Having solved his Google problem, Rick Santorum drops out of presidential race

Having finally solved his Google problem (as of today's search Dan Savage's website is no longer the top result for a Rich Santorum Google search), Rick Santorum is reported to have suspended his campaign. This leaves the Republicans with virtually no option but to elect Mitt Romney the flip-flopping candidate that Republican primary voters have gone out of their way for two presidential cycles to avoid.

 Congratulations to the Republican party. You have your candidate. Read More......

Do the Republican candidates stand by NOM?

The anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage was busted this week following the leak of secret internal documents showing NOM's plan to drive a racial wedge between white gays and blacks. Here's part of the offending document:

"The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks - two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key..."

This is pretty disgusting stuff. As John wrote on the main site, "it's all about promoting a race war between blacks and whites in order to hurt gays and the Democratic party, to hell with what it does to the black community, the civil rights movement, or the future of this country."

Last year, NOM posted an article on their blog, titled, "All Major Candidates Sign NOM Marriage Pledge, Commit to Concrete Steps to Support Marriage." This list excluded Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, who you may recall took a bit of a hiatus last summer and was not considered a serious candidate. But the list included Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, along with Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty. Gingrich later did sign the NOM Pledge and is prominently featured on the pledge's website. Here's the pledge:

In signing NOM's marriage pledge, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum pledged to:

• Support and send to the states a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman,
• Defend DOMA in court,
• Appoint judges and an attorney general who will respect the original meaning of the Constitution,
• Appoint a presidential commission to investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters,
• Support legislation that would return to the people of D.C. their right to vote for marriage.

So here's the question: Do Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich still stand by their pledge to the race-baiting and divisive NOM? Do they support NOM's plan to promote "a race war between blacks and whites in order to hurt gays and the Democratic party"? Do Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich think it's OK to associate with an organization like NOM? Or will Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich disavow their fealty to NOM?

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Santorum is the Not Romney

After last night's double victories for Rick Santorum in Alabama and Mississippi, a couple things seem clear about the state of the race:

• Rick Santorum is officially the Not Romney candidate that the Republican Party has been looking for over the last year-plus.
• Newt Gingrich's southern strategy has failed. Unfortunately, since he outperformed Romney in both Alabama and Mississippi, it's unlikely that his ego will allow him to drop out just yet. As long as he's in the race, he is preventing Santorum from collecting delegates. The presumption is that this helps Romney.
• Gingrich's campaign will likely go on up until the moment that Sheldon Adelson decides to stop writing million dollar checks to support it. One man is keeping Newt in the race. If I were Rick Santorum, I'd be phone banking Adelson all week.
• Ron Paul's performance is a joke at this point. For all the perceived grassroots support and small-dollar fundraising power, he has utterly failed to register in recent primaries. That said, I doubt he drops any time soon.

Despite all of this, it still looks like Romney will get the nomination. It will just be a slow, unenthusiastic slog. Conservatives don't believe Romney is one of them, but every time he casts himself to the right of Santorum, he walks himself down a path that alienates independent voters, women and Hispanics. In short, Romney's pathway to attaining the Republican nomination depends exclusively on him attaining a Pyrrhic victory. He will win in such a way as to put himself in an insurmountable hole for the general election.

Of course, if Santorum attains the nomination, we could be looking at Obama winning reelection with 40+ states.

It's silly at this point to expect there to be another candidate to come in at the convention, unless Romney is prevented from winning the required number of delegates (something which does not seem likely). Romney will continue to look more and more like Bob Dole and the only thing that is likely to save the Republican's chances of winning back the White House will be a major disaster, economic or military. In short, the GOP is going to have to make like Rush Limbaugh and root for America to fail if they want the White House back. Given how turbulent the economy has been and the lack of major popular accomplishments during the President's first term, it's fairly remarkable that the GOP couldn't nominate a challenger with a better shot at beating President Obama.

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Super Tuesday

As if the Gods of Excitement hadn't done enough already with this month Chevy Truck Month and the beginning of the March Madness tournament, today is Super Tuesday. Ten states will primary or caucus today, accounting for nearly 20% of the delegates.

Up for grabs are Georgia, Massachusetts, Idaho, North Dakota, Alaska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont, and Ohio. Nate Silver is projecting a strong night for Romney, one which he will come out with the most delegates in almost any scenario:

This scenario assumes that Mr. Romney will win Massachusetts and Virginia very easily, and Vermont and Idaho fairly easily (winning all 32 delegates in Idaho because of the way the state’s rules are structured). It assumes a narrow Romney win in Ohio and a narrow loss in Tennessee, and that Mr. Romney wins either the Alaska or North Dakota caucuses, but probably not both. Mr. Gingrich wins Georgia only, although by a big margin; Mr. Santorum wins Tennessee and Oklahoma, although by smaller margins than were expected a few days ago.

Silver goes on to note that because of increased media expectations and the intense focus on Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee, Romney might not walk away with a performance that is sufficiently impressive. Additionally, with Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama holding their contests within the next week, Romney will continue to face scrutiny in regards to his ability to win Southern states.

The "Can Romney win in the South?" line of criticism seems about as reasonable as the "Will woman and Hispanics turn out for Obama?" criticism of the 2008 primary. These core Democratic constituencies broke heavily for Hillary Clinton, but came home and turned out for Obama at historic levels in the general election. Whether Romney wins Mississippi or Alabama in the primary has no real relevance. If he gets the nomination, he will have a near-lock on the Deep South and this is true even if base enthusiasm for him is tepid. Much of this line seems to be aimed at continuing the primary. That isn't to say that the fact that Romney likely isn't drawing strong support in the Deep South during the primary is irrelevant, but it's unlikely to be a factor that prevents him from getting the nomination.

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RIP Santorum Google Problem

I guess the Santorum surge really is over.

Per Dan Savage:

But tonight when I Googled "santorum"—after getting an alert from a reader—the link to www.spreadingsantorum.com and the frothy-mix definition did not show up as the #1 Google search result. In fact, the landing page for the site did not appear anywhere in the search results. (But the blog that the site links to did.)

But do not grieve people of the Internet. The search result might be gone but Savage also points out that the discomfort around Rick Santorum's last name lives on.

No one has to Google "santorum" when they see a headline like "Santorum comes from behind in Alabama three-way." Everyone gets the joke without anyone having to look it up. The new definition is out there. Mission accomplished.

When Dan Savage and his readers began this Google Bomb years ago they had no idea that Rick Santorum could ever be this close to the Presidency. (Because really who would ever think that possible other than Rick Santorum and maybe his mom?) But their actions had a larger than life impact on Santorum's brand, an impact I don't think he'll ever be able to recover from. Read More......

Romney holds off the white knight for now

Jonathan Karl, ABC News, February 17, 2012:

A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race.

“If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity.

George Stephanopolous, ABC News, February 28, 2012:

"What [Romney's performance] tonight has done, I think, is kill any talk in Republican circles of finding another white knight to come into the campaign."

At least for the moment, that is. Losing his home state of Michigan would have been devastating for Romney. But as it is, he only barely won and Rick Santorum will take home the same number of delegates as Romney. To the extent that Romney has killed the talk of a new "white knight," it is just barely and just for the moment. He certainly hasn't suddenly created a popular groundswell in the Republican base for his candidacy. Super Tuesday is a week away and it will be a major test that could produce wins for Romney, Gingrich and Santorum. If Romney gets his clock cleaned next Tuesday, watch for the talk of the white knight to reemerge.

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Michigan, Arizona primaries today

Nate Silver predicts both Michigan and Arizona will go for Romney:

Michigan: Romney 38.7%, (55% chance of winning); Santorum 38.0% (45% chance of winning); Paul 12.6%; Gingrich 9.9%

Arizona: Romney 43.4%, 99% chance of winning; Santorum 27.3%; Gingrich 19.2%; Paul 10.2%

I'm hoping that the presence of independents and Democrats in the Michigan primary can swing the state to Santorum. The only problem is that Romney had a strong lead with early voting, making the current tie in polls not reflective of votes he's already banked. But we shall see tonight. If Santorum wins Romney's home state, it will be a huge blow to his chances at the nomination, as the GOP establishment will start speaking openly about the weakness of the current field.

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CNN debate redux

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has a good roundup of take-aways from last night's CNN debate. The short version is that Romney is being viewed as having won by being a giant dick. Here's one example of how Lewison saw this playing out:

Mitt Romney positioned himself to Rick Santorum's right. If you watched the debate, you learned that Mitt Romney thinks Rick Santorum is basically a liberal Democrat, and he promised to govern far to Santorum's right. Need I say more?

If Romney ends up winning the Republican nomination it will likely be because he convinced primary voters that he was more conservative than all the Anti-Romney's out there. That list has included such radical conservatives as Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. If it goes on to include Rick Santorum, it would be a stunning testament to Romney's ability to not only adopt any position, but to do so convincingly. The challenge for him will be, has he left room to move back towards the center in a general election? Based on last night's absolutely bonkers rhetoric, I'd guess the answer is no. The DNC and Obama campaign will have more than enough fodder to drop major bombs on Romney's radicalism on issues like bailing out Wall Street, opposing the continued existence of an American auto industry, deporting anyone whose skin color is lighter than Conan O'Brien's, and putting steel chastity belts on all unmarried women. Mitt Romney is not an approachable, nice multi-millionaire who understands your problems. He's a raging ass and it will be easy to show it to voters in a general election.

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CNN Debate Live Tweeting

(Matt Browner-Hamlin, Matt Ortega, Kombiz Lavasany)

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Things Rick Santorum used to say

It's debate day - today the remaining major candidates will debate in Arizona, days before the Arizona and Michigan primaries. There hasn't been a debate in a while, something that one could rarely write before this month, and the landscape has shifted dramatically since Santorum swept Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota. He is now the front-runner and the cash is flowing into his coffers, while Romney is spending down his reserves at a fast rate which should scare both his supporters now and hurt his ability to run a strong campaign if he is the nominee.

But with a new debate and his new status as front runner, the research books are opening up on Rick Santorum. Huffington Post reported yesterday that Santorum was pro-choice before he entered politics.

In a December 1995 Philadelphia Magazine article -- which the Huffington Post pulled from Temple University archives -- Santorum conceded that he "was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress... But it had never been something I thought about." Asked why he changed his mind, he said that he "sat down and read the literature. Scientific literature," only to correct himself and note that religion was a part of it too.

Huffington Post also reported on campaign statements from 1990 which showed Santorum as what would today amount to being a moderate Republican on abortion. This is fairly surprising given Santorum's culture warrior bonafides. As a result, we can expect this line of attack to be raised in tonight's debate.

In a slightly more bizarre edition of "Thinks Rick Santorum Used to Say," the Drudge Report is quoting Santorum more recently at the far other end of the culture war. The quote allegedly comes from a 2008 speech at a college in Florida:

"Satan has his sights on the United States of America!" Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has declared.
"Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."

This sounds a lot more like the Santorum that we now know, so I don't know that it would do much to turn off the Republican voters who are trending his way. But this sort of rhetoric is exactly the type of thing that would likely ensure that nominee Santorum would lose in historic fashion, which is, incidentally, the elite Republican critique of him.

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Santorum defends himself from Romney mudslinging

The Santorum campaign is out with an ad bashing Romney for attacking Santorum. In it Romney is played by an actor who looks like the child of Romney and Rick Perry. So it has that going for it... But beyond that, it's a soft-touch, cutesy ad that tries to cost Romney support by concern trolling on the possibility of conservatives rejecting mud slinging in the primary. We shall see if this works.

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Santorum leads in latest PPP national poll among GOP voters

Just in case you needed another reminder that rank and file Republicans really, really don't like Mitt Romney. Per the latest PPP poll he's at 38% to Romney's 23%. Newt and Paul are at 17% and 13%.

More from PPP:

Part of the reason for Santorum's surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney's favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point net decline from our December national poll when he was +24 (55/31). Gingrich has fallen even further. A 44% plurality of GOP voters now hold a negative opinion of him to only 42% with a positive one. That's a 34 point drop from 2 months ago when he was at +32 (60/28).

Santorum is now completely dominating with several key segments of the electorate, especially the most right leaning parts of the party. With those describing themselves as 'very conservative,' he's now winning a majority of voters at 53% to 20% for Gingrich and 15% for Romney. Santorum gets a majority with Tea Party voters as well at 51% to 24% for Gingrich and 12% for Romney. And with Evangelicals he falls just short of a majority with 45% to 21% for Gingrich and 18% for Romney.

If corporations are people, Mitt Romney is a corporation. He's the personification of everything that's gone wrong. Which is why both Gingrich and Santorum keep hitting him on his time at Bain. We're hearing a lot of rhetoric about values but I think it comes down to the economy. And with unemployment falling it will be all but impossible for Romney to craft an effective narrative against Obama should he win the nomination. Read More......

Romney campaign attributes anti-Santorum quote to Will Rogers

Will Rogers died in a plane crash in 1935. Rick Santorum was born in 1958.

This morning the Romney campaign attributed an anti-Santorum quote to Rogers in the subject line of a press release, which is odd since Will Rogers passed away 23 years before Rick Santorum was even born.

The Romney campaign's willingness to stretch reason knows no bounds.

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Santorum cleans up in Missouri, Minnesota & Colorado

In what will surely (again) tarnish Mitt Romney's aura of inevitability, Rick Santorum got a sweep in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. Daily Kos has the breakdown:

.			MO	MN	CO
.	reporting		100%	88%	99%
.			%	%	%
.	Santorum, Rick ✓ ✓ ✓	GOP	55	45	40
.	Romney, Mitt	GOP	25	17	35
.	Gingrich, Newt	GOP	0	11	13
.	Paul, Ron	GOP	12	27	12
.	Uncommitted		4

Markos notes that no delegates were awarded last night. Of course, nary a word of that was mentioned when the state in question was Iowa and it wrongly looked as if Mitt Romney had won. The fact remains that right now Rick Santorum has won four states, Mitt Romney has won two, and Gingrich has won one. The perceived momentum of victories is, at this still early stage, far more important than delegate counting.

If nothing else, the GOP will have to count on the fact that their base conservatives will come home to vote for Mitt Romney if he does end up getting the nomination. In 2008, Clinton voters came charging back to Barack Obama. Of course theirs were more personality and style based, not ideology based differences...

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NBC Republican debate live coverage

(Matt Browner-Hamlin, Matt Ortega, Kombiz Lavasany)

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South Carolina Results Thread

Updated 8:30 PM: Well then. On to Florida. Looks like this nomination isn't going to be locked down anytime soon. Daily Kos has a sortable calendar of upcoming primary and caucus dates. Goodnight y'all.

Updated 7:55 PM: TPM notes that according to the exit polls, the only income bracket Romney won were people making over $200,000 a year.

Updated 7:40 PM: Looks like Santorum will finish third, ahead of Ron Paul.

Updated 7:20 PM: Awkward HuffPo headline: Mitt Newt-ered Down South. Exit poll data from CNN.

Updated 7:10 PM: Well that didn't take long. Fox and NBC News both projecting that Newt has won.

Polls close at 7 PM. We'll keep updating this post with results and news as it comes in.

Until the results come in here are some stories of note from earlier today:

Frontrunners Mitt and Newt kept their final hours on the trail as classy as we've come to expect from the two of them.

In the morning, Gingrich all but called Romney chicken after the former Massachusetts governor came and went at a campaign stop where both candidates were expected to meet.

"Where's Mitt?" Gingrich said mockingly, as he arrived at a Greenville diner just minutes after Romney's bus rolled out.
...
Not to be outdone, Romney's campaign later put out a statement celebrating the "15th anniversary" of the House decision to reprimand Gingrich for ethics violations, during his days as speaker. The Romney campaign plans to deliver an anniversary cake to Gingrich's South Carolina headquarters to mark the occasion on Saturday.

According to the New York Times South Carolina voters are waiting until the last minute to decide which candidate to vote for. And over at HuffPo, Howard Fineman explains what the hell happened to Rick Santorum. Read More......

Santorum hits Romney for Obama similarities

This is a pretty brutal spot from Rick Santorum, hitting Romney for sharing positions with Obama on Wall Street bailouts and healthcare reform, as well as citing Romney as being more liberal than Ted Kennedy on social issues. This is as elemental a case against Romney as I've seen and it could do real damage in South Carolina (assuming the Santorum campaign has enough money to put it front of votes in a meaningful way).

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The Internet and Rick Santorum

I had planned to write a post of my favorite Santorum headlines but Gawker beat me to it. They also found this passage from an AP article about the Caucus.

"The best thing about the Santorum surge is that, even in Romney's best case scenario, he must still confront a "Romney Pushes Out Santorum" headline. Poor Mitt. If he wants Santorum out, he'll have to loosen up." [AP]

Santorum's Google problem has a special place in online/political history (and my heart). With the help of columnist Dan Savage and a good old fashioned Google Bomb the Internet has made it's feelings about Rick Santorum known. What's remarkable is that a 9 year old online campaign haunts Santorum every time anyone Googles him, not what you want to come up in your search results if you're running for President of the United States.

The media coverage of this phenomenon has been nearly as amusing as the political headlines. Several media outlets ran articles about it today. Mashable wrote an open letter outlining six steps to help Santorum repair the damage.

After years of being one of the Internet's largest inside jokes, Santorum has gone mainstream. Read More......

Happy Iowa Caucus Day!

It's finally here...after months of campaigning, more debates than voters at Michele Bachmann events, and 499 posts at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field, we come to the Iowa caucus and our 500th post. No more speculation. No more boomlets by Herman Cain or Donald Trump. We finally get to hear from Republican base caucus-goers.

The last three weeks have seen an end to the Gingrich boom and with it, rises by Ron Paul and Rick Santorum in Iowa. At this point the Iowa caucus seems to be a very close race between Paul, Santorum and Mitt Romney. Conventional Wisdom is coalescing around the idea that if Romney finishes in the top two, he's likely on his way to locking up the nomination early. Yesterday Mike Allen reported:

WHAT THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN IS THINKING about Tuesday night's caucuses - A top adviser emails: "If we win, it's fantastic. If Santorum wins and we are second, it's good. If Paul wins and we are second, it's great. Any of the likely outcomes is positive for us."

The most likely shakeup would be if Paul and Santorum go 1-2 and Romney gets third. Given the poll numbers, this is certainly a possibility.

The Iowa caucus could be the beginning of the end for the Bachmann campaign and could well force Gingrich and even the well-funded Rick Perry towards the door.

Stay tuned for caucus coverage here tonight... Read More......

Santorum surges in Iowa

Two new polls have Rick Santorum surging in Iowa. First the scary accurate Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucus goers has Mitt Romney holding steady at 24% but Rick Santorum surging from single digits to 15, most of that surge in the last days of polling.

Mitt Romney 24 %
Ron Paul 22 %
Rick Santorum 15 %
Newt Gingrich 12 %
Rick Perry 11 %
Michele Bachmann 7 %
Jon Huntsman 2%

The second is a Public Policy poll released tonight that continues to show Santorum's surge (warning PDF).

Mitt Romney 19%
Ron Paul  20%
Rick Santorum 18%
Newt Gingrich 14%
Rick Perry 10%
Michele Bachmann  8%
Jon Huntsman  4%
Buddy Roemer  2
Someone else/Not sure  4%

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