Monday, April 9, 2012

Is Rick Santorum In Or Out Of The 2012 Race?

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By Jared Allebest
There is some speculation that Rick Santorum will be dropping out soon given that he may not win any delegates in Pennsylvania and that there has been no campaign activity from the Santorum campaign:

Rick Santorum’s campaign insisted Friday the former Pennsylvania senator is still in the race despite mounting pressure even from voters in his home state that he pull out before the Keystone State’s primary April 24.

But Santorum has scheduled no public events over the holiday weekend and has made no major media buys, fueling speculation that he might quit. Polling in Pennsylvania that shows him slipping against front-runner Mitt Romney raises the prospect of an embarrassing home-state loss that could hurt his chances if he were to make a run for the nomination in 2016.

A Santorum campaign spokesman said the candidate had a busy slate of events scheduled for next week and promised that a list would be released soon.

If he decides to stay in the race, Rick Santorum will have to face some harsh facts about his campaign. Recently, a memo was released to the press from the Santorum campaign in which he outlined his belief that he can become the Republican nominee. However, Santorum's path to victory is based on some very flawed assumptions:

Santorum's camp said its internal count shows Romney with only 571 delegates while Santorum has 342. CNN's current delegate estimate, however, shows Romney with 657 and Santorum with 273.

"This race is much closer than the media and Establishment Republicans would like to report," stated the memo.

By CNN's count, Romney needs 44% of the delegates remaining to gain the nomination while Santorum needs 78%.

The campaign reached its rosier version of the delegate count making some assumptions that many experts don't believe will happen, including that Florida and Arizona will change positions and decide to award their delegates proportionally instead of winner take all. Santorum officials said the states broke Republican National Committee rules by not making their contests proportional and therefore conclude the RNC will take away some of Romney's delegates there.

Florida Republican Party Director of Communications Brian Hughes told CNN his state's rule was accepted by the RNC and therefore it will stay a winner take all state.

"It's a kind of a sad commentary on where they are that they have to make things up rather than face the reality of the status of their campaign," he told CNN.

Rick Santorum doesn't have a whole lot of time to decide. The Pennsylvania primary is in a few weeks and he has to decide whether he's in or out. Hopefully, he makes the right decision and bows out.

See more of Jared Allebest here ..................  http://conservativesamizdat.blogspot.com/

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