Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Santorumania!

Last night in Iowa...
Mitt Romney – 24.6%
Rick Santorum – 24.5%
Ron Paul – 21.4%
Newt Gingrich – 13.3%
Rick Perry – 10.3%
Michele Bachmann – 5.0%
Jon Huntsman – 0.6%
99% of precincts reporting
I actually think this can fuck up Romney more than people are predicting. Santorum is crazy, but he's actually more polished than Cain, Bachmann or Perry, who were all able to surge for about a month before plummeting back to earth. The difference here is the timing on Santorum's surge is pretty ideal, especially combined with the news that Bachmann and Perry are dropping out. (update: Apparently perry isn't dropping out. Good luck with that!)

The craziest aspect of this primary has despite the fact that Romney is the only candidate that consistently beats Obama in the polls, he has only been able to get 30% of the GOP vote. Also, looking at PPP Polling's stuff a few weeks back, Romney wasn't the top second choice of any of these people, it was very much a Paul, Romney, and everyone else type division.

If Paul had won, I think there would be a movement among conservatives to suck it up and rally around Romney and make sure the greater evil (Paul) was defeated. The current situation could actually be a lot more troublesome for Romney. If Perry and Bachmann drop out, their support is much much more likely to go to Santorum than anyone else, especially Romney. Also, I'm not really sure where Newt's support will go when he drops out, but it does seem like he's willing to sacrifice any chance of winning to destroy Romney, which won't help Newt, but it would hurt Romney.

As absurd as this sounds, I could see a senario where Santorum's surge is perfectly timed, he gains the support of the other non-Romneys once they drop out, and wins the nomination. I've been wrong about this stuff on a fairly consistant basis before, but I do think that's a possibility.

What do you guys think?

1 comment:

  1. I know I should look away and careless, but this is pretty horrifying. I mean look at Paul's percentage. I do have a special hatred for all the delusional people who believe themselves to be libertarians.

    But let's think about this for a minute the Republican front runners: blame black people for being poor, believe AIDS patients are getting what they deserve and hate gay people.

    ReplyDelete