Santorum campaign suggests Mitt Romney may have done deal to make Ron Paul his running mate
http://harndenblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/02/santorum-campaign-suggests-romney-may-have-done-deal-to-make-ron-paul-his-running-mate.html
After tonight's debate, in which Ron Paul and Mitt Romney repeatedly attacked Rick Santorum over his 16-year record in Congress, the former Pennsylvania hinted that something nefarious was going on. "You have to ask Congressman Paul and Governor Romney what they've got going together,"
Santorum told reporters in the spin room in Mesa, Arizona. "Their commercials look a lot alike and so do their attacks." Santorum's top strategist John Brabender went even further, charging that the two men had "joined forces" and were coordinating attacks against his man
"Clearly there's a tag team strategy between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. For all I know, Mitt Romney might be considering Ron Paul as his running mate. Clearly there is now an alliance between those two and you saw that certainly in the debate." The was also coordination in their attack ads, he charged. "Ron Paul for all practical purposes has pulled out of Michigan. Correct? Where's he running negative ads against Rick Santorum? Michigan.
"It was interesting to me that if you watch Ron Paul when he came into the debate wrote negative things about Rick Santorum down because when he started to get questions he would immediately pick up his paper and start mentioning Santorum stuff." He added: "What is amazing to me this shows a remarkable ability by Romney, who has already proven to be the most negative man in history on TV, now he's even training his opponents to be negative for his benefit and actually I think that takes remarkable skill."
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my take, and why
The main reason this has any credibilty is the 'behind-the-scenes' delegate control strategy of the Paul campaign, who could have enough actual delegates at the convention that he controls to tip the nomination to any of the other 3 candidates:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291218/ron-paul-s-delegate-strategy-katrina-trinko?pg=2
Ron Paul’s Delegate Strategy
The Paul campaign has focused on diligently training its supporters, who, as any reporter whose e-mail address is public can tell you, are a passionate lot. Paul backers are willing not to just show up and pull the lever for Paul, but also to learn the arcane rules that govern delegate selection.
Consider what happened at one Maine caucus site. Washington Post reporter Felicia Somnez reported that while the original schedule had been selection of delegates first and then the caucus vote, a voter’s proposal that the order be reversed was approved by the attendees.
Around half of voters had come for the caucus vote, not for the delegate selection. “The state delegate race would be conducted with only about half that many people in the room,” Somnez wrote. “And that meant the pool had effectively been reduced to only the most committed voters of an already quite diehard bunch — among them, many Paul supporters like [Alex] Lyscars who were willing to spend more than four hours at a caucus on a Saturday afternoon and for whom the straw-poll results were secondary to the actual delegate race.”
After Maine’s caucus, the state GOP called Romney the caucus winner.
But the Paul campaign had a different spin on the outcome. “We are confident we will control the Maine delegation for the convention in August,” said Benton in a statement issued that night. The campaign estimates that about 75 percent of the state’s current delegates are Paul supporters. And it’s not just Maine and Colorado.
Talking to reporters in January, Benton predicted that the Paul campaign would ultimately “win the Iowa delegation, even though we took a close third place . . . on caucus night.” Seventy-five percent of the Minnesota delegates to local party conventions are Paul backers, according to the campaign.
Ultimately, the odds that Paul could get enough delegates to swing the national convention to a vote nominating him are nil. But the more delegates Paul controls, the more of an impact he can have on determining the GOP platform at the convention. Furthermore, if it does come to a brokered convention — admittedly an unlikely scenario — the Paul campaign will be ready. Benton refuses to speculate about what the specific odds are that there will be a brokered convention, but does say of the possibility, “We’ve always seen it as more likely than most people would.”
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