Though Mitt Romney took one step closer toward securing his position as the undisputed front-runner on Super Tuesday, he was not able to close the deal. Now, with the contest predominantly in the Deep South and the Sunflower State, Romney is by his own admission, playing away games for the next ten days.
The real drama is not so much about Romney: the math now places him at the tipping point for victory, or very close to it. One--and only one--of the remaining challengers would have to win big in nearly every remaining contest to surpass Romney's delegate total by the end of May, something akin to drawing a straight flush in poker. This long-shot arithmetic might be possible even on a bad day if at least two of the remaining candidates--Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich--were to defer. But it appears neither man will budge.
And that brings us to the real drama. While Romney coasts for a while, possibly ceding Alabama and Mississippi to the insurrectionists (though at this writing the polls have tightened even for Romney, who has now gained to within a few points of the others), the more intense dynamic is found between Gingrich and Santorum, who now struggle mightily to prevail among the social conservatives, Tea Partiers, True Believers and other non-Romney partisans. Once Santorum's to win or lose, Alabama and Mississippi now seem up for grabs.
Gingrich hopes to inflame another surge, and finally set conditions to rights by winning more than South Carolina and Georgia in contests seven weeks apart. Santorum seeks to solidify his position as the only real alternative to the establishment candidate. Now at mid-March, Santorum himself rests at his own tipping point--a potential negative tip-over in which crucial momentum may be lost if he suffers multiple defeats.
Rumors swirled for 48 hours that Gingrich was in a make-or-break situation. Some of his own staff hinted that Alabama and Mississippi must-win states. But the next day Gingrich himself issued a declaration: he is staying in the race all the way to convention. Both sides floated demands that the other withdraw, and then both sides denied such demands were ever made. The stakes have become high for Romney's principal contenders. And of course Romney benefits from this lack of unity among the anti-Romney forces.
Romney, Santorum and Gingrich all spent the last several days feverishly crisscrossing of the south in search of support. There were candidate appearances in Huntsville, Birmingham, Mobile, Meridian, Jackson, Tupelo and Hattiesburg, and all candidates drew large crowds.
At an appearance in Dothan, Alabama on Saturday afternoon, Gingrich was defiant and unapologetic, challenging the conventional wisdom of Romney as inevitable, and sounding an even more aggressive tone when his remarks turned to the subject of President Obama. Speaking to a standing-room only crowd inside the Wiregrass Museum of Art, Gingrich attacked Obama's failed energy policies. But Gingrich also chided Romney for the former Massachusetts Governor's attempts to pander to southerners with remarks about biscuits and cheese grits, and Gingrich clearly sought to portray Romney as someone as equally out-of-touch with small town America as Obama himself.
But the centerpiece of Gingrich's remarks was directed at energy policy, and he wasted little time honing in on Obama's now infamous declaration that as a nation "we can't just drill our way to energy independence." With gas prices on the rise, again, and the President's approval ratings showing signs of backsliding--largely due to pain at the pump--Gingrich clearly sees an opportunity to pin blame on Obama and what he sees as a lackluster and unimaginative approach to energy policy.
In the meantime, Santorum gets another first place trophy. His win in the Kansas caucuses, which was not a total surprise, nevertheless helped to fuel his campaign for a few days with momentum. Santorum won a bigger victory than expected, and though the exact totals have not been made official, the former Pennsylvania Senator will walk away with at least 33 delegates from the Sunflower State. Santorum won even in the metropolitan counties of Sedgwick (Wichita), Shawnee (Topeka) and Johnson (Overland Park). Like his win in neighboring Oklahoma, Santorum swept almost all of the state. In some western counties Santorum's margin approached or exceeded 60%.
His lead there comfortable enough, Santorum quickly returned to the Deep South states to campaign, hoping to blunt a Gingrich surge and also a surprising uptick of support for Romney in Alabama.
Gingrich clearly hopes to see Alabama tilt into his column. Though he won nearly all of Georgia, the former Speaker's vote totals in the western Georgia counties were strong enough to indicate the possibility of a pattern extending well into neighboring counties of the Camellia State. Gingrich also performed remarkably well in the Florida panhandle, another neighbor to Alabama.
Mitt Romney clearly hopes that the sheer weight of his current delegate advantage begins to convert the doubters. If he can continue to break Santorum's bursts of momentum, and if he can blunt the next Gingrich surge, Romney may have a better-than-average shot at closing the deal by the end of April.
Meanwhile, talk persists among the chattering classes of a brokered convention, and more than a few Republicans envision a scenario in which no single candidate arrives in Tampa with the required 1144 delegates in the bag. After the first round of balloting, during which pledged delegates are bound by national party rules to cast their votes according to their state's primary or caucus distribution system, delegates can then act as free agents--more or less. In this dream scenario (or nightmare, depending on one's view), delegates and GOP movers and shakers could engage in ad hoc efforts to float alternate names.
Historically, this is not how Republicans prefer to settle their differences. But clearly this is not the usual election cycle for the GOP.
In the meantime, we have 24 hours or so to await the results from three states--Alabama, Mississippi, and (nearly forgotten in all the brouhaha over cheese grits and biscuits) Hawaii.
Copyright 2012, Thursday Review
Road Show is published each week by Thursday Review publications, copyright 2008, 2012
