Rick Santorum: Defiant? Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via flickr
Is the GOP presidential nomination race all but over? After months of thrills and spills that have seen the GOP candidates’ fortunes go up and down like a game of Snakes & Ladders, establishment pick Mitt Romney finally seems to have sealed his frontrunner status. The one-time Massachusetts governor has more delegates than the other candidates combined, according to recent estimates, and is riding high in the polls going into Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Romney has also attracted endorsements from prominent Republican elders such as Jeb Bush, as the party grows weary of the protracted nomination contest.
The question is whether the remaining three candidates are prepared to accept the new narrative of Romney’s inevitability. It would appear not. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has scaled back his campaign, but insists he will remain in the race. Libertarian-leaning Ron Paul, who has yet to win a single primary or caucus, has shown no inclination to drop out, recently claiming he is trying to save the Republican Party from itself with his continued run. And social conservative Rick Santorum, once considered a serious potential threat to Romney, has declared he’s going nowhere unless the former Massachusetts governor clinches the 1,144 delegates needed to take the nomination outright before the GOP convention in Tampa in August.
Tough times ahead for Santorum. “For Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, it is shaping up to be a cold and lonely spring,” wrote Sam Youngman at Reuters. Youngman pointed out that Santorum is hoping to ride out a series of likely defeats in the April primaries: “If Santorum can survive until May, he has a fair chance of winning states where his appeal to evangelical voters goes down well.” But Santorum still has a long way to go to catch Romney on delegate numbers, and the former Pennsylvania senator is also at a financial disadvantage.
“I think it’s absolutely apparent that it’s in the best interests of our party at this particular point to get behind the person who is obviously going to be our nominee and to begin to make the case against the president of the United States,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, reported The Washington Post.
Santorum slump. The Pennsylvania primary on 24th April is a must-win contest for Santorum, said The Wall Street Journal; and Wisconsin is also of considerable importance, given that the social conservative has presented himself as the best candidate for blue-collar states. But “support for Mr. Santorum in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin appears to be slumping amid growing signs that many Republicans are reconciling to the likelihood that Mr. Romney will emerge as their party’s nominee”.
Mitt Romney’s campaign staff played an April Fool’s prank on their candidate, sending him into an empty room for a pretend rally. See the video below.
Gingrich campaign effectively over. “The campaign question is no longer ‘Can Gingrich win?’ It’s ‘When does Gingrich have to drop out?’” wrote David Weigel at Slate, pointing out that the one-time House Speaker has now lost his the embedded print journalists who were exclusively covering his campaign. However, said Weigel, this doesn’t necessarily mean Gingrich will be out of the headlines – on the contrary, as a “curio candiate”, Gingrich will probably generate more press interest. “If you want people to show up to your big policy speeches, run for president. If you want the press to write about them, try something else,” Weigel wrote.
Rick Santorum broke out a basketball metaphor in the face of calls from Republican leaders for the GOP to rally around one candidate. “It’s like telling Kansas last night, ‘You’re down by 18 points, but before halftime — give up its over.’ We aren’t even at halftime folks, not even half the delegates have been selected in this race,” he said, referring to the Kansas Jayhawks coming from behind to win a key game, reported ABC News.
Running on spite? “In a presidential contest that’s been unprecedented in so many ways, add another first to the list: we are seeing a national political contest fueled, on the challenger side, almost entirely by spite,” wrote Ana Marie Cox in The Guardian’s Comment is Free. Cox argued that the only thing keeping Gingrich and Santorum in the presidential nomination race is antipathy towards Romney. And this negativity has spread outwards – Gingrich and Santorum aren’t united in their dislike of the front runner, but snipe at each other, too. “The spitefulness on display in the conduct of Gingrich and Santorum simply alienates, GOP elites and, it appears, voters alike,” Cox wrote.