Although I am not a member of the Santorum camp, I appreciate the tenacity he brought to the Republican primary.  As Dan McLaughlin mentioned earlier, Santorum trailed the GOP pack for most of the primary season.  When he won in Iowa, must of us wrote him off.  After all, he had no money and no national campaign staff.  Yet, despite the odds, Santorum continued the fight.  As of today he has won over 3 million votes and 11 states to become the dominate conservative alternative to Romney.  In the process, he has endured relentless attacks upon his character, his family, and his faith.  A quick google search of “Santorum” will reveal the level of filth directed at the man.  Until recently the top search result defined “Santorum” as a byproduct of anal sex.  Even some “conservatives” – scare quotes used intentionally – have resorted to the same level of filth.  Yet, Santorum persevered until the delegate count and the need to care for his daughter and family led him to exit the race today.

Conservatives owe a lot to Rick Santorum.  He succeeded where all the other non-Romneys failed and exposed the myth of Romney’s inevitability.  Many have made hay out of polls showing that Santorum faced a “humiliating” upset in his home state of Pennsylvania on April 24th.  The truth is that even a loss in Pennsylvania would not have been humiliating.  Humiliation is the fact that Romney can only secure the nomination through smear campaigns and massive ad buys that have often outgunned his opponents 15 to 1.  Humiliation is the fact that Romney has been running for the GOP nomination since 2006 and a upstart candidate with no name recognition, no money, and no national campaign organization actually bested him in so many states including his adopted home of Michigan.  Rick Santorum has demonstrated Romney’s weakness with the conservative base.  If Romney is smart, he will move to correct that problem.  If not, then say hello to four more years of Obama.

Some “conservatives” have even suffered from Santorum derangement syndrome or SDS.  The very mention of his name sends them into fits and convulsions.  Resolutely they declare Santorum to be beyond the pale and state their willingness to back Ron Paul over a Santorum nomination.  In their more lucid moments they boldly claim that Santorum is a pro-life statist and not a true fiscal conservative.  While Santorum has faltered in his fiscal conservatism, he has at least remained true to his social conservative values, which is a heck of a lot more than one can say of Mitt ”all my principles are negotiable” Romney.  Santorum admits to mistakes as a Senator during the Bush years and promised to hold the fiscal line as president, which is more than Mitt Romney has done. Santorum has never given cause to question his promise to repeal Obamacare, which is more than Mitt Romney has done.  Santorum may not have been the true Reagan conservative but he is a lot closer to it than either Romney or Paul.

Mr. Santorum has my thanks and respect for a well waged campaign against overwhelming odds.  My prayers are with him, his family, and especially his daughter.

According to Rebel Pundit, Alex Hayes, director of Mainstream Republicans of Washington State, distributed a list of preferred delegates to Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich supporters at this convention. The vast majority of these slates of delegates consisted of Romney supporters. This fact was not disclosed on the slate. Most disturbing was the letterhead on the slate–which prominently claimed the endorsements of the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns. In addition, Hayes verbally claimed that the Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich campaigns “agreed to work together” at the county convention. Such endorsements and agreements did not exist!  Indeed, the only campaign standing to benefit from the slate distributed by Alex Hayes was Mitt Romney’s.

**Update** We have received this photo of the proposed “Unity Slate,” Alex Hayes tried to persuade Washington voters to choose. The slate definitely appears to convey the slate is endorsed by Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

In this undercover video, Alex Hayes decried dishonesty in politics while attempting to lure Santorum supporters into casting ballots for Romney delegates. This is no way to treat so many hundreds of grassroots conservatives involved in politics for the first time.  His brazen attempt to fool those who aren’t professional politicos such as himself into handing over a massive win to his preferred candidate is disturbing.

In all the excitement of discovering who won the latest plurality of voters in the latest primary, it is easy to lose the forest for the trees, which is that the purpose of our Presidential primary system is to reflect the preferences of our party’s voters in the selection of our candidate for the President.

An examination of the voting thus far shows that we have established a classic relational triangle among the supporters of the three most viable candidates: (alphabetically) Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.

Mitt attracts the cluster of voter preferences for those with a strategic focus: emphasizing factors such as electability, attracting swing voters (or at least not scaring them off), and tailoring the message to maximize acceptability.

Newt attracts those of a more tactical bent, who focus more on policy and program – who thereby emphasize coherent philosophy, putting conservative ideas into practice, leadership qualities – and combat skills in debate and pushing back against a hostile media.

Rick attracts those who focus more on the more intangible: values, faith, character, passion, scrappiness, strong convictions and blunt speaking – those expressions of a conservative ethos that have too long been suppressed – along with an associated greater willingness to overlook weaknesses in record and in media savy.

And each group of supporters believes that their priorities should prevail and offers the best chance for success in November. And thus far, each commands loyalty from a minority of the voters, with none reliably exceeding 40% or so.

I’m trying to be fair, and I’m sure many would have somewhat different descriptions of the clustering of preferences, but the larger picture is that we have developed a relational triangle because the predominant preferences for each candidate are distinctly independent of each other and have low correlation between them.

In other words, each group tends to be speaking a different language, languages which have little common vocabulary with each other.

This in turn has hitherto prevented the formation of a coalition between two of the candidates against the third and also has hindered accretion of support for any one of the candidates at the expense of the others – a reflection of the structural stability of triangles.

This stability we’ve seen expressed in the howls of protest when one group is asked to throw their support to another candidate, either “for the good of the party” or to block the victory of the third.

And this stability highlights the difficult challenge of ending up with a single winner without destroying the party structural beyond repair.

A Snapshot of the Race Today

I will leave to those with more expertise in analyzing polling date and understanding the intricacies of state election laws to develop detailed alternative scenarios.

However, it is clear that with a majority of the delegates selected to date plus a stronger campaign network and a preponderance of support from party and elected officials that Mitt Romney still has the advantage going forward and is in the best position to win an outright majority of delegates before the election.

Newt clearly has no way to win a majority of delegates, and thus his remaining in the race can only be an effort to deny a delegate majority to Mitt in the hope of exerting influence at the convention. It would seem improbable that he could be the nominee in a brokered convention, but in this volatile season of surprises, I suppose nothing should be ruled out.

Rick is in the peculiar position that Newt remaining in the race will almost certainly deny him the ability to assemble an outright majority, but may also make a brokered convention more likely than if he were to face Mitt one-on-one. He certainly would be the underdog in a one-on-one, but he would face a clearer path to the nomination if he could successfully defy the odds.

Much would depend on how Newt voters would redistibute themselves if Newt were to suspend his campaign, the outcome of which is by no means obvious. Moreover, given that Rick Perry’s endorsement seemed to have little impact on Newt’s candidacy, it’s unclear what would be the impact of an endorsement from Newt or his forming an overt coalition.

The Way Forward

The challenge then is how we can maintain a viable party structure through all this to compete effectively in the general election. While I don’t have a magic solution, I think that the above analysis offers several areas of guidance.

1) It is important that we recognize the existence of and try to find a way to bridge the gap among the three voter clusters so that the values and emphases of each group are at least heard and acknowledged and respected rather than being trampled on by zealous partisans of the other candidates.

2) Especially as we are likely to face and tightly contested campaign that may yield a narrow margin of victory in the delegate to the winner, should one end up with a majority, we must not so discourage those whose candidates end up on the losing side that they absent themselves from the general election. We need to take heed to the lesson of Pyrrhus.

3) A “brokered convention” is no panacea and could easily create a situation of deal-making and haggling that would give sausage-making a sterling reputation and could tarnish the legitimacy of the nominee. Be careful what you wish for.

4) Indeed, the only rationale behind pushing for a brokered convention would be if – to return to the triangle analogy – this would enable us to break into the third dimension and create a tetrahedron – a 4th point, a new nominee that could rest on the foundation of the existing triangle – that is, a nominee that all three groups could buy into.

So far that person has not been made manifest, and unless the clouds clear at this late date, we need to be very leery of embracing the brokered convention.

In the end, the voters for each of these constituencies will through their votes determine whether one of the remaining candidates will gain a majority of delegates before the convention.

In the remaining days, then, let us keep our eyes on the goal – to realign our nation to the vision of its founding fathers so that we can pass on to future generations the Blessings of Liberty that those who came before us have passed on to us, many of whom did so at the cost of their lives.

The calls today from conservatives across the country will be for Newt Gingrich to drop out. They’re right. His ship with the leaky hull officially sank yesterday by failing to win in the area of the country where he still had a chance. It’s time to move out of the way for the sake of the country.

What won’t be discussed is the impossible dream of Mitt Romney also reading the writing on the wall. For 3 decades, anyone Republican who was not able to run as a conservative has lost. Many will say that GWB was not a conservative, but he ran both campaigns as such and wasn’t questioned for it. Bob Dole was. John McCain was. Mitt Romney is viewed as more liberal than either of them. His credentials as a conservative will be questioned just as they were yesterday and his answers to those questions will fall short.

The aforementioned writing on the wall is that he has failed to position himself in the eyes of the voters as someone who will bring fiscally-conservative ideas to the table to fix the problems we’re facing. It’s extremely clear to those who understand such things that people vote based upon the effect it will have on their wallets which is why there is a constant ebb and flow in Washington between electing fiscal conservatives and liberal economic mindsets. When one side doesn’t work, the other is more appealing. It’s been happening that way since Jimmy Carter with Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton being the only presidents viewed  by the general population as having a positive effect on the economy.

The thinking from the Republican Establishment has always been sound on a surface level and ignorant once the layers are peeled back. They know that moderates and independents hold the keys to the White House, but they wrongfully believe that getting the moderate vote means putting up a moderate as their choice. It has constantly failed and they simply do not understand the mindset.

If things are going well in the economy, the incumbent always wins. If things are going poorly, the opposing party wins IF they put up a candidate who strikes people as heading in the exact opposite direction. People often forget that Bob Dole was going up against a Clinton term that was not doing so hot economically. It wasn’t until his second term that things got better. Dole had an opportunity to take the White House but was unable to offer a truly-conservative face that represented the fiscal responsibility people wanted. He failed and Clinton’s presidency, for all of its flaws, came out as an economic success.

Al Gore didn’t capitalize on this and people were starting to doubt whether the liberal bubble economy could be sustained. They were right and elected a man they believed had the conservative chops to pick up the pieces once it broke. Unfortunately, the conservatism that Bush exuded did not translate as such economically.

All of this brings us back to Mitt Romney. His inability to wrap up the Republican nomination despite spending much more than his opponents is a clear indicator that the people do not want him in office. He may be able to buy his way into the nomination, but it should not have been this hard. If people believed in him, the money that he has spent and the attacks he has pointed at his opponents should have locked him in by now. Instead, he is limping from state to state. This is a bad sign.

Mitt Romney cannot defeat Barack Obama. If he was unable to buy his way to a second-place finish in either southern state, he will be demolished once the full force of the Obama campaign rains down upon him.

Rick Santorum offers the contrast to Obama that is required to win the general election. He has neither the organization nor the cash to defeat Romney and should have been out of the picture long ago. Fortunately for him, his conservative message has kept him in the race and has him poised to pull off the upset if America is willing to wake up and see the reality of the situation.

There is no way to compare the policies, history, or personalities of Santorum and Obama without calling them opposites. Romney, on the other hand, can be compared more closely to Obama than to his conservative opponents in the party that he supposedly represents. The results in November would be a landslide if Romney wins because he does not resonate the fiscally-conservative principles that are required to defeat an incumbent.

If logic ruled over pride and desire, the losses Romney suffered yesterday would be clear indicators that the best chance for the Republican party to take the White House would be if Romney dropped out.

“There is no education like adversity.”
- Benjamin Disraeli

After every primary, there are the inevitable cries for the laggard of the day to quit. Since Super Tuesday, there have been calls for Newt Gingrich to suspend his campaign, and while Rick Santorum is on record saying, “People should stay in the race as long as they feel they should stay in the race,” his supporters have been ardently vocal in their belief that if Gingrich would withdraw, there would be a better chance at a more conservative Republican winning the nomination.

Santorum has been on the receiving end of such demands for months now. He’s got enough sense and integrity not to become a hypocrite on the matter, and more to the point, he knows the pressure is already on Gingrich, who desperately needs to win Alabama and Mississippi to remain statistically viable. Santorum victories in the south will assure a two-man race going forward.

Many pundits maintain that a lengthy and contentious primary is bad for the eventual nominee, in that it will leave the candidate battered and depleted, and leave the party faithful bitter and disenfranchised. But recent history tells us this is merely the false hope of Democrats desperate to see Obama remain in office; in fact, the 2008 Democratic primary was just as hard-fought.

The fact is, the Republican primary season has given all of the candidates valuable experience. Over the course of twenty heated debates, intense campaigns in over two dozen states, and countless interviews with hostile media, the eventual nominee will emerge well-seasoned and battle-hardened for the general election. There will be little left for Obama to strike him with that he hasn’t already learned to defend.

The GOP nominee will have enjoyed months of media scrutiny and publicity, making him familiar with voters and primed to make his case for the White House.

Most importantly, the incumbent is extremely vulnerable. Barack Obama faces the unprecedented statistical challenge of a re-election bid following a yearly average approval rating of 44.5% and well over 8% unemployment – no President has won re-election with approval ratings that low and unemployment so high. In fact, only Reagan won re-election with unemployment over 7% – at 7.2%, but that was after bringing unemployment down from 10.8%.

Couple these historically bad numbers with historically high gas prices and an anemic economy, and you have all the makings of a one-term President. It really doesn’t matter how long it takes the Republicans to settle on a nominee, and the combative primary will only serve to produce a strong and well-known candidate, one that should be equipped to unseat the man who, by the numbers, is the worst American President since Herbert Hoover.

So sit back, enjoy the fight, and stop begging for someone to quit. It’s better to win on the field than by forfeit.

This article originally posted at Examiner.com 

http://lafango.com/blog/brightfame_63/91311-the-democratic-party-agenda-is-hidden-in-smoke-and-mirrors

When a Democrat spokesman was asked if same sex marriage would be on the Democratic platform he said that it was being considered because “government” should not be allowed to determine the definition of marriage.  What he means is “state(S) government should not be allowed to determine same sex marriage in its’ own state.

Apparently, the liberal Democrats believe that the Federal Government should be able to govern and rule over state legislation if it doesn’t support their agenda of legislated social change.