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We know that Mitt Romney, since he’s a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, wasn’t high when he said on camera that he was going to win Alabama’s primary.
And he surely wasn’t on mind-altering substances when he brashly insisted that Rick Santorum was ”at the desperate end of his campaign,” suggesting that the homo-hating former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania just won’t obtain the number of delegates to win the nomination (and thus, he should get out of the race, one assumes).
Well how do you explain this, Mittens? What substances were you on?
Santorum wins Alabama and Mississippi and Romney was out of the running in both states.
Rick Santorum was projected the winner of the Alabama primary on Tuesday night by NBC News, and not long after projected to finish first in the Mississippi primary by Fox News.
The Yellowhammer State has 50 delegates, 47 of which are bound by the results of the contest. Mississippi has 40 delegates, 37 of which are bound by the results of the primary.
The GOP Clown Car is performing way beyond my expectations in this cycle. When I was watching the exit poll data on CNN before the polls closed and it showed that Mitt Romney couldn’t even win the college-educated vote in Alabama (he did get the >$100K/yr vote and post-grads), that pretty much was the tale of the tape.
When your “front runner” not only doesn’t close the deal in the South but comes in third, that’s f’d. Is anyone of those high-paid Mittens advisers going to get the boot, because this piss-poor, laughable work is just the gift that keeps on giving. This Tweet captured the night it in a nutshell:
RT @chrisharrisks: Romney’s gazillion dollars just lost to a guy whose whole campaign is 4 staffers & a fax machine.
8 Comments
Kudos to the fax machine!
While Romney is clearly crazy for stating he was going to win, he isn’t far off when he says Santorum can’t win. That isn’t propaganda, it is the hard truth. Newt cannot either. Mathematically it is impossible.
Santorum may have won the popular vote in these two states, but the actual delegates were split fairly evenly between Romney Newt and Santorum. And that is very very bad for Santorum. It means even in the deep south Santorum cannot get a plurality of Delegates, which means he cannot win.
(update, had the wrong numbers) There are a total of 2286 delegates. Approximately 485 already have gone to Mittens. Newt has 131 and Paul 48. That means a max of 1622 delegates remain. Santorum has 251 of the needed 1144. That means he would have to win ~60% of all the remaining delegates to win. The margins by which he is winning are such that literally isn’t possible.
If he can do math what Santorum is really hoping for is to get as high a percent of the remaining delegates as he can, and a brokered convention where he might get Newt’s delegates to vote for him. This isn’t likely to work either however, because even with a brokered convention Romney statistically has the most likely chance to win.
All Romney has to do is spend as much money as he can to prevent Santorum from winning enough delegates. That is why the nasty political ads are flying.
I wonder, wouldn’t winning any contest in AL or MS carry some negative baggage in the 1st world, majority part of the US? Maybe there’s a net liability there, where it really counts.
“1st world, majority part of the US”
That’s a smug, elistist, stereotypical, offensive, jack-ass thing to say; and I don’t even live in Mississippi or Alabama.
Well, sorry, but I’ll hold my ground. There is no offensive intended, and I speak from experience. I remain sincere about this.
I was stationed in Biloxi for 30 months when in the Air Force. For a casual visitor MS could be seen as a comfy, middle class, cosmopolitan, thoroughly modern (yet not progressive), recognizable US location as long as you are within 10 miles of the coast. Believe me, it really goes downhill from there. Again, no offense intended, but it is what it is.
Alabama is a tad better off, but not by a great deal.
Sure, there are always exceptions. But the stereotypes and caricatures there are substantially (not always) the case.
What the causes are (mostly poverty) is not my point. Instead I was writing about a consequence — a net liability among a wider national viewpoint for a winner in an extensively covered MS or AL contest. That is, there may be reminders and not a lot of patience with well worn and predominant attitudes of the MS and AL electorates regardless of the causes. A special skepticism may prevail. It may rub off onto a winner where, somewhere else, it might not.
New York and California have not had their primaries yet, and in fact, California is one of the last states to vote. Chances are good these states will go overwhelmingly for Romney. One of the other candidates would have to pull a huge upset in both of these states to steal the nomination. Alabama and Mississippi’s 90 delegates (total) make up less than 4% of 2286.
I think the point to the original post is that no one should be surprised that these heavily religious/right-wing (and presumably not Mormon-friendly) states would go to Santorum or Gingrich (from neighboring Georgia). If Mitt spent much money there at all, he was foolish.
here’s how these states compare to the rest of the nation
Mississippi:
highest teen pregnancy rate
lowest median household income
highest rate of obesity
“worst state to live”
(Livability Index based on 44 weighted factors)
Alabama:
fewest students completing high school
lowest per capita GDP
among five states with highest per-capital gun deaths
highest rate of stroke
Cherry picking? Well maybe a little.
You can hold your ground, but I still contend that your comment was a cheap shot made solely for the purpose of appearing superior.