Feb
8
Maybe it's time for somebody else. (Pic: Huffington Post)
Last night was by far the most interesting night of the 2012 GOP Presidential Primary. I’m still processing the implications of a Rick Santorum sweep in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado. In 2008 Mitt Romney won Minnesota (by 19 points) and Colorado (by 42 points). Fast forward to 2012: in Colorado, Romney received 20,000 fewer votes than he did in 2008. Considering only 70,000 votes were cast in Colorado in 2012, this monstrous decline in support cannot be attributed to a change in the electorate.
And I also can’t believe that it’s because the people of Colorado fell head over heals in love with Rick Santorum. The guy just isn’t that interesting, he doesn’t have a strong enough of a personality, and he doesn’t offer anything new. He just isn’t Mitt Romney and, also, he isn’t Newt Gingrich. And thank God for that.
I wasn’t really buying into this whole not-Romney sensation. But I think last night is the best evidence you’ll get. Gingrich had his chance and squandered it by being himself: overly brash, overly pandering, incessantly creating enemies, and lacking moral character. He had his chance at being the not-Romney. He lost.
In comes Santorum. The not-Romney-not-Gingrich. Your run-of-the-mill social conservative. He’s nothing special, but that’s what makes him special in this election. You have the CEO Romney, who has flip-flopped his way through years of politics and therefore has terrible conservative credentials. You have the crazy and at times flippant Speaker Gingrich, who alienated most of the congressional GOP in the 90s with a dictatorial approach to the speakership. Both have baggage.
That leaves two candidates: Senator Santorum and Representative Paul. I side with the Texas congressman because I have put in a fair amount of research and believe he is a true conservative. But to the regular GOP voter, Santorum is the more ideal Republican. Unwaveringly pro-Israel, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage. He is the establishment! And that’s not necessarily what the voters want. But it is what they’ll get if they don’t want Romney. And it is what they’ll get if they don’t want Gingrich.
This unrest created by the Santorum sweep in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado (and potential upcoming Paul upset in Maine) marks what I believe to the perfect opportunity for another candidate to step into the race. The voters have rejected Romney again. They have rejected Gingrich again. And Santorum had been rejected after Iowa and has only returned out of a lack of options, so I have every reason to believe that a new candidate would easily unseat him at the top.
The timing is just right. There are still 24 states a new candidate could potentially compete in if they started working on filing today (although NY’s filing deadline is tomorrow and PA’s is next tuesday). And with Super Tuesday coming up in just under a month, that’s the perfect amount of time to establish him or herself as viable, participate in one or two debates and drum up excitement and money like Rick Perry did when he entered the race, except this time the candidate would peak during Super Tuesday rather than a month before the Iowa Caucus. A decent Super Tuesday showing could easily propel them forward to the Convention. At this rate, if Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum keep trading wins back and forth, I don’t think any of them will have a majority of delegates going into the convention, especially with the emergence of proportional delegate allocation.
Romney still has the best shot at it. But the Colorado loss has shown me that anything is possible in this race, something I didn’t really believe before last night. Even a candidate coming in now could have a chance at victory. And now is the time for the not-Romney-not-Gingrich-not-Santorum candidate to step forward.
Related posts:
- And Now Romney Has Won The Nomination
- Beyond the Beginning: Why the Primary Schedule is Less Problematic for Romney than Some Think
- How to Not Become President. By: Newt Gingrich
- Landslide victory in Puerto Rico – a good sign for Romney
- Part Two of Why is _____ in the GOP Race: Featuring Newt Gingrich
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