monday that the savagery of the campaign carries risks for Republicans and has taken [attention] away from Obamas policies.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73365.html#ixzz1nhKQIFOL
DearAbby
(12,461 posts)The longer-than-expected Republican primary has given many more voters a chance to meet the candidates and cast ballots in meaningful elections, but it has caused some in the party to worry that it is weakening the eventual winner in his confrontation with President Obama.
Mitt Romney is still the heavy favorite to win the nomination, with 75.2 percent odds to Rick Santorum's 9.8 percent, but the data suggests he could be looking at a Pyrrhic victory. The president's odds of re-election jumped to above 60 percent in the days after Santorum's big wins on February 7, according to prediction markets.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/republican-nomination-extends-march-candidates-face-weakening-odds-152347629.html