Election 2012: Explaining the Ron Paul Victory in the LA Caucuses

Back in January, I read an article on Politico that Texas US Representative Ron Paul was going to skip actively competing in the Florida presidential primary to focus on other contests, including the far distant Louisiana caucuses. I guess people should have taken him at his word. After Mitt Romney defeated Rick Santorum in the Wisconsin primary in early April, the fight for the GOP nomination ended. The former Massachusetts governor's victory in dairyland forced Santorum out of the race prior to what probably have been a second-place finish in his homestate of Pennsylvania. After Romney swept the bundle of northeast primaries last week, ex- House Speaker Newt Gingrich will likely end a campign he's been "phoning in" since placing a distant (and delegate-less) third in Louisiana's presidential primary. Yet Paul has shown no indication of bowing out, or at least pulling the plug on his presidential operation. After a lead-off crash in Iowa, the Paulistas have met frustration in most corners of the country. Maine was the high-point, though Paul still fell short in his efforts to finally claim a victory. And then came Louisiana, The Sequel. Just as Santorum ran up the score in the March primary, Paul did the same in the caucuses, taking 4 of 6 congressional districts. You could say the Death Stars aligned for the partisans of the Texas libertarian. Let me preface this analysis by stating that in no way do I wish to take anything away from Paul or his supporters in Louisiana. He invested in the state and his operatives and volunteers worked hard to pull off an impressive tactical victory. That said, it could not have happened with some help from the opposition (and a bit of dirty ops from Team Paul). First, the withdrawal of Rick Santorum created an enthusiasm vacuum that many of his state supporters could not transfer from the primary (where Santorum almost won an outright majority against three major opponents that spent time and resouces here) to a leaderless coalition of social conservatives. A number of Santorum delegate candidates bailed with the presidential candidate seeing no point in trudging forward. Newt's quasi-surrender last week depressed his folks as well. Secondly, Romey and his Super PAC sat out the caucuses. Were they gunshy after dropping loads of dough in attack ads and direct mail pieces and receiving no return or were they simply conserving all primary funds for a pre-convention general election operation? Or did they simply get caught with their Brook Brothers britches down, assuming that Louisiana would merely go the way of Rhode Island and Delaware? If the third, then such an assumption shows a lack of understanding about politics in general. The northeast states that voted has congressional primaries on the ballot in addition to the presidential contest. With the former driving turnout of the latter, Romney benefited from incidental votes for "the leader". However in the case of the Louisiana caucuses, the delegate selection was the only thing on the ballot, which also had restricted polling times and locations. Many voters did not see the point of participating, assuming they even knew about the caucuses since Romney is the de facto nominee. The Paulistas easily took advantage of not only a vacuum of interest and awareness, but, in the case of the New Orleans area, competition with Jazz Fest (the second largest public event after Mardi Gras) and the Zurich Classic, which is a major sporting event. Had Santorum remained as an active candidate, had Romney tried (he did receive 4x's the vote Paul garnered in the state primary) or had the caucuses been held on a weekday evening, the results would have been different. Santorum won 63 of 64 parishes in March while Paul got 6%. So where do things go from here? First, the Paul win will have political consequences. The Washington Post rcently ranked Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal 8th on its list of probable veep contenders for Romney and I suspect the caucus result will do to those odds what Arizona US Senator John McCain's surprise victory in the 2000 Michigan primary did to then-Governor John Engler's hopes of being George W. Bush's running mate. Governor Jindal has stated he has the job he wants and has no interest in being vice-president. Like the Paul Florida deal from January, we should take him at his word. Secondly, the Louisiana GOP has likely held its last delegate caucus or at least anything resembling this setup. The state GOP has had a tumultuous record with caucuses since 1996 and this one was likely the kill-shot. I'm not stating policy here, just making a prediction. Third is more inside baseball but still important: delegate selection. According to state party rules, presidential candidates that met the 25% threshold in the primary are entitled to proportional share of the 20 delegates up for grabs in the March contest, thus awarding Santorum 10 and Romney 5. Though the former suspended his camoaign, his national operation has stated they want those ten delegates and Romney also wants his five delegates. The rub is that those delegates will be selected by Paulistas elected in the caucuses at the state GOP convention in June. Will the Paulistas settle for the five uncommitted delegates unclaimed from the primary plus the 18 from winning 4 of the 6 congressional district caucuses or will they get greedy and hijack the 15 Santorum/Romney delegates from the primary? If there's an overreach, they could run into a seating problem at the Republcan National Convention via a challenge before a Romney-controlled credentials committee, where the "ballots controversy" from the caucuses could be factored into the committee's final decision as to whether the results of the caucuses were tainted through an organized effort by a camp to create systematic confusion to manipulate the outcome. It remains to be seen if the will of 91,321 Louisiana Republican voters who cast a ballot for Rick Santorum and the 49,758 Louisina Republican voters who cast a ballot for Mitt Romney in a tax-payer funded election could be erased by 150 people chosen in a caucus that drew less than 10,000 participants.

In Defense of the Electoral College

When you vote for president in the general election this November, take a close look at the ballot and you’ll notice a number of names in smaller type below that of the presidential candidates. Those listed in the fine print are the people you are actually voting for, since we do not have direct election for president in the US. In 2004 I had the privilege of serving as a Republican presidential elector when I (and eight others) received 1,102,169 votes on November 2, 2004. A few decades ago, Louisiana voters actually cast votes for individual electors who were grouped by party and the names of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees. A voter could apportion the state’s electoral vote total amongst the various candidates and electors, which is why popular high-profile people were sought by the major political parties to stand as presidential electors. In 1976, a well-known physician on the Republican slate ran ahead of his fellow Gerald Ford electors in Louisiana, though Democrat Jimmy Carter fared well enough to avoid creating a split in the state’s electoral votes. And as mundane and simple as the duties of being a presidential elector are, civics books contain a handful of asterisks denoting the occasions when individuals failed to do the easiest of constitutional tasks. One of the best attributes of the electoral college is its default recognition of the importance of states. In this respect, the electoral college is a monument to federalism. Eradicate the electoral college and a restructured US Senate based upon population instead of sovereign states will not be far behind. Secondly, the electoral college does a better job containing election fraud than national popular vote. For example, tainted votes in say Illinois can at no worse throw that state’s electoral votes to a candidate as opposed to providing the margin of victory via direct election. Thirdly, the electoral college system compels candidates to politically invest in regions instead of just population centers. In direct election, California, Texas, Florida and New York would dominate while Delaware, New Hampshire, Nevada and other small to medium sized swing states would be ignored. The electoral college system also tends to philosophically moderate candidates as they cannot just gin up turnout by playing hard to their respective bases. The electoral college forces candidates to develop and present more of a national message as opposed to a Dallas, San Francisco or Phoenix message. The faithless elector is the electoral college’s greatest weakness, though that same flexibility is also part of the genius of this process (keep reading). Though the late Fox McKeithen had his staff type George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney in the appropriate blank on the official electoral vote ballot, I technically could have objected and written in the name of any American legally qualified to serve as president, though to have done so would have betrayed the wishes of the over one million Louisiana voters who expected to see the state’s electoral votes go to Bush. That is a problem though the remedy would be to enact legislation on the state level that would obligate electors to follow the will of the people. The real genius in the system pertains to a “doomsday” scenario should tragedy befall the winning presidential and/or vice-presidential nominees between the November election and the casting of the electoral votes. In that situation, the death of the president-elect or vice-president-elect would not result in the second-place ticket ascending to the White House but would simply throw the decision to the presidential electors to choose substitutes who reflect the philosophy of those who were elected. This happened in 1872 when Horace Greeley (who was the de facto Democratic candidate against President U.S. Grant) died after the presidential election but before the electoral votes were cast. Though this scenario would hopefully be rare in the future, it would be difficult for a national popular vote system to incorporate such a critical contingency. While Americans take for granted the peaceful transfer of power from one political faction to another (instead we should take great pride in this), laws should be crafted to anticipate the maximum of applications, including dreaded worst case scenarios. Abandoning the electoral college would mean far more than the abolition of a system viewed by critics as political anachronism but a major restructuring of the relationship between the federal government and the states and between presidential candidates and the people.

Why I'm for Newt and Not Mitt

After learning that the candidate I had been advocating for since August 2011 was going to suspend his campaign that same afternoon, I was faced with a personal political dilemma.

Rick Santorum had only two weeks before triumphed in Louisiana’s Republican presidential primary though the loss in Wisconsin quasi-officially ended the actual fight for the Republican nomination and put the champion of social conservatives in a fiscal position where he could no longer conduct a viable campaign without doing to his children what profligate spending by the Obama Administration has done to four generations of children not yet born.

I could dutifully line up with Mr. Inevitable (who I have always believed to be the inevitable nominee and still believe will be an inevitable loser this November) or go with someone else as a protest vote, US Representative Ron Paul of Texas or ex-House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Allow me to quickly dispense with the Paul option: I’m not going to support a candidate for president who does not see a difference between Iran and Luxembourg.

My problems with Romney are copious.

Romney is not a sincere conservative and his clumsy political tacking does not inspire much confidence that he will be able to hang with Mr. Smooth in a debate.

I’ve always maintained that conservatism was not rejected in the 1996 and 2008 presidential elections since conservatives were not listed on the top half of the ballot.

Conservatism was misrepresented with tired Beltway pols who struggled to talk like a conservative with a straight face. They didn’t believe in the message and thus could not effectively sell it to the public.

Secondly, Romney has the least Republican cred of any GOP nominee since Wendell Willkie. The same politician who hyperventilated over Santorum’s attempts to get registered Democrats to support him in states with cross-over voting had himself voted in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic Primary.

Third, there’s the giant rhinoceros in the room: RomneyCare. Expect Obama to lecture Romney on health care the same way Bill Clinton lectured President George H.W. Bush on taxes after the latter violated his once famous then infamous “read my lips” pledge.

Please feel free to check out RomneyCare in its full coercive and punitive glory on the Massachusetts Department of Revenue website, www.mass.gov/dor/docs/dor/health-care/2011/hc-instr.pdf.

Consider it a preview of the ObamaCare horror experience waiting for Americans just around the corner.

It was with good reason why the words “health care” didn’t leave Romney’s lips during his speech at the 2011 CPAC.

Fourth, I have a tough time believing Romney will do a decent job building a rapport with the average American. Democrats will paint Romney as a bad Republican stereotype, or put more succinctly, a GOP version of John Kerry.

Let’s hope Romney doesn’t celebrate winning the Pennsylvania primary by windsurfing in Boston Harbor.

Finally, there was the obnoxious manner he has handled his political business, as an individual and presidential candidate and through his Super PAC cronies.

Romney associates were fingered as the source of unflattering leaks about Sarah Palin while she and John McCain were on the campaign trail in 2008, with the goal being to damage the Alaskan enough so she would have a tough time seeking the GOP nomination four years later. You can read more of this here: http://spectator.org/archives/2008/10/27/post-defeat-planners.

It seemed Romney’s 2012 interests took precedent over the party’s and America’s interests in 2008. But that’s how the Romney people play.

Savage first, co-opt later.

While Gingrich is neither perfect nor ideal, the Georgian has done far more for the Republican Party than Romney has ever done or will ever do.

Two years after Romney “heroically” voted for Paul Tsongas, Gingrich orchestrated and led a Republican takeover of the US House of Representatives. That Gingrich’s very real contributions to conservatism and the GOP were misleadingly marginalized in pro-Romney Super PAC hits was disgusting.

Newt deserved better and Romney and his ilk should have behaved better.

Though he will not be our party’s nominee and will not be president, Speaker Gingrich has my support and I hope others who see Romney for what he is will send a signal through caucus contests and primaries remaining on the calendar that conservatives do not want to see the achievements of the TEA Party movement cavalierly discarded, the party platform eviscerated of conservatism and a running mate selected more to appease the New York Times than the party base.

Though the fight to have a true conservative representing our party in the November election is over, the fight to keep our party conservative continues through Gingrich’s candidacy.

Every strong showing by Gingrich means one less shake of the etch-a-sketch.

Election 2012: Folding the Sweater Vest

Note: Forgive this gonzo journalistic exercise as I pen this column from the first person, as I was personally involved in the Santorum campaign as a state director in the Louisiana effort.

Early Tuesday afternoon I received an e-mail from the Santorum campaign informing me of that an impromptu conference call was slated with less than fifteen minutes warning.

Having opened the e-mail late, I got on the conference call a bit tardy though was told they were waiting for Rick to join in.

At this point I assumed the candidate was going to briefly breakdown the state of the campaign and give his state leaders a pep talk about going forward.

Instead Rick opened up with a thank you for all of our hard work before then stating that in a few minutes he was going to announce the suspension of his presidential campaign.

At that point I logged on to the Drudge Report (or as I called it the Romney Report) to see if I missed some pretty big news but there was no mention of Santorum’s imminent departure, just a small image of the candidate with the words “staying in” (or something along those lines) below it.

I don’t recall whatever else the candidate said as I was somewhat stunned by the news, though appreciative that he had the courtesy to personally brief his staff and state leaders about the development before hearing it on the news.

That Santorum was not going to be the party nominee was obvious for a while, even amongst his supporters.

The social conservative’s best hope of knocking off former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was missed in the Michigan primary. A Santorum triumph over Romney in the most important of his several “home states” would have been a mortal blow to the frontrunner.

That’s not to say a Santorum win in Michigan would have meant he would have been nominated, but it would have virtually ended any hope of Romney serving as the party’s standard bearer in the general election.

A new candidate would have emerged from the establishment fold to challenge Santorum, though the Pennsylvanian would have had the upper hand.

After Michigan, the expectations game worked against Santorum. The story wasn’t that Santorum came close to an unthinkable upset against Romney in Michigan but that the latter had rallied from an absurdly large polling deficit to win.

To paraphrase Romney’s election night speech, he truly did win by enough.

Ohio became the next battleground.

Once again, Santorum entered the contest with poll numbers in the political stratosphere before the Romney Super PAC and a few rhetorical gaffes brought him back down to earth and as the last numbers came in from Cincinnati and Cleveland once again below Romney, even if by a hair.

After Ohio, it was apparent that the new objective was not to surpass Romney in the delegate count but to deny him a majority going into the convention and trying his luck appealing directly to the delegates (a novelty in this political era).

From that point, Santorum had to focus his energies and resources finishing off not Romney but former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to consolidate the split conservative vote.

Had Santorum won in Ohio and Michigan, Mississippi and Alabama would not have been the close calls they were.

On the night of the Deep South primary, I was in the war room with Santorum observing his facial expressions change with the numbers in Mississippi. When his lead was razor thin, I was somewhat amused to see him lament about the possibility of “another Ohio” to which I blurted out “a 1500 lead with 20% still out is a win. There is no Cuyahoga County in Mississippi”.

I don’t recall the candidate being amused by my wisecrack though my familiarity with the Magnolia State proved accurate.

Louisiana was the high water mark of the Santorum effort. He crushed both Romney and Gingrich, finally won the Catholic vote by a big margin and carried 63 out of Louisiana’s 64 parishes, losing only Orleans Parish.

The must win state for Santorum wasn’t Pennsylvania but Wisconsin. A victory in Wisconsin would have made a win in Pennsylvania beyond Romney’s reach.

And as Wisconsin went, so went Santorum’s capacity to conduct a viable campaign in an expensive media state such as Pennsylvania.

Though I have supported Rick Santorum since August of last year and have spent countless hours working on the Louisiana primary and caucuses, I don’t blame Rick for ending his bid.

At best a win in Pennsylvania would have caused him to take on considerable campaign debt that would have handicapped his efforts elsewhere. At worst, Santorum would have suffered the indignity of being rejected once again by Keystone State voters while piling up expenses.

. Too many politicians often let their ambitions delude them into spending beyond their means with consequences that linger long after the election.

Dropping out was the responsible thing to do for him and his family.

And with Gingrich running a scaled down though active campaign, the termination of the Santorum bid does not deprive conservative voters an alternative in the caucuses and primaries remaining on the calendar.

Rick Santorum wasn’t my first choice, though I got behind his candidacy earlier than most.

After ex-Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty fell prey to the Ames Straw Poll, I believed that Santorum was the most viable conservative standing even though he was polling 1% nationally when I cast my lot with him.

The long odds never bothered me as I don’t bet on candidates, I believe in them.

And I did not want to make the same mistake my candidate made four years ago when he “settled” on Romney.

It was apparent from the beginning that the Massachusetts moderate was going to be the party nominee, though Romney wasn’t going to get it with my vote.

Santorum’s candidacy was a reflection of the frustration that conservatives have with the Republican Party. And though the candidate has left the stage, I suspect many of his votes will transfer over to either Gingrich or Texas US Representative Ron Paul.

Romney may have lost an opponent, the court is out as to whether he gains many new supporters.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank Rick and his family for enduring those many lonely nights in Pizza Barns across Iowa in October and November while the party base hopped from one flavor of the month to the next.

It could not have been easy to believe that there would be a day when the dozens that would show up to hear his message would eventually grow to hundreds.

As a conservative I am grateful for the sacrifices he and his family made to give us a real choice.

As an individual, I am grateful that I was allowed to be a part of a campaign.

Though it wasn’t always a pleasure, it truly was an honor.

It's Time for Newt to Strike the Colors

Though I am a Rick Santorum supporter, I’ve always had a good deal of sympathy for Newt Gingrich.

He was the leading conservative rabble-rouser of this generation. A brilliant political strategist with the boldness to make things happen, Gingrich dared to dream and think on a level that caused the permanent GOP minority caucus managers to hyperventilate.

Two years after then-registered independent Mitt Romney cast a ballot in the 1992 Democratic Presidential Primary, Gingrich played the lead role in the Republican capture of the US House of Representatives, ending an exile that extended back to the Eisenhower Administration.

The historian had written himself into the history books.

When the LSU political science department offered his class on videotape during intersession, I took it.

To see Gingrich’s GOP cred savaged by a Romney-aligned Super PAC is the apogee of hypocrisy and while the former speaker has certainly stepped in plenty of political dog doo-doo through recklessness over the years, he did not deserve the treatment he suffered in Iowa and Florida from Romney partisans.

Gingrich missed a golden opportunity to face off against Romney sans Santorum in Virginia but did not make the ballot. A win in Virginia on Super Tuesday would have helped him make a stronger case in Alabama and Mississippi, states where Gingrich was competitive.

It would have been Gingrich’s best chance to rewrite the narrative of GOP delegate scramble. Instead, the pair of Deep South states proved to be the last gasp of the Gingrich campaign.

Perhaps Team Gingrich spent too much time dwelling on the debate circuit and not the pesky minutiae of a national campaign. Attention to details is how Barack Obama outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

The effect of Santorum’s surprise wins in Mississippi and Alabama doomed whatever chance he had at winning Louisiana, where his daughter Jackie was born and where he attended grad school (Tulane).

And with Santorum running up the score in Louisiana (48%), Gingrich’s path to the nomination isn’t murky; it’s non-existent.

Gingrich has nowhere else to go until May and a late rally isn’t in the cards.

Right now the race for the Republican nomination is at a crossroads: Romney has an overwhelming financial, establishment and organizational advantage though he has not been able to seal the deal in a convincing way while Santorum is trying to stand athwart of the Romney inevitability argument yelling “stop!”.

Santorum’s challenge is that much tougher since beyond Romney’s operational superiority the Pennsylvanian also has to compete against the “conservative spread”, that being the satchel of conservative votes that has represented a margin of victory denied to Santorum in several key states.

At this point, Gingrich can either choose to exit from the primaries and caucuses on his own volition or endure the embarrassment of being marginalized into insignificance, a path he is already well down judging by his crash in Louisiana and his single-digit poll numbers in Wisconsin.

Newt the historian ought (who not long ago compared Romney to 1920 GOP early frontrunner Leonard Wood) to know that 2012 is the polar opposite of 1980.

That year the conservative vote had largely coalesced around Ronald Reagan’s candidacy (who had quickly disposed of his challengers for the mantle of the Right) while the moderate establishment vote was cut four ways (George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, Howard Baker and John Anderson).

It was because of the divided moderate vote that Reagan pulled an upset in the not-so conservative state of Vermont.

It might be too late for a Gingrich withdrawal and endorsement to stop Romney’s slog to Tampa Bay though the former speaker’s continued presence in the race practically guarantees the Massachusetts moderate’s nomination.

It’s time for Newt to recognize reality and come to terms that this election is not about him.

Back in January this Santorum supporter argued that a vote cast in the Florida primary for Santorum was in effect a vote for Romney. Rick had practically pulled out of the Sunshine State and had no chance to succeed there while Gingrich was investing heavily in Florida.

Now that we are on the winner-take-all section of the primary calendar, a conservative vote for anyone but Santorum is in effect a vote for Romney.

If Gingrich will not take himself out of the race, then it is up to Gingrich supporters to do the job for him abandoning his sinking ship by backing Santorum.

The Presidential Primary That Almost Didn’t Happen (or The Terrible Embarrassment That Almost Did)

Republican presidential candidates will take an unprecedented interest in Louisiana’s presidential primary.



Already the state has been saturated with political mail, phone calls and television advertisements from the contenders aiming to replace Barack Obama and Super PACs “independently” advancing their cause.



More often than not, the Louisiana GOP contest is a rubber stamp ratifying a de facto nominee determined a few weeks prior.



In an attempt to bring a semblance of order to a frontloaded primary/caucus calendar, both national parties agreed to a set of general delegate allocation principles that 1) protected the “favored” status of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, 2) designated a proportional period of delegate allocation and 3) a winner-take all period of delegate allocation.



All three tenets of the presidential nomination system reform were disregarded and continue to be disregarded by several states, most infamously Florida which moved its presidential primary ahead of Nevada and refused to conform to a proportional delegate allocation system. Whether they actually pay a penalty or are compelled to follow the national rules remains to be seen.



Because Louisiana’s presidential primary had just moved to February (the exclusive reservation of the “favored four”) for 2008, it was necessary to move the date of the statewide election back to March in order to comply with the rules. The alternatives were to either lose half of the state’s delegates to the respective national conventions or hold a so-called “beauty contest” primary that would be meaningless in terms of awarding delegates with a caucus to be held later.



With the leadership of the Louisiana Republican Party unwilling to give up any of its delegates and a multi-million dollar “beauty contest” an exercise in fiscal insanity, the state GOP advocated for enactment of legislation returning the Louisiana presidential primary to March.



Except this time, the Louisiana Republican Party’s dance partner from 2008 stood them up.



For reasons that initially seemed perplexing, the Louisiana Democratic Party remained mute on moving the state’s presidential contest. With Obama drawing no credible opposition, it was somewhat understandable that state Democrats took no interest in a bill moving the Louisiana presidential primary back to March.



However as the clock ticked down on the 2011 regular legislative session, the face of the national Democrats reared its head in a mischievous manner.



After the bill sailed through House of Representatives, the legislative ringleader of the Democratic caucus quietly acted to have the bill killed in Senate committee with the assistance of a few Republican senators.



Democrats later argued, hypocritically, that the primary is a waste of money (they didn’t think so when Obama was fighting Hillary Clinton four years before) though at no time did any member of the state Democratic caucus introduce legislation to cancel the primary and thus actually save the taxpayers the expense of a statewide election.



In other words, they tried to orchestrate a multi-million dollar embarrassment for the Louisiana Republican Party, just as the Missouri GOP was mocked for their own beauty contest in February when their government didn’t move early enough to bring their primary into compliance with national rules.



The Louisiana Democratic Party’s antics were immature, irresponsible and churlish, though their tracks covered with the assistance of their fellow Republican senators.



Fortunately another committee meeting was conducted late into the session to reconsider the legislation that had been bottled up and the Republican legislators who assisted with the Louisiana Democratic Party’s national committeewoman’s chicanery suddenly found religion.



The bill left committee on a party line vote (a testament to why Democrats should never be allowed a fair shake on a committee that handles election matters) and passed the senate by a comfortable margin, with the legislative black caucus voting in the negative.



Thus Louisiana’s voice in the presidential election process was saved by a load of angry calls and e-mails from Republican activists to Republican legislators, a bare Republican majority on a critical senate committee and a sliver of a window in the legislative process.



Instead of being ignored at best or mocked at worst in what would have been a public relations debacle, Republican presidential candidates are spending time and money in our state, talking with voters (something generally reserved for the denizens of New Hampshire and Iowa) and learning about the federal issues that affect Louisiana.



And unlike four years ago, the consequences of the state’s Republican primary will not be lost in a political vacuum.



A win by ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney would finally demonstrate strength in the Deep South, the bedrock of the national GOP, and perhaps end talk of an unresolved nomination going into Tampa.



Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is fighting for survival. A victory by the Tulane grad would revive his flagging candidacy after coming in close seconds in Mississippi and Alabama. A second place or worse showing would end Gingrich’s candidacy through withdrawal or being marginalized to irrelevance.



Texas US Representative Ron Paul has yet to win a state. Ever.



That said, a Louisiana win would do less for him than winning the Powerball would do for me. The latter is far more likely.



For ex-Pennsylvania US Senator Rick Santorum, a big win in Louisiana would be meaningful in three ways- 1) further dampening Romney’s hopes of ending the fight for the party nomination ASAP, 2) potentially firing the kill-shot on Gingrich’s candidacy prior to the legal start of the winner take all period and 3) providing his campaign a major boost going into to the Wisconsin primary, the next major contest on the political calendar.



So when Republicans go to their precincts to let their voice be heard on Saturday, March 24th, I hope they remember two things- 1) your vote matters and 2) the Louisiana Democrats, who find disenfranchisement conspiracies lurking in every close Republican election victory, tried to rob you of your vote for president.



Do your homework and then go vote.

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Disclaimer- The author is actively involved in Rick Santorum's campaign for president. If you are a registered Republican in Louisiana and would like to become involved in the Santorum campaign, please e-mail your information to louisiana@ricksantorum.com.

Election 2012: Reality Check Tuesday

Note: The author has been supporting former US Senator Rick Santorum since August 2011 and is actively involved in his campaign. Weigh the opinions expressed and arguments presented as you see fit.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex-US Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania both had good nights while it seems to be “goodnight” for ex-US House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich.

For Texas Congressman Ron Paul it was more of the same. ‘

Super Tuesday revealed glaring weaknesses even for the victors.

The most startling number of the night wasn’t the sliver separating Romney from Santorum in Ohio but the 40% Ron Paul “protest vote” in Virginia. Though only the two were on the Old Dominion GOP ballot, that so many people who disagree with Paul would cast ballots for him is a measure of the disgust much of the party base has with Romney.

And while Romney won Ohio with 38%, it could be argued that 52% of Buckeye voters cast ballots for conservatives. Not since Goldwater has there been such an open rebellion by the party base against the party establishment.

Though the Bain Capital executive very much remains in the driver’s seat on the road to Tampa Bay, site of the 2012 Republican National Convention, Romney’s continuing performance struggles despite the substantial financial and organizational advantages over his rivals is noteworthy and should be disconcerting.

While there is no threat of Santorum or Gingrich voters supporting President Barack Obama in November, a lack of enthusiasm by the party base could be fatal.

Santorum racked up some badly needed wins on Super Tuesday yet missed another opportunity to “close the deal” in a large state. And once again fell short of a plurality after previously enjoying a big lead over Romney.

Santorum desperately needs to score a big win somewhere before his candidacy devolves into that of a social conservative protest vote.

The upshot for Santorum is that he achieved an important secondary objective: burying Gingrich in two southern states the week before Republicans in two Deep South states hit the polls.

Gingrich experienced his first actual victory party since his South Carolina win back in January.

Granted his landslide win came in his home state of Georgia and though he avoided the indignity of losing the place where he launched his political career.

However there were no shortage of electoral indignities for Gingrich across the Super Tuesday map, particularly with third place finishes in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Ohio.
Gingrich needed more than just a strong showing in Georgia to resuscitate his floundering candidacy. Winning Oklahoma and Tennessee would have better positioned him in next Tuesday’s Mississippi and Alabama primaries.

Instead, Santorum enhanced his status as the conservative alternative to Romney while Gingrich is increasingly being viewed as a “conservative bleeder” enabling Romney’s nomination by remaining in the race.

Expect Gingrich to flail mightily in Alabama and Mississippi, and barring a shocking turnaround, with the kill shot to his candidacy coming in Louisiana on March 24th.

Since Paul’s candidacy steered towards collecting delegates for a purpose unrelated to actually winning the party’s presidential nomination, his effort remains immune to his failure to win a state. Ever.

Overall Romney achieved what he wanted, bagging a big state while Santorum has recovered from two rough weeks and goes into friendly territory against a frontrunner distrusted by conservatives and an increasingly marginalized Gingrich.