The American Spectator

1. Louisiana reminded us that conservatives and evangelicals aren’t sold on Mitt Romney, that Rick Santorum tends to win primaries every time Romney appears to have the nomination sewn up, but these Santorum victories do little to reduce Romney’s delegate lead. Remember when I said that throughout this primary process Romney has failed to land the knockout blow and Santorum hasn’t managed to overtake Romney? We saw it play out again this weekend.

2. Newt Gingrich came in third in Louisiana, but he became the first Republican presidential candidate to openly call for an open convention instead of nominating Romney. Gingrich said such a spectacle “would be the most exciting 60 days of civic participation in the age of Facebook and Youtube.” Gingrich noted that Barack Obama did fine in 2008 even though Hillary Clinton fought him for the Democratic nomination until mid-June and told CNN’s Piers Morgan “Whoever became the nominee would have the highest attendance, the highest viewership in history for their acceptance speech and we would have compressed the Obama attack machine to 60 days.”

3. Ron Paul came in fourth in Louisiana, but numerous reports suggest his campaign was competitive in the hunt for delegates in Missouri. Paul also raised more than $830,000 at this writing for what his campaign describes as an upcoming “push” in California and Texas. Both offer glimpses of how well Paul will do with his caucus strategy and whether he would have been better served by trying to run up his popular vote totals in big states.

4. Starting this week, Obamacare is on trial before the Supreme Court. More important things hinge on the outcome of the case, but there will be a 2012 impact too. If the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional, does that nullify the issue for Romney or shift the focus from his promise to “repeal” to what the Romneycare architect would “replace” it with?

5. Here’s a fascinating piece explaining Obama’s reluctance to support same-sex marriage: his flip-flop would go over well with his young supporters, but would hurt him in the black community.