Monday night, I sat looking at the
GOP primary schedule and, considering Mitt Romney’s enormous
fundraising advantage, was filled with a sense of foreboding. After
Newt Gingrich’s meltdown in Nevada, the prospects for the
conservative “Anybody But Romney” opposition looked grim
indeed.
Rick Santorum’s 3-for-3 hat-trick Tuesday night, however,
revives the glimmer of a possibility that Romney can still be
beat. But it will nevertheless be a
difficult challenge and, in the short term, will require at
least tacit cooperation between the Santorum and Gingrich
campaigns.
After we get the results of the Maine caucuses on
Saturday — a near-certain win for Romney — Arizona and
Michigan hold their primaries on Feb. 28. With Romney’s vastly
superior financial resources, he would likely win both states
unless Santorum and Gingrich strike an unofficial deal: Let
Gingrich concentrate his campaign on Arizona (a Sun Belt state that
matches Gingrich’s political strengths) while Santorum focuses on
the industrial “Rust Belt” state of Michigan. Both of the
conservative “not Mitts” would face long odds against Romney in
those states, but the odds will be slightly shorter than they would
be if both of them were shuttling back and forth between the two
states. They could economize in terms of campaign staff, travel
expenses and advertising and, if they get a lucky break somewhere
along the way, might conceivably score twin upsets, so that Romney
loses both Arizona and Michigan.
The Washington State caucus intervenes March 3, the Saturday
before “Super Tuesday” March 6, when Santorum and Gingrich could
again improve their odds against Romney by a tacit and unofficial
division of states. Ohio is another industrial “Rust Belt” state
that matches Santorum’s strengths, while Gingrich can count Georgia
as his home turf. Of the other Super Tuesday states, Vermont and
Massachusetts are practically “gimme” votes for Romney, who will
almost surely also defeat Ron Paul in Virginia, where neither
Santorum nor Gingrich qualified for the primary ballot. That leaves
Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee as
possibilities for either Santorum or Gingrich. Would Santorum be
willing to cede Tennessee and perhaps also Oklahoma to Gingrich in
exchange for a clear shot at Romney in the other states?
Some such arrangement would seem to offer the best hope of
stopping Romney, if the conservative rivals Gingrich and Santorum
are really serious about stopping Romney at all costs. The
two conservatives would have to be willing to postpone until after
Super Tuesday a showdown between themselves, knowing that neither
of them has a good chance at the nomination unless — by a
modicum of tactical cooperation in the near term — they can
deliver enough defeats to Romney to stop him from building an
insuperable early lead in the delegate count.
This kind of cooperation between two candidates in the GOP
nomination contest would be unprecedented, but would simply
replicate how the campaign has played out accidentally so far:
Santorum upset Romney in Iowa and then, after Romney won New
Hampshire, Gingrich won South Carolina, depriving Romney of a
snowballing “inevitability” momentum. After two more Romney wins in
Florida and Nevada, which threatened another “inevitability”
snowball, Santorum came back to
score big Tuesday in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. What the
Santorum-Gingrich tag-team has so far achieved against Romney in
sequential contests, they must now attempt to repeat in
simultaneous contests.
Certainly, after Santorum’s impressive victories Tuesday,
Gingrich will look silly if he doesn’t cease his oft-repeated
arguments that Santorum should drop out and endorse him. And while
Santorum now asserts that he is the only conservative choice in the
Republican campaign, he doesn’t yet have the financial or
organizational resources to match Romney’s powerful machine. The
only way either Gingrich or Santorum can realistically keep
up the fight against Romney with any hope to prevent him from
getting the nomination is to “spread the field,” forcing the Romney
campaign to defend against different opponents in different states,
at least during the next four weeks.
One final thought: Both Gingrich and Santorum are hostile to Ron
Paul’s anti-war libertarian ideology. Yet if they are really
serious about stopping Romney, Gingrich and Santorum should
tell their supporters in Virginia: “A vote for Ron Paul is a vote
for me!”
